I’m planning my first bike tour this May. I’m going to take 5 days to do Chicago to Detroit. Just me, my current road bike, tools, tent, and a change of clothes. Have you been touring before? It seems kind of intimidating, so I decided a shorter tour was good to start with. If it works out I think it’s something I’d like to do for longer distances post-ERE. This is the kind of thing I don’t want to miss out on by retiring when I’m 60-something. I’d be interested in the survey of EREer’s book. I like following the journals in the forums.

@S – No touring experience, all I’ve done are a few 100M+ rides. The part that intimidates me is finding camp spots—no idea how to go about that, since I’d probably want one with 20 miles of where I’m going and me being obsessive about contingencies—maybe this will turn out to be really easy. Our first tour will probably be SF->LA, although I’m planning on doing some shorter one day excursions to nearby cities first just to get the navigation down (I have no sense of direction).

@Gretchen – It’s a wooden sword shaped like a katana used for training samurai. Some of them fought with them too; it has certain advantages over steel. Today, they are used in aikido, kendo, kenjutsu, and shinkendo.

@George – Believe me it can be frustrating. I used to have new things lined up while I was engaged in “present things”. However, while I was working on the book, I was lining up “sailing” and “martial arts” as alternatives with the primary motive of writing a second book. Which is kinda bumming out. I don’t really have any interest in going full-bore on the sailing or the martial arts. As it is now, I have no _primary_ occupation. I do have several leads/contingencies though. Lots of tentative things. I’m kinda waiting to see which one will take hold.

Now that I think about it, having an unsigned office on the city square would be fun. You just know somebody would walk in and ask “what do you do here?” I would look up from the desk and say “Mostly mind my own business, how about you?” LOL

“$30 plastic snake contraptions.”

Are you sure that’s not a giant centipede?

@rjack – I’m not blogging too much anymore as it is. I will keep the blog and the forum alive. I’ll probably get some snarky comments for having an early retirement site and going back to work, but I have a Franklin approach to life. I’ll do what is interesting and sometimes a job makes it possible to do things that can’t be done on one’s own. (But I won’t work for money.)

That bokken looks pretty dangerous. 🙂
You should stop by Portland on your bike tour. It’s a huge bike city and you would like it.

I thought this was a April fools day, but I see it was posted on 31 of march

Good,
Waited so far to see if you were going to out it as some April Fool’s post.

I like the fact you re-invent yourself all the time — partly because I tend to be that way too. And as did Jefferson, I see. As Dale Carnegie put it: Whose face do you search for first, in a group photograph? 😉

You’ll get a lot of snarky comments as you’ve put it, but then again half of them on the current blog/forum already go to great pains to point out that they won’t go ERE or be like you, blah blah… So if that kind of opinion doesn’t faze you, I don’t think the odd stranger who’s convinced that you’re a moral hypocrite because of what you say and what you do should matter one bit (specialy since that’s primarily an ammo for guarding their own flawed value systems and nothing more)!

I liked both a) your qualifier that you’re not going to be working for “making yourself some money” anymore and b) your explanation as to why a job might help in the odd places (Bruce Wayne is a human being, but Batman is an institution [corny!]). There’s an Indian proverb to the same effect “A single tree will never make an orchard.”

I share your sense of direction, so to speak. So “Be Careful”. I know it made for hairy walks/rides for me in the past. Now, who’s “J_”? Haven’t come across this moniker (a vague recall about your thanking for some donation in the past, but I could not be sure)

P.S: Congrats on the book sales. My open offer to work as co-author in your second book (as opposed to another essayist) still stands 😉

P.P.S: Liked your fruit flies remark too.

The nice thing about going back to work after you retire is that you know YOU are in control. I was more progressive in my attitude and took on work differently. It was liberating.
It is worth the try. It also gives you a clear field of view for what retirement really is.

Still working on the assumption that this is not April Fool’s post:

This post also goes a little in explaining some of your ambivalent remarks (which is unlike you) about ‘work’, in the threads on the forum on “Finding Satisfaction in Work”. Now I see that you were having the discussions with yourself rather than others.

—-

Jacob, just out of curiosity, what careers are you looking at?

Jacob,I like the way you think and write. I would buy any book or books you wrote just to see your thinking on said subject. I think any subject that you feel is important and gives you the charge of energy required to write a book would find an audience. You are what I call a valadator, and have a following.