Rodolph “Rad” Audibert Delaroderie, IV

Welcome to my absolutely ordinary life. I retired in 2002 after nearly thirty years as a police officer, and have been putting far more time into RAD Software — running since 1987 — as a home-based business doing software design, development, and distribution. I thought about a second career in education, but I’m really too busy, and I’m having too much fun.

I’m busier now than when I worked full-time. The good part about discretionary time is that I do what I need to do more or less when I feel like doing it.

On two wheels

What I really enjoy is the annual motorcycle tour. In 2003 I rode up to northwest Canada, got on the Rockies, and rode them down to Mexico. I wrote that trip up and sent it to Wing World; to my amazement they ran it in the November 2003 issue, pictures and all.

In June 2004 I rode the Pacific Coast Highway end to end, Washington to Los Angeles — seven thousand miles. It had a few picturesque moments, but I wouldn’t repeat it or recommend it. The 2005 trip went up the Atlantic coast to Nova Scotia, a beautiful part of the continent experienced entirely in cold rain; the locals said it was the wettest spring on record and I believe them. In 2006 I took the Gold Wing to every high point west of the Mississippi, most of them in Colorado. Other than one very scary moment, it was a wonderful getaway.

In June 2009 I made the first grand trip on the new bike: Baton Rouge for my 40th high school reunion, then the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to spread my father’s ashes as he had asked, then to California, then home across the continent on back roads the whole way.

Work, and one long month in 2005

In spring 2004 I bought several domains, including this one and radsoftware.org for the business.

After Hurricane Katrina I went back to my home state and spent a month working for the Corps of Engineers on the FEMA Blue Roof project — seven days a week, twelve hours a day, driving Jefferson Parish and assessing thousands of homes for damage. You had to have been there to appreciate the scale of it. The coverage did a poor job: it focused on the heavy flooding, which was actually a small part of it, and largely missed the enormous wind damage and sustained minor flooding that caused most of the devastation. It also focused on people complaining and ignored the vast majority who were out there with shovels and rakes cleaning up their own neighbourhoods.

The house in the woods

I spent all of 2007 designing and building a retirement home on four acres of woods in Harris County, north of Columbus, Georgia. Acting as my own contractor saved enough to afford things I otherwise couldn’t have. It was also nerve-wracking from start to finish.

Walk through it and you’d think I had money. I tell people it was only possible by saving half of everything I earned and living on bologna sandwiches for thirty years. Most of them laugh, but it’s more or less true.

In September 2015 I moved from west central Georgia to central Florida, where I am now.