"What have you been up to since you retired?"

I hear that a lot, and my answer is usually something like, "Absolutely NOTHING!" or "Not much, really."

Then I got to thinking about a couple things I have done since retiring a year ago. And I decided to make a list -- at least a partial list.

So, here's what I've been up to in the past year:

I've been to:

• Several HOG State Rallies (even the Duluth HOG Rally -- twice)
• To the eastern-most point in the US and west to Phoenix
• North to the Canadian border and south to the Gulf of Mexico
• HOG National Rally in Knoxville, TN
• Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaoggagoggchaubunaguhgamaugg (no, my fingers didn't 'spaz')
• Lake Michigan sand dunes
• The House on the Rock
• "The Rock" in west-central Iowa
• Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, where I almost lost my lunch (and more) numerous times
• McDonald's Museum
• Superman Museum
• SPAM Museum
• USS Alabama and Museum
• Air Force Museum (twice)
• Indianapolis Motor Sports Museum
• Titan Missile Museum and Education Complex
• New Mexico Museum of Space History
• Museum of Naval Aviation
• American Museum of Science and Industry
• Gun shows and car shows
• The Mall of America
• Saguaro National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Shenandoah National Park, Acadia National Park, and others
• Carlsbad Caverns
• National Solar Observatory
• TWO school reunions
• Several Drum Corps shows, including the 2007 World Music Games
• White Sands National Monument
• Transylvania (Louisiana)
• White Sands Missile Test Range
• Disney World - Twice!
• Kiester and Bixby, Minnesota

And I:

• Went on our Annual ride to Helen for Oktoberfest
• Visited Es and Bill in Virginia
• Visited Norm and Ive in Arizona
• Had my nose busted
• Crashed my Harley into a pickup truck (and won)
• Visited Farmamerica
• Met a guy who actually combs his ear hair!
• Had an extensive self-guided tour of every room in my old High School
• Cooked: pineapple upside down cake, banana bread, sugar cookies, meatloaf, goulash, biscuits, (but not a cherry pie -- that was Alice)
• Spent more time with my brother (Norm) and sister (Esther/Marie) than we've had together in the past 10 years combined.
• Seen Blue Angels perform in practice
• Been on numerous rides and lunches with the Harley Owner's Group chapter members
• Toured the Cirrus Designs aircraft plant
• Toured the Harley-Davidson plants in York, PA, Kansas City, MO (twice), and Tomahawk, WI. (The Wauwatosa, WI, plant was closed.)
• Toured an iron ore ship
• Was the photographer for a friend's wedding
• Crossed Michigan's Mackinac Bridge
• Stopped at countless statues, memorials, and roadside attractions
• Ridden something like 40,000 miles and in 36 states
• Ridden in rain, snow, dust storms, sand storms, crosswinds of 65 mph, dragon fly blizzards,
• Rode more than 1,000 miles in one day to earn the Iron Butt Association's "Saddle Sore Award"
• Ridden in the chaos of downtown Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, New York, Boston, and Chicago
• Followed "Fall" foliage colors from Maine, through New York and Michigan to Minnesota, and then down into Missouri.
• Made it to Vermont - the milestone marking my presence in all 50 states (and it only took me 59 years)
• Camped in temperatures ranging from 102 down to 22, with winds up to over 60 mph
• Got in bed with Gerri (okay, it was in the hospital, but ...)
• Camped on ground that became an island overnight
• Had lots of dinners and meetings with old friends (Gerri Downs, Joyce Peavey, Charlie [and Candy], Christi Slay, Connie [and Wayne] Tucker-Long, Barbara Hester, Doris [and Ray] Green, Pat Embry, Kim [and Randy] Ponthieux, Mark, Michelle, Tina, Phil [and Linda] Ratliff, Dan Hill, Mike Sarran, Patrick Gridley, DJ Lucas, Joan Wandrisco, Jim Penner, and many more); and other friends and relatives (Dave and Janet Elliott, Linda and Larry Icenbice, Robin Ives, Sandy Williams, Mary and Alice Williams, John and Marcia Priebe, Lois Evans, Keith Williams, and others -- far more than I can remember).

And I've Seen:

• Bears
• Moose
• Deer
• Elk
• Plastic dinosaurs
• The World Trade Center site
• The Pentagon
• The United Flight 93 memorial
• Iwo Jima Memorial
• Arlington National Cemetery
• Statue of Liberty
• A giant surfin' gorilla
• Foamhenge
• Numerous roadside "art" exhibits
• A cow in a coffee cup
• Lots of light houses
• Paul Bunyon
• Early American forts
• Hot air balloons
• Becky's new boyfriend
• Abe Lincoln's birthplace
• John Wayne's birthplace
• The world's largest bat (baseball)
• The world's largest bat (mammal)
• The world's largest ball of twine
• The world's largest catsup bottle
• The world's largest stucco snowman
• The world's largest penny
• The largest coffee pot in America
• 29 3/4 Avenue (really) in Wisconsin
• The Texas Eifel Tower in Paris
• The launch of Space Shuttle STS-118 "Endeavor"
• A massive wind farm of over 500 square miles
• Swarms of beautiful butterflies
• The beautiful Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania
• Fort Knox (both the one in Maine and in Kentucky)
• My brother's quartet sing the National Anthem at a Phoenix Suns game
• My brother's quartet sing in concert in Wisconsin
• The Roadrunners perform one final time
• All sorts of relatives; nieces, cousins, and any other types
• Reelfoot Lake (created by an earthquake in 1811)
• and A 9-foot-tall thistle

Damn. NO WONDER I feel tired. I HAVE been doin' stuff! I think I'll take the next year off.

...

eBay. I admit that I’ve purchased several items through eBay, but not through the auctions that made eBay a household name. I’ve bought stuff through eBay “stores” -- virtual storefronts set up by some folks who have lots of things to sell but don’t want to deal with customers face-to-face. In other words, my kind of retailers.

The auctions, however, have always been a mystery; mostly due to my ignorance of how they worked. I’ve seen folks sell some pretty stupid stuff for some remarkably large sums of cash; but I also know some folks are even more unscrupulous than they might look. Still, if people could swap junk for real American Money, why not me?

After almost a year of thinking about selling stuff on eBay, I decided to take the plunge. I had a couple old “data cards” (or memory cards) that I would never use again. They’re for a now-obsolete model of Garmin GPS. Maybe someone, somewhere might want ‘em enough to at least pay for the postage to get them.

I proceeded to spend hours and hours researching the process, and it looked fairly simple. Well, as simple as learning an entirely new language and mentally assembling a dozen odd-shaped puzzle pieces. Let’s see... you just:

• Set up an account on eBay. Name, address, E-mail, phone numbers, ... that kind of stuff. Easy.

• Set up PayPal account. That’s essentially a financial go-between service (undoubtedly very lucrative for them) to handle payments. They, too, want all that personal information. But they also want credit card account numbers and other normally private information that you hate to part with. But they CAN be trusted, right? After all, they’re doing business on the Internet, and we all know how safe that is.

• Tie the two aforementioned accounts together so the eBay account and the PayPal account can talk to each other and exchange my money whenever they feel like it.

• Oh, and now you get to tie your PayPal account to your bank account “for verification” purposes. Maybe other reasons, too -- I'll discover those as I go along, no doubt. Hey, what harm could it do to give them your bank account numbers?

• Review everything you’ve entered into both those accounts, and try to find where you may have screwed something up. Good luck!

• Now decide what physical object(s) you want to part with. You have to assume that there re probably only two outcomes from this endeavor: a) everything will work and you’ll actually SELL something for money (yippee!); or b) you’ll screw something up and lose money and the object you were trying to sell. So no matter what you do, the object you picked is gonna be history.

• Create the sale item on eBay. Click a link, then fill in the form. Sounds easy. But you have to get all that information together ahead of time; item descriptions, part numbers, quality descriptors, sales options, and such. Oh, and pictures. You need pictures. And as you enter each bit of information, you must decide, “Is this something I want to pay extra for?” (eBay offers scores of options, most of which cost just a few pennies more! So it’s true here; it takes money to make money.)

• Finally, post the item and sit back and watch the auction.

One of your choices is to select the length of your option. Most folks apparently choose 7- or 10-day auction periods. That ensures that people who only check eBay once a week will have a chance to see your item. (People who check only once a week are the ones who shop from home. Most folks check eBay daily during the week -- while at work, where they’re getting paid by their employer to be doing something else, of course.)

Then the excitement begins! Your items just sits there. No bids, no interest, no hope. Like a mongrel 6-month-old mutant puppy in a run-down, small-town shelter. Nobody seems to want it. But as the end of your auction draws near, you see some activity. People start asking questions; Can you ship to Spain? How much to ship it to Australia? (Actual questions.) Can they be rewritten? (I really, really wanted to answer that one, “Of course they can, you stupid shit. And if you had to ask that question, you’re obviously not smart enough to use these anyway, so just go away.” I didn’t, of course. At least not in writing.)

