When You're Over the Hill...You Just Pick Up Speed

About the Book

Roger and Leatrice Hadlich, following their "if you don't use it, you lose it" philosophy, when they retired as academics at the University of Hawaii, they spent a year teaching ESL for the YMCA in Hiroshima, Japan, using all of their free time happily touring Japan. They then bought an RV in California and spent 16 months traveling 40,000 miles on the highways and byways of the US, Canada and Alaska. Next they acquired a power boat in Florida and took a year to cruise 6,000 miles around the canals, rivers and waterways of the eastern US and Canada. They then accepted appointments as Peace Corps Volunteers in Poland, after which experience they moved to an 'active retirement community' in Walnut Creek in California.

These several post-retirment adventures serve as the basis for each of the chapters of their book "When you're Over the Hill… you just Pick up Speed; An Adventurous Retirement; Some guidelines." Each chapter, after summarizing how the Hadlichs managed the details of the adventure (including costs), offers useful suggestions on how interested readers might consider embarking on a similar experience. The 'how to' sections of each chapter give guidelines for seeking further information, including biibliographies and websites. The book's appendix offers detailed information on how th handle mail and money, pay billls, work the telephone and manage the sundry other problems associated with being away from home for extended periods.

About the Author

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota and raised through High School in San Francisco, Roger Hadlich's adult years have been characterized principally by their amazing variation.

Educated at Yale, Madrid, Middlebury and Michigan, with BA, MA and PhD degrees in hand, he embarked on an academic career. His professorial positions included Cornell, Rome (Italy), Alaska and Sacramento, finally settling him for 25 years at the University of Hawaii.

He has lived in Spain, Italy, Mexico, Poland and Japan. His travels include 20,000 Miles around the Pacific in a small sailboat, similar treks in motorboats in Europe and America, and a 55,000 mile RV trip throughout the U.S. and Canada. Along the way, he published more than 40 reviews, articles and books in the academic fields of Spanish and Romance linguistics and pedagogy.

His leisure interests include all kinds of sports (he was a 3-time All American diver in college), dancing of all sorts (ballroom, folk, hula, flamenco, etc.), choral music (he recently founded the Ashmolean Singers), and 'Goof' (which is what he calls his golf game.)

The publication of Games my Mother taught me culminates a life-long interest in language and word games.

He lives joyfully in Walnut Creek, CA with his wonderful wife, Leatrice Mirikitani