Endings and New Beginnings

So I have 12 days of full-time work left.  Mind. Blown.  I am changing from Mary Cassidy, Mild Mannered Veterinary Hospital Manager to Mary Cassidy, the part-time gardener and full-time wanderer for the rest of 2019. 

Working 40+ hours a week is the adult life I’ve always known – for the past 7 years on the hamster wheel of veterinary medicine and before that on the corporate slave ship in a variety of roles ranging from National Sales Training Manager / Instructional Designer / Facilitator to Project Manager to Quota Carrying IT Salesperson to Major Account Management.  Oh, and dog trainer.

Before joining the corporate world in 1988, I’d been working at one thing or another since I was 15 – babysitting, retail sales clerk in a candy store, waitress, bartender and a university work study job word processing at NYU’s graduate school admisssions office back in the day when Wang reigned supreme and printers were so loud they had to be enclosed in sound-proof boxes.    

Work has always been a huge part of who I am and have been.

How do I feel, standing on the edge of this transformation to a “non-work” me?  Scared shitless and exhilarated. Full of certainty one moment and then wracked with doubt the next.  Unbelievably unburdened and free one minute and then weighted down with guilt that I am leaving my vet peeps. 

Sure that, at 53 years old (how the F*CK did that happen?!),  I do know who I am without work to define me and then wondering how in semi-retirement will I be able to turn my achievement crank enough to quiet the whisperings of my insecurities?

The whole retirement thang started a year and a half ago when the owner of the veterinary practice I manage told me she was going to sell.  I knew a corporate buyer was most likely so started thinking about what would be next for me as the new owner was unlikely to keep me on after the first year.  Mick, my husband of 22 years, was ready to throw in the towel as he had put in 30+ year with the Toronto Police Service.

We started scheming, dreaming and crunching numbers… We knew we wanted to do some travelling but what to do with our dog Cassie, a sassy 7-year-old black lab who has both of us wrapped around her paw?  We couldn’t leave that saucy minx behind.  Afterall, when she was 3 she almost DIED, but that’s a story for another time. 

Tossing around ideas, we hit on buying a travel trailer, hitching it up to something that could pull it, and all three of us taking off to explore North America like the On the Road hipsters of old.

The only technicalities? None of us had ever camped a night in our lives.  We knew nothing about RVs. We owned a small SUV, nothing with enough balls to tow even the lightest travel trailer.

Undaunted (ignorance is bliss, eh?), we started doing our homework.  Last Spring, we went trailer shopping and visited a few RV dealers to find a model and floor plan that fit our vision and budget.  A la Goldilocks, we landed on the Coachman Freedom Express 19-foot couples’ trailer as a good possibility – not too big, not too small but just the right size for our family of 2 humans and 1 canine.

We found that new, they were a tad more expensive than we could realistically afford to spend and confirmed we would also need a pretty beefy pick up truck if we were serious about this as the CRV we owned wasn’t up to the job.  And then fate intervened.

The same day we saw the shiny-spiffy, expensive new Coachman Express at the dealer, I went on Kijii to see if there were any used ones for sale.  We had heard from people in the know that used trailers in good shape don’t come up often so were surprised to see an ad for the exact model we wanted for private sale in Burlington, the next town over.

I fired off an email and received a quick response from the seller.  We arranged to meet up the next week.  Driving over to the seller’s house to see the trailer, Mick and I looked each other in the eye, and pinky swore that we weren’t going to buy that trailer.  We weren’t ready, we hadn’t seen enough, and we didn’t want to make an impulse purchase.  No harm in kicking the tires and learning though, right?

When we got there, “Trailer Bill” as we have affectionately called him since, announced he already had a verbal offer from the people who saw it earlier in the day and had tried to call us to cancel our visit.  We were disappointment but philosophical about it as, after all, we had a pinky swear that we weren’t going to buy it anyway.  We thought, what the hell, we’re here so asked for the tour as part of our on-going research.

After spending 5 minutes with Trailer Bill, it was clear he was a guru of all things camping and RVing.  We’re talking literally “Sage Sitting on the Mountain Top” caliber.  We were there for 2 hours and got to meet his lovely wife Mandy.  We learned a lot.  We loved the trailer.  We loved Bill and Mandy.  We loved their dog Rambo.  We left to drive home.

We got about a ¼ of a mile from Bill’s house, turned to each other and said, “WE HAVE TO BUY THAT TRAILER!” So much for the pinky swear pact.  Mick spun the car around and back we went.  When he answered the door, Bill was surprised to see us again.  We made him an offer he couldn’t refuse with cash on the spot – but refuse he did, as that’s the kind of stand-up guy he is.  He reiterated he had an offer and would – at Mandy’s urging as I think she really wanted us to have the trailer – contact the other folks that night to see if they were going to firm up.

Fate intervened again and Trailer Bill emailed us later that night – the other buyers had dropped out. “Spot”, as I have named her, was ours. 

We’ve been camping exactly 3 times in “Spot”, only towing her with our Dodge Ram called “Rover” any distance once to Upstate New York.  We got mad skills and all the raw materials but no experience – and can I tell you that Cassie is the best camp dog ever – so we’re going to go for it!

2019 is gonna be our “Senior Gap Year” and We are are planning “Mary, Mick, and Cassie’s Epic Adventure”.  6,600 miles, 70ish nights across the heartland of America.  We take off on July 26^th, may the travel gods be with us!

Main stops include visiting the American Pickers in Iowa (really hope Mike and Frank are around); the Badlands in South Dakota; Cody, Wyoming; Yellowstone; Grand Teton; Arches, Canyonlands, Mesa Verde National Parks then on to Oklahoma, up on Route 66 to Joplin, Missouri where it all began. 

Next is Memphis, Nashville, Pigeon Forge, and Smokey Mountains National Park. Time in Raleigh with family and dear friends then up through Shenandoah National Park’s Skyline Drive.  We’re finishing with a victory lap up the East Coast through Montrose, NY, up to New England with stops in Rhode Island and Massachusetts to visit more of our favourite peeps. 

Finally, across Upstate New York with time in Cooperstown, Sodus Point, Letchworth State Park and finally home.

It’s either going to be the best time of our lives or a total disaster.  I’m betting on the former.  Stay tuned for updates.