A small celebration had been planned or at least contemplated. My Adventure Mobile was approaching 100,000 miles which is a major milestone for any vehicle. I hadn’t really given much thought as to just what I was going to do when the big moment occurred but a picture of the odometer was definitely on the list. And of course it would have to be posted to social media, most likely Facebook. It was 2 days before Valentine’s Day 2024.

This trip was to Hamcation in Orlando, FL which is a huge ham radio fest (hamfest) that drew close to 25,000 people for the three day weekend event. I was on my way home from and driving through Tennessee when I noticed the van was less than 150 miles from hitting the milestone. And then somewhere in Kentucky I thought to look again and the odometer read 100138 miles. I had missed it and like so many things in life there was no going back.

The van, a 2020 Ford Transit Connect was bought new on January 31, 2021. My wife and I have a son, Paul, who works for Ford and because of that we are able to buy them on the A Plan which saves us a lot of money on new purchases.

For some time I had been visualizing what was wanted in such a vehicle but the biggest issue was that it had to be long enough for me to sleep in. My previous car was a Ford Escape which was just fine as a car at the time but retirement was approaching and my sights were widening. On the nearest Ford dealer lot I saw a van that looked to be what I needed. A tape measure showed the distance from the back seat to the rear door was 6’6″ which was more than enough room for my 5’9″ frame. A deal was struck which was soon followed with plans for the first road trip.

That van was going to be my bed for many nights ahead. While retirement was nearing wealth was not. The van would be a free place to sleep while traveling. I bailed from the work life the moment it looked like we could afford it. Any sound financial advisor would have told me to keep working. What they couldn’t tell me was how long I would live and be healthy. A little chart I once saw helped put things in perspective. It indicated how long the typical person lives after retiring at various ages. One thing on that chart screamed at me. It was that the older a person worked before retiring the sooner death after retirement occurred. The inverse was that the younger a person retired the longer the average lifespan. That was taken very seriously and the retirement savings plans suddenly were taken much more seriously.

I had been a licensed ham radio operator for 30 years but had mostly gotten out of it 20 years ago. I wanted to get back into after retirement. But I didn’t just want to sit in a room with a radio, I wanted to travel and experience more of the world. There is a subset of ham radio called Parks on the Air. In it hams go out into state and national parks and play radio. My hopes involved doing this throughout the country. Little did I know at the time how much this would influence and even dominate my retirement life. Since then my Adventure Mobile and I have traveled in all 49 states as well as the District of Columbia. There is the Alaskan Highway which I drove from mile 0 in Canada into Alaska but there is no Hawaiian Highway which meant we had to fly to that one.

There are awards in Parks on the Air, often shortened to POTA, that are earned for various things. One of the most sought after one was for going to parks in every state and playing radio. Lo and behold, I was the first to ever earn that award!

So here we go. This is my first blog and in it I hope to tell stories that are mostly about those travels, ham radio, and how they intersect.