Author: mchazen

Today was the first time we towed the Jeep.  After checking and re-checking all the connections and carefully following the instructions in the Jeep manual, we finally got going.

The first stop was the Aldea house, where the only items left are what we plan to take in the motorhome.  The loading took only three hours and there was nothing pretty about it.  We knew it would take weeks to sort things out, but at least we were out of the Aldea house.

After the loading, we drove to Valencia Village, an RV park near Magic Mountain.  It was not the nicest place to stay, but it was convenient to the San Fernando Valley and to the storage facility in Oxnard.  I still had to be available for the house closing.  Explaining that we are new to the RV lifestyle, the RV Park mercifully gave us a pull-through.

Contemporary note:  Connecting the Jeep was an interesting process and  required a leap of faith.  Basically, you make the tow-bar connections, unlock the steering, put the transmission in park and put the transfer case in neutral.  That’s right, the transmission is in Park — as in locked.  Putting the four-wheel drive transfer case in neutral unlocks the rear wheels.  Unnerving as it sounds, it was clearly described in the owners manual and a call to Jeep confirmed the process.

Eventually we developed a hook-up-the-jeep checklist and kept a laminated copy in the glove box.  Jeanne handled the transmission and ignition settings while I wrestled with the tow-bar.  We then checked each other’s work.  It worked well since we never had a problem.

A wise tip — if you’re ever around someone hooking up a tow vehicle, leave them alone!  The procedure needs full attention.

Are we glad to have taken the RV driving class!

The instructor was excellent and very patient.  He gave us many, many tips on the operation of the coach and spent at least an hour on the operation of air brakes.  The class included quite a lot of drive time for both Jeanne and me.  The best part was the time spent on backing exercises.  Overall, the class was worth every penny!  An excellent investment.

Jeanne and Marty in front of coach at Puddingstone Lake, the first day after pickup.

The coach and its little brother 'Liberty' at Puddingstone.

Jeanne on driver side.

We’re looking forward to loading the coach and getting on with our adventure.  Tomorrow will be a challenge getting from Pomona to the Aldea house then to Valencia.  I have more confidence after taking the driving class but it is still a challenge.

The big day has arrived!  We picked up the coach today and don’t have a clue how to operate it.

The two hour orientation at the dealer turned into four hours.  They were very through about going over the operational aspects of the coach and showed us where the ten pounds of instruction manuals are.  There is so much to learn.  It is like taking possession of a new house that is mounted on a commercial truck chassis.  To complicate matters, most of the systems are dual-energy sourced. Even learning to operate the awnings is a challenge.

Picking up coach on January 26, 2004 at Giant RV in Montclair, CA.

Modifications made to Jeep Liberty for towing.

Picking up coach on January 26, 2004 at Giant RV in Montclair, CA.

We made arrangements for an RV driving class and the school suggested we stay at Puddingstone Lake, which is an RV park close to the Pomona Fairgrounds and convenient for the instructor.  The tricky part was getting the coach from the dealer to the park.  Time to be bold.  Without hesitation, I climbed into the driver seat, fired it up, swung onto the freeway and proceeded to Puddingstone.  No problem.  Mike Jones was there to meet us to provide moral support and show us where an excellent steakhouse was located.  We’re glad Mike was our first guest, his presence was very much appreciated.

The most surprising aspect of the trip is getting used to the air brakes.  They don’t respond like hydraulic brakes.  You have to gently feel when they engage and adjust the pressure slowly.  I guess stopping 32,000 gross vehicle weight takes a little getting used to.

We slept very soundly our first night on the road.

The coach is here!

We called Giant RV and the motorhome has arrived from the plant in Indiana. Sometime this week we’ll go to Giant to have the tow system installed on the Jeep and to see the coach. We’re getting excited!

The house went on the market and sold in one day.  Really.  It sold in a few hours.

The buyers appear to be sincere and we hope to work with them to make the transaction as smooth as possible. A closing date of January 30 has been set and all the tasks related to the sale have been set in motion. We are trying to coordinate the sale of the house with delivery of the motorhome and hope for an overlap of a week or so.

In the meantime, we continue to clean out the house. Most of the big stuff is gone by now and most of the household items were sold at the massive yard sale in August. With the furniture and appliances gone, we are mostly living on camping furniture and using an ice chest, the small Bar-B-Que and camp stove for cooking.

Contemporary Note:  Hard to believe I grew up here.  It was a small house, two bedrooms and a den.  I shared a bedroom with my brother for a number of years.  Modest as it was, mom and dad worked hard for it and it was a source of pride.  Mom actually paid off the 30-year mortgage in 1985.

The kayaks arrived!

After spending a few minutes trying to decipher the instructions, skinning a few knuckles and some bad words, we finally got them put together.  I’m sure we’ll discover the tricks after we set them up a few times.  The quality is surprisingly good and we can’t wait to get them in the water!  These look like the perfect platform for exploring and fishing.  We sure wish we had these in Florida.

