Living in a New Reality

I slept great last night and woke up this morning realizing that even though we couldn't continue traveling on the schedule I created for this trip it was ok. Yes, we lost one nights reservation fee at Anza Borrego State Park but that might even be reimbursable with our truck repair extended warranty. After years of living by a calendar, a daily schedule with deadlines and a lengthy list of thing to do I fell into an emotional morass because we couldn't keep going to the next location on our trip.

Today is a new day and the Lord reminded me as I was laying in bed that our trip plan is man-made and an artificial deadline. We're RETIRED.... more or less. We can go where we want, stay as long as we want and change our plans anytime we want. This new reality obviously is taking some getting use to and yesterday was a wake up call for me. We are learning how to live in this new flexibility and freedom to be spontaneous. Weird to think it would be so hard to accept but after years of a disciplined and scheduled lifestyle I think many of you might understand what this might be like.

So Thursday, January 12 began with a cup of coffee, a banana and the view of the Pacific Ocean outside our back window watching the early morning surfers riding the waves offshore. Today it cleared enough to see both Santa Catalina and San Clemente Islands offshore. Not a bad way to start your day, right?

We got a call from Bob at MasterTech around 12:15 PM informing us the alternator finally arrived. His technician would need a couple hours to install it and road test it before we could come by. So I stopped by the RV guest services office to extend another day here. We relaxed and did some revised trip planning with the expectation we would get the truck back in time to leave Friday morning. Karen spent part of the day working out details on the phone with Allstate regarding the rental car expense reimbursement procedures. MasterTech called us shortly before 4 PM to tell us the truck was ready to pick up. Yeah!

The final bill for all the work came to $1370 and change. We paid $243.66 for our part and Allstate paid the balance. Thank God we purchased the extended warranty service coverage. So "Rambo" and "Trinity" are together again and we couldn't be happier. Tomorrow we will finally hit the road for the Anza-Borrego desert to spend two days with our good friends, the Conrads.