I was driving in the car yesterday and Spectrum radio was
playing a top 28 of the 2010’s. That’s when it hit me that we were not only
entering a new year but a new decade. Damn, I’m getting old. A whole decade whirled
by and I barely noticed. I have a vivid memory of my friends and I standing on
the playground in grade school, discussing how old we would be in the year 2000.
That milestone was 20 years ago! Several years ago my Dad told me that at a
point in my life, time would not just be going by fast but I would actually feel
the sensation of acceleration of time passing. I think it’s safe to say I’ve
reached that point.
It started me thinking about where Champ and I were in our journey
in 2010. We had been married for 8 years; I was entering the severe burn-out
stage of my career but wasn’t aware of it yet. It was the year our youngest got
married. We were also in the fantasy stage of the life we are living now. We
had held some of those late-night campfire meetings about how cool it would be to
sell everything and be the volunteers we met in the campgrounds we frequented.
Since 2010, we sold our acreage and moved into town thinking we would never be
full time. We’ve had 4 grandkids born since then and somewhere along the line,
I retired early we sold the place in town and are now entering our fourth year
as full time RV volunteers.
Thinking about the past year, is about like any other year.
There were some good things that happened and some not so good things. In the
past 12 months we have met people who are now in our regular communication
circle as a result of our travels and seen some new places. I am excited for the
next year and the next decade. As I look ahead another decade to the beginning of 2030, I marvel
that our youngest child’s oldest son will be 18 years old. Our oldest grandson
will be nearly 40 and the youngest of the grandkids will be in high school. In 10 years, I will be applying for Medicare
and Champ will be 78, yikes! Hopefully, we will still be working and travelling
around the country. In 10 years, I imagine we will be among the
old timers at Saylorville Lake in the summers having 14 years under our belts
as work campers there, by then. I’d like to believe our rig will be paid off,
but trades seem to make that a life sentence that we choose.
In my mind, I have been developing a sort of decade bucket
list for the 2020’s. I want to tour the Pacific Northwest and work camp at
Glacier National Park. Given our strong desire to be in Iowa through the summer
months, that will require a good deal of sacrifice at some point. I want to
spend a winter in the Florida Keys. That is on the schedule in 2 years at a NWR
we are scheduled to volunteer at in ‘21/’22. I would love to venture down the
Baja Peninsula some winter and work in Alaska one summer. I dream all these
things assuming of course the Champ and I will be eternally the age we are now.
But if you don’t believe that what would one accomplish? I look ahead with the best of hope that we
will both stay healthy and active till we are a ripe old age and someday come
off the road together by our own choice when we have done all we want to do. I
can’t begin to wrap my head around how many more people we will know ten years
from now when I am looking forward to the dawn of the 2030’s.
In the meantime, we don’t know what the next decade holds,
or tomorrow for that matter. Who will we know, who will we have lost? Will be both
still be alive? What places will we see
that we never dreamt of? What kind of cool jobs will we get to do? Life is full
of unknowns. That is what makes it so much fun. Scenery changes, people come in
and out of our lives and the wheels on the bus go round and round.
Until next time…
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