Hobbies

Now that we are full timing in the RV we have to make allowances for hobby time. We won’t be driving all the time, and you can’t afford to act like you are on vacation all day everyday so we have to have a normal “home life”. As we cleaned out our house, I discovered just how many hobbies I had and was amazed by the number. Skeet shooting and associated reloading, wood working, electronics kits and projects, microcomputer kits (yes, I am a geek), model trains from when the kids were little, Lego sets from my son’s childhood, model building, stamp and coin collecting, shot glasses from everywhere we visited, ball cap collecting from all over the world, coffee cup and glasses from old military units (I don’t even drink coffee!) and things like that. My wife looked a bit flabbergasted that I wanted to keep them but they were all memories of great times in my life.

I also had a collection of going away plaques and mementos from all my assignments. Some of these I could let go but the signed ones were special and found a place in storage. I know my kids will just chuck them when I die but that’s their issue, not mine! Most of these hobbies/collections were basically inactive but I was loathe to get rid of them because I know someday we’ll settle down in a home again and I’ll want to put them back up.
I wanted something to do on the road that counted as a hobby but didn’t have a large footprint or amass a lot of stuff. Even collecting shot glasses soon amasses a certain amount of weight and takes up space. I chose photography since I always wanted to get better and our traveling would pair up with that nicely by giving me plenty of opportunities to hone my skills. I’m taking a photography class online through Great Courses to improve my shots. We were also going to be bringing our good DSLR camera anyway so why not! It’s an older model but, hey, so am I!

I’m also continuing the genealogy work I previously started. It doesn’t amass a lot of weight as it’s mostly in a database program and the research is also mostly online. I might even be able to finagle a trip or two to some ancestral locations to collect more data! I had a distant relative who began the work on one branch of my family tree and I slowly worked outwards to find out when most of my relatives came to the U.S. My wife’s side is nearly blank and we’re using a trip to her Mom’s to fill in some details. It gets complicated quickly since every generation you go back doubles your relatives at least and that means double the branches to research. I found Ancestry.com helpful but not for my wife’s side oddly.

Then, I would be remiss in not mentioning, there's this website, Instagram and Facebook posts to keep family and friends in the loop on where we are and our adventures. It's nice to post about our travels because since we are so busy, any given stop along the way starts to fade from memory as new adventures push it back into the recesses of my mind. As an example, by the end of our first 6 week roadtrip, the first parts seemed like a whole lifetime earlier!