Rather than crowd my first year of retirement with too many objectives, I thought I would keep it simple and assume a limited number of projects. My "normal" tasks, including the races; Creemore Vertical Challenge and Copper kettle Dash, prep for the maple syrup season, cut firewood for a few customers and myself, and a few other projects for this year, including helping to build a house (Lee Anne's daughter Lily and son-in-law Daryl's house), upgrade the bathroom and sunroom and build a cabin on the Singhampton property...
Thrown into the mix is a strong desire to make the races better (new signs, better bridges in the swamp, etc.), spend more time in the gardens, landscape and increase my training (running and biking). I think you see where this is going...
A week has 168 hours. I know this because of my "old" job, which included fiddling with several part ordering systems (parts needed to make Hondas). Some of the more esoteric systems needed to perform calculations based on roughly a half hour breakdown of transit times, staging times ("production" hours) where parts could be unloaded and readied for the assembly lines. On a personal level, I never really analysed the impact of "not" working on my available time. If you exclude sleep (let's factor in showers, breakfast, etc. and call "sleep" 8 hours per day), there are about 16 hours per day that are available for "projects". Let's keep things simple and declare that work represent only 40 of the remaining 112 hours. I know, travel time to work alone used to burn 6 hours per week. Disregard, damn it! So, when I worked, I had 72 "project" hours per week and I now have 112. Not an order of magnitude, which is what I THOUGHT I would have...
A tangible problem with retirement that I never considered, is that I can CHOOSE what to do on almost any given day. This sounds wonderful (and it is!) but it also means that bizarre tasks that no one should consider doing are gladly slotted into my daytime schedule. Let's bike to Owen Sound, or Angus, or Phelpston (all of these were done in the last 2 weeks). I hopped on the tractor and started to dig out the pond. This actually requires some foresight as you need to block the inlet 3-4 days ahead, so that the pond bed has a chance to dry out a little. The muck in the pond is an alarming 3 feet thick. Think of the volume! My smallish pond (about 20' X 80') has about 180 YARDS of muck. That would be about 18 large dump truck loads. I realized I had nowhere to put the mud, so I abandoned the task, until the fall.
So, the Creemore Vertical Challenge SAP (Specific Action Plan) is mostly on schedule, but I'm surprised that I am not way ahead of the plan. What have I been doing, lallygagging?
Running
I am not happy with my running as yet. It is starting to improve, but the curve is very slow. Ran a half marathon trail run on the weekend (12 Mile Creek) in 2:09, which is acceptable, but bodes badly for next week's race, the Niagara 50K. I will run as far as this body will allow, then DNF if I must. No, I don't want to drop to the half, it's not something that would inspire me.
Well, that is about it for now. I will be glad when the CVC is over. Not because I dread it, but because I still have a "job" to do, until it is complete. I think retirement will truly start once I can stop adhering to a schedule.
Hey! Hope to see you are the CVC!
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