The seeds of Tom and Anne Rackerby’s wonderlust were planted long before Tom’s 1978-1980 stint at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Here, in his words, are some highlights of the philosophy that he and Anne have embraced in retirement, and a look at the fun, intriguing life they’ve made for themselves.
RETIREMENT AS HAPPILY EVER AFTER: We Haven’t Had a Bad Day Yet
Anne and I have been retired for more than 13 years, and we haven’t had a bad day yet.
We moved to the east shore of Lake Tahoe in 2002 to enjoy an active lifestyle. We mountain bike and kayak and snowshoe, go to Rock and Roll concerts and collect sunsets. We also do about five, two-week active adventures each year, mostly bicycle trips and small ship expeditions.
I should note that Anne started collecting titanium parts six years ago, and now has two hips and a knee. It hasn’t slowed her down.
LOOKING BACK ON THE EARLY YEARS: My Social Credentials Were Magnificient!
I wrapped up my undergraduate career at the University of California at Davis in 1969. My career choices were Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines or Canada due to the Vietnam draft. So, I became a Navy Supply Corps Officer. Between two ship deployments to Vietnam, Anne and I met on a blind date in Long Beach, the sailor and the schoolteacher, you probably saw the movie.
We married in 1973 and I continued in the Navy, running a retail and services complex at a Navy Air Station in Texas. That was fun and, since I never really considered what I might want to do in a civilian job, I extended for another couple of years and we packed up and went to the Philippines with our four cats.
This was 1975 and Vietnam had just fallen, so my first job was to feed 30,000 Vietnamese boat people who had floated to the Philippines and got channeled to an available island.
This period, 1975-78, was the highlight time of both of our careers. Anne had great freedom in teaching a 5th and 6th grade class for the Department of Defense school system. I ran a retail and services complex at the large Subic Bay Naval Station, which had 2,300 employees and generated more than $50 million annually.
It also started our fondness for travel. As Clark Air Force Base was only an hour away, every time Anne had four or more days off, we would drive up there with a small travel bag and find out where the next airplane was headed. It might be Tokyo or Singapore or Bangkok and we didn’t really care. So, we hitchhiked around the Far East quite often and we visited 16 countries during our three years in the Philippines.
Then came a time in 1978 when I was supposed to get serious about my Navy career. The choices were three years on an aircraft carrier or four years in a Washington DC staff job. Since those choices were not on our fun adventures list, I thought going to a business school might be a way figure things out.
I applied to Stanford GSB as a joke. An Esquire magazine had a cover story on “the world’s greatest business school” and I had $25 to blow on an application fee. I’d mostly phoned in my academic career. I’d flunked out of UC Davis my freshman year, scrambled for a year at a junior college, but made it back to UC Davis for my final two years. While my final grade point was around a 2.1, my social credentials were magnificent.
A SATISFYING CAREER: I Found My Dream Job After 26 Consecutive Bullets
In May 1980, following 26 consecutive bullets, I chose to go to work for ATC, a cable TV company that had a small ownership by Time, Inc. I knew nothing about the technology, but I liked to watch television and that wasn’t even a requirement. The industry was just beginning to expand into urban United States and it was hiring more than 2,500 people a month from outside the business.
I moved from trainee to Regional Manager in four weeks and became one of the company’s first two Division Presidents a little more than a year later.
In 1985, we moved to Denver as I was promoted to run the company’s National Division – and I stayed in that position until I retired in 2002. When I started in the business, there were more than 200 cable TV companies; when I retired, there were fewer than ten.
I probably had the best job in our class. The basics: one company, two locations (San Diego and Denver), three similar jobs in operations, and 14 different bosses. Except for one year, I never worked within 1,200 miles of my boss. I was a fairly senior client for every channel on the cable dial. Consequently, we had a life that included annual invites to the Super Bowl, the Master’s golf tournament, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the Aspen Comedy Festival. Other invites included the Olympics, the French Open and Hollywood awards shows which provided some very special experiences. And none of that required any vacation time or expense on our part.
Anne brought her 14 year teaching career to a close after we left Palo Alto. Travel opportunities that my job provided made flexibility in her schedule important. She became a Master Gardner via Colorado State University and handled inquiries at the agricultural extension office. For many years, she chaired the communications function for Junior Symphony Guild Designer Show House. Anne also started out as a volunteer with the Denver Dumb Friends League, the oldest and largest non-profit animal shelter in the United States, and served on their Board of Directors for 10 years.
THEN WHAT? We Parted With 80 Percent of our Worldly Goods
We bought our retirement house in Lake Tahoe two years before I retired. We hired an estate sale company and parted with about 80% of our worldly possessions including all of our furniture. Anne designed all of the furniture for our Tahoe house. We moved here in September 2002 to live a simpler life.
