HERE’S A NOTE I SENT to my Seattle Times colleagues Tuesday morning:

“Yesterday afternoon when I should have been carefreely cleaning out my desk on my way to a happy-go-lucky retirement, I instead spent several agonizing hours in the Swedish Hospital ER with a highly unpleasant kidney-stone episode. If you thought I disappeared without saying goodbye, you’re right, because I could hardly speak by the time my dear wife arrived to rescue me around 1 p.m. It was my first time for such an episode, but I’d always heard they come on like a speeding dump truck and that it feels like you just got run over by said truck. I can now attest to that!”

So the final day at the Times didn’t quite go as planned, and I got one of those “you’re not a blooming youth anymore” reminders. (It’s one good reason not to wait too long to ditch the office, fellow codgers.) This particular reminder came with really stupid timing.

I was back in the office on Wednesday. Barbara kindly joined me to help clean out my desk since I was still feeling tender.

When the time came I bid goodbye to some of my co-workers, and as we started to carry out a couple of boxes full of my desk detritus – family photos, old postcards, travel sections I wanted to keep, etc. – something happened that I totally didn’t expect (and doubt that I deserved): My newsroom colleagues started applauding. It started in one corner and spread across the room as we walked, until it was almost overwhelming.

I looked around at the many smiling faces. Maybe they were glad to see me go, my wife joked. But I knew the truth: They’re just nice and decent people. That’s the Seattle Times way, and I was honored and touched by the gesture of camaraderie. It reminded me that ditching the office has its tradeoffs, because I no longer have that roomful of good people watching my back — not just professionally, but emotionally as well.

Now it’s Friday, a beautiful, sunny spring morning at Shilshole Marina and it feels like the real first day of our new life.

For the next couple weeks we’ll be clearing out the sailboat for daughter Lillian to move aboard, and getting many other ducks in a row (have you ever tried herding ducks?). Next stop: the San Juans. 

APRIL 16, 2018, IS MY FINAL DAY of going to work every morning, breaking a 40-year-habit. The last stint has been 22 years at The Seattle Times, editing and writing about travel and outdoor adventure. I’m not really thinking of this as retirement, because I’m going to keep writing, and hope to make a little money at it. I’m just thinking of it as a new period of sleeping in later.

Barbara and I have lived on our 32-foot-sailboat, Sogni d’Oro, for the better part of 25 years. Next stop, Center Island, in the San Juan Islands of Northwest Washington state, where we’ve had a small cabin for 15 years. No ferries, no stores, no cars… no trash removal. Plenty of challenges. Even though we know the place, we’ve never lived there full-time. I expect it will be a lot like moving to a strange new land — in the best sense, I hope, rather than the mugged-and-left-in-a-ditch-with-no-passport-or-credit-cards sense!

The cabin is pictured below. Our new old boat is pictured above: a restored classic 20-foot runabout built by Skagit Boat in La Conner, Wash., in 1957 (and here’s a nifty detail photo of the chrome nameplate). It reminds me a lot of the ’57 Chevy station wagon my folks drove when I was a tot. It should stoke some good adventures to get things started. When not doing chores or trying to grow a garden, we plan to thoroughly explore our archipelago, our state, and our corner of the continent, and will still jump on a plane now and then.

You’re welcome to come along for the ride.

— Brian J. Cantwell

“I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.”  — Bill Bryson