On the Road

Strong winds buffeted our RV, knocking the 24-foot Kodiak travel trailer attached to our pickup side to side in our lane.

I gripped the wheel so tightly that my knuckles turned white.

The forecast had been for strong winds through this part of Kansas, a barren expanse of hills and valleys, spotted here and there with the occasional grazing cattle, but I never imagined what 60-mile-an-hour gusts could do to an RV on the open road.

My wife, GiGi, and I had bought the vehicle not long before; this was the first long trip we’d taken with it. I kept my eyes glued straight ahead. I was beginning to think I wasn’t cut out for a long trip like this. Part of me wondered what I was cut out for anymore.

“So what’s next for you?” a colleague had asked me at my retirement party a few days earlier.

For the last 33 years I’d been a reporter for the Citizen Patriot in Jackson, Michigan, but a bad economy meant cutbacks, and I’d accepted a buyout of my contract—reluctantly.

I told him what GiGi and I had planned for the next two months: an RV trip out west with my sister-in-law Kelly, brother-in-law Gene and their spouses, Jim and Joyce. They were driving from their homes in Florida and we would meet them on the road.

“Sounds great,” my colleague said. “Enjoy your retirement!”

That was the problem. I loved my work at the paper. At age 60, I wasn’t ready to retire.

I’d always been a cautious person; for the last few months, as I counted down the days until my job was over, I’d worried about how I’d adjust to retirement.

What do I do now, Lord? I asked.

I tried to push those worries aside and focus on the road trip. I mapped out our route and our budget. Four thousand miles, I figured, to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state and back. Now that I’d be on a fixed income, with gasoline running three dollars a gallon, distance was a big deal, right?

I never planned on the wind. GiGi and I had already driven through Indiana, Illinois and Missouri on our way to Assaria, Kansas, where we’d meet Jim and Kelly.

Now the winds pushing our RV around felt just like those winds of change that had pushed me into the next stage of my life. No matter how hard I gripped the wheel, they still blew us off course.

Finally we reached the campsite where Jim and Kelly were waiting. I looked at the RV. Some of the waterproof stripping had been torn away. I couldn’t help having a nagging sense of fear. If this RV couldn’t hold up in Kansas, how would it handle the mountains?

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Click on the photos tab above to see photos from Ken and Gigi's travels!