I am getting near retirement

 and a a sailor when I do retire I am not going to wind up in the Old Mariner's Home sitting on a porch telling sea stories and watching ships roll in and out.

No way in hell.

Besides my career being somewhat of an odyessy my life has certainly been one and I have been told by the Gods that after I retire that there is only one way to end my odyessy.

I, much like Odyusses, have been told to take an oar and carry it inland until someone asks me why I am carrying a winnowing fan.

I have heard a lot of mariners say that the instant they retire they are going to buy a big bag of pot and smoke it. I can see this but it is not my style.

When that happens my odyessy will end and I will settle down. I have been thinking that my march inland will be an interesting subject for either this or a seperate blog.

Several years ago I met a Louisianan that was born in Maine that did a similar thing. After he got out of the service he returned to Maine. He had gone through basic during the winter and had been promptly sent to the Pacific. 

Not the part of the Pacific that everyone things of, he was sent to Alaska.

I guess after he was discharged and returned to Maine he bought a surplus jeep and put a snow plow on the front and lived there another year or two.

One day he just packed Maine in and hopped in the Jeep and headed south and kept going south until someone asked him what that thing was on the front of his Jeep.

That's where he decided to live. He was tired of ice and snow and it made sense to live somewhere that people didn't even know what a snow plow was.

The Jeep with the snow plow now is likely little more than a pile of rust sitting in his back yard, assuming he's still with us.

Of course my luck seems to be a luck of extremes. What will likely happen is that someone will figure out my plan and ask me before I get half a block. Either that of nobody will ever ask me and I will be hiking forever.

Oh, well. We'll just have to see what happens.
 getti


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY