A Retirement Surprise

On May 28, 2025 I retired from RTX and started a new life. My team got me two parting gifts, one of which I will write about in a separate post. The other gift was gift cards to Woodcraft, a woodworking chain of stores. The next day, I hopped in the car and drove to the store. When I got there, I wandered aimlessly for about an hour, drooling at all the cool stuff and (in typical Geoffrey fashion) asking the associates there a ton of questions. I also started loading up my cart. Below are pictures of my purchases.

All this stuff was on sale. “You can never have too many clamps!”

Pull saws and Forstner drill bits were already on my list of “Need to have.” The scribing tools I learned about while there.

These saw blades are extremely expensive, but are supposed to be worth it. Time will tell.

This router lift will let me use my hand router in a table without having to buy a dedicated router table.

After gathering my stuff and asking my questions, I asked them to “ring up my loot.” The total came in at just under $1200.00. I handed the guy my first gift card (worth $100) and the price dropped by $100. I then handed him my second gift card (worth $50) and the price dropped by ….. $500.00!!! WHAT?!?!? I thought, there’s no way the team would spend that much money on me. He ran it through again and confirmed, it was worth $500. I was stunned, and very humbled. I lugged my new stuff to the car, and then just sat there, totally speechless. I had to call my wife and share the news because I was too emotional to start driving home.

As I sit here on Sunday morning, thinking about my first weekend as a retiree, I cannot help but think how blessed I am to retire early, but even more so, how blessed I am to have worked with such great people. I may not have accomplished all my career goals, but I feel like I must have done something right to warrant such thoughtfulness. Thank you to all my team for such a memorable send-off. I will not forget this, or you.