My little items sat there for more than 9 days, with bidding that started at 99 cents. It got a first bid of $35 on about Day 5, and finally worked up to $65 by Day 9. But in the final moments of the sale, a flurry of activity! There were three bids that bumped the price up to $91 in the final 26 seconds! These eBay shoppers must not have a life, either.

The bidding now closed, you weave your way through some obvious -- and some obscure -- menus to contact the winner of the auction and to send an invoice. Then you wait, hoping the buyer actually pays for the item they’d won. But, Hey . . . it’s free money. So don’t worry about it. Right?

In my case, my eBay account said the buyer paid, so it must be okay. Now all I gotta do is ship it. Right?

Not wanting to cut my eBay experience short, I took another step into new territory. With a single mouse click, you can create a postage-paid mailing label right on your computer and printer. I tried it, and it appeared to work; but only after my heart skipped a few beats as I envisioned charging the $5.80 in fees to my credit card only to see my printer jam up and spit out some mangled, worthless spitwad of paper and ink. To my relief, it worked. (You realize, of course, that to print an actual “label” you’d need to have a sticky-backed “label” on which to print in the first place, don’t you? But I’m too cheap. Plain paper worked -- with the help of some tape.)

In the end, my net profit from this sale was about $83 -- for items I would never use again anyway. None too shabby.

So, Where’s that money now? . . . No, I’m asking. Where’s that money now? Will it be in eBay? In PayPal? In my credit card or checking account? Or behind Door Number 3?
I feel like I’ve been swept away in some strange, high-tech, high-energy form of Three Card Monte. “Where’s the money? Now you see it, now you don’t.”

I can see that balance sitting there in my PayPal account; but now what? I’ll eventually have to figure out how to get the money back to ME! I'll worry about that after I give my brain a nice long rest.

And then maybe I'll try selling another item or two! Maybe.

Hi! How are ya? You got your stuff with you? I'll bet you do. Guys have stuff in their pockets; women have stuff in their purses. That's okay. There's all different ways of carryin' your stuff.

Then there's all the stuff you have you in your car. You got stuff in the trunk. Lotta different stuff: spare tire, jack, tools, old blanket, extra pair of sneakers. Just in case you wind up barefoot on the highway some night.

And you've got other stuff in your car. In the glove box. Stuff you might need in a hurry: flashlight, map, sunglasses, automatic weapon. You know. Just in case you wind up barefoot on the highway some night.

So stuff is important. You gotta take care of your stuff. You gotta have a place for your stuff. Everybody's gotta have a place for their stuff. That's what life is all about, tryin' to find a place for your stuff! That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down and see all the little piles of stuff. Everybody's got his own little pile of stuff. And they lock it up! That's right! When you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. 'Cause they always take the good stuff! They don't bother with that crap you're saving. Ain't nobody interested in your fourth-grade arithmetic papers, National Geographics, commemorative plates, your prize collection of Navajo underwear; they're not interested. They just want the good stuff; the shiny stuff; the electronic stuff.

So when you get right down to it, your house is nothing more than a place to keep your stuff...while you go out and get...more stuff. 'Cause that's what this country is all about. Tryin' to get more stuff. Stuff you don't want, stuff you don't need, stuff that's poorly made, stuff that's overpriced. Even stuff you can't afford! Gotta keep on gettin' more stuff. Otherwise someone else might wind up with more stuff. Can't let that happen. Gotta have the most stuff.

So you keep gettin' more and more stuff, and puttin' it in different places. In the closets, in the attic, in the basement, in the garage. And there might even be some stuff you left at your parents' house: baseball cards, comic books, photographs, souvenirs. Actually, your parents threw that stuff out long ago.

So now you got a houseful of stuff. And, even though you might like your house, you gotta move. Gotta get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff! And that means you gotta move all your stuff. Or maybe, put some of your stuff in storage. Storage! Imagine that. There's a whole industry based on keepin' an eye on other people's stuff

Or maybe you could sell some of your stuff. Have a yard sale, have a garage sale! Some people drive around all weekend just lookin' for garage sales. They have enough of their own stuff, they wanna buy other people's stuff.

Or you could take your stuff to the swap meet, the flea market, the rummage sale, or the auction. There's a lotta ways to get rid of stuff. You can even give your stuff away. The Salvation Army and Goodwill will actually come to your house and pick up your stuff and give it to people who don't have much stuff. It's part of what economists call the Redistribution of Stuff.

OK, enough about your stuff. Let's talk about other people's stuff. Have you ever noticed when you visit someone else's house, you never quite feel at home? You know why? No room for your stuff! Somebody else's stuff is all over the place. And what crummy stuff it is! "God! Where'd they get this stuff?"

