Yesterday was a big day in my new fulltimer life: I hauled the fiver on public roads and no one died. I didn’t even ding it. No problems at all, really. One of the fiver’s brakes was a bit squeaky, but that could just be rust. I hope.

The truck handled beautifully. It accelerated well and, more importantly, decelerated well – the brakes worked better than I hoped. As Rosco, my driver trainer, a guy with 20 years of experience driving gas tankers, said, “You’ve got a nice rig here.” “Nice rig” is high praise, I think, among the trucker set.

The joy of my success was somewhat mitigated by a problem that surfaced after I had backed the coach onto our site-of-the-day: the front jacks, needed to raise the RV to ready it for unhitching, didn’t work.  No power.  I had this image of us traveling for days without being able to unhitch the truck. Or, more likely, delaying our departure (and missing our Saturday night going-away party) until we could get a repairman to find his way to Northwood.

But I tracked down the problem: a blown in-line fuse that I didn’t know existed.  Unfortunately, it was a 30-amp fuse, of which I had none.  But I did have 2 spare 20-amp fuses and they were sufficient (barely – I blew one and nursed the other by operating the jacks in short bursts) to lift the fiver off the hitch.  That allowed me to free the truck and hustle down to the local Camping World to get some fuses.  It is 16 miles away, but in NH that qualifies as “local.”

Today we are going to take it out for a second driving session.  And by “we” I mean Jett and me.  We’ll see how Jett does. She has very little experience in big rigs (unlike me, veteran that I am), so it will be interesting to see how white her knuckles get.

Last Friday was my last day of work.  For three months. Then I resume working in California. So my status is “not quite retired.”

I really intended to resign. I had my resignation letter typed up and in my hand.  But on the day I planned to hand it to my boss – just over four weeks ago – I learned that another member of our very small group was also leaving.  As losing 40% of her staff at the same time would be quite a blow to my boss, I started searching for ways to soften the impact.

Well, we knew we were wintering in California, somewhere south of San Francisco. We knew we had to work at least half the year to make ends meet. The home office is in Silicon Valley which is… south of San Francisco.  Hmmm…

I didn’t think the company would go for it, but when I told my boss that I had to leave Massachusetts in September for at least 3 months, I offered the option of a leave-of-absence.  That would simply many things for us: we wouldn’t need to scramble to find something to do, I wouldn’t have to take a big pay cut and benefits would extend indefinitely (though we would, of course, have to pay for COBRA during the LOA).  But then COBRA would extend for 18 months after I really did retire, which would get Jett much closer to her Medicare eligibility.

Much to my surprise, the company took the offer.  So I am on a three-month LOA.  I will resume working December 10.

Of course the company benefits, too.  They don’t have to buy me a gold watch.

I dinged the fiver. Not too bad – just the end cap of the canvas topper for one of the bunkhouse slides. But I feel like a babysitter who has dropped the baby.  If only I had been more careful…

The occasion was the tail end of a 3-hour driver training session at the campground.  I had already successfully pulled the coach off of its very tricky seasonal site, threading the needle between the tree and the stump that guarded the access to that location.  I had also backed it into a slightly elevated site.  Then it was suggested (by Nancy, the ever-helpful campground owner) that I try a different back-in site.  This one was on the other side of the pond, so I had to navigate the turn at the entrance and the narrow passage between the office and the garage.  It was the turn at the entrance that did me in. There is a tree there that leans into the roadway.  I was very aware of it and was concerned by the proximity as I started the turn.  But it was on the outside, so it wasn’t in the way, really.  Except that I underestimated how far the back swings out on a tight corner. I was going slow and barely clipped it, but it was enough to snap off the plastic end cap.  I also knocked off a sign that was screwed into the tree.

Nancy was apologetic, saying she should have been watching that side more closely.  But it was 100% my fault.  I need to watch that swing-out.

Jett wasn’t upset at all.  She rated my driving at 9.5. Other than that incident, I would agree.

But I still feel bad about dropping the baby.