Author Al Macy is a character and a tightwad with a unique sense of humor. He and his wife squirreled away enough money to retire early, do interesting things, and take unusual trips. As he puts it:"Every day I wake up with nothing to do, and by the end of the day, I've only gotten half of it done."During his working life, Macy was a neuroscientist, computer game programmer, jazz trombonist, chef, CEO, piano player, clam digger, and technical writer.The book is a journal of a car/bicycle/camping trip from California to St. Louis and back, but Macy promises that "if it starts sounding like one of your brother-in-law's boring slide shows, I will stop this book, and we'll turn around and go home. I mean it."Interspersed with the journal chapters, you'll find thought-provoking life tips, stories from the past, and descriptions of Al's wacky inventions. You'll hear poignant anecdotes about what happened when doctors discovered a golf-ball-sized tumor in his wife's brain and how everything they owned burned.Here's an example of one of those chapters:Chapter 47 - Puking in a ThunderstormHere's a mishap that illustrates the saying "You're on an adventure when you wish you were home wishing you were on an adventure."In 1982, Lena and I were visiting her folks in Sweden, and we went on a ryggsäcksfotvandringtur. To speak Swedish, all you do is take a bunch of English words, screw around with them, and squeeze them together. For example, in the big word in the last sentence, the only real foreign part is "rygg" which refers to one's back. Other than that it's just "Back - sack - foot - wandering - tour," meaning "wandering around on foot with a pack on your back," or "backpacking."Apparently we have 1,019,729.6 words in English (.6 really?). In Swedish, the total depends on how you count them. Is "ryggsäcksfotvandringtur" one word, or just five words stuck together? Most Swedish dictionaries have around a half-million entries, but if you count words that are Velcroed together,