theboondork's RV blog

A change of plans!

8/14/2020

Your fortune cookie says...... if you click the pics you will live a long and interesting life.

Purple flower just opening up.

Due to things beyond my control, my mini-vacation plans have had to undergo a severe revision. It's things like this that caused me to try and not make plans because there are just too many things in this world that I'm not in control of, but it would be a better world if I were.

First of all, I was planning on going on the trip late this month and getting back before September the 13th, but I just got a call from a family member saying their going to come visit me on Labor Day weekend. This was a double surprise because I didn't know they were coming to visit, and I didn't know Labor Day was coming up. I don't normally keep up with holidays. There's really no need to because every day's a three day weekend to me. So I needed to make a quick, but thoughtful decision. I don't like making decisions, they require to much.... thinking.

I looked at some of the options available to me. Things like, leave earlier, leave later, don't leave, leave and don't tell anyone, pretend to leave but stay here, pretend to leave and actually leave, leave but don't go anywhere or leave without actually leaving.... I've been studying Black Holes, and this is theoretically possible as your crossing the Event Horizon.

Obviously, I have a lot of options, but most of them are rather silly... Except for the one about the Black Holes, and that one is science. But I have decided that my best option would be to leave early. I gave a lot of thought to going later after September the 13th. But by that time, things can get a mite chilly in the high country and darn cold at night, and I had just as soon avoid that if possible.

So my new plan, that's not really a plan, but more of a thought, has me leaving either the 18th or 19th of August, that should give me plenty of time to take a relaxing mini-vacation and still get back before the Labor Day holiday. If I'd known Labor Day was coming up, I never would've made my first plan, I would've sheltered in place until the holiday was over.

theboondork

Purple flower.

I backed the little Bronco into its normal parking spot. It's a little easier to work on it when it's like this because the camper door doesn't open into the street.

6 Comments

Judith

8/15/2020 07:49:18 pm

Aha! Flexibility is being required. Sounds like you've got a good plan....a new one.

Tom

8/15/2020 08:45:41 pm

Almost any new plan is better than an old plan. But for me I prefer no plan whenever possible. To me a plan sounds like everything is figured out and written in stone but it almost never works out that way because things change as soon as you start using your plan. To quote ex-heavyweight champion boxer Mike Tyson, when a reporter asked him if he was worried about his opponents plan to defeat him he said.... "Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth".

I prefer to do things on a whim as much as possible I find it more interesting and more of a challenge that way, of course it drives the people around me crazy. But I think not knowing what I'm going to do, or when, is more fun.

So I think I need another word to replace "plan" and I believe "intention" works better. So my intention is to take a mini-vacation next week. See how that sounds like I may go, or I may not...... I like that.

Tom

Larry Worsham

8/16/2020 06:06:08 am

During our working years we had to plan everything so we could get things done. After retirement we don't plan as much but make list of things to do that get largely ignored. In our family we say that all plans are made in jello.............

8/16/2020 08:11:05 am

Agreed. When you're working, raising a family, and paying the bills, there's no way to avoid planning, life would be chaos without it. But as a retired Full-timer life can be as planned and scheduled out just as much as your working life was, or you can be as free as you want to be.

There are some folks that enjoy making plans. My daughter's a good example of that. As a paralegal she not only had to have her ducks in a row but she had to make sure the attorneys she worked for had all of their I's dotted and T's crossed, sometimes lives depended on it. So everything had to be planned to the Nth degree. Now she doesn't have to do that anymore but she still plans everything in her life just as if it was that important. And she appears to enjoy it.... She obviously didn't get that from me.

For me I relate plans to schedules, and schedules to a lack of freedom, And since freedom is the best part of being a full-timer I cling to it like my life depended on it.

So I try to keep my planning to a minimum and as you say "write it in Jell-O", that way it doesn't bother me if things change, because I'm still free to go where I want, when I want.

And that freedom I love so much is one of the reasons I'm a boondocker. Boondocking IS freedom. Look what would've happened if I was a normal RVer and I had to drastically change my mini-vacation plans like I did the other day. After making all the campground reservations I would have to call maybe 10 different campgrounds back and shuffle the whole trip to a different date. As it was I didn't need reservations because I can boondock if nothing else is available, so there was nothing for me to do when my "plans" changed except pack up the camper quicker.

Tom

Linda

8/16/2020 02:08:58 pm

During our full time traveling years I was a cross between you and your daughter. I gathered and sorted tons of data about places to go and things to do. But for travel itself we just winged it since we never knew how long anything would take along the way. I've been known to pull into a Walmart or Cracker Barrel parking lot and call them from there to ask if I can stay the night.

8/16/2020 02:47:36 pm

Now that's my kind of camping! Gathering up tons of data to determine where you would like to go and things you want to see does not come under my definition of planning, I call it research and it's perfectly acceptable to me. It's when dates are picked and scheduling is made that I have problems with. I've had deadlines and schedules all of my life.... I didn't like them then, and I don't like them now.

For instance, right now my intention is to leave Tuesday on my minivacation, but I could leave tomorrow if I feel like it, Wednesday wouldn't be a problem, I could even leave on Thursday but by then I'll be getting antsy and wanting to go.

There's five or six places I want to visit in the approximately two weeks of travel time I have available, and I have no idea which place I will go to first or last because I'm not sure which of the three routes that are available to me I will take when the time comes.

I also don't know how long I will stay at each place, that will depend on I much I like the place I'm at... That to me is the way I enjoy traveling and the more options I have available the more I enjoy it. And it sounds to me like we have that in common.

Tom

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A change of plans!

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