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Monday, June 30, 2008

Yesterday I shared some of our adventures in northeast Kansas with you but I didn’t have room to tell you about the best of the best.

We stumbled into the tiny community of Horton (population 1,885), and I was ready to set up housekeeping! What Horton lacks in people and services, it more than makes up for in friendliness. Horton is called the Electric City, because it was the first rural community in Kansas to get power under the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), back in 1937. Horton is one of those slow paced communities where a dog can lay down on Main Street and take a nap in the middle of the afternoon, and folks will drive around it.

The Horton Headlight newspaper has been in business since 1886, and even though it was a Saturday, managing editor Linda Messer was in the office when we poked our heads inside the open door. Linda invited us in and gave us a tour of the cramped backshop and basement pressroom. Years ago the newspaper switched over to computerized offset printing, but the old lead type cases and Linotype typesetting machines are still sitting there, dusty and neglected. The ancient press still has a newspaper hanging off the folder, and if you did not know better you’d expect the pressmen to return from lunch and fire it up any minute.

As an old time weekly newspaper publisher, I was in hog heaven. I cut my teeth in a small town newspaper much like this, and my first job was as a printer’s devil, cleaning and sorting type, then delivering the papers on a route after they came off the press. From there, I moved up to setting type by hand (a skill that doesn't exist any more) for flyers and broadsheets before they ever let me set a slug of type for the actual newspaper itself. I guess that ink got into my blood, because I've been involved in the publishing business in one way or another for much of my adult life. I was on a trip down memory lane and didn’t want it to end.

A couple of doors down from the newspaper office, we met Luke Pollock at the English Leather Shop At age 24, Luke is one of the most impressive young men I’ve ever met. He said he stumbled into the shop in 2002 looking for some neatsfoot oil for his boots, and the shop’s owner, Lawrence English, asked him if he wanted the five gallon jug or the large 55 gallon economy size. The young man and the shop owner became friends and Luke soon found himself learning the shoemaker’s trade, and when English retired, Luke purchased the shop.

Luke told me that even in a small town like Horton, he has more business than he can handle, because shoe repair and leather working are dying crafts. He said he wishes he had some eager beavers who wanted to learn, because he’d like to pass the trade on to future shoemakers, keeping alive the tradition Lawrence English started with him.

I had a wonderful conversation with Luke, and eventually Terry, Mel, and Carolyn wandered down the street while Luke and I continued talking. He was such a personable fellow that I could have stood there all day, but I eventually figured he had better things to do on a Saturday afternoon than waste it talking to an old fart like me, so I bid him goodbye and went off in search of the rest of my group.

I found them next door at the Electric City Emporium, owned by Tom Reed. How do I best describe this place? Picture a combination of an old time five and dime store, a flea market, and an antique store, all rolled into one. The aisles are cramped and filled with every kind of novelty and goodie you can imagine, from toys to kitchenware, to books, to horehound candy, with no apparent rhyme or reason to how they are displayed. But that’s half the fun. 

By the time we got done poking around the shelves on both floors of the store, it was getting late, so we decided we’d better head on down the road. But we left Horton reluctantly, and it is definitely on my list of places to get back to one of these days.

Thought For The Day – Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell is such a way that he looks forward to the trip.

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Sunday, June 29, 2008

We have been playing tourist here in northeast Kansas and having a wonderful time! Who knew Kansas could be so much fun? Yesterday Mel and Carolyn took Terry and I on a day trip through some of the small towns in the area, and there was so much to see and do that it will take a couple of blogs just to catch up!

Our first stop was Troy, where a replica of the Statue of Liberty stands on the lawn of the handsome Doniphan County Courthouse. The courthouse lawn also holds a 27 foot tall Indian sculpture named Tall Oak, which was created by noted Hungarian artist Peter Toth.  I managed to get Miss Terry and her cousin Carolyn to stand still long enough to pose for a photo before we set off on our next adventure.

The little village of White Cloud was our next stop. It was here, in 1913, that a ten year old boy named Wilbur Chapman sold his pet pig to raise money to donate to a leper colony. The story hit the newspapers, and soon children around the world were saving their pennies and nickels to give to charity. In memory of Wilbur’s beloved pig, cast iron piggy banks were created to hold these childhood donations, and an icon was born.

White Cloud is a charming little place, and this old building served as the town’s barbershop for years. On a bluff a half mile or so from downtown a wooden viewing platform gave us a magnificent 360 degree view of four states, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, and Iowa.

A few miles from White Cloud, we stopped to visit the Native American Heritage Museum State Historic Site. The museum is housed in a former Presbyterian mission built in 1845 to indoctrinate Indian children into the white culture in a cruel attempt to “civilize” them. History is written by the victors, but we were not always the good guys.

In Hiawatha, we spent some time at the Davis Memorial in the Mount Hope Cemetery. The memorial is either a testament to love at its best, or spite at its worst, depending on how you choose to interpret it. When John and Sarah Davis were married, her family was opposed to the union, and John Davis never felt accepted by his in-laws. The couple were both financially successful and frugal, though they never had any children.

When Sarah died in 1930, the story is that John did not want her family to inherit any of his money after he was gone, so he spent his fortune creating a memorial consisting of eleven life-sized Italian marble statues of he and his wife throughout their married life. The first shows them as a young couple courting, other statues show them as they aged, and in the final statue, John sits alone in his chair, an empty chair beside him with the word Vacant chiseled into it.

We saw a lot more yesterday, but space does not permit me to include it all here. So tune in again tomorrow for more of our adventures in this interesting corner of Kansas.

Thought For The Day – There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.

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Saturday, June 28, 2008

We love traveling the back roads of America. You just never know what you will find in the small towns and along the two lane roads, from interesting historical sites to funny signs that will have you chuckling for the next ten miles.

The other day while cruising along a back road in rural Illinois, we came across a used buggy lot, where the local Amish farmers can trade up for a new set of wheels. I wonder if used Amish buggy salesmen wear white shoes and white belts?

The buggy lot was funny enough, but what really made the day for us was that the same business that sells used buggies, with a sign about “preserving our Amish heritage,” also sells cards and poker chips! Hey, nothing reflects the simple Amish lifestyle better than a good all night card game, does it?

We also love old architecture, and on the back roads we have seen everything from stunning brick storefronts to rustic log cabins. I’d stop and take pictures of every one we see, if there were enough places to pull over and enough hours in a day. Another favorite for us is historical signs. I have Miss Terry convinced that there is a special endorsement on my drivers license requiring me to stop and read every one of them we come across.

Today we are going to do some exploring here in northeastern Kansas with our hosts, Mel and Carolyn Henley. There is a lot to see and do here, and we won’t have time to do more than scratch the surface before we have to continue our trip west but that’s okay, it gives us an excuse to come back again. Miss Terry is having a good time visiting with her cousin, and Mel and I spend the time commiserating about how hard life is being married to two beautiful women who are good cooks too! J

Of course, even freeloading off of family has it’s drawbacks. Carolyn forgot to add butter to the chocolate cake she baked for us yesterday, and poor Mel and I have been working as fast as we can to eat it all up so she can redeem her reputation and bake another one the right way. Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it!

Thought For The Day – If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise.

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Friday, June 27, 2008

We’re back! I wasn’t able to post a blog yesterday due to technical difficulties. I have also not been able to access my e-mail for a couple of days now, so if you’ve written or placed an order, please be patient with me. Yahoo says they have managed to forward any new incoming e-mail to another account, but whatever has been sent in the last couple of days is stuck in Never Never Land. They promise that as soon as Achmed in their engineering department slaps a new coat of mud on the hut and gets the goats fed, I’m next up on the list to have my problems addressed. I’m obviously not holding my breath!

We have some good news. As I posted the other day, our little granddaughter is in the hospital facing some serious health issues. Terry talked to my daughter last night, and the antibiotics seem to be working and the doctors are confident they have a handle on it. Thank you for all of your prayers. It means a lot to us.

Wednesday, we left the bus at Elkhart Campground and drove the van west on a sorties of U.S. highways, running in a downpour for the first couple of hours before the rain finally cleared up. We stopped in the small town of Arcola, Illinois, where we saw the world’s only monument dedicated to the hippie movement. It was an interesting piece of sculpture, and well worth the trip.

Arcola was also the hometown of Johnny Gruelle, the author who introduced Raggedy Ann and Andy to the world’s children, and the Visitor Center there has a nice display of dolls, toys, and coloring books about the beloved dolls. Arcola was also the Broom Straw Capital of the World, and once supported several factories that made brooms. The Visitor Center has the world’s largest collection of straw brooms on display.

We hooked up with Interstate 72 and took it west across Illinois, crossing the Mississippi River into Hannibal, Missouri. Folks, it is one thing to watch the television news about all of the flooding in the Midwest, but until you drive through and see mile after mile of flooded farm fields, and water reaching up the side of buildings, you really don’t understand what is going on.

We pulled into Mark Twain State Park, where our pals Ron and Brenda Speidel were volunteer hosts. We hadn’t seen this fun couple since last fall, and we were more than ready for our buddy fix. We all have family we were born into, and family we create. Ron and Brenda are a very important part of our extended family, and we love them to death.

