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Thousands retire, then become 'full timers'

Most people who live in RVs year-round are retirees. Changing from a stationary home to a rolling one means making lifestyle choices.

By JANET GROENE
Published July 25, 2006

Joe Cronin's buddies think he's half crazy, living in a motor home a few months each year. They should meet Connie and Peter Bradish, who live in an RV all the time.

The lifestyle is called full-timing and, though nobody knows how many people are involved, they could number more than a million.

The Bradishes lived in Cocoa for 27 years before they sold everything and hit the road. When Peter turned 54, Connie started the countdown to retirement.

He says 1996 was the longest year of his life, as he worked for a computer company knowing he likely would retire at the end of that year. Connie, who had been teaching college biology, retired six months later.

The couple rented a cabin in North Carolina to see how they would like summering there but it took only a week to realize they wanted more mobility. Eventually they bought a used 32-foot motor home; a three-week vacation in it sold them on the RV lifestyle.

Several things were obvious, Peter says:

- They knew they wanted to travel - a lot.

- The RV needed to be high inside (he's 6 feet 3).

- They knew their next motor home would be a rear-engine diesel-powered model, to get better fuel economy and reliability and to carry a heavy payload.

They traded in their gasoline-powered RV in 1997 for a 36-foot, 1993 Beaver Contessa diesel "pusher," as rear-engine models are called.

While Peter waited for Connie to retire, he started on a long to-do list. When Connie walked out of work on her last day, she climbed into the motor home. With a car in tow and their cat on board, they took off.

That first trip ranged up to Maine, over to Oregon, across Texas. They knew they'd found their lifestyle.

Now, they spend about eight months of the year on the road, looking up friends and family. They play golf, research genealogy and make new friends in campgrounds and at RV rallies.

Says Peter: "Too many of our friends retired too late and died before they could live the dreams they had for their golden years."

[Last modified July 24, 2006, 21:25:29]