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Before I tell you about this week, I want to give you a little backstory on me and my life. After I had the epiphany that I no longer wanted to chase money and chose to pursue happiness, I sold my condo and retired. Mia (my dog) and I moved in with my mom. Since my mom was also retired, we got to hang out and it was delightful. We would spend time sitting on the front porch and talk, play games, and laugh. This was right at the start of the pandemic.
My last consulting gig was a client at the epicenter of the COVID outbreak in New York; I left the week before the National Guard quarantined a town. I saw, first hand, how it was unfolding up there and knew it had the potential to get very bad very quickly in North Carolina. So, I contacted the hospital where I used to work and told them I would come out of retirement to assist in the COVID response. I ended up on the front line.
I led a team of 30 teammates at a roving, mobile testing unit. We went all over the city to the underserved parts of the community to ensure they had access to testing and services. We were testing 350 people in six hours. When we would get on site at 07:00, there would already be 110 cars in line waiting for us to start. People would wait four to five hours, we would have to turn people away. We helped fix cars that broke down in our lines, we caught medical emergencies, and I was in my element. I also knew that my time was finite and that I had a larger goal: go back into retirement and move to Mexico with my mom and dog. I just had no idea when that would happen.
I finally decided that COVID was not going anywhere, all we could do was try and stay safe. I talked with Mom and we decided to bite the bullet! I re-retired and we got a buyer for Mom's house. We gave everything in the house to a community church with a large underserved population. LITERALLY everything. We could only pack 550 pounds of stuff into my SUV without blowing the transmission. So, we gave back to our community and we closed on the house yesterday!
Which means..... TA-DAH!! We are on the road! Mom is in charge of taking pictures on this trip. We had a rocky start, so we missed pictures leaving North Carolina and traveling through South Carolina, but she started to get the hang of it around Augusta!
To be fair, the reason is was rocky was because the first 2.5 hours we were driving through Tropical Storm Zeta. It was pouring rain and the wind was insane! I was battling the wind and am pretty sure the only reason my SUV didn't blow right off the highway was because of all the extra luggage weight holding it down. I know, not really, but it was really bad. The rest of our drive we could see remnants of the storm tearing its way through the states. All of the states had teams out removing fallen trees from the road or giant, highway road signs snapped in half like mere toys.
We finally decided to call it a day in Birmingham, AL. I had a client here! Got to show mom some of the buildings in the hospital system. The UAB Children's Hospital is just gorgeous!
Since we are on no particular timeline, we are leisurely traveling. I planned our trip with Atlas Obscura, so we are planning on hitting a few interesting sites along the way. While this gem is not on Atlas Obscura, we found this cool overpass in Birmingham that had all of these rainbow lights! This is not the clearest picture, but it was my favorite of mom's attempts.
Until tomorrow!
Always choose JOY!!
So glad you made it through the storm safely!