We spent our first night in the van parked next to Ron and Brenda, and let’s just say it was interesting. J Between the fact that I rushed Miss Terry so we could get on the road, so everything was kind of thrown into the back of the van, and the air mattress that lost it’s air, and the really, really nasty rainstorm that hit overnight, we decided that we have some refinement to do with the van conversion idea. But, it was fun, and Terry didn’t make me go sleep on a picnic table in the rain, so we got through it.

Thursday morning, after saying a reluctant goodbye to Ron and Brenda, we stopped at the Mark Twain Shrine at the state park, which holds the home the celebrated author was born in, as well as an excellent display on his life and work. It was interesting, and made me want to go back and read Tom Sawyer and some of his other classics all over again. 

We got onto U.S. Highway 36 and continued west through miles of construction zones, and about the time the road smoothed out again, we ran into a roadblock. The highway was under six feet of water, and the emergency workers routed us onto a series of narrow two lane roads through flooded farmlands, and about then another nasty storm hit. I battled wind, rain, and lighting for over 100 miles, real white knuckle driving, and eventually we ended up on Interstate 70. I’d have happily pulled over to wait it out if I had thought it would ever end, and if there had been a safe place to pull over and not sink up to our axles.

About the time we got onto the superslab the rain finally stopped and we had an easy run into Kansas City. We crossed into Kansas, and shortly arrived at Terry’s cousin Carolyn’s home in Basehor, a few miles northwest of Kansas City. Carolyn and her husband Mel made us welcome, fed us, and I think we’ll hang around here a few days while we correct some of the shortcomings in our van plan. Mel’s a heck of a nice guy, and as it turns out Carolyn is a pretty good cook! Hey, free food is something I appreciate!

Thought For The Day – Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Wow, judging by the response to yesterday’s blog, a lot of readers are interested in mining the wealth of information to be found online. I’ll have to share some of my other favorite websites again one of these days.

After three days of hard work, the inside of the van is not finished, but it is to a point where we can use it on our trip west. We covered the interior walls and ceiling with insulation and then plywood, and built storage boxes over the wheel wells. Those boxes also serve as a support for the plywood base for our air mattress. It’s not fancy, but we’ll have a place to sleep if we don’t want to pay for a motel room. As time goes on we’ll cover the walls and ceiling and add a few other creature comforts that will allow us to get by for a few days at a time away from the bus.

We’ll be on the road today, headed west. We’ll leave the bus at Elkhart Campground and take the van. We’ll stop in Missouri to see our pals Ron and Brenda Speidel, who are volunteer camp hosts at Mark Twain State Park near Hannibal, and then we’ll take U.S. Highway 36 across Missouri. I’ve always wanted to drive this laid back route through the friendly small towns of the Show Me state, because over the years so many of our RVing friends have told us it is a nice trip.

Our final destination for this trip is Lewiston, Idaho, where we are scheduled to teach at Life on Wheels July 6–11. However, that is subject to change. Our fourteen month old granddaughter Destiny is in the hospital in our old hometown of Show Low, Arizona, being treated for a nasty bacterial infection called pseudomonas. This can become very serious for infants whose immune systems have not fully developed, and for older people with weakened immune systems.

Destiny will be in an isolation ward for ten days while she undergoes a strong course of intravenous antibiotics, and we are keeping in constant touch with my daughter Tiffany to monitor the situation. If we are needed there, we’ll cancel our Life on Wheels commitment and go to Arizona instead. Family comes first. Folks, please remember this precious little girl in your prayers.

Thanks to our Verizon air card, I expect we’ll be able to get online to answer e-mail and so I can post blog updates while we’re gone. I welcome your e-mails and comments, but please don’t send me a lot of forwards and jokes for a while, if you don’t mind. We’ll be pretty busy and I won’t have time to wade through all of them.  

We plan on stopping to check out some interesting places on our trip, so check back here often, because I’ll have some brand new places and adventures to share with you.

Thought For The Day – A married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people remembering the same thing!

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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

I wrote a blog a few days ago about the evolution of internet access for RVers, and in response, someone wrote to ask what made getting online so important. She uses her laptop to send and receive e-mail when she has a connection, but sometimes goes weeks before doing so.

The internet is a wonderful tool for RVers, and I cannot imagine not being able to get online as we wander around the country. Not only do we transact business online, including taking orders for books and subscriptions, our three websites help promote our rallies and other events, and we earn money from the Google ads on the websites. As a writer, I also do a tremendous amount of research online. But even if we did not run a business from the road, I would still require an internet connection.

E-mail is the most obvious benefit, but there is so much more an RVer can do online. Handle banking and other financial chores, book reservations at an RV park, check fuel prices around the country, get up to the minute weather reports, read RV park reviews and RV service reviews, check road conditions, shop online, read and participate in online forums and communities, and research areas where you plan to visit, to name just a few.

Here are some good websites that many RVers find interesting and useful.

www.gaspricewatch.com – Monitors gasoline prices nationwide

www.dieselboss.com – Monitors both gas and diesel fuel prices nationwide

www.rvservicereviews.com – Readers contribute reviews of good and bad service facilities

www.rvparkreviews.com - Readers contribute reviews of RV parks nationwide

www.byways.org – A great guide to exploring America ’s scenic highways and byways.

www.festivals.com – If there is a festival going on anywhere in America, you’ll find it listed here

www.museumstuff.com – A valuable resource for museum lovers

www.nps.gov – The National Park Service main website, with links to National Parks, Historic Sites and Monuments nationwide.

www.rvdoctor.com – If your RV is sick, you can learn how to make it well here

www.rvia.org – The website of the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association, loaded with info on the RV industry

www.roadtripamerica.com – Filled with RV travel tips, destinations, funny signs, and other helpful information

www.kbb.com – Before you buy or sell your car or truck, check the Kelly Blue Book

www.hmdb.org – The Historical Marker Database lists historical markers nationwide

www.infoplease.com – Online dictionary, encyclopedia, almanac, thesaurus, and more

www.casinocamper.com – List of casinos where RVers can park, as well as gaming information

www.aitaonline.com/Info/Low%20Clearances.html#California%20Low%20Clearances – List of low clearance and bridge heights on major and secondary highways

www.roadfood.com – Guide to neat restaurants from burger shacks to rib joints

www.tripadvisor.com – Loaded with information on attractions and destinations across the country

www.roadsidepeek.com – Guide to interesting road trips, highway curiosities, and attractions.

www.legendsofamerica.com – Fun website for nostalgia and history buffs

www.weirdus.com – Haunted locations, ghost tales and other oddities

www.forttours.com – Guide to historic forts

www.worldslargestthings.com – If its big, it’s listed here

www.milebymile.com - Road maps, road conditions, and highway RV travel itineraries

www.us-highways.com – Guided to US numbered highways

www.usacarry.com – Guide to state by state firearms carry laws

www.volunteer.gov – Lists thousands of opportunities to volunteer nationwide

Thought For The Day – Worrying works! 90 percent of the things I worry about never happen.

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Many thanks to everybody who sent Miss Terry birthday greetings yesterday. You really made her day. J Some guys get their ladies something sexy to wear from Victoria’s Secret for their birthdays, but I know my wife better than that. She’d much rather have a new tool belt from Home Depot!

Yesterday we got most of the plywood attached to the walls and ceiling of the van, except for one section about 30 inches wide that we’ll finish today. A while back we got some expanding cargo bars that we use in the van to keep things from sliding around, and they came in very handy to hold the ceiling panel up until it was screwed into place. Today we’ll build boxes along both sides over the wheel wells, and figure out exactly how we’re going to set up the platform for the air mattress. We won’t get the entire project finished before we leave later this week for our trip west, but we’ll have it basically functional.

I have to be honest with you, I really, really do not want to go all the way to Lewiston, Idaho for Life on Wheels www.rvlifeonwheels.com.  I’m still not feeling all that great following my surgery a couple of weeks ago, and even though things are healing fairly well, being on my feet for very long and walking around much is still not comfortable. I know it won’t be the most enjoyable trip I’ve ever taken, but I made a commitment, and I’ll honor it.

We won’t be taking a direct route to Idaho. Instead we’ll dip south as we head west, stopping at Mark Twain State Park, near Hannibal, Missouri to see our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel, who are volunteer camp hosts, and then we’ll spend a few days with Terry’s cousin Carolyn Henley and her husband Mel, who live near Kansas City, Kansas. Mel and Carolyn are wonderful people, and they are looking forward to joining the fulltime lifestyle one of these days. How long we stay depends entirely on how well Carolyn can cook. J

After we’ve abused Mel and Carolyn’s hospitality for a while, we’ll make a few stops in Kansas and Nebraska to chase down some stories for an upcoming issue of the Gypsy Journal. My late friend Dave Baleria loved RVing through the heartland of America. In fact he developed a couple of very popular classes for Life on Wheels based upon his adventures in Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. But Terry and I haven’t spent nearly enough time exploring those friendly small towns, oddball attractions, and historical sites just waiting to be discovered.

