"You're The Reason God Made Oklahoma"

[BD}

Whoever the aforementioned country song was written for should thank the writer.  Very green rolling wooded hills.  Not what you would expect for Oklahoma..  (Good song even if you are not a country fan.)

Awesome weather.  Sunny, evening temps in 60's, daytime 70's to 80,s.  Up at 0700 to christen the K-cup coffee pot which takes up WAY too much valuable counter space so I'm frequently advised.  We compromised by my promising to bring VD hot chocolate in bed every morning.

Left Lane Springs CG at required 0900 and before Freddie got up.  First task of the day was to rescue a post turtle, (google "obama post turtle"). Based on the quantity of road kill we saw the rest of the day, Missouri either has a LOT of wildlife, or lesser amounts of not very smart wildlife, especially armadillos.  Saved two more turtles later in theday.

Uneventful trip the rest of the day.  Gas down to $3.55/gal.  Conducted a thoroughly exhilarating training session on the use of GPS #3 (of 5).  It appears that VD's Law of Disappearing Electrons applies in Oklahoma also.  Will try again this evening.

Last stop of the day...  a quilting shop in Tulsa.  Seems OK quilt material is different than IL quilt material.  I amused myself by examining (and then throwing a quilt over) a $12,000 sewing machine.  My retirement car cost less.

Overnighting at Heyden State Park just west of Tusla.  Excellent CG with hot water showers and flush toilets.  (So much for "off the grid".)  Populated only by a few old retired people.

Had a nice little bedtime surprise coming back from the showers.


YES!  IT'S A  #$%!**!  TARANTULA!!  Small for a tarantula, but where's MAMA.

Night All

On The Road Again...Just Can't Wait...

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So here we are at the end of day 1 of the rest of our lives.  And a glorious day it was.  Up at the crack of dawn trying to think of all of those things that we obviously missed last night when we decided "we have it all!!"  Grabbed another couple of hundred lbs and stuffed it into the unused nooks and crannies.  Time of departure at precisely 0900 as per long established Davidson protocol.

0905 hrs - 2.5 miles  -  First stop  -  CARIBOU COFFEE.  Two large light roast with room and a couple of muffins.  Enough  of the right stuff to get us 450 miles down the road.

0915 hrs - 5.0 miles  -  Second stop  -  SPEEDWAY GAS.  OMG!!!  Who woulda thunk.  By my estimate we'll run out of cash somewhere between Peoria and Springfield.

1730 hrs - 401.7 miles  (won't bore you with the in betweens)  ARR Lane Spring CG a few miles south of Rolla MO (home of the Missouri School of Mines). No sights at the CG, just a place to spend the night.  Better than the K-MART parking lot.

CG completely empty except for the CG Host who appears to be a cross between Freddy and "The Scream", although very friendly.  (Please take note of the last dot on the Everytrail Tracker.  If there isn't another one there by about 10 am Thursday.....)

For anyone inclined to need to know where we are at every second, go to www.everytrail.com and type davidso1 into the search box.  You'll need to navigate to our list of trips and pick the one at the top of the list.  Should be the most recent segment.  There are still some technical challenges to getting it to display on this blog, but I should have it figured out by the time we get home.

That's it for today.  Don't expect too much for Thurdsay.  Crossing Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. Not a lot of photo ops.


Good Night

CAN YOU HEAR (see) ME NOW?

[BD]


Being a hpoeless gearhead, the past two days, we (actually I) have been immersed up to my dupa in all of the electronic gadgetry absolutely essential when venturing into the southwestern wilderness.

At last tally we've accumulated 1 laptop, 1 tablet, 2 smartphones, 1 dumbphone (VD's), 1 IPOD, 5 GPS devices, 3 digital cameras, 7 chargers and approximately 800 different cables and assorted adapters to hook them all together to form a neural network Spock himself would have been proud of.

A sub-specialty of this assemblage is GPS tracking.  As noted, we will have 5 different units.  (I'm leaving 3 others behind as they would be redundant.)  The objective being to have absolute certainty of our precise location, +/- 20 ft, 24/7, without ever having to read a road sign or even look out the window, or God forbid consult a paper map!!

In addition, the plan is for real-time tracking uploaded to a yet to be selected web service, so that all our family and friends can immediately determine that we are totally lost in spite of having enough technology to navigate to Alpha Centauri.

I NEED one of these!

AND... as an absolute last resort, we have the means to uplink an SOS to a satellite with an urgent request  for life sustaining essentials (i.e. chocolate, Fritos, Coke - no ice, etc.).

So all we need is one more trip to Radio Shack for a solar panel built into a baseball cap so we can keep all this stuff functional.  Ahhhh....  Living off the grid is going to be awesome.

Next entry will likely be from the road.

The Road To Nirvana

[BD]

The Desired Path

The guy who said "Getting there is half the fun." apparently hasn't retired yet.  We are now in week 3 of the process.  My X-coworkers have concluded that I haven't retired yet, (because I'm at the office at least for a few hour each day), and therefore continue to feed me things to keep me occupied.  However, my better half (VD) assures me that I have in fact retired and am therefore available to go out an play 24/7.  A state of retirement purgatory.



In all honesty though, it has been a really good experience.  Lots of getting ready for the first expedition and yet ANOTHER retirement party.

Awesome T-shirt and cake.  :D and Julia got the chocolate wheels - DRATS!







Also, Jessa Slade (the famous author) was visiting for the past week.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the Romance Writers conference with her, (had to work that day...), and so missed the assorted cover-page hunks and hunk-trisses that I hear were assembled.

I WILL have a large assortment of reading material for the trip though.



Well, as promised in the first entry, posting diligence will not be my strong suit.  However, once formally on The Path, we should actually have something a bit more interesting to offer, and maybe even the time to share it with devoted followers on the "Road to Nirvana".

Good Thing I Like the Desert

The New Reality Takes Root

[BD]

The Year 0000, Day 1, The First Monday, AR (ante-retirement).

The sun rose at 6:31 am, (I beat it by 1/2 hr like always), this the first business day of Retirement.  Slink out of bed so as not to get the evil eye from someone we all know.  Off to the coffee pot as always, the toaster - a new regimen, and the morning paper, usually Saturdays and Sundays only.

EXCEPT.....  I canceled it a few weeks back.  $780 bucks a year to be peppered with ads and "news" NOT designed to give you a perky smile to start the day.  So instead I fire up my, (VD's), trusty $800 tablet (plus $30/mo data package) to get just the news that tells me what I want to hear.  (I'm sure some of the family members catch the economic irony of it all).

By 8:30 I'm ready to start a new life of healthy habits and I'm off to the Y.  Guess who else is off to the Y at 8:30 am.  Every tuned in / toned up soccer mom (no disrespect intended Sarah P) who just unloaded the munchkins off at school, all of whom can out lift/run/stairmaster/treadmill me without breaking a sweat.

By 9:30, back at the house ready to take on the day of idle hours contemplating this, that and nothing.

THWAK!!  Smacked in the face by the wet towel of reality.  Cell phone rings, "my computer won't start up"... email jingles, "can you put together a report summarizing the last 5 year of raw material purchases?" .......

Off to the races.  It was the FINEST 3 hour retirement I've ever had.