And you know how sometimes when you're visiting someone, you unexpectedly have to stay overnight? It gets real late, and you decide to stay over? So they put you in a bedroom they don't use too often...because Grandma died in it eleven years ago! And they haven't moved any of her stuff? Not even the vaporizer?

Or whatever room they put you in, there's usually a dresser or nightstand, and there's never any room on it for your stuff. Someone else's shit is on the dresser! Have you noticed that their stuff is shit, and your shit is stuff? "Get this shit off of here, so I can put my stuff down!" Crap is also a form of stuff. Crap is the stuff that belongs to the person you just broke up with. "When are you comin' over here to pick up the rest of your crap?"

Now, let's talk about traveling. Sometimes you go on vacation, and you gotta take some of your stuff. Mostly stuff to wear. But which stuff should you take? Can't take all your stuff. Just the stuff you really like; the stuff that fits you well that month. In effect, on vacation, you take a smaller, "second version" of your stuff.

Let's say you go to Honolulu for two weeks. You gotta take two big suitcases of stuff. Two weeks, two big suitcases. That's the stuff you carry onto the plane. But you also got your carry-on stuff, plus the stuff you bought in the airport. So now you're all set to go. You got stuff in the overhead rack, stuff under the seat, stuff in the seat pocket, and stuff in your lap. And let's not forget the stuff you're gonna steal from the airline: silverware, soap, blanket, toilet paper, salt and pepper shakers. Too bad those headsets won't work at home.

And so you fly to Honolulu, and you claim your stuff -- if the airline didn't drop it in the ocean -- and you go to the hotel, and the first thing you do is put away your stuff. There's lots of places in a hotel to put your stuff.

"I'll put some stuff in here, you put some stuff in there. Hey, don't put your stuff in there! That's my stuff! Here's another place! Put some stuff in here. And there's another place! Hey, you know what? We've got more places then we've got stuff! We're gonna hafta go out and buy...more stuff!!!

Finally you put away all your stuff, but you don't quite feel at ease, because you're a long way from home. Still, you sense that you must be OK, because you do have some of your stuff with you. And so you relax in Honolulu on that basis. That's when your friend from Maui calls and says, "Hey, why don't you come over to Maui for the weekend and spend a couple of nights over here?"

Oh no! Now whaddya bring? Can't bring all this stuff. You gotta bring an even smaller version of your stuff. Just enough stuff for a weekend on Maui. The "third version" of your stuff.

And, as you're flyin' over to Maui, you realize that you're really spread out now: You've got stuff all over the world!! Stuff at home, stuff in the garage, stuff at your parent's house (maybe), stuff in storage, stuff in Honolulu, and stuff on the plane. Supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain!

Finally you get to your friends' place on Maui, and they give you a little room to sleep in, and there's a nightstand. Not much room on it for your stuff, but it's OK because you don't have much stuff now. You got your 8 x 10 autographed picture of Drew Carey, a large can of gorgonzola-flavored Cheez Whiz, a small, unopened packet of brown confetti, a relief map of Corsica, and a family-size jar of peppermint-flavored, petrified egg whites. And you know that even though you're a long way from home, you must be OK because you do have a good supply of peppermint-flavored, petrified egg whites. And so you begin to relax in Maui on that basis. That's when your friend says, "Hey, I think tonight we'll go over to the other side of the island and visit my sister. Maybe spend the night over there."

Oh no! Now whaddya bring? Right! You gotta bring an even smaller version. The "fourth version" of your stuff. Just wallet, lighter, hankie, pen, cigarettes, contraceptives, Vaseline, whips, chains, whistles, dildos, and a book. Just the stuff you hope you're gonna need. Actually, your friend's sister probably has her own dildos.

By the way, if you go to the beach while you're visiting the sister, you're gonna have to bring -- that's right -- an even smaller version of your stuff: the "fifth version." Cigarettes and wallet. That's it. You can always borrow someone's suntan lotion. And then suppose, while you're there on the beach, you decide to walk over to the refreshment stand to get a hot dog? That's right, my friend! Number six! The more important version of your stuff: your wallet! Your wallet contains the only stuff you really can't do without.

Well, by the time you get home you're pretty fed up with your stuff and all the problems its creates. And so about a week later, you clean out the closet, the attic, the basement, the garage, the storage locker, and all the other places you keep your stuff, and you get things down to manageable proportions. Just the right amount of stuff to lead a simple and uncomplicated life. And that's when the phone rings. It's a lawyer. It seems your aunt has died...and left you all her stuff. Oh no! Now whaddya do? Right. You do the only thing you can do. The honorable thing. You tell the lawyer to stuff it.