Many of the small towns in this region offer free or very low cost overnight camping in their city parks, which is a great way to make up for those high fuel prices we’re dealing with these days. Here at the Gypsy Journal we publish a guide to over 1,000 free and low cost overnight parking places, and it has sure helped us keep some of our hard earned money in our pocket. You can order the book online at our RV Book Store or by sending a check for $8.95 to Gypsy Journal, 1400 Colorado St. #C-16, Boulder City, NV 89005. Remember every dollar you save on camping can go to help some oil sheik pay for a new set of solid gold wheels for his 47^th Rolls Royce.

Thought For The Day – Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby" when babies wake up crying every two hours?

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Sunday, June 22, 2008

One of the best things we did when we built our bus conversion was to insulate it very well. Many times when everyone around us is running their air conditioning, we simply open our windows to catch a cross breeze and are comfortable. As fulltime RVers, we try to avoid extreme cold weather, but a couple of times we have been stuck in places where the temperature was about ten degrees, and with just our Olympian catalytic heater we have been toasty warm.

Yesterday we used the same base insulation in the van as we did the bus. Consisting of a thin layer of aluminum foil sandwiched between two layers of polyfoam, the insulation comes in rolls, is very easy to work with, and has amazing insulating qualities. We cut it into sections to fit the contours of the van and affixed them to the metal walls and ceiling. This is great stuff, we get if it from Ben Pearson at Engineered Bonded Structures (EBS) here in Elkhart , and that alone will help keep the outside temperature from transferring through the walls. EBS makes all sorts of neat insulation products, and in our bus conversion project, we used their products to insulate our generator compartment, the area under our bed that sits over the engine, and even as a base layer under our floors. You can reach EBS at (574)266-3471.

Here are photos of the inside of the van before we insulated it and after. Several people came by while we were working on the van to check out our progress, and I think they were surprised to see Miss Terry doing most of the work. My job is to stand around and look pretty.  I’m just the eye candy around here, she’s the brains of this operation.

A thunderstorm came up while we were working, so we made a quick run to WalMart to pick up a Thetford porta potty, a battery powered LED light fixture, and a couple of other items for the van.  Today we’ll add another layer of insulation, and then will start attaching wood paneling to the walls and ceiling. 

For many people, campfires are an essential part of their camping experience. A while back a company called CampCentral sent me a nifty product to evaluate. Called Firepliers, they are a set of heavy duty tongs perfect for reaching into a fire to move that stubborn piece of wood into position without burning your hands. Measuring 30 inches long, and capable of moving wood over a foot thick, these are a handy item to have around the campsite. Check out their website at http://www.firepliers.com/page/page/4626064.htm.  

Today won’t be all about working on the van, though. It’s Miss Terry’s birthday, and I plan to spoil her by taking her someplace outrageously expensive that we really can’t afford. I just haven’t decide yet if it will be the Shell or the Mobile gas station.                       

Thought For The Day – Three essentials to happiness in life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

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Saturday, June 21, 2008

Usually when we get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal in the mail, we have some time to relax, but not this time around. We’ll be busy the next few days trying to get some things done in the van to make it comfortable for a few nights on the road, and sometime next week we’ll start heading west toward Idaho for Life on Wheels.

As I wrote a while back, we want to make it into a basic B van conversion for short trips away from the bus. It won’t be anything fancy, just a few creature comforts to allow us to survive a night or two without having to spend money on a motel room. I don’t know how much we can accomplish in the time available, but I’ll post some photos as the work progresses.

We stopped at RV Surplus www.rvsurplussalvage.com yesterday to pick up a couple of items for the project. This is our favorite toy store, and we got many of the components for our bus conversion there. Anyone converting a bus or refurbishing an RV can find anything they need at the RV surplus outlets in and around Elkhart, and RV Surplus is the best of the best. For a list of other RV surplus suppliers, check out our page listing sources nationwide at this link: RV Surplus Parts.

While we were visiting with Trina Ambris, who runs RV Surplus, her son Brandon stopped in. Over the years we have watched Brandon grow from a hardworking teenager helping out in the family business to today, when he runs his own company, Hyperlite Trailers, Inc. www.hyperlitetrailers.com. Brandon manufacturers some neat small toy hauler trailers, and as fuel prices continue to skyrocket, I’m sure his business will soar. ToyHauler magazine features the Hyperlite trailers in their current issue, and you can read the story online at http://www.toyhaulermagazine.com/hyperlite08.html. I predict much success for this sharp young man’s future.

Speaking of fuel prices, it is interesting to see which states stick it to us the most with their taxes on fuel. Compare for yourself at this state fuel taxes link  http://www.massachusettsgasprices.com/tax_info.aspx, Remind me not to fill my tank in California, which has the highest state fuel taxes nationwide!         

Thought For The Day – There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.

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Friday, June 20, 2008

For the last two days, poor Miss Terry has been working like a madwoman getting the new issue stuffed into envelopes and ready to mail out. I’m not allowed to help with this project, because the post office requires them to be in a very specific order, and getting just one envelope out of sequence brings everything to a screeching halt. Yesterday we dropped off boxes of papers to be sent to the Escapees Mail Service in Texas, and Alternative Resources www.alternativeresources.net/ in South Dakota. We have so many subscribers that use both services that they allow us to box up the papers and ship them to them in bulk. The rest of the papers are ready to go and will hit the post office this afternoon.

With the price of fuel and the hassle of standing in line at the post office, I have been looking at some of the online postal options such as www.stamps.com that allow their subscribers to print postage right from their computers. I’m curious if anyone here has used any of these services, and if so, would you share you experience with me by sending an e-mail to editor@gypsyjournal.net.

I talked to our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel, fulltimers who are volunteer camp hosts at Mark Twain State Park near Hannibal, Missouri. Ron said that the flood damage is bad upriver along the Mississippi River, and that people from throughout the region are coming to pitch in and help fill sandbags to keep the rising water at bay. I find it interesting that I haven’t seen any reports of FEMA and the rest of the of the Federal government rushing in to help these folks, nor have I heard any of them on the news pleading for help like we did from New Orleans during the hurricanes. I guess those hardworking folks in the Midwest are used to taking care of themselves, instead of waiting for handouts and relief from the government. They don’t have the welfare mindset. It’s just a different culture.

While Terry was busy with the mailing, I spent some time tweaking our websites, in an effort to get our Google ads to start performing again. It’s strange, we’ll have weeks of steady clicks and good commissions, and then suddenly it drops into the sandbox, then after a while it picks back up again. It seems like we have the same ads appearing, and the same volume of traffic to the websites, yet the numbers take a nosedive. I just can’t understand why.

One topic I get a lot of e-mail about is working on the road, so I also added a new page on the subject that is a brief overview of the class I do called Work Your Way Across The USA at Life on Wheels www.rvlifeonwheels.com and RV rallies. Check it out at this link: Working On The Road.

Thought For The Day – Life is a journey, not a guided tour.

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Thursday, June 19, 2008

I get a lot of e-mail, often well over 100 legitimate messages a day, not counting what my spam filter catches, and the jokes and forwards I get from anybody and everybody. One of the big reasons we abandoned our HughesNet tripod internet dish and got a Verizon air card was because when we were traveling and did not have the time to set up the dish, our e-mail would really pile up.

Well, even with the air card, it was sure piling up yesterday. We access our e-mail from Yahoo, and for whatever reason, yesterday it just would not allow me to get to my e-mail. Just one more glitch in Yahoo that they can’t seem to get right. I called their help line, only to get a recording saying that they were aware that many business customers could not access their e-mail and their technicians were working on it. Finally, late in the afternoon whatever was wrong got fixed and I could start wading through the pile of waiting messages.

Even with frustrations like this, RVers have come a long, long way since Terry and I started fulltiming nine years ago. Back then, you toted your laptop computer down to the campground office, and if they were feeling particularly benevolent, they would (for a fee) let you plug into a phone line long enough to download your e-mail. It wasn’t uncommon for the next guy in line to read over your shoulder in an effort to get you to hurry up so he could get his chance.

Eventually we got a cellular phone modem, which was incredibly slow and unreliable. It was not uncommon to get knocked offline three or four times in an hour, but on a good day I could sit in my RV and actually check my e-mail. Talk about luxury!

The next innovation was a gadget about the size of a calculator, called PocketMail. It consisted of a little keyboard with which you could type a message and then hold the device up to a telephone and send and receive e-mails. No attachments or graphics, no web surfing, and messages were limited in character length, but it was convenient for basic communication.

The advent of satellite dishes revolutionized internet access for RVers. There was a time when some dealers for the expensive automatic dishes waged a propaganda war against those of us who opted for the cheaper tripod setups. There were rumored threats of having our systems, and even our RVs, seized by the FCC, for using the “illegal” dishes, urban legends about some RVer somewhere who was killed when an improperly aimed tripod dish blew an ink pen in his shirt pocket through his heart, and even attempts to intimidate RV park owners and rally sponsors into banning tripod systems because of supposed liabilities they faced if someone was injured by a customer’s poorly aligned system. All of that nonsense eventually died down, and thousands of RVers use both the automatic and tripod systems to good advantage.

