October 15, 2008
To All our Friends and Relatives:
No, I am not confused. It is not Christmas. We are sending you Halloween greetings instead. Dan always said that Halloween is his favorite holiday. At least this letter won’t get lost among all the other Christmas cards!
As some of you already know, on Christmas we will be in the Pacific Ocean, cruising around Pitcairn Island (where Fletcher Christian and the others from Mutiny on the Bounty went) and then on our way to Easter Island (Moai, the giant stone statues).
But to back up—this has been a year of change and anticipation for us. Over a year ago Dan decided that he would retire on 10/31/2008 and we began making plans. I was planning to work until then, too, but I ended up leaving my job at the end of July. I LOVE being retired and have decided that working for 50 years is enough and I don’t ever plan to do it again. I am really enjoying the more leisurely pace and having time to walk the dog every morning. Angel, I might add, is very happy about it too.
We leave on our trip on November 2nd and will be home on February 16th, a total of 15 weeks. We had always said we wanted to go to Australia when we retired. Meanwhile, last summer, while surfing the net, I discovered a fantastic South Pacific cruise on the Tahitian Princess and we fell in love with the itinerary. That was the starting point and the rest of our trip just grew around that.
We have continued to do the things we love to do this year. Dan did several half marathon runs and participated in a team race in the Reno-Tahoe area that covered 178 miles (with 12 people on the team) and took them 29 hours. I just stayed in the condo on the lake and went to the casino to drop $5 in the penny slot machines. The next weekend he was on a 6 person team that did the Sawtooth Relay from Stanley to Ketchum, 62 miles. Both involved running in the middle of the night wearing a headlamp, as well as in daytime.
We play as much bridge as we can, go to all the BSU home basketball and football games, participate in Corvette and other car related activities. Dan also keeps up with the 70 rose bushes in the yard. All of these activities will be easier next year, with much more time to do them.
In August (after I retired) we took a road trip to Albuquerque to spend some time with Susanna and our newest grandchild, Zander, who will be a year old in a couple of weeks. On the way home we spent 3 days in Battle Mountain, Nevada. We participated as course monitors in an open road race in Nevada where some of the cars (over 1/3 of the 80 were Corvettes) reached speeds of over 200 MPH, all on a closed state highway. I was skeptical when Dan signed us up, but it was really a lot of fun.
Dan spent a week in May in Chicago area visiting everyone there and attending the retirement bash for his baby brother, Gary. It is the year for retirements.
He will be going to Monterey to deliver a paper at Internet Librarian conference in October, just two weeks before he retires. It will be sort of a last hurrah, and a chance to say farewell to his many colleagues from other libraries around the country.
I have made a couple of trips to the Bay area to spend time with Karen and her kids and grandkids. On the most recent visit, Karen and I went over to the coast to spend a couple of days. It was absolutely gorgeous, sunny and in the 70s, and while having lunch on the Monterey wharf we watched 5 sea otters cavorting right outside the window of the restaurant.
For those of you who are interested, our trip itinerary (briefly) is as follows: first, most of a week in Rarotonga and a day on Aitutaki (Cook Islands), then to Queensland, Australia (where I can snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef), and a drive along the Australian coast to Sydney. Then, to Auckland to board a 2 week cruise all around New Zealand, Tasmania, and back to Sydney. Our hotel overlooks the Opera House and we have tickets to hear Handel’s Messiah there on Dec. 7th. Next, we drive to Canberra, Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road and back to Sydney again. Then we fly to Tahiti, spending a week on Moorea, followed by boarding the Tahitian Princess for a 26 day cruise. This cruise goes across the Pacific to Peru, to Ecuador, and then through the Panama Canal to the San Blas Islands and Costa Rica. We end up at Ft. Lauderdale. We are spending about 10 days in Florida, including the Keys, Daytona, Cape Canaveral and Orlando. We end up our trip with 3 weeks at our time shares in Maui.
This has taken a great deal of planning and coordination and we are really looking forward to it. We are taking the laptop and as we have time may blog some progress reports and pictures. If you check www.riverofdata.com there will be links from the home page to anything we are able to put on the web, either pictures or text. You might get an email or two from us along the way. We decided to do this now, while we are still young and healthy enough to enjoy it. You never know what will happen in the next year or five. I told Dan we will probably have to move under the bridge when we get home, and he assures me that he will get me a ‘very nice’ grocery cart, like the ones at Costco, not the wimpy plastic ones like at Walgreens. He also said we will have the Corvette with us under the bridge as well.
To complicate all this preparation, we have to sort out all the Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement options before we leave and get all the paperwork in place. And of course, the stock market is making everyone crazy. Financially, we could not have picked a worse time to decide to retire, but otherwise it is the perfect time. Last week I had a reminder of just how much all this has affected me. I had been having some shortness of breath and decided to check with my doctor. After a whole bunch of tests, including a CAT scan to look for a suspected pulmonary embolism (that was a pretty scary day), his final diagnosis was that my heart and lungs are fine. It is just stress! I hadn’t planned to have such a complete physical right now, but we got our final money’s worth from the insurance and it is nice to take off with a clean bill of health.
So, as we head off to the South Pacific, we hope you all have a wonderful and peaceful holiday season. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we embark on this greatest adventure of our lives.
Gail and Dan Lester gail@riverofdata.com and dan@riverofdata.com