It’s been a while since I posted. I figured there might be a couple of people wondering what was going on with my life. The last time you heard from me, we were in Vancouver for the birth of our new grandbaby and about to celebrate Christmas. It’s almost April now and a lot has happened since then. I think I’ll catch you up bullet style.

• On Christmas Eve morning I woke up to a call from my sister telling me that my mother had passed away. After the initial shock and a good cry, we realized we had to get to Texas as soon as we could to support my father and sister. We had a big Christmas celebration planned and had already bought all the food for it. Michelle spent the next four hours running around delivering that uncooked food and gifts to all our Canadian relatives while I spent it getting the rig ready to roll. That was the fastest I have ever packed up. By noon we were on the road. What should have been a three day trip, took five. Some of the highlights of that trip included having to move in the middle of the night from were we stopped the first night because a homeless person was standing outside our RV screaming at it for three hours straight, to driving through two snow storms in high mountain passes, to being stranded in a Walmart parking lot because the snow piled up too high in the night. We eventually made it, though.

• When we got to Texas it was a busy time getting all my father’s affairs in order. My mom had handled all financial aspects and tracking all that down was a nightmare, but we finally got it all worked out. We held a celebration of life for my mom that turned out really nice.

• Since my sister lives in Dallas, which is almost three hours away, we decided to stay with Dad for a couple of months to make sure he was steady on his feet before we left him by himself. I officially retired on December 31st and while it initially was exciting, it felt weird not to be working every weekday. Also, I was not quite prepared for the amount of time it takes between retiring and being able to access my retirement fund. We went almost a full two months with no income. It came down to the wire, but we managed to scrape through. My health really improved during this time and I was able to get a lot of much needed work done on the rig. We also finished creating an audiobook out of Tales of the RVidiots: Year One with myself and Michelle narrating. That will be available soon.

• Not long before we were thinking about shoving off, I took the two dogs out for a hike. Not five minutes after we got on the trail, the dogs got ahead of me and got their leashes tangle together. When I called them back, they came running at full speed with the leashes between them like a clothes line. Yup, swept my feet right out from under me and I came down hard on my left shoulder and head. I was actually knocked unconscious for a few minutes. When I came to, I was in severe pain, but managed to coral the dogs and make it back to my jeep. I pretty much stayed in bed for the next three days thinking I was just bruised up and I would eventually shake it off. At the end of the week, when I was still in immense pain and could physically see some sort of bump sticking up out of my shoulder under my skin, I went to the doctor. You guessed it, broken left clavicle. I had surgery to fuse the bones back together with a metal plate and have been waiting for it heal, not being able to use my left arm for much of anything. To top it off, Michelle decided to get in on the act when she slipped in the backyard and broke six ribs. Nothing you can do about those except let them heal. So needless to say we didn’t shove off and have been pretty much the walking wounded around here for the last few weeks.

• I am supposed to get my staples out on Monday and if everything goes well, we are planning on heading back on the road sometime next week. The good thing about being retired is I don’t have to wait until the weekend to travel anymore.

So, that’s pretty much my 2025 so far in a nutshell.

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