WiFi was another big step forward, and more and more RV parks, truck stops, and even highway rest areas have WiFi hotspots where RVers can access the internet. These systems range from very reliable to worthless, and I’ve heard more complaints about WiFi than just about any other technology. It is not uncommon for even the paid WiFi services to be offline as often as they are on.

The latest, and in my opinion greatest, thing to come down the technology highway is the air card. We changed to an air card several months ago, and have never looked back. Some critics of air cards will tell you that in remote areas where there is no cell signal, they are worthless. That’s true, but the signal footprint of our satellite dish, also had limitations, in our case in the far northwestern part of the country. Yes, you can request Hughes switch you to another satellite, but what happens when you travel to an area that the new satellite’s footprint doesn’t cover?  There is no perfect “one size first all” answer, but every day new innovations are being developed. I’m excited about what’s just over the technological horizon.

Thought For The Day – Did you ever notice that when you put the words "The" and "IRS" together, it spells "Theirs?"    

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Sometimes we see things that leave us scratching our heads and saying “huh?” Such was the case the other day when we spotted this car going down the street ahead of us, with a dog hanging its head out the window. That’s not an uncommon sight, we see dogs with their heads sticking out car windows all of them. What struck us as odd was that we couldn’t see anyone in the driver’s seat.

Our first thought was that whoever was driving the car must be really, really short. But then the dog crossed over to the driver’s side window and stuck its head out there, and we said “Whaaaat?” How could anybody drive with the dog in their seat? Was anybody driving? The car stopped at every traffic signal, then took off again with the rest of the traffic, though it was tailgating the Sara Lee truck ahead of it.

Was it a guide dog for a really short, blind driver? I was beginning to think I had taken too many pain pills there for a little while! We got into the other lane to pass, and then realized the car was being towed by the truck! They build all kind of specialty vehicles here in the  Elkhart area, not just RVs, and apparently someone was delivering the truck and towing their car for the return trip. Mystery solved, and we got a good chuckle out of it. J

We love old architecture, and we always enjoy looking at the neat old houses, churches, and commercial buildings in the East and Midwest. You just don’t find those kind of places out West, where we lived most of our lives. We’ve also seen some very cool bridges in our travels. We’ve driven past this beautiful old bridge spanning the St. Joseph River on U.S. Highway 12 at Mottville, Michigan for years now, and yesterday we finally stopped to check it out.

According to the historical sign at the bridge, the three span 270 foot long bridge was built in 1922 and is the longest example of a concrete camelback bridge in the state. The highway has been rerouted and a much newer bridge carries traffic across the river now, but the old bridge has been preserved and is used for foot traffic. Can’t you just imagine a shiny Model T rattling across this bridge, back when they were both new and state of the art? We find treasures like this on every back road in America . That’s one reason we love the RV lifestyle so much, and never get bored. There’s always something new and interesting to see waiting for us just over the next hill or around the next bend in the road.                                      

Thought For The Day – The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

When I woke up Monday morning, my back had gone out again to the point where Terry had to help me get out of bed. I hobbled around a while, popped the last pain pill from my surgery, Terry manipulated and jerked on my leg, and eventually I could move around fairly well.

Terry drove us up to our printer in Allegan, Michigan to drop off the CD of the new issue of the paper, and we spent an hour or so with their computer tech guy tweaking the photos. I have been using an ancient version of a page layout program called PageMaker, and it has been giving me problems in producing the finished PDF output. I bought a new program called InDesign a couple of months ago, but haven’t had the time to learn it yet. Almost every newspaper in the country is using InDesign, so once I can get up to speed with it, we’ll be using current technology, which will make things much easier. Our contact at the printer said she would try to arrange a time for me to spend a couple of hours with one of their layout artists who is well versed in the program to teach me some basics.

My back had subsided to just a dull ache by the time we were back in Elkhart, but we decided to stop at the chiropractor’s office for another adjustment. If anything, it made matters worse, and by late afternoon I was hobbling around again.

Our friends and fellow Life on Wheels instructors Rick Shafer and Marcia Gantz were in town running some errands and stopped by to visit for a while. We really enjoy Rick and Marcia, and we had a nice chat, but I’m afraid I wasn’t great company because I was too busy being a wimp. Rick will be presenting a seminar on boondocking at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, and Marcia will do a seminar on using the Excel computer program to keep track of your RV expenses.

When I checked my e-mail in the evening, I had several from readers sending positive feedback on my Fathers Day blog about my dad. I appreciate it. He was quite a guy, and I wish you all would have had the opportunity to get to meet  him. I especially wish Miss Terry would have been able to know my parents, but they were both gone years before we got together.

I also had an e-mail from a lady we first met as a student at Life on Wheels, whom I have been corresponding with for a while now. She is a brand new solo RVer, and wrote to tell me that she had just finished her first trip alone in the RV, from the St. Louis area to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where she was establishing her legal domicile in preparation to going fulltime. She said she was terrified for the first 75 miles or so, then relaxed and really enjoyed the trip. It’s always rewarding for us when we see our fledglings spread their wings and fly away from the nest. Here’s wishing you many, many happy and safe miles, Cathy.                                          

Thought For The Day – Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.

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Monday, June 16, 2008

Wrapping up a new issue of the Gypsy Journal, “putting it to bed" in newspaper parlance, is always a satisfying achievement. We put the new issue to bed yesterday afternoon, and this morning we will drive 70 miles north to Allegan, Michigan to drop the CD off to our printer. If all goes according to plan, we’ll drive back up tomorrow and pick up the finished print job, and then spend the week stuffing envelopes.

This will be our 55^th issue of the Gypsy Journal, and based upon our 36 page issues, that is 1,980 pages. Each page holds approximately 1,100 words, depending upon the number of photos and ads appearing on the page. That is 2,178,000 words. Wow, over two million words! And I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of all of the things I want to see and write about. Or maybe, as Miss Terry just told me when I gave her these numbers, I’m just full of it! J

I found an interesting story on Yahoo News over the weekend. Drivers in San Diego, California, where gasoline is averaging $4.61 a gallon, are crossing the border into Tijuana, Mexico and filling up for $2.54 a gallon. The report said that motorists are saving almost $54 filling up a typical Ford pickup with a 26 gallon fuel tank in Mexico, or more than $38 filling a Toyota Camry with an 18½ gallon tank. The story said gas prices are lower in Mexico because their government has an oil monopoly and supplies all gasoline throughout the country to its Pemex stations.

I don’t like Big Brother running things, but maybe the folks south of the border are on to something. I lived much of my life along the Mexican border, and my dismal impression of their government is based upon the corruption and inefficiency that I saw and dealt with first hand. But if even they can keep fuel prices in line, you know the dipsticks in Washington are really messing up! Maybe someday we’ll see Americans slipping over the border to stay, a reverse flood of illegal aliens, so we can afford to buy fuel.

For any of you folks out there that have been interested in scrap booking, I have great news. Our friend Cheryl Green has just agreed to come to our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, where she will be presenting a seminar on Digital Scrap Booking Made Easy. Cheryl is a consultant for Creative Memories, and you can check out her website at http://www.mycmsite.com/sites/cmcherylgreen. We first met Cheryl and her husband Gary when they were students at Life on Wheels, and we immediately hit it off with them. You can get to know this fun couple by visiting their RV travel website at www.bigrigrving.com. Then come to the rally and you can meet them in person. I bet you’ll like them as much as Terry and I do!                                      

Thought For The Day – The glory is not in never falling, but in rising again every time you fall.

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Sunday, June 15, 2008

Happy Fathers Day to all of you dads out there. If you haven’t called your dad today to tell him that you love him, walk away from the keyboard and do it right now. I’ll wait here for you.

Being a father is hard work, and I know I made about every mistake a father can make while my kids were growing up. Nobody gave me a handbook on how to get the job done, so I just muddled along the best I could and tried to learn by trial and error.

I was a single father for many years, and raising a kid alone is not easy. I wish I could go back and try to undo a lot of things, but hindsight is always best, isn’t it?

My own dad was quite a guy. He was a lawman, a combat veteran, an ordained minister, a gifted musician, and a poet, among his other roles. He had a hard life. He struggled to feed his family through the Great Depression, and saw his friends die around him in the South Pacific. He fathered eight children, and buried five of them.

He was 45 when I was born, coming to my parents long after they thought they were out of the baby business. My dad was a part of the generation that didn’t know they were supposed to be their kids’ buddy. He saw his duty as the family provider, guide, and educator. He didn’t give me many rules to obey, he just set a standard I was expected to live up to. I never had a bed time as a kid. I could stay up all night and read if I wanted to, but come morning, I had darned well better be up and ready for school at the appointed time. No excuses were tolerated. Growing up, and as an adult, I can’t think of many things worse I could have done than disappointing him or letting him down..

