Retirement is working out great so far. A person could get used to this really easily!

It's given us lots of time to work on the Airstream and we've taken advantage of the extra time.

The electrical system is essentially finished except for putting in the 12 volt outlets. The solar panels are hooked up and charging like crazy and the inverter is installed. Sun power is so awesome. We can power the ceiling fans now and have a little breeze when working inside. Heinz has the power installed for the stereo system and the front two speakers in, so soon we should have music without trailing extension cords for the portable radio.

We installed the sub-flooring last week also, then realized that the nails we used were about a 1/2" too long. Heinz is now outside grinding them down over the water tank and spare tire spaces. Luckily we figured it out before we had done the entire floor and switched to staples for the rest of the floor as no one in town had 1" flooring nails.

All of the interior metal is back up except for the strip down the middle. Sometimes I think that piece is never going back in, but Heinz wants to leave it open until the last possible moment in order to keep the electrical wiring open for troubleshooting.

Since the remainder of the walls were up I spent Saturday prepping them for paint: scrubbing, sanding, filing down rough rivets, filling in old holes and patches with Bondo, etc. Heinz spent the day with the electrical system as mentioned above.

And then the rain came, and came, and came. It rained all Saturday evening, all night and most of Sunday. A total of 1.2 inches.

We got out to the trailer on Sunday morning and found 5 damp spots on the flooring. Boos, hisses, curses and depression. So off came some panels and the depression lifted a little. None of the leaks were coming from areas of our repairs. One was from a still open air vent hole that had been simply taped over with painter's tape, the second was from the front curved window that we hadn't done anything with yet and knew had a leak (we had hoped we had put enough sealant on it, but sigh, no such luck). The third leak was by the door and access panel where we had removed the seals and not gotten around to re-applying it yet, one by a wheel well that needs more sealant and the last was from a combination of roof line rivets and side rivets that we had not replaced. We got the window and air vents taped over with good waterproof tape (Gorilla tape--truly a wonderful product!) and when the rain let up in the afternoon, we drilled out the rivets on the streetside outer wall and roof line and replaced them. I had been down a little because the painting and flooring hadn't been completed yet, boy, was I glad they weren't done since we ended up having to track down leaks.

Today I plan to sand down the Bondo'd patches and then maybe, just maybe, the ceiling strip will go in and I can paint the primer coat.

It's official. We've retired, Heinz from a total of 28 years in the USAF and Teresa from 34 years of nursing. We immediately flew to New Hampshire for Heinz's daughter's wedding. We spent around 10 days up there playing around. It was a new place for the two of us and we had a blast enjoying the changing leaves and New England coastline.

The colors were somewhat subtle down in southern New Hampshire/Massachusetts and quite brilliant up in the Green Mountains in the northern end of the state. Before the wedding, we took in the Franconia Notch and the flume, the Shaker Village in Canterbury and Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth among other sights.

It rained most of the week, but the day of Jess and Pete's wedding dawned clear and sunny, which was great since the ceremony was outdoors. Following the ceremony we enjoyed drinks on the patio followed by dinner and dancing until close to midnight, then a firepit and bar-b-que at the home of the groom's sister. The partying finally broke up around 3 am. Now that's a wedding celebration.

We had family in for the ceremonies from Kansas and Colorado also, so it turned into a mini-family reunion in addition to the wedding.

Following the festivities we drifted down to Boston and did the tourist thing: followed the freedom trail and spent some time in Salem.

Following our return home, we promptly went into self-imposed isolation with horrendous colds, so no work got done on the trailer for at least 3 weeks straight.

But now we're better and we've made some major progress in the past 3-4 days: end caps re-installed, air conditioner installation completed, and side walls replaced. Heinz is spending today working on installation of the 120 Volt/12 Volt converter, while I start going through some of the house separating out Goodwill vs. storage vs. going on the road items.

We're adjusting nicely to the concept of retirement so far. I really can't say that either of us is missing work even a tiny bit so far.