Jeanne with Folbot boxes.

Marty in his kayak.

Jeanne in her kayak ready to explore the world's waterways.

Marty in Jeanne's kayak, fishing pole at the ready.

Kayaks packed and ready for the road.

December 5, 2003.  This was my last workday at Fox and retirement became a reality. That evening, the staff organized a retirement party hosted by Sarah Cha at her lovely home.  I was genuinely touched by the warmth and personal feel of the gathering.  Jeanne and I had formed personal friendships with most of the staff and leaving was like saying goodbye to a group of friends.  Several fine gifts were presented, but the most thoughtful was a picture book the group produced in secret.  It is truly an honor to have worked with so many talented people.  I have no doubt there will be many successful careers from this group and I plan to stay in close contact.

We have been living in Mom’s house for several months and preparing the property for sale has turned into a monumental task.  Jeanne has been instrumental in taking care of Mom’s household effects and I focused on everything else.  Slowly we’re getting through it, but until the house is sold it looks like a full-time job.  It turned out that my mother was a borderline pack-rat and it has taken months to sift through everything.

We are carefully considering what to take in the motorhome and setting those items aside in specific areas of the house.  The plan is to load the motorhome in one visit to the house as quickly as possible.  Most everything else from the apartment has already been put in storage.  The coach is still scheduled for delivery by the end of January but the timing remains tricky.

A dilemma!  We enjoy fishing and want to take a boat of some sort, but are not sure how to solve this problem.  Our very good friends, Doug and Karen suggested folding kayaks and even demonstrated how theirs sets up.  We ordered two Folbots and expect them to arrive very soon and should easily fit in the cargo compartment of the motorhome.

The story begins in August, 1998. Jeanne was working for the California State Compensation Insurance Fund and would soon be eligible for retirement. I was working for the Seagram Beverage Company (SBC) at the Western Regional Office. We were living a quiet life in Van Nuys and my mother was living close by in the house that had been her residence since 1955.

In the early 1990s my (Marty’s) mother had been treated for lymphoma and forced into retirement. In 1998, she was living a relatively independent life, but the return of lymphoma was always a concern. With my brother living in Seattle, Jeanne and I were the only family Mom had in Southern California.

During this time the management of SBC had been squeezing costs from the business for about a year and open positions were not being filled. The CFO was considering a consolidation of financial functions and was feeling me out regarding a promotion and relocation to the headquarters office in New York. We were not thrilled with the prospect of moving to New York.

With major changes within SBC imminent and the possibility of relocation to New York, I began looking for other opportunities within Seagram. I applied for a general ledger manager position at the recently opened Shared Services Center in Delray Beach, Florida. After a series of interviews that stretched on for months, I was selected for the position and directed to report for work in early November 1998. Jeanne stayed in California until March 1999 to qualify for retirement, sell the house and coordinate the move.

As these decisions were being made, Jeanne and I tried to evaluate Mom’s health situation. We knew that if Mom’s cancer returned the burden of her health care would most likely fall on us. In the event of illness, we would either have to bring her to Florida or we would have to return to California. With the career decision pressing on us and no way to predict when the lymphoma would return, we decided to move to Florida and hope for Mom’s continued good health.

After moving into our new home in June 1999, Mom arrived in Florida for a three week visit. We were alarmed at how much she had changed both physically and mentally. She seemed to be loosing her edge and we started discussing what to do if she became too ill to care for herself. However, at that time all we could do was continue to monitor her health.

About six months into the Florida assignment, managerial responsibility for the center passed from Seagram to Universal. It didn’t take long to determine the skills and practices of the new management group were poor at best and many of the best employees began talking about leaving. Having just arrived, I decided to stay put for the next few months.  Little did I know it was going to get ugly.

About a year into the assignment, Vivendi purchased Seagram/Universal.  Eventually the general ledger department was asked to carve up the Seagram ledger, which was a clear indication that Seagram would be sold off in pieces to finance the deal. Seagram had no future and the stock price was dropping.  It was time to head for the door.

There were several options including retirement, but with the uncertainty of how Mom’s health would affect our future I decided to keep working and started interviewing. I was getting very close to finding work locally when an old boss (from my 7up days) called regarding an open Controller position at Fox Sports Net in California. As much as we enjoyed living in Florida, the Fox job was a great opportunity and would give us a chance to be close to my mother. We decided to return to California, but we would have to move fast. Once again Jeanne would remain behind long enough to wrap up affairs and sell the house.

Upon returning to California, I spent the first three months living with Mom. The regular schedule imposed by my job brought some structure to her life.  However, when Jeanne arrived we rented a small apartment in West Los Angeles to be close to work and Mom was once again on her own.  At least we were now close enough to manage her health care should the need arise.