He wasn’t a disciplinarian. That task was usually left to my mother. I’m sure I got spanked as a kid, but the only time I ever remember my dad hitting me, I was eighteen years old and home on leave from the army. Nothing is more foolish or foolhardy than a young soldier with eight hours of hand to hand combat training and two beers under his belt who is trying to show off for his pals. My dad was sitting on the sofa, and I was being a bit loud and obnoxious when he said, in that quiet voice of his, “Sit down and shut up, you’re making an ass of yourself and embarrassing your mother.”

I decided that I wasn’t a kid anymore, and the old guy needed to know right then and there that we were equals. “I’m a man, you can’t tell me what to do any more,” I laughed and playfully slapped at his cheek as I said “come on, old man, show me what you’ve got.”  I never saw it coming. Hell, I don’t even remember him getting up from the sofa, but he hit me just once, and I was on the floor gulping air like a beached carp. When I could finally breathe again, Dad casually asked if I had anything else to say. “No sir,” I told him as I limped off to my room, trailing my ego and newfound machismo behind me.

My dad was always proud of me, and whatever I did, whether I succeeded or failed, he let me know that as long as I gave it my best, that was what mattered. He always told me that I could be or do anything I wanted to be in life, as long as I worked hard enough to make it happen. He set a great value on education, probably because he dropped out of school at an early age to help feed his family. But he was highly read and knowledgeable on many subjects. I think he was most proud that I was the first in my family to go to college.  

My dad’s been gone over 20 years now, but I still miss him, and I wish I could call him today and tell him Happy Father’s Day. But maybe he’s somewhere looking down at his youngest son, and will get the message. I hope so. I love you, Dad.                                

Thought For The Day – The best way to get even is to forget.

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Saturday, June 14, 2008

Here in Elkhart, Indiana, gas prices at the local Stop and Rob went from $3.99 a gallon to $4.19 overnight. Ouch! Anybody have a set of roller skates they want to get rid of?

After three days of near agony, I finally gave in yesterday morning and let Terry take me to a chiropractor. He bent me around like a pretzel, crunched and twisted, and popped whatever was out back into place. Then he recommended I put an ice pack on my lower back every few hours and sent me on my way. I still have some residual soreness, but nothing like I have been dealing with.

Okay, change of plans. I reported in Monday’s blog that the folks from Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) www.rvsafety.org had contacted us and cancelled their scheduled appearance at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally in September. Yesterday they e-mailed to say that they were going to able to be there after all.

I’m happy, because I believe that having our rigs weighed and being aware of weight safety is critical. If you haven’t had your RV weighed yet, include it in your plans for the rally. The small investment in time and money can save you many times over in terms of prolonging the life of your tires, suspension, and drive train, not to mention that it is an investment in your safety. You can call Rick or Joyce Lang from RVSEF at (207) 522-3336 to reserve a weighing time at the rally.  

Someone asked me the other day if I am worried that fuel prices will keep the number of attendees at the rally down. I think we’ll be fine. We have three months to go, and already we have well over 60 RVs paid and registered, and another 35 or so that have asked us to save them a place, but have not formally registered yet. We started out hoping for at least 100 RVs, which is our break even point, and I don’t think we’ll have any problem hitting that number. I’ve talked to a lot of people in this part of the country that aren’t going to be able to make it all the way to Gillette, Wyoming for Escapade this year, and I think we’ll be able to attract some of them to Ohio instead.

I was hoping to have the new issue of the Gypsy Journal wrapped up by now so I could be lazy this weekend and drop it off at the printer Monday morning, but I lost some time Thursday and Friday, so I’ll use the next two days to finish up.

Next week will be a blur of running back and forth to the printer in Allegan, Michigan, about 85 miles away, to drop off the CD with the new issue, and then back to pick up the finished print job on Tuesday. Over the winter, the mail service we have been using in Elkhart sold out to a different company, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. So once we load the new issue into the van, we’ll drive to Kalamazoo, pick up the addressed envelopes, and come back to Elkhart. It will take the rest of the week to get all of the envelopes stuffed and back to the mail service. Then we can breath a long sigh of relief and try to catch our breath before we start thinking about our trip to Idaho for Life on Wheels in early July.  

Thought For The Day – He who hesitates is probably right.

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Friday, June 13, 2008

If you’re the superstitious type, be careful not to break any mirrors today, avoid walking under ladders, and give black cats a wide birth. It’s Friday the thirteenth! I’ve never really been into all of that stuff, but you just never know. J

It really warmed up again yesterday, and by mid-afternoon we were feeling the heat. Elkhart Campground has really filled up, with a Holiday Rambler rally bringing in about 60 coaches, and everybody wants 50 amp electric so they can use their air conditioners.

We had a lot of company yesterday afternoon. Bob Curry came by and visited for quite a while, and as soon as he left, Ed Boehm, one of the folks here with the Holiday Rambler group, showed up. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to visit with Ed very long, because the folks who had pulled into the site next to us had blocked our TV dish and I had to reposition it. Shortly thereafter, another couple were at the door, and then Al Hesselbart from the RV Museum arrived. By the time everybody had left, it was 9:30 p.m. and I pretty much gave up on getting anything else accomplished for the day.

Sometimes a business person has to know when to cut his losses and take a different course of action. We have been faced with that decision in respect to one of our most popular books, the RVers Dashboard Companion. We have encountered one production delay after another in our latest reprint, and by the time we can get them printed and mailed out, they will already be out of date.

The main content of the book is a list of all WalMart, Sam’s Club, Camping World, and Flying J truck stop locations nationwide, with address, telephone number, turn by turn driving directions, and GPS coordinates. Our major problem is that WalMart is opening new stores faster than we can update the book. In 2007 they opened 281 new stores, another 180 are scheduled to open in 2008, and 140 more in 2009.

So I find myself neglecting other writing projects and putting other books on the back burner to try to keep up with adding all of the new store listings. It’s not as simple as just typing up the new store addresses. I have to verify their address and telephone numbers, then use two or three different mapping programs to get the directions and GPS coordinates down. Then I have to reformat the book pages to include the new listings. This changes the page count for every page following. So if I add two new stores in Arizona, every page of the 380+ page book that follows has to be changed. I found myself putting in at least 8 to 10 hours a week on the book updates. Throw in delays in dealing with a printer who changes their press formats and paper sizes, and it is enough to make me pull my hair out, if I had any hair left to pull.

So yesterday we pulled the plug on the project, and mailed out refund checks to the customers who had books coming and were waiting for the last batch from our printer. I always hate to admit defeat, but it just doesn’t make good business sense to continue to dedicate so much effort to one project, when we have others we can complete and get into print.

Thought For The Day – Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?

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Thursday, June 12, 2008

I spent most of the last two days chained to my computer working on the latest edition of the Gypsy Journal to get it ready to take to the printer. The storms that assaulted the area over the weekend have passed and the weather has been beautiful. Miss Terry has taken advantage of the blue sky and moderate temperatures to log some miles on her bike. I’m not allowed on mine until my stitches come out, which will be a few weeks yet, so I’m jealous.

In the evening I needed a break, so I sat outside to watch the world go by, and subscriber Bob Plaskon from Salem, Ohio came by to introduce himself, and we chatted for a couple of hours, until the mosquitoes finally drove me inside. Bob is a heck of a nice guy, and it was good to spend some time getting to know him.

Today we got some new neighbors, and they are not going to be fun to spend time parked next to. There are two trailers, and I think they may be part of a carnival that came through.  The adults are pretty young, they have several unruly little kids, and at least a half dozen barking dogs. I was beginning to fear that I’m just becoming a crotchety old fart grumbling about everything, but then I heard one of the longtime regulars here, about as mellow a guy as there ever could be, tell one of the kids to stop running through his site, so I guess I’m okay for a little while yet. As I write this, it is just after midnight, and they are still outside, adults, kids, and dogs, all raising a ruckus.

If you want to learn more about your computer, boy have I got great news for you! Jim and Chris Guld, from Geeks on Tour, will be offering a hands-on computer boot camp just before our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally in September. If you want to get the most out of your computer, if you’re confused by all of the different programs and how they work, this will be the perfect opportunity to learn. The Gulds are currently at a rally in Branson doing their boot camp, and you can read about it on their blog at http://geeksontour.blogspot.com/2008/06/computer-boot-camp-pre-rally.html

The rally is coming together very well. I still need to fill a couple of seminar slots, especially some on crafts. If you are interested in doing a seminar on an RVing topic or on a craft or hobby, send me an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and let’s see what we can put together. We’re always open to suggestions.

Thought For The Day – I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

In a post on the Escapees forum yesterday, someone reported that they had just completed a seventeen day 3,484 mile trip, at a cost of $1,984 dollars in fuel, which breaks down to about .56 cents a mile. They asked if the dream of fulltiming and traveling at will is over.

I replied that the dream only ends when you stop dreaming. Most fulltimers I know don't move about every day or two. After you've been on the road a while, that gets very tiring. We go someplace, sit a while, then go someplace else and sit a while.

Even with today’s high fuel prices, living and traveling fulltime in an RV costs us less than living in our former sticks and bricks house did. In the Frugal RVer classes I teach at Life on Wheels and RV rallies, I point out that two couples could leave Elkhart, Indiana in identical RVs, travel to Tucson, Arizona along the same route, and one couple could easily spend twice as much as the other. This lifestyle can be just as expensive as you want to make it, or it can be very inexpensive, if you so choose.

