Easing my way into retirement...!

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Wayne Duck

Race Dog
Joined
Aug 29, 2011
Messages
944
Reaction score
299
Location
No fixed address...Travelling Southern Africa in a
Greetings! It's been a while since I've posted any ride report on here - so, here's why and, at the same time, here's another ride report.

On the morning of the 22nd October 2013 I got a call to "just pop through" to the boss' office. I arrived to find a whole panel of people, including an HR representative from the head office...so obviously this was not going to be just an ordinary business update!

Long story short, after serving the Company for 26 years they handed me a "mutual separation agreement" that they wanted me to sign. Basically they had decided, without any pre-negotiation or warning to us, to get rid of a few of the exec and senior managers that were "no longer a fit within the Company", i.e. causing "a cork in the bottleneck" that was slowing BEE progression through the ranks, bla de bla de bla. With me being just 7 months shy of my 50th birthday and of very pale complexion I was an obvious candidate.

I was not going to sign anything without conducting proper research so I took the "agreement" and said I'd see them the following day. By the following day I'd found out that I'd be much better off tax wise if I got them to retrench me. So we agreed to alter the wording from "mutual separation" to "retrenchment".

...and that's how I now find myself in early retirement  ;)  To be honest, I'd been quietly planning to retire at 50 for a few years now but had recently decided to extend that by another 2 years. As fate would have it, the Company (because of the retrenchment package offered) has saved me two years of working!

So since October (2013) my life has been rather hectic - moving, busy selling a house and contents in Jhb, setting up my retirement income, etc. I have had my retirement home in Underberg for the past three years but will only move there permanently at the end of 2014.

That brings me to this ride report - I had to get to Underberg to sort out a few things. It was just me (my fiance still has her job here in Jhb until the end of this year) so I took the bike.
As many of you that have ridden in the Underberg / Himeville area will agree, it is in riding heaven. The whole of Kwa-Zulu Natal (with it's many thousands of km's of dirt roads and tracks) on your doorstep, just a small pass away from the mountain wilderness of Lesotho and around the corner from the very scenic mountain-to-sea offerings of the Eastern Cape.

...more to come.

 
Top