Our life is pretty stress-free. Lake Tahoe is a very spiritual place and the people who live here have a pleasant vibe. Per state law, I’ll be termed out of my unpaid Trustee job for the Logan Creek General Improvement District after 12 years, but I’ll probably keep the secretary and treasurer positions until they want to pay someone to do it. Anne coordinates the neighborhood fire prevention activities and the Bodacious Babes Book Club that she started 12 years ago.
A MOVING PLAN: Anne Says, You Rest, You Rust
By my mid-40’s I realized that my physical well-being was going to require regular exercise, so Anne bought us both bikes for my 47th birthday. The following year, we did our first organized bicycle trip in the Loire Valley with Backroads.
We’ve now done 56 organized bicycle trips since 1995, and it is our preferred mode of travel. We’ve also done 23 small ship cruises, 15 organized land trips, 18 whitewater rafting trips along with assorted hot air ballooning, snorkeling and kayaking adventures.
We normally do five, 15-day trips annually from Labor Day through mid-June.
We’re usually at Lake Tahoe for the summer. When we don’t have visitors, Anne and I normally do activities together 3-5 times a week – pilates, kayaking, biking.
STRETCHING THE PLANNING HORIZON: We Appreciate High Quality Adventures
Often, as people age, their planning horizons tend to shorten, but having a couple of exciting adventures booked out in the future can be very energizing and help put a longer time horizon on your thinking. And, high quality adventures have to be planned 12 – 18 months in advance.
Our travel focus spans worldwide and generally targets unique cultures, great art and cool animals.
Inaugural bike trips in a “new” country are always great. We were part of the first trip in Jordan in 2010. Riding shiny new bikes with cool bike helmets past Bedouin shepherds provoked a call to the Jordanian military, as they thought they’d been invaded from another world.
A bike trip in Burma was equally cool. The Inle Lake people live on the water and the company we traveled with had built new stilt houses for three disadvantaged families. Attending the blessing ceremony with Buddhist monks was a special event. There was little translation available, but the happy tears in the families’ eyes said it all.
A couple of years ago, we took an expedition cruise to Borneo. The orangutans there are being decimated by jungle clear-cutting for the palm oil industry. We spent half a day at an orangutan orphanage, which was very special. Feeding baby elephants in the Thailand elephant camps was also cool.
We did two weeks in Egypt in 2010 and that was probably the most enlightening time we’ve spent anywhere. We were there 365 days before the country fell apart.
Some of our most favorite experiences were in Japan (the most pure culture); Bali during Nyepi (Hindu day of silence/New Year); the Palio (world’s oldest horse race) in Siena, Italy; mountain biking in the Mashatu game reserve in Botswana (“oh look, there’s a rhino!”); hot air ballooning near Cairns, Australia during a total solar eclipse, and a magical evening at an 11th century Jain temple somewhere in central India.
Next up are biking in Slovenia in May; driving and biking in Scotland in September; and biking in Laos on Election Day. We’ll also be back in Vietnam this year, kayaking the Halong Bay.
Other places on our travel list include Sri Lanka, Russia, Portugal, South Pacific islands, game parks in Botswana and Sabi Sands, Sicily, and Eastern Europe. Also, I want to see more original paintings by Jan Van Eyck and Hieronymus Bosch. I had to take a lot of art history classes to get my undergraduate economics degree.
I hope I live long enough to see things mellow enough in Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan for visits; that’s probably 25 years away.
I find that having trips planned out 6 to 18 months in advance gives something to look forward to, and a form of immortality.
RETHINKING VALUES: Paying a Premium Hadn’t Often Been a Consideration
Both Anne and I grew up in small towns. My dad was an independent egg rancher in California’s gold mining country and her father ran a family gas station in a resort town in Michigan. Those influences instilled in us a habit for living beneath our means. Paying for the premium level of something hadn’t often been a consideration.
However, in 2007, just prior to Anne’s first hip replacement, our flight in coach from Chicago to New Delhi took 15 ½ hours and Anne let me know that we have enough money in our travel budget to fly business class on international flights. Also, we now have someone meet our flight and take us to the hotel instead of trying to figure out if the shuttle van is a better value than the random taxi in a strange place. Spending money for comfort and convenience is a learned behavior for some of us, but it can be worthwhile.
PARTING ADVICE: If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Overdoing
For all of us, it’s a time of life when many begin to shift their focus from asset acquisition to more experiential activities.
As you ponder that transition, you might want to assign a lower priority to some of the things that previously were important in your life, particularly the ones that consume time and emotions. This could include passionate attitudes towards politics, sport teams, and family drama. It’s not always easy, but “just let it go.”
Enjoy our culture while it’s still around. More and more pieces of the souls of baby boomers are getting moved into museums. Visit places that were important to you during your Wonder Bread years, before you or they change any more.
Don’t forget to have FUN! Smile and laugh every day. Do more things that make you feel good, both planned and spontaneous.
Important events like any anniversary or the summer solstice should be celebrated as excessively as possible. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.
Thanks, and rock on.