Yes, it does cost a lot of money when we fuel up. Terry and I recently drove from northern Arizona to Elkhart, Indiana, by way of Bowling Green and Lexington, Kentucky. Not exactly a direct route. We covered 2,163 miles, and our fuel costs alone were $1541, or 70 cents per mile. That is a lot of money.

But we don’t travel that far in one trip very often. We’ll make a few short trips in the bus in the next few months, but we probably won’t use more than a couple of tanks of fuel between now and when our rally ends in Ohio in mid-September.   

We also seldom pull into a campground for the night when we’re on the road. We use lots of free campgrounds, Passport America parks, Elks and Moose lodges, VFW posts, fairgrounds, etc to help lower our camping costs. When we do arrive at our destination, we take advantage of weekly or monthly campground rates. Then we make short day trips in our van to explore the local area.

I think too many people, including a lot of new and wannabe fulltimers, have an idealized picture of the RV lifestyle. The RV ads show folks sitting around a campfire in a pristine forest sitting, or enjoying an afternoon beverage in an upscale RV park, where everyone is always perfectly groomed, the mosquitoes never bite, and there is never a cloudy day. Life is an endless journey down scenic highways that never have construction zones or potholes.

In truth, the fulltime RV lifestyle is really not all that different than that of people living in houses, condos, and apartments all over this country. As John Denver used to sing, some days are diamonds, some days are stones. Some of us demand the very best, spend a lot of money, and live in luxury. Some of us are more conservative, we have to watch our pennies, and we cut costs wherever we can.

Does the fellow paying megabucks to drive the newest and fanciest coach out there, who only parks in upscale resorts with all of the amenities, have any more fun than I do rattling down the highway in my old bus, and spending the occasional night parked in a rest area or Wally World parking lot? You couldn’t convince me he does. I’m too busy living my dream.

Thought For The Day – Can you cry under water?

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Yesterday was frustrating. The day began with me waking up to terrible back pains. It was all I could do to crawl out of bed and hobble to the bathroom. This happens fairly often with me, and Miss Terry was able to manipulate my leg and jerk whatever was out back into place. I was still sore all day long, but the pain level was greatly reduced.

Regular blog readers will remember that when we had new tires installed on the bus back in March at GCR Tire Center in Tucson, they failed to tighten some lug nuts, and over tightened others, necessitating over $400 worth of repairs. The manager of GCR acknowledged that their tire installer screwed up, and promised a check to cover the full cost of the repairs. Well, as they say, “the check’s in the mail.” Two months later, we still have not received it, and repeated calls to GCR first were met with promises to look into the problem, and now when I call, the manager is “unavailable.” I called twice again yesterday. The first time I was told that he was on another line and would call right back, which he never did. The second time I called, he was again “unavailable.”

I then made a series of telephone calls to the Pinal County Fairgrounds, in Casa Grande, Arizona. According to local news reports a while back, the manager and some of the staff we have worked with in the past have been suspended pending an internal investigation for some alleged shenanigans, and we are still waiting for the contract for our 2009 rally. We paid the deposit back in February, we have the rally dates set and confirmed, but we need to have the actual contract in hand to take care of things like the rally insurance. Over the last few weeks I have talked with a series of interim employees, all of whom have promised to get the contract in the mail, but apparently it’s on the same mail truck as the check from Tucson. Enough with the mañana attitude, folks, just do your job!

I also got an e-mail from a couple who wrote that they wanted to come to our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, but it conflicts with an annual family event. They wanted to know if we could change the rally dates. I responded that it was impossible to do so at this late date, and they replied asking why. I explained that we have a contract with the Mercer County Fairgrounds for the rally dates, we have over 50 RVs already paid and registered, and another 40 or so who have indicated they plan to attend, and there was no way to change everything at the last minute. They then wrote and said they felt like I was discriminating against people with older RVs. Huh? Where did that come from? I won’t change the dates of a rally that were set a year ago to accommodate one couple’s schedule, so I’m picking on them because they have an older rig? I drive a 32 year old RV! Does that sound like someone who discriminates?

Thought For The Day – For every obstacle, there is a solution - over, under, around or through.

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Monday, June 9, 2008

The current high fuel prices have had some impact on the RV lifestyle, and we are seeing it begin to trickle down. Last week we received word that the folks from Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) www.rvsafety.org will not be able to attend our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, as previously planned. RVSEF depends on sponsor donations from the RV industry to survive, and those sponsorships are way down.

RVSEF is not the only one feeling the pinch; industry sponsorships to Life on Wheels www.rvlifeonwheels.com are also down, as are student registration numbers. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for many established RV institutions. When an RV manufacturer is faced with laying off its workforce or cutting production to keep from going out of business, it is understandable that they won’t be too thrilled about giving money to outside organizations, no matter how much good they do for the RVing community.

Here at Elkhart Campground, things seem to be pretty busy. This past weekend the Escapees Tri-State Rally was here, with nearly 40 RVs attending. Saturday afternoon Terry and I walked over to the meeting hall and joined them for social hour. We had not registered for the rally, but like all Escapees, they made us feel welcome.

The Escapees left Sunday, and the advance party for a Holiday Rambler rally came in right on their heels. Keith and Jill Chapman, from Benton Harbor, Michigan, are hosts of the rally and new subscribers to the Gypsy Journal. They came by the bus to introduce themselves and pick up a bundle of sample copies for their goodie bags. It is always nice to meet our readers, and we had a nice visit with Keith and Jill. We hope to get together with them again before they get too busy with their rally activities.

Most RVers are good people and a joy to be around. Unfortunately, not all of our RV park neighbors are always pleasant. We have a couple parked near us in a popup trailer that don’t seem to have a clue about RV park etiquette. They intrude on our space riding their bicycles, and drive their car too fast. Worst of all, they have a yappy little dog that never seems to shut up. I try to live and let live, and hoped that they would be gone in a day or two. But it’s been almost a week now, and it’s about time to either say something to the campground’s owners, or to the louts themselves.

Of course, campground neighbors like that are in the minority. Most are delightful people like Clyde and Becky Pruitt, from Campbellsville, Kentucky. They are longtime subscribers to the Gypsy Journal, and are spending a week at Elkhart Campground. Yesterday evening they came by to introduce themselves and get acquainted, and we had a very nice visit. I hope we can spend some more time together while they are here.

Thought For The Day – Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.

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Sunday, June 8, 2008

I wish I had talent.

I’d love to be able to draw or paint, to play music, or to fix things. But alas, it just not in the stars for me.

My dad could play any musical instrument with keys or strings. He never took a music lesson in his life, and couldn’t read a note of music. But give him a guitar, banjo, or fiddle, sit him down at a piano, or hand him an accordion and he could make the most beautiful sounds come out that you have ever heard. He could listen to a song one time and play it back for you perfectly.

I can’t even play the stereo. I’ve always wanted to play the saxophone, which to me has the sweetest sound of any instrument ever made. A few years ago I actually found myself owning not one, but two, saxophones. I quickly learned that while I want to play the saxophone, I don’t have the patience to learn to play the saxophone! Eventually I got tired of listening to the dogs howling in the neighborhood while I practiced, so I gave one of the instruments away, and the second gathers dust under our bed.

I had an army buddy named Laird Smith, who could sit with a pencil and a piece of paper and create wonderful drawings of the things around him. Military vehicles, men at work, the historic buildings at our duty station at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Laird would also sketch delightful caricatures of the people he met, that captured their true personalities.

I can’t draw a straight line with the aid of a ruler. My five year old granddaughter Hailey draws me pictures to hang on the refrigerator that are light years ahead of anything I could scribble.

My friend Terry Simpson, my pal Ron Speidel, and a lot of other folks I know can actually build and fix things with tools. If you’ve ever been in our bus conversion, you’re seen the beautiful cabinets Miss Terry built from scratch, and the rest of her handiwork.

I know that there are two kinds of screwdrivers in the world, - and +. All I have to do is look at the end of one to determine which flavor it is. The folks at Home Depot and Lowes all have my photograph posted in their tool departments, and at employee meetings they are warned not to allow me to touch anything more dangerous than a yardstick.

Oh, I can go through the motions of fixing things, but I know I’m just lying to myself, and making even more work for the person who will actually have to repair the problem in the end, because first they will have to undo whatever I messed up.

To give you an example of the kind of trouble I can get into without adult supervision, the other day we discovered that our rooftop air conditioner wasn’t working. I checked the breaker and confirmed that it was turned on. Then I used my electric meter to determine that I had power at the breaker, but not at the air conditioner switch. I called Terry Simpson, who suggested that I make sure the wires going into the breaker and to the ground were solidly connected. That’s where things went to hell.

Our breaker box is located on the wall behind and above our dryer. So I leaned in with a screwdriver to check and tighten the connections, if necessary. Can you see this one coming? About the time a solid jolt of electricity went through the screwdriver and made contact where my oversize stomach was leaning on the dryer, I remembered that I hadn’t turned off the main breaker first. Ouch!

Oh, by the way… the air conditioner works fine. I had the breakers mislabeled, and was flipping the wrong one on and off. Once my eyes stopped watering and my toes stopped tingling, I figured that out, turned the right breaker on, and recuperated in cool comfort.   

Thought For The Day – Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.

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Saturday, June 7, 2008

Yesterday was a weird weather day here at Elkhart Campground. The forecast called for thunderstorms, and we were under a tornado watch for part of the day. Very strong winds blew all day long.

Between the weather and still feeling really sore, I didn’t do much but nap and mope around most of the day. I spent some time reading Joe and Vicki Kieva’s e-book RVing Alaska, Insights and Observations, and I’m all jazzed up about making the trip myself. Besides covering in great detail the preparations needed to get ready for such an adventure, a large part of the book is a daily journal they kept on their last Alaskan trip, in 2007.

The journal covers everything from the daily mileage driven, to fuel costs, places they stayed, RV park costs, restaurants they discovered, observations about the weather and road conditions, and the sights seen along the way. I’ve read a lot of Alaska travel books filled with data about stopping places and attractions to visit, but this journal shares the day to day adventure, from mundane things like comparing prices at the grocery stores, to adventures like watching bears catch salmon at the near ghost town of Hyder, Alaska. This is great reading for both RVers planning a trip north, like ourselves, or just armchair travelers along for the ride. Check out Joe and Vicki’s website at www.rvknowhow.com to learn more about this e-book and their other RVing products.   

We’ve been coming here so long that Bob and Gita Patel, owners of Elkhart Campground, pretty much give us the run of the place and let us do whatever we want to. Though they have lots of full hookup RV sites, our preferred space here at the campground has 50 amp electric and water, but no sewer hookup. We like it because it’s roomy, and we usually don’t have neighbors parked right on top of us.

Our large holding tanks make it easy for us to go a long time between trips to the dump station, but eventually go we must. A few days before we left for Lexington I noticed that our tank was getting pretty full, but I got busy and forgot about it.

Yesterday we reached the critical point where we couldn’t wait any longer. Miss Terry didn’t want me doing too much and ripping a stitch or something foolish, so while she unhooked our water, electric and satellite TV connections, I fired up the bus to go dump. While the bus was airing up, the sky exploded with lightning and thunder, and it began to rain heavily. Then, as suddenly as it had hit, the storm was gone and the sun began to shine. We dumped, pulled back into our site, and just about the time Terry got everything hooked back up, the sky turned black again and the thunder began to rumble ominously. We sure appreciated that window of opportunity when we needed it!

An Escapees chapter is having a rally here at the campground, and though they invited us over to join in the fun, I just wasn’t feeling up to it. Our friends Butch and Fonda Williams are here for the rally, and yesterday afternoon they stopped by to deliver a delicious roasted chicken and French bread to us for our dinner. Butch said he knew Miss Terry was too busy listening to me snivel to have to cook too. What nice folks!

We ended the day on a sad note, when we received word that our friends Mike and Pat McFall lost their son Scott to leukemia. Scott received a bone marrow transplant a few weeks ago, and it was hoped the procedure would help make him well again. Unfortunately, that was not to be. Our hearts ache for Mike and Pat and their family as they go through this terrible ordeal.

Thought For The Day – People rarely succeed at anything unless they have fun doing it.

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Friday, June 6, 2008

In spite of the pain pills they gave me following my surgical procedure, I didn’t get much sleep Wednesday night. So yesterday while Miss Terry drove us back to Elkhart, I reclined my seat and napped much of the time.

I was a bit uncomfortable, especially when we hit several rough stretches of pavement along Interstate 75 (what part of I-75 isn’t rough?), but overall we had a good trip. We left the interstate and cruised through Celina, Ohio, and then Van Wert, before following US Highway 30 into Indiana. 

From Fort Wayne, we took US Highway 33 north to Goshen, passing through the friendly little town of Churubusco, which calls itself Turtle Town, USA. There are a couple of turtle statues along the highway to welcome folks, and we stopped to take a couple of photos.

Yarn spinners around here claim that back in 1949 the Beast of Busco, a monster snapping turtle the locals nicknamed Oscar, haunted a nearby lake and terrorized the town’s citizens. The story even hit the national media and created quite a frenzy for a few weeks. But despite several expeditions to capture the critter, Oscar managed to slip away into the muddy murk of legend. Apparently all has been forgiven, because these days Churubusco holds an annual Turtle Days festival in June with a parade, carnival, and, of course, turtle races.

This part of northern Indiana is Amish country, and a drive along any back road will likely have you passing farms where Amish men work the fields with horse teams, and sharing the road with horse drawn buggies. The WalMart in Goshen, Indiana even has a covered shelter where the Amish can tie up their buggies while shopping. Usually the Amish shy way from having their photographs taken, but these kids and their mother seemed very happy to wave and smile as I snapped a picture.

It was incredibly hot throughout the region. The sign at a bank in Goshen said it was 89 degrees at 5 p.m., and the humidity wasn’t far behind. As soon as we got back to the bus we opened all of the windows and turned our three Fan-Tastic Fan roof vents on high to get some air moving. When we built our bus conversion we put a lot of extra insulation in, and it has paid off both in heating and cooling the bus.

Before leaving Lexington, we filled the gas tank, paying $3.84 a gallon, which was cheaper than we had been seeing gas prices in Indiana recently. Our Ford van has a 35 gallon tank, which gives us a range of over 500 miles, so we still had plenty of fuel on board when we got back to Elkhart Campground. Of course, the flip side to that coin is that it just costs more when we stop at the gas station.

Thought For The Day – People are funny; they want to be in the front of the bus, the middle of the road, and the back of the church.

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Thursday, June 5, 2008

You know you’re a fulltime RVer when you are staying in a motel, go to the bathroom, and try to flush the toilet with your foot!

Yesterday was busy. The first thing in the morning, I had my heart stress test at the VA hospital here in Lexington, Kentuck and I’m happy to report that things look good in that department. At least I didn’t do a belly flop on the treadmill and ride off into the sunset flapping my arms and legs like a beached sea turtle! J We don’t have the final report yet, but from the early readings, it looks like my heart is okay and the damage that recently showed up on my EKG is from the heart attack I had years ago.

The worst part of the stress test was the prep. The tech shaved part of my chest to attach the various electrodes. But to be sure they stayed in place, first she sanded the spots where she had shaved me. Yes, sanded. With some kind of medical sandpaper. Folks, if you’ve never had your chest sandpapered, take it from me, get a nipple pierced or something less painful.

Once the stress test was completed, we left the van in the hospital parking garage and walked the three blocks back to the motel. I took the la la pill Nancy Hazelton had prescribed for me, then napped for an hour or so before we walked back for my surgical procedure. I won’t go into detail about that, it’s a rather personal matter, let's just say it was a "guy thing" and I won’t be riding my new bicycle or chasing any girls through the RV park anytime soon. L

Back at the room, I was feeling pretty uncomfortable. Orv and Nancy Hazelton had invited us over for a game of Mexican Train, but I took a rain check. We had a quick meal and I spent the evening sitting around watching TV, checking e-mail, and being lazy.

Since the medical things went well, we plan to return to Elkhart Campground today. Miss Terry will drive, since I’m taking pain meds and just don’t feel up to doing much except whining and sniveling. Thanks everyone, for your calls and e-mails. I appreciate all of you. The worst is behind us, and I feel a lot better knowing that the chest pains and EKG report from a few weeks ago were warning signs and nothing more.

It will be a few days before I can move around in relative comfort, but as soon as possible I’ll be back to walking again and working on improving my habits toward a healthier lifestyle. Like I wrote a while back, I know I’ll never be thin, but I need to take better care of myself. There are a lot of back roads we have left to explore, and a whole bunch of you I’m looking forward to meeting up with somewhere in our travels.    

Thought For The Day – Whatever hits the fan never gets evenly distributed.

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Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Yesterday was a long day. We were on the road by 8:30 a.m., leaving the bus at Elkhart Campground and driving the van south to Fort Wayne on US Highway 33, where we picked up US 27 south and followed it through small towns and farm lands. We love traveling the two lane roads, but on this trip I was glad we were not driving the bus. Our route included too much stop and go traffic in the many little towns along the way, and southern Indiana has some pretty steep hills where we would have been delaying traffic behind us with our slow old bus. When this happens, we try to find a safe place to pull over and allow traffic to pass us, but there were few safe places along the way where we could have done so.

Eventually we joined up with US Highway 52 and crossed into Ohio, where we soon got on the interstate and had a quick run south to Lexington, Kentucky. Except for a lot of rain, and one idiot in an eighteen wheeler, the trip was mostly pleasant and uneventful,

We arrived at the University Inn about 4:30 p.m., checked into our room and freshened up, then had a wonderful seafood dinner with our friends Orv and Nancy Hazelton. Nancy is my primary medical provider with the VA, and when I told her I was getting anxious about a bit of minor surgery I’m having this afternoon, she promised to send in an order for happy pills for me, but warned me not to take anything until after my stress test this morning. I guess nodding off during your stress test is considered bad form.

Nancy will be retiring at the end of the year, and she and Orv plan to buy a new coach and hit the road as fulltimers. She keeps promising to hook me up with a new primary, but she’s a hard act to follow. I keep telling my buddy Orv to look at things from my perspective; he is gaining a wonderful new lifestyle, but I’m losing one hell of a good medic. Yes Orv, from this side of the keyboard, it really is all about me!

We’ll be here a couple of days while I get poked and prodded, and plan to be back in Elkhart by the weekend.

Thought For The Day – The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

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Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Terry and I will be on the road today, headed for Lexington, Kentucky, where I have a stress test and some other medical stuff scheduled for Wednesday. Since we only plan to be gone a couple of nights, we are leaving the bus here at Elkhart Campground and driving down in the van. The University Inn is just a block or so away from the VA hospital, and when the reservation clerk asked why we were going to be in town and I told her it was for medical appointments at the VA hospital, she gave us an automatic 10% discount. That’s always appreciated. J I’d much rather have the bus, but with the cost of fuel and campgrounds in the Lexington area, we’ll save enough money by taking the van and doing the motel thing to make it worthwhile.

Could we be seeing the start of a downturn in fuel prices? Even when we’re not traveling, out of habit, I check the Flying J website http://flyingj.com/fuel/gasoline_CF.cfm almost daily just to see how bad we’re getting shafted at the fuel island. On Sunday, the website showed diesel in Winslow, Arizona selling for $4.66/gallon. Yesterday it was $4.57/gallon. Eloy, Arizona was $4.65/gallon on Sunday and Monday it was $4.59. Is this just a temporary dip or have things peaked? Of course, we consumers have been trained very well. Diesel in Arizona was $3.12 a gallon last December, and then it spiked up to $4.70 this spring. So if it drops down to, let’s say $4.25 a gallon, people will say prices have come down 45 cents a gallon. No they didn’t. They went up $1.13 a gallon!

Winnebago seems to be the latest in a growing line of RV manufacturers who are taking a hit from the economy and fuel prices. It was announced yesterday that in the quarter that ended May 31, production was reduced during all but one of the 13 weeks by either shutting down entire production lines for a week at a time or by going to four day work weeks. Now Winnebago has announced that it will stop production, for at least the foreseeable future, at it’s Class C manufacturing plant in Charles City, Iowa and move operations to their Forest City, Iowa facility. The move will leave 270 Winnebago employees in Charles City without jobs. I think things will continue to get worse before they get better.

I’ve been working on the seminar schedule for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally and we still need a couple of craft seminars. If you would like to do a seminar, please send me an e-mail at Editor@gypsyjournal.net and include a brief description of the seminar you have in mind. We still have plenty of openings at the rally, and it’s going to be lots of fun. Make your plans now to attend! With no Fall Escapade planned this year, it’s a great way to wrap up your summer travel season, or to get started on your fall and winter adventures. 

Thought For The Day – You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.

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Monday, June 2, 2008

We picked up our new Trek Navigator bicycles on Friday, and Miss Terry has had me pedaling my chubby little legs all over the neighborhood. The first day we did about three miles, and yesterday we covered about two miles. Now, I thought Drill Sergeant Howie, the man who taught me how to be a soldier at Fort Knox back in the day, was a hard taskmaster, but that man was a Cub Scout compared to my wife!

It’s not enough that she’s got me burning up the local roadways, but as soon as we climb off the bikes, she makes me walk a half mile circuit around the campground at a fast pace to “loosen up” my stiff leg muscles! I’ve suggested that maybe her drawing me a hot bath, and following that up with a nice long massage might loosen me up just as well, but apparently that isn’t going to happen. L

After reading Saturday’s blog, in which I reported that next year Terry and I plan to cut back on our Life on Wheels (LOW) teaching commitments, someone wrote to ask if we were “abandoning Life on Wheels and turning our back on the program.”

Not at all. We have dedicated a lot of time and energy to Life on Wheels, and we wholeheartedly believe in the program. It is the single best investment any RVer can make in the mobile lifestyle, be they fulltimers, weekend campers, or wannabes. One look at the course descriptions at the LOW website at www.rvlifeonwheels.com will show classes covering every aspect of the RV lifestyle, from selecting the RV that is right for you, to how to negotiate the purchase of that RV, technical classes on how to use and get the most from your RV’s onboard systems, to lifestyle classes on places to go, dry camping, and activities to do as you travel around the country. There are two LOW conferences remaining this year; in Lewiston, Idaho July 6 -11, and in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania September 7 – 10, and we have openings for more students at both.

While Terry and I plan to stay involved with Life on Wheels, we want to travel more, and the LOW schedule takes up much of the prime summer travel season. We’re either developing new classes or working on improving our existing ones, teaching, or on the way to one LOW conference or another from March through September. Terry and I do more seminars at LOW than any other instructors, one every class period. Frankly, we’re burned out. We’ll continue to be a part of the program, just on a reduced basis.

After I wrote that we were thinking about a trip to Alaska, longtime RV authors and speakers Joe and Vicki Kieva e-mailed to tell me that they have a brand new DVD out titled RVing Alaska: What to Expect: How to Prepare that covers all of the things anyone planning a trip to the Great Land needs to know, from road conditions and driving tips to the documents you will need to cross the border into Canada, what to expect on the trip up and back, as well as the Alaska State Ferry System. The DVD sells for $24.95 and is worth every penny. My copy is on it’s way to me right now. Joe and Vicki also have a great e-book titled RVing Alaska, Insights and Observations with even more great information on planning your adventure. You can learn more about these two titles plus the Kieva’s other books on their website at www.rvknowhow.com. Be sure to check out their blog under the RV Notebook heading.

Thought For The Day – Once over the hill, you pick up speed.

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Sunday, June 1, 2008

If I had to name just one thing that is essential for any full time or extended travel RVer to have with them when they hit the road, it would not be a GPS navigation device, a campground directory, a good fire extinguisher, or even a Visa card with no spending limit. Those would all be great to have, and we actually have the first three in our bus. But, in my opinion, the one thing every RVer should pack is a sense of humor.

The ability to laugh at life is the greatest gift any of us can possess. It will get you through traffic delays, bad weather, breakdowns in fun places like Muleshoe, Missouri, and anything else life throws at you. I know it has served me well over the years.

There aren’t many times when I can’t find something to laugh at. Sometimes I think the good Lord put a lot of people here on earth just to entertain me. The next time you’re feeling grumpy, just take a stroll around the campground and keep your eyes open. I bet you can find something to chuckle at.

Newbies and weekend campers are always good for a laugh, especially when they’re trying to back into a campsite or hook up. We’ve all been there, and we all have to learn sometime, but once we do, it sure is fun watching someone else do it!

Of course, it’s not just the newbies who have difficulties. After nine years of fulltiming, I’ve gotten pretty good at backing the bus into just about any RV site, with Miss Terry’s expert directions. Well, that is if there isn’t anyone watching me. But if there are a few folks standing around in the site next door observing, I’ll run over the water bib, ding a mirror on the side of a tree, or run over a French poodle every time!

We had two different rigs here in Elkhart Campground in the last few days that had their water hoses and electrical cords hooked up, but instead of running them down through the access hole in the bottom of their utility bays, they ran them out over the side and left the bay open all the while they were here because the door wouldn’t close. Last year we had a neighbor hook up that way, and then when he couldn’t close his bay door, he unhooked everything, hooked it all back up again the same way, and was cussing a blue streak because his bay door still wouldn’t close!

The dump station can be more fun than the cartoons at a Saturday afternoon matinee. Last winter in Casa Grande we watched a solo lady pull up to the dump station and empty her tank, and all the while a fellow whose RV was next in line stood there talking to her. Once her tanks were empty, she picked up the non-potable water hose laying in the mud at the dump station, stuck it down into her sewer hose and rinsed it out, then stowed her equipment away and drove off. The guy who had stood right next to her and watched the entire proceedings then pulled his rig up, dumped, and then picked up that same nasty water hose and began filling his fresh water tank with it! I bet old Montezuma really exacted revenge on that fool!

Of course, some folks are much more careful at the dump station. One hot August afternoon a few years back, here at Elkhart Campground, I watched a fellow pull up to the dump station. He pulled on a pair of rubber chest waders, like fishermen wear, slipped on goggles, a paper surgical mask over his face, and then donned what looked like heavy welder’s gloves. It was probably 100 degrees outside, and the humidly wasn’t far behind. I was getting heat stroke just watching him! Then he pulled out a bottle of disinfectant and began to spray everything in sight. I couldn’t hold back any more, and asked him what he was doing.

“I’m going to dump,” he said, in a tone usually reserved for the village idiot.

“Okay, I get that,” I told him, “but what’s with the getup you’re wearing?”

“Don’t you know e-coli lives down there,” he asked, with that same tone of voice.

“Oh, e-coli, okay. For a minute there I thought you had lost your Rolex and were going in after it!”

People really shouldn’t use the words he did on the village idiot as he wanders off in search of something else to amuse himself.

Thought For The Day – What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

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