The need to upset the routine

Even in retirement there is routine.

It's not like, as some people believe, you retire from a career of work and begin a career of loafing around. At least that's not the experience that Baby Boomers, including this one, want for themselves.

We need to be doing something. In general, this is a generation of achievers -- over-achievers, in some cases -- and the idea of doing nothing is not an option.

In retirement we want to decide what to do with our time, not have someone decide or dictate for us what we do with our time.

My time is goes to writing and data mining as a contractor and sub-contractor. And my time goes to keeping myself healthy by going to the gym. And my time goes to keeping myself engaged in the outdoors by golfing, surfing and skiing.

And my time has a routine to it.

I'm in my home office between 6:30 and 7 a.m. each day to boot-up my computer and start writing for a couple of hours. I get to the gym usually by mid-morning. Then I get home for lunch and spend the afternoon doing rest of my contract and subcontract work. Within that routine I'll make room for the round of golf, a few hours in the surf, or some time on the mountains.

Even that routine, as appealing as it might be, needs to be broken up every now and then.

Which is why I've been happy to have been on a road trip this week to Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey.

It is said that writing is discovery. Writers explore their surroundings and discover something of themselves when they put words to paper (or words to screen). It is a mental journey.

Travel is discovery too, a tactile journey of the five senses:

• The feel of warmth of a late September sun in the left field seats at Camden Yards in Baltimore;
• The scratch of sand in my toes on Rehoboth and Dewey beaches in Delaware;
• The fleeting glimpse of dolphin leaping from the water;
• The taste of crab in the dip at Striper Bites in Lewes, Del.;
• The gentle roll of the ferry from Lewes to Cape May, N.J.;
• The glimpse through binoculars of the migrating raptors at Cape May Point.;
• The hum and clang of slots inside Caesar's and Trump casinos at Atlantic City;
• The aroma of the frutti de mare that came from the kitchen to my plate at Basil T's Brewery and Italian Restaurant in Red Bank, N.J.

In writing I can take myself so far. Travel outside of the routine takes me the rest of the way there.

A Baby Boomer's life for the birds

Goldfinches are pigs.

That's one of the things that I've learned from birds as I've watched them at my bird feeder.

I'm a retired Baby Boomer in search of a hobby. And I've become an armchair bird watcher. I don't go to the birds like most bird watchers. The birds come to me.

So I've become a bit of an desk chair expert on the lives of birds, at least as far as their eating habits are concerned.

The goldfinches -- male and female -- belly up to the feeder and gorge themselves. And I thought I was bad at an all-you-can eat buffet. At least I'm not eating three times my weight at one sitting.

I hung a bird feeder from an eave in front of my home office window. I look out above my computer screen and can see the birds come and go. Watching their behavior has given me a bit of insight into their personalities.

Chickadees grab one sunflower seed and fly away. Nuthatches do the same thing, though they're more gymnastic about their approach and hang upside down in taking a seed before they fly off.

You can see how baseball players learned to eat sunflower seeds by watching birds. The birds break open the seed, eat the meat and eject the shell using just their beaks. Substitute beaks for teeth and you've got baseball players.

Cardinals -- the birds -- are my favorite. They're beautiful to look at. They make little chirps as they eat. They can be a little shy. They hang back, buried in the foliage of the trees nearby. Then they swoop to the feeder, eat for just a moment, then swoop away.

The male cardinals are less shy than the females. The females are very shy; they wait for the males to get to the feeder first as if to make sure the coast is clear. The juvenile females are especially skittish. One in particular appears occasionally out of a big bush outside my window but she rarely makes the short flight to the feeder.

Lately, I've seen a blue jay darting in and out of the cover of the tree line at the edge of the property. He hasn't made a foray to the feeder yet, at least not when I've been at my post.

At one time I had two bird feeders going -- the one outside my office window and one outside the living room window. But it was too much, the responsibility too great. I was going through a big bag of seeds about every 10 days, not to mention the litter of expended sunflower shells on my driveway.

Even with one feeder I feel like I'm in charge of a needy group -- kind of what work used to be like before retirement.

I was away from home and the bird feeder was empty. My wife tells the story of how she and her daughter were sitting out on our deck, enjoying the sun when the male cardinal lit on the rail and started chirping at them, as if to say, "Yo, can one of you please fill the bird feeder while what's-his-name is away?"

Even though cardinals can be skittish, this one had no problems speaking his mind about wanting to be fed.

I've come to think of these birds as ideal pets. They stay outside. They're fun to be with. I don't have to train them. I don't have to take them to the vet. And I don't have to clean up their poop.

Well, except when the feeder is empty and they poop on my car.

Baby Boomer's call of the road in an RV

The biggest question I get now that I've taken an RV trip with my wife Jane is whether we're still married.

The answer is yes ... and better for it because of the long weekend in the 31-foot recreational vehicle.

The call of the road seems ingrained in Americans' DNA. We have a lot to see. We have the roads to get us there. We have the motivation of "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac or "Travels with Charlie" by John Steinbeck or, for a real twisted take on the theme, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson.

And we Baby Boomers are positioned with our sense of adventure and empty nests to continue to take up where Kerouac, Steinbeck and Thompson left off.

One vision I had of my retirement is packing us up into an RV to follow my beloved Red Sox around on a series of away games. Go from park to park to park. I want to re-see America with older, wiser eyes than back in the 1970s when I took a cross-country trip in a Dodge Dart.

A retirement gift gave me the chance to get a taste of the RV lifestyle, one that maintains its pace despite the recession. Even though the sales of RVs is down, according to the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association, RVs are still on the road, their owners determined to keep on truckin'. The trade group says that 64 percent of RV owners plan to travel over the Labor Day weekend, a slight increase from last year.

The gift certificate for a three-day rental gave us the opportunity to trek north to a campground in New Hampton, N.H., near Pemigewasset Lake.

Steering the 31-foot Winnebago Chalet on the highway was a bit like navigating the Queen Mary on the high seas; it felt more like floating than driving. And, despite a cursory demo by the rental agent, the hook-ups at the campsite of electrical, water and sewer were a bit daunting.

But the folks at the Twin Tamarack Campground were extremely helpful to a couple of newbies like Jane and me.

There were no disasters, a la the Robin Williams movie "RV".

In truth, for a few days we had the comforts of home -- albeit a small home -- but a home with running water, a shower, flush toilet, electricity, cable TV, internet access and the ability to cook the same meals that I would in my own kitchen.

We ate well, we explored, we entertained ourselves with good books to read and Scrabble.

We met a couple in their 60s who live the lifestyle full time in their fifth wheel rig: summers in New Hampshire, a site at a favorite campground in Florida and in between trips to various places throughout the country for Habitat for Humanity building projects. They are genuinely happy with a life that isn't anchored to a house, a life that allows them to roll with whatever urges the road offers.

Getting ready to leave meant dumping the gray water (basically the shower, kitchen sink water) and black water (from the toilet) -- black water first through the hose, then gray water to wash out and rise the black out of the hose. Then fresh water from the water hook-up to finish the job.

Would we do it again? Yes, with the caveat that we tow a car. Once the rig is parked, leveled and hooked up, you don't want to undo it all to travel around and sight see. We wished we had a car to do that because there was a lot to see that we didn't.

And that's the lure. There's a lot to see out there.