There is an ongoing thread on the Escapees Forum about the fact that Flying J truck stops are now charging RVers $5 to dump their holding tanks. Some of the people who have commented about Flying J’s new policy, as well as some who have written to me about it, are really ticked off, calling it corporate greed and vowing to buy their fuel elsewhere from now on. One fulltime RVer who e-mailed me said “I have bought fuel at Flying J for 8 years, used their dump stations, and spent the night many times. But I’ll go out of my way to avoid them from now on!”

Well, I don’t blame you, brother. The nerve of those guys! After years of giving you free camping and free dumping, now that the economy has changed and businesses are scrambling to cover their costs, let alone make a profit, you deserve to be able to continue to freeload. How dare they start charging you for the same things that commercial campgrounds have been charging for ever since they first opened!

I remember a similar thread last year before the Escapade rally in Sedalia, Missouri, when folks were complaining that barriers in the parking lot of the Sedalia Wal-Mart prevented RVers from entering to dry camp overnight, and there were comments about boycotting the store. 

Where is it written that a business has to give its customers anything for free! Good service, yes; a fair price, absolutely; but free camping and the free use of an RV dump station? I guess I missed that memo.

I served many years on my town’s Planning and Zoning Commission, and I remember codes requiring businesses to jump through a lot of hoops if they wanted to set up shop in our community. But I can’t ever remember demanding that a business give something away to customers.

For the most part, RVers are pretty special people, and I’m proud to count myself among their numbers. But every barrel has a few bad apples,including ours.

My friend Bill Joyce sent me a link to a blog post yesterday about Wild Horse Casino near Chandler, Arizona. It seems that in the past, RVers had abused the casino’s hospitality by setting up housekeeping for weeks, even months on end. That has changed, and now casino security is clamping down on the RV slobs who take unfair advantage of the casino’s free RV parking. I’m sure that there are some who feel this is unfair too. Probably the same jerks who caused the problem in the first place.

I just don’t get this idea that somebody owes us anything and we deserve to get it. I appreciate it when a business gives me a break, whether it be free camping, free dumping, or a discount on a purchase. But I don’t expect it, and I don’t demand it. And if a business has been generous in the past, but things change and they have to start charging me for a service that was free in the past, I certainly don’t feel offended, I don’t boycott them, and I don’t whine and complain. I appreciate the courtesies of the past, pay up and figure I’m still ahead because of prior savings,and continue to support them. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Bad Nick has been busy, by the way, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Our Tax Dollars At Work. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I want to know – therefore I go.

This is our last day vending at the FMCA rally, and though sales have not been what we had hoped for, they are about what we expected them to be. We have covered our expenses, and we have introduced a lot of people to the Gypsy Journal. Hopefully when they get back home or wherever they’re headed from here, they will have a chance to read it and then we’ll see a few more subscriptions come in.

As I said before, the FMCA crowd just isn’t our customer base. It seems like a lot of them spend their time in fancy RV resorts and would never think of boondocking or spending a night in a free campground in a city park, so they have no interest in the guidebooks we sell listing places like that.

I was really disappointed that last night’s scheduled entertainment, a concert by country music singer Lorrie Morgan, was cancelled due to rain. I’ve always been a big fan of that beautiful lady’s music and would have loved to see her in person.

Even if we don’t make any money at this rally, it has been worth it to see so many of our vendor friends, meet some of our readers, and make some new friends too. And I have enjoyed the opportunity to visit my old hometown.

Tuesday evening we looked up another of my childhood buddies, Gary Chandler, and his wife Karen. I had not seen them in 32 years. I managed to find their address with a Google search, but no telephone number, so we took a chance that it was the same people and drove back up to Toledo.

I would never have recognized my old friend, and he didn’t recognize me either, but once I told him who I was it was like old home week, with lots of hugs and laughter all around.

I don’t have any siblings left, so it was good to touch base with some of the people I knew way back in the day. Miss Terry never got to meet my parents, so it was nice for her to get the opportunity to see them through the eyes of my old friends. It made my heart feel good to hear them tell how much they still loved my Mom and Dad, and how they loved listening to Dad play his guitar and tell his stories from his days down on the border. My Mom wasn’t just a mother to her own children; she was Mom to all of our friends as we were growing up, too.

One person whom I would still like to find is the man who was the editor of the Toledo Blade newspaper back when I got out of the Army. I applied for a reporter’s position with the paper, and I can still see his sneer as he told me “Boy, neither you nor I will ever live long enough to see your name in print.” I don’t even know his name, but I’d love to see him someday just to say “Oh yeah? How do you like me now?”

Just as we did at the Escapade in Sedalia, Missouri, we are experiencing very poor cell phone and air card service here in Bowling Green, even though we have full bars of high speed EVDO signal. There are just too many people overloading the circuits, and it doesn’t matter if you have Verizon, AT&T or Sprint, everybody is having problems. Such is life at an RV rally.

Thought For The Day – I get enough exercise just pushing my luck.

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Terry and I have been very lucky in that our business has allowed us live our dreams and have a life that many people envy. We’ll never be rich, if you measure riches in terms of dollars, but we get to go where we want, see interesting things and beautiful places, and meet wonderful people.

We really don’t have the time to take on any other jobs, but I can’t help browsing through the pages of Workamper News and thinking “That might be fun to do!”

Last week while we were at the Escapade rally in Sedalia, Missouri, we talked to some friends who are going to be selling fireworks for a couple of weeks leading up to the Fourth of July. They gave me the name of their contact at the fireworks company, and I called just to see how it all works.

Basically, as the company representative explained it to me, they have specific locations arranged, sometimes a lot on a busy corner, sometimes part of a WalMart parking lot or some other high traffic business. The company sets up a tent and delivers a load of fireworks about the third week of June. The contracted dealers, many of whom are RVers, sell from the stand through July 5^th or 6^th, and then whatever inventory remains is returned to a nearby company warehouse. The dealer gets 20% of all of the money they take in.

I was told by some people that have experience in such things that different companies have different contracts, and some pay a guarantee plus commission. We have met several RVers who pick up extra money selling fireworks, Christmas trees, and pumpkins at roadside stands. It is hard work, you are expected to be open 12 hours a day for two weeks or more, and you are responsible for any theft. The tent must be lighted at night to prevent theft, and the dealer is expected to either use their RV generator to power the lights, or rent a generator.

How much you make depends on your location. At one spot the company had in Connecticut, the representative said we could expect to clear $4500. At another, in southern Michigan, I was told to expect to make about $3,000.

That sounded like a lot of money for just a couple of weeks’ work, until I crunched the numbers. The Michigan commitment would require us to spend a day or two receiving the inventory and getting it set up, 15 days of sales, and then at least another day to pack all of the inventory up and get it back to the warehouse.

Just the 15 days of sales, at 12 hours a day per person for the two of us was a deal breaker. That is $200 a day, or $100 each. $100 divided by 12 