Racing In Lots of Directions

My mind, that is. After our thrilling discussion of last night regarding the sudden truncation of our timeline, my mind has begun to feel the same way that I feel after I’ve spent an hour trying to figure out a puzzling brain teaser. In a good way, definitely, but still, the reality that I’ve been planning on for a couple years now has suddenly shifted under my feet, and I’m still trying to recover my footing!

So the new plan is as follows: we are moving up our scheduled purchase of our fifth wheel to summer/fall of 2013. We will order our fifth wheel in the spring of 2013, and get it sometime later that year. I’m not quite sure how that works yet. We plan to order through a dealer in our area, but we don’t know how long it will take to actually have the fifth wheel arrive here from the factory. (Our trip to the factory in Kansas will probably take place in the fall of 2012.) We will now be purchasing our truck probably in June or July 2013. I’m not sure of much more about the truck purchase – that’s Harry’s department. I know he has a list of places that he is going to start visiting when he is ready to order the truck – to see who can give him the best deal for what he wants. Both of these purchases have been moved up almost a year since we want to get our financing while Harry is still working. His tentative retirement date is now fall of 2013. The winter of 2013 – 2014 will probably be our last one living in the sticks ‘n’ bricks. I say “probably” because the following year everything will depend on what happens as far as the house sale. If all goes according to plan, the house will be listed on the market in April or May of 2014. Wow! Then we wait and see what happens.

So now I have moved my attention to working on a sample budget. I’ve been pulling up sample budgets on the RV Dreamers website, and looked at the same kind of information on various blogs that I read. This weekend when I start filling some boxes with books and other items for our church garage sale, I’m going to be looking around with a new eye. This change in our timetable has completely adjusted my view of things.

Another very exciting development in the past couple of days has been finding out that the RV Dreamers 2011 rally is going to be on the east coast. That is a huge relief to me, as I really HATE to fly. I would have loved to go to the rally this past April, but Harry and I had already booked a cruise for April, and we couldn’t manage two vacations in the same month. We would have loved it, but it wasn’t a very practical option. So I was very happy to find out that we should be able to make the 2011 one.

It’s been a great couple of days! And tomorrow is Friday!