In July 2002, the lymphoma returned. A series of chemo and radiation treatments put the cancer into remission, but the side effects hospitalized her for three weeks. Mom sort-of recovered and from the middle of December through the end on February 2003, she led a relatively normal life.

Starting in March 2003, the lymphoma turned aggressive. Initially the chemo seemed to work but as the treatments continued she became weaker and weaker. After a long hospitalization, it was obvious the chemo was too much for her and the doctors wrote the hospice order at the end of May. By the end of June she was gone.

After the funeral, we discussed what our next step would be. My contract expired at the end of November and a management change made me wary about staying. It was time to move on, but move on to what?

One thing was certain, we were determined to leave Los Angeles (specifically Van Nuys) for good.

For years we had prepared for retirement by developing several outside interests, many of which included outdoor activities.  For about three years, we had been researching recreational vehicles (RVs) and attending RV shows.  Jeanne had been extensively reading about the RV lifestyle.  Eventually we hit on the idea of traveling full-time in an RV while looking for a place to live.  In October 2003 we attended the RV show at the Pomona Fairgrounds and ordered a motorhome for delivery in January 2004.  The long delivery would give us time to prepare and settle Mom’s affairs, which included the cleanup and sale of her house.

So, in October 2003 the decision was made and everything about our lifestyle was about to change.

Hi there!

If you’re reading this, you’ve decided to travel with us on our Excellent Adventure. 

Where to start. . . . .

A career is an interesting part of life.  It determines the activities that fill up each day, the people you associate with and the perception that you and others have of your place in society.  Building a career takes years of education, training and experience.  As a result, a measure of self satisfaction comes from mastering the nuance of a trade and the recognition from peers of a job well done.

And the idea of leaving it all behind can be unsettling. 

However, eventually you either get too old, or reach that ‘tipping point’ where you put more into the job than than you get out of it, or just plain get tired of dealing with the same thing day after day.

And you start asking yourself what the remainder of your life will look like and how do you make the transition.  The unacceptable alternative is working until you drop.

Jeanne and I watched our friends and family go through this as they neared the end of their career.  Some had an easier time than others making the transition.  We noted that those who successfully made a transition not only prepared financially, but made an effort to cultivate an interest in activities totally unrelated to work.  It was a valuable lesson to learn and early on we chose to prepare for all aspects of retirement.

At first, it was the dream of cruising around the world on our own sailboat.  After crewing for local sailboat races, we realized just how much work it was, how dangerous sailing in foreign waters could be and how unforgiving the open ocean is.  Not a good idea.

Back on dry land, two ideas slowly began to come together.  First, we both enjoyed outdoor activities.  As members of a hunting and fishing club, we had a front-row seat to learn from experienced outdoorsmen.  Everything from maintaining recreational vehicles to knot tying.  You name it.  If it had to do with the outdoors, someone in the club could teach you about it.  Second, even though we had family in California and friends in Florida, those two states were off the retirement list for reasons to numerous to enumerate here. 

It dawned on us that a good way to select a permanent place to settle would be to ‘try on’ a community to see how it fit, and an RV would be perfect for this.  Travel to a place, stay there a while, read the paper, look through the yellow pages, talk with the local folks, get a feel for the real estate market and take in the local culture.  If we liked it, do some in-depth research.  If not, leave.  Simple.

The more we thought about it, the more sense it made.  Too many of our friends were lured to a place by articles, magazines or family only to find, after relocating, they really didn’t like their new digs.

There were other considerations:  good medical care, a relatively close college or university, shopping, access to air travel, etc.  But for the most part, we just wanted a pretty place to live a quiet life and enjoy the things we like to do.

We had a strategy and the plan was set in motion.

It took a lot of work to prepare.  Research of the type of RV, the full-time travel lifestyle, including insurance, banking, what to do with our mail, where to establish residency, etc.  There were a thousand decisions to carefully consider.  

Looking back, there were a lot of difficult decisions regarding the house and our belongings.  Letting go of ‘stuff’ was a psychological challenge.  Standing in front of a shelf of economics textbooks one day, I announced to Jeanne that we would conduct an experiment.  I would toss a micro-economics book in the dumpster and wait three days to see if our life changed.  Three days passed.  Nothing changed.  The experiment was a resounding success and we found getting rid of ‘stuff’ was liberating.  I’m sure the books are quietly resting in the Los Angeles landfill.  A lot of stuff was sold, given to family, donated to charity or tossed.  The remainder was put in storage.  The image of seeing all our possessions stacked into an area the size of a one car garage is hard to shake.

The closer we got to retirement, the greater the mental break with our old life.  It was a leap of faith that everything would be ok in the end.  It was the opportunity to do anything else.

We didn’t know how long it would take or where we would settle.  There was only uncertainty and a belief that we wouldn’t end up homeless, hungry and lost.  It was a gutsy thing to walk away and start over.

And so starts the Excellent Adventure.