It's official: the next adventure is underway

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The papers are on file and I can already hear the sound of the first retirement check clinking into my bank account.

After several years of calculating, recalculating and then recalculating the recalculations, the lines crossed and the Admiral and I have pulled the plug on the California State University and made it official with the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS). May 31 is our first official day of retirement. December 15, or so, we will be heading south to the beachfront in Tenacatita to start building a house.

For those people who have followed this twisted path in the last few years, yes, it is the second time I retired. I came back from retirement for one year to be chair of the Faculty Senate on campus - in itself enough to convince me that I really needed to get out.

Our connection with the university will remain for a few years though. Under a special early retirement program, faculty can collect their full retirement checks, but receive half a year's salary (in addition) for teaching one 15-week semester. We took it. It will make the transition to Tequilaville, er, I mean Tenacatita (where our beachfront lot is) much easier. And it will fund houses on both the beach and the small lot we purchased in the pueblo of Arroyo de Seco a few kilometers up the beach from Tenacatita.


CalPERS headquarters in Sacramento

The CalPERs building in Sacramento is a wild piece of architecture and houses some of the most efficient people I have ever dealt with. We were in and out with our paperwork in 20 minutes - 20 minutes! - and were given plenty of good advice about how to maximize all the benefits that the system offers. The staff said they have great jobs, in good part because very few of the people who come in - if any - are dragging their butts because they really want to keep working.


Retirement Gift

There's a fairly strong argument that college professors are already retired - even when they're working, I suppose. But what the last few years of semi-retirement (before this year's stint in university politics) enabled me to do was set up some writing projects & contracts that will follow me to Mexico or wherever adventure beckons.

We don't really consider May 31 as the beginning of retirement. Alternately we call it 'the beginning of our third careers' and 'Take the money and run.'

Still, I've been looking at books like the one below for some inspiration and ideas (as if I need anymore). I've been writing for more than 30 years. Maybe it's time to take up some new stuff to add to guitar & ukulele playing, fishing off the beach, sailing, kayaking and, well, who knows?

I know for sure we are planning on building houses that have lots of space for guests, though given the size of those CalPERs retirement checks, hammocks are as likely as beds for sleeping accommodations.

Just kidding.

Well, maybe.


Retirement jobs

New meaning to whirlwind day in Mexico

ARROYO SECO, Jalisco, Mexico - Some things in Mexico are done in ever soooooo sloooooow time.

Others are muy rapido, a fast-forward so fast you forget what you were thinking a moment ago.

Where was I?

Anyway, Sunday consisted of getting the four of us out of Santana's beachfront apartment and then meeting the architect at our beachfront lot in Tenacatita where she crawled through the brambles with her assistant and son to measure our lot. She drafted us a quick sketch of the kind of house she thought would be best for the lot while we all drank tea and coffee and ate chilaquiles.

That took us until noon. And her sketch is unbelievable - as in good-unbelievable.

But because the architect was on our clock for the entire day (at a price you would pay an architect in the states for a couple of hours), we dragged her out to Arroyo Seco to look at Lot. No. 2 where she repeated her magic, coming up with a good-looking design for that hillside property. Two lots, two houses. One-half budget available. Hmmmm....

For now, the future holds six-plus weeks of the semester at the university before we can return to Tenacatita and Arroyo Seco. But we have some sketches to be pondering while the clock runs out.


Measuring the Arroyo Seco property


Architect at work

Time getting short south of the border

LA MANZANILLA, Jalisco, Mexico - For the first few days here, the spring-break vacation/real-estate tour/Tequila marathon stretched out like an endless vista in front of us. Then suddenly, like riding a Harley-Davidson at 115 mph across a desert salt flat, we are at the end of the clear space with our mental momentum still roaring at full throttle.

Zooooooooooooooooom.

Several hikes up the steep hills of town today revealed several houses (for construction ideas only) that are elegant in their simplicity. We hope they are equally elegant in construction cost and that the designs can be adapted to either Admiralty Beach in Tenacatita or Arroyo Seco where the town is already talking about the blonde gringa and the gringo with the ponytail who looked at property on the hill.

Let's hope the Arroyo Secans like the sounds of ukulele and violin strings, mixed in with some Toby Keith and the occasional Steppenwolf on the stereo.

'Born to be wiiiiild, born to be wiiiiild...

A last sweep down the beach yesterday gave me the photos below, a trench for a sea-wall, an inland-Mexico resident coming to town for the week-long Holy Days holiday at the beach, and yet another sundown over the bay.

We're not yet done though - there's the rest of today, an evening meeting with an engineer/architect, a nearly-finished bottle of Tequila and then two days in Puerto Vallarta before touching back in Sacramento Monday where the real world, I fear, will seem much less real than this one.


The trench for a concrete seawall


The young lady in red


Sunset over Tenacatita Bay

Admiralty Beach Land Co. expands to the hills

ARROYO SECO, Jalisco, Mexico - Just 30 kilometers north of Tenacatita (where our lot is being prepared for eventual construction of Casa Admirale), we found a wonderful little town called Arroyo Seco, located in a valley that opens to the ocean.

It's a real-deal Mexican town. If we build a house there and join the community (the latest plan hatched over margaritas) we will boost the gringo population to three in a town of probably 500 people. The only other Norteamericano in town is called Spiderman, a surfer who moved in a dozen years ago.

Yup, Spiderman. I can't make this stuff up.

Like all things Mexico these days, we fell into a situation where a lot was for sale, a neat parcel already level and ready for construction on a hillside overlooking the tiny pueblo. Today it looks like we will add it to our list of places to write from.

Oh-my-God...


View from the lot looking north

What, have the Admiral and Captain gone totally mad, buying a lot that is, gasp, almost a mile from salt water?

Rest easy, amigos. The lot was embarassingly cheap, leveled & ready for construction, electricity is available 100 feet away and the city water tank/supply is on the lot next door and available to tap.. So we can scratch 'expensive water tank' off our list of utlities. Coupled with all that is the mayor of the town is also the fellow who owns a bulldozer and who our builder/friend Arturo says would like nothing better than to improve the goat path driveway we have into a real road.

And best of all, a house can be built muy rapido, so we will have a place to live while we decided exactly what we want the beach house to look at Tenacatita.


The road from the town square to the lot


Rolling down the hill towards town

Perhaps one of the nicest things about the town, weatherwise, is the way valley opens to the ocean, letting a cool seabreeze in almost all the time - a big factor as temperatures in the inland of Mexico are in the mid-90s right now. At Arroyo Seco, I doubt it topped the mid 80s at the heat of the day while we sipped beer purchased at one of the three tiendas in town. One of them is named Mini-Super Miguel's. Maybe I'll get a discount there.

When we took our tour of Arroyo Seco (and a lot of other places) yesterday, we were guided by Joe Santana who can barely drive through any of these places without half the town coming out to chat - and frequently asking him to buy their property. We ran nearly out of gas in Joe's SUV, so in very Mexican-fashion Joe got some petrol from a friend (who also has a beach lot for sale, hmm...) who siphoned it into Joe's tank.


'Nino' and Joe (right) putting some petrol in the car