Good bye vacation, hello pretirement

Sunday, February 21. Wet, wet, and more wet. After Phil prepared a wonderful breakfast of raisin bread French toast, the rain really started to pour. The plans for a long run had to be changed to a walk, and when they got back Phil and Peter were soaked and had to change before we got ready to go to the airport. While he did the finishing touches on his packing, we put together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for him.

The grey grim weather made it easier to say good bye to Peter. After all, vacations quickly become as dreary as the weather, and the weather reports warned of lots of rainy day in the future. Phil and I drove away from SFO thinking that Peter only had only about an hour to wait before his flight back to Boston, but it turned out the plane was delayed because the crew got in late from Long Beach.

We drove back in the downpour and agreed that this rain was beyond anything we were used to in Southern California. There was so much water in on the freeway, the cars created their own little cocoons of spray as they sped along. Phil pointed out a minivan with a mattress and a box spring stacked on its roof at an alarming angle and secured with just one rope. The driver cruised along with this soggy load, zipping between lanes and casually chatting with his passengers like they were on a trip to the beach in a convertible on a sunny day. We laughed but I felt relieved when he passed the minivan. Better to be in front of it if that mattress began to slip.
That crazy minivan passed us a couple more times and became funnier every time it crossed our path. With tears in my eyes from giddy laughter, I thought what better way to switch from vacation to our brief experiment with retirement than a good laugh.

Back in Aptos, we quickly settled in to a quiet Sunday afternoon. Phil got his hair clippers and went right down to the bathroom to give himself a buzz cut. Now his hair is about a quarter inch all over. After the initial shock, we decided it looked kind of European and a little military. He's decided to grow a goatee as well. I'm tempted to cut my hair short too, but don't have the nerve to do it myself. Taking an extended stay opens the door to experiment with things you might not do at home with friends around that might be puzzled or even upset by radical changes.

The rain let up in the afternoon and Phil set out with his GPS hiking device and walked part of the golf course, measuring the holes and plotting the best way to shave a few strokes off his score. I went for a short walk with Dixie and came home to think about what I was going to do with the next two weeks. We had a nice spaghetti dinner and finished up some dark chocolate left over from Peter's visit. (We discovered that we all shared a preference for extra dark chocolate.) Later, we had a long Skype conversation with Drew and Tony back in Long Beach, sharing photos of our visit with Peter and their bike ride along the Los Angeles River. I began to see how easy it would be to become a couch potato in this comfortable home.