Last week of work!

Well here we are, the last day of work and only 3 days to departure! Its really been a week of reminiscing about the past 17 years with the same company. I got to spend time with people I haven't seen in awhile (I was a Service manager @ 4 different Dealerships all owned by the same company) and also see peoples true feelings as I began to wind down the last week of work.  I found myself becoming very emotional as people came up to wish me farewell and others offered to pray for me.  I'm leaving a company that I truly enjoyed going to work everyday. They threw a going away party for me and my general manager said some nice words and presented me with a $500 check for diesel fuel!  The check we are holding is a great novelty item I will keep forever.  Heck it means more to me than the actual money. We also managed to dodge several tornadoes that blew through a few days ago.  Karen, my wife, was worried that we would wake up and the trailer would be laying on its side in the yard! The storms are gone and the trailer is in the upright postion so we are shooting for Sunday the 31st as our leave time.

Getting close to go time.

 

Well we are two weeks out now and things are moving at a hectic pace.  I have finalized the installation of the 2nd fuel tank in the bed of the truck.  I took it to the gas station and put $100 dollars in it and it only filled the bottom 1/3 of the tank up!  I opened the petcock and the fuel transferred into the factory fuel neck and the gauge in the truck slowly climbed.  I have been driving for the last 2 days and the fuel gauge in the truck is still pegged in the full position.  This will allow us to fill both tanks (115 Gallons) and all we have to do is keep an eye on the gas gauge and when it starts to move we know the big tank in the bed is empty.  I also had a good friend of mine named Denny, refinish the steering wheel in my truck as the leather was wearing through.  He came to me and dyed the leather back to the factory look and feel and I promptly bought him a nice lunch!  Thanks Denny!  Our bicycle rack showed up in the mail today so my son Bryson tore the packaging open and proceeded to help me put it together.  He is growing up fast and is so excited about anything to do with tools or cars.  Well we have 2 weeks left and a lot to do but it will all be worth it when we finally leave the house and hit the road!

Myakka River trip.

Wow, we found this little park on our way from Palm Beach to Tampa!  Its these types of hidden jewels all around the USA that i'm most excited about.  We spent about 2 hours and managed to find an armodillo wandering around and a box turtle.  The kids had fun with both of the new found animals and they wanted to keep them!  We enjoyed seeing them and let them go along their way.

Last trip to Florida for awhile.

Well we are here in Florida visiting our friends and relatives. I have started the unwinding process of my hectic life. Now that I'm no longer directly running a service department my stress level has dropped dramatically. My wife Karen on the other hand has a lot on her plate with our dog Norman and his career! She is off to New York next week for a week and a half and then we have to be in Washington DC two weeks later for another appearance for Karen and Norman. So, in the next three weeks we need to move out of our house, get it rented, pack the camper, turn the houses over to a management company and finish our health insurance! My father in-law has been collecting data for us and went down to AAA and got every travel guide for the entire USA! They weren't too happy with him for that, but hey that's won of the perks of AAA. Thanks Dad for doing that for us! So this morning we are packing everything back up for the long haul back to Georgia. Three more weeks to go!