Getting Ready

In June 2006 I bought a 1993 Lazy Daze motor home. It is the 23.5 foot Twin/King model on a Ford chassis with a V8 460 engine. My plan is to get the rig ready for full timing and hit the road after selling my home in Truckee, California (high in the Sierras near Lake Tahoe).

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First a bit about me so you can get an idea about where I'm coming from. I'm a single retired guy of 68 years of age trying to live mostly on Social Security. I have worked at several different jobs when I was working but the last few years of my working life were spent working on computers as a programmer, tech, network manager and in technical support.

I was born in the state of Oregon and grew up in Central Oregon in the town of Redmond. After graduating high school in 1956, I joined the US Navy and spent the next three years in San Diego as a Hospital Corpsman at Balboa Naval Hospital.

After getting out of the Navy in 1959, I started attending San Diego State majoring in Zoology and minoring in Chemistry. My idea then was to become a medical doctor. Shortly after getting out of the Navy, I got married and about a year later my daughter Heidi was born. After graduating from San Diego State, we moved to Westwood in Los Angeles while I attended the UCLA School of Medicine. I continued to work odd jobs to provide for my growing family (my son, Marc was born at UCLA) while trying to be a husband and father and study with the full load of Medical School. To make a long story short, it all got to be too much and I dropped out of Medical School and went to work full time as a Research Technician at The Laboratory of Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Biology at UCLA. After about two years, I got a job in Medical Research at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla.

After about four years of research in biochemistry working on enzymes, my marriage started to fall apart. My wife and I separated and I got a small apartment in La Jolla. I started hanging out with beatniks and attending Acid Tests. Then three things happened within the space of a month that changed my life. My divorce became final, I lost my job and I lost my apartment so I packed a few things in my red TR3 sports car and went On the Road (thanks to Jack Kerouac).

I went past San Francisco to Portland, Oregon where I stayed a couple of months with hippies I met there. Then I left for Denver, Colorado and stayed about four months and made a few friends, some of whom, I am still in contact. Towards the end of 1966, several of us traveled in a caravan to San Francisco and the Haight Ashbury. It was a great carefree time and we spent the time staying with new friends and attending shows at the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms.

I survived the next few years selling Berkeley Barb and Oracle newspapers on Haight Street and doing other odd things that hippies do. In 1969, I had another son named Demian. I did some art work, paintings and drawings and took photography classes at the San Francisco Art Institute. Then I started to drop back in working as a epidemiologist for the San Francisco Department of Public Health for about four years and then as a sound and audio/visual tech at San Francisco hotels for a couple of years. I then got my first computer a Commodore VIC-20 and got interested in programming computer games.

The property where my art loft was located in the Lower Pacific Heights was sold and I had to move. I got an apartment in downtown San Rafael across the Golden Gate bridge in Marin County. I lived there for about 12 years working as a computer programmer, computer tech and accountant for five years with The Marin Housing Authority.

circa 1975

I then was offered a job as an assistant network manager with the Truckee River Bank where I worked for a couple of years.

I rented my house out, left the Sierras and returned to Marin County where I lived several more years working in software technical support for several different software companies. Shortly after the 9/11 disaster, I was laid off from my job and after looking for work for a few months and finding nothing I decided I was retired since by that time I was eligible for Social Security.

Two years ago after several unpleasant experiences with tenants, I moved back into my Truckee house. I have had to share my home with roommates because I couldn't afford to pay my mortgage and utilities on the meager Social Security payment I get.

After quite some time of researching cheap living possibilities, I have decided to try full timing in a motor home. I haven't traveled a lot in my life so I hope to visit many of the beautiful places in our country that I have not seen before. I also want to check out some areas in Mexico and may decide to get a place down there. After my house sells and my rig is ready for the road, I hope to visit my friend, John Calypso at his place in the state of Vera Cruz, Mexico. Please check out John's blog "Viva Veracruz" at http://vivaveracruz.ranchocalypso.com/blog/ .

My house is now on the market. The realtor put the sign out front last Friday. I have made some changes to the motor home. I installed a new pantry cabinet and took out the microwave and Onan generator. Since I want to continue my computing lifestyle while on the road, I plan to put as many solar panels on the roof that will fit. The installation should begin next week. In addition to the 85 watt panel I already have, we will install four 130 watt Kyocera panels, an Outback sine wave inverter/charger (2500 watt), a new charge controller and four more batteries in the space where the Onan generator lived.

I just took delivery of a new HughesNet dish and satellite modem for internet access. I am expecting delivery of the Dustyfoot Mobility Kit (tripod, etc. for the HughesNet dish) and the TV kit (which will allow me to get DirecTV using the the HughesNet dish) this week.

Other things I plan to do in the near future to get ready for the road:

1. Get a cell phone for emergencies. I'm thinking on getting a Motorola E815 phone with Verizon service.
2. Move my web site, Gary's Mountain Inn http://zextek.dyndns.org/ to a web hosting company.
3. Change residency to state that is friendly to full timers and set up mail forwarding. I'm tending towards South Dakota at the present time.
4. Finish setting up all my bills for online payment.

Gary this week.

Well, I think this is enough for my first blog entry.

Here's hoping to see you On the Road with Gary.