Oscar Mike said:
But many seldom do. I see a lot of folks retire and sit on their backsides, the worst thing a person can do is be idle.
Boy I must really be doing something wrong. I just finished, well almost finished getting the Aerbus ready to travel. I haven't worked that hard in weeks. Come to think about it, having an RV is almost like a part time job. Week before last I spent 4 days cleaning and polishing the Aerbus. If you've read any of the Red Max Pro threads you'll know what I'm talking about. Today I picked up some new cables for the battery interconnects. Broke one last night when I was adding water to them. Then I disinfected the fresh tank. That's a first for me. Boy does that drain slowly. Next I tried to fix the leak under the kitchen sink. Think I got it. But the biggie is what feels like moving the entire contents of our 3 bedroom home into our short 32 footer. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but my wife doesn't know the meaning of minimal. Seriously, 7 pounds of coffee. I mean, I like coffee. Lots of coffee. But 7 pounds for maybe a month. Just seems like overkill. If there was ever a list of the top ten reasons to go full time, never having to load and unload the rv again is certainly number 1. Of course, all this work and trying to find room for everything is also my amo for the next bigger RV purchase discussion.
I've been somewhat lazy this past year. Actually the last year and a half. That was when I finished landscaping my front yard. To put things in perspective, a continuous comment of the neighbors walking by my front yard was, why don't you rent a tractor. My front yard is about 100 feet across. I terraced the entire yard. Started out to be a parking area for the motorhome. Found out the city frowns on that. So not wanting my initial efforts to go in vain, I just landscaped the entire yard. Of course I had worked for 3 weeks pulling the remains of a tree stump that I had cut down the year before. Lots of digging. Lots of chopping with the heavy ax. Thank God for the pulling power of an F250 diesel or a large part of that stump would still be there. Between the moving of dirt from one side of the yard to the other, building a gravity retaining wall with between 4 and 500 blocks that weighed about 20 lbs a piece and then spreading 6 tons of gravel by 5 gallon pail and wheelbarrow I believe I moved close to 100,000 lbs of stuff. Of course this was a water reduction program so I had to pull out the in ground sprinkler system and lay a new drip system. Before the drip system was installed I covered the entire yard in weed barrier. Took about 3,000 sq feet. One of the benefits of my 3 month long 7 day a week effort was a weight loss of 25 lbs and a significant increase in strength. Of course, doing minimal work the last year and a half the weight magically reappeared. And sadly those new muscles were replaced by a lot of loose flesh.
But seriously, sitting on the duff for too long and not doing any physical stuff is asking for trouble. As I perfected my couch potato and wine drinking efforts I also lost some of the strength that comes from doing physical things. My blood pressure was also starting to increase. It has been maybe 110 over 60 something most of my life. Lately, it's been between 120 and 130 over 60 something. Pushing hypertension. So I started exercising again. Two weeks ago, I couldn't do one pushup. :-[ Seriously. One pushup. That really bothered me. But kept at it. Yesterday I was up to 15. For me, not being able to do pushups is rather scary. I used to pride myself on my physical condition. I used to chide my mother since she didn't do much of anything her entire life. Of course she made it to a within 3 days of her 99th bday. My father, on the other hand, the picture of health, died at 58. Of course, he was a heavy smoker most of his life. I gave that up about 30 years ago.
So I guess if there's a message here and it's about retirement, then retire, but don't stop working. Seriously, I don't have a gardener. I never have my cars washed, I do all the maintenance things around the house and I love spending time in the garage with my stuff. And about the 15 pushups, I'm going to work on that. I'd like to be able to do 3 sets of 25. A friend of mine who is 6 years my senior can do that. He's 77.
