Author: margrad80
I am a retired Merchant Mariner, a retired Marine Surveyor, and a currently active novelist. I am starting this blog to follow my life in retirement, as I follow a more inconvenient life.
Two months, it was only supposed to be two months.
This post was written on the flight from Hawaii on August 20, 2018. I have just now gotten around to proofing it and getting it onto the web. It all started in 2005, when I came to Hawaii to be with a very dear friend whilst she was going through an unpleasant divorce. Now it…
The first rain
I have been in Ecuador for a week now, and today was the first day that it rained. I am setting in the window seat of my AirBnb watching the rain coming down. It surprises me that so few people have umbrellas. I guess no one expected it to rain today. I don’t know I…
The First and Last Day of School
You would think that at nearly 60 years old that the first day of school wouldn’t give me a case of the nerves. You would be wrong. I barely slept the night before. The school is an 11 minute walk from my condo, something that my teacher Patricia, who lives in a town north of…
The Adventure Starts:
I arrived in Cuenca around breakfast time, but with only a few hours of sleep in the previous 24, food was the last thing I was thinking of. I had package of Biscoff cookies leftover from one of my three flights. That with a glass of Cuenca’s tasty perfectly safe tap water was enough…
Promises, Promises
All over social media, I have been promising my family and friends that I would be catching up on my blogging. I will … I promise! However, that being said, I am going to leave some of the unfinished blog posts unfinished for a while. I really need to blog about what is happening right…
Finding the right bag for Travel
I wasn’t kidding about having my bags packed. Once I had some idea of where I would like to go and what sort of traveler I wanted to be, I needed to draw up a packing list. It was then that I decided to become a digital nomad. It wasn’t long before I realized that digital…
Planning to get out of here
Once I had my condo ready to show, I had time on my hands between showings. Of course, I continued working on my novel, but when that wasn’t occupying me I began planning my year of travel. I definitely didn’t know where I wanted to go, what order, or for how long. I was just…
The Car is Gone, the Condo is Next
After a few months of retirement, I found that I was becoming restless. It wasn’t that I wanted to go to sea again. I don’t. I just wanted to get out of my routine and do the things I hadn’t had time for when I was working. I wondered if I could afford to travel…
Life gets in the way.
Not long after I started this blog I got sick. It wasn’t too bad, just a cold. After a week of having the cold, I was better and back to blogging for one day. I was back to my normal routine for just one day. Then a got the flu! Two weeks of the flu,…