20 years answering the alarm. 25 more keeping people safe. Now I get to choose where I go.
Former firefighter, then Healthcare Company Security Supervisor. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Full-time traveler, now full-time telling you the truth about it.
For 45 years, my schedule wasn't mine. I spent 20 years as a firefighter in Carmel-by-the-Sea — the kind of job where you don't plan your week, you plan around the alarm. When that chapter ended, I spent another 25 years as a Healthcare Company Security Supervisor, keeping people safe on a different kind of clock. Trips got cancelled. Vacations got shortened. "Someday" got pushed back more times than I can count.
Then someday actually came.
"I figured out fast that nobody hands you a manual for traveling later in life. So I started writing one."
What I found was a whole industry built around either 25-year-olds backpacking through Europe, or glossy resort ads that don't tell you what a trip actually costs, how much walking it really involves, or which "senior discount" is real versus a marketing gimmick. So I started Rooster Roadie Travels to close that gap — real destination guides, real discounts I've verified myself, and real talk about mobility, pacing, and planning for travelers 55 and up.
I'm not here to talk down to you, and I'm not here to sell you on something I wouldn't do myself. If a deal isn't real, I'll tell you. If a destination isn't worth the hype, I'll tell you that too. You've earned the right to travel on your own terms — my job is just to make sure you've got the information to do it well.
The road is wide open. Let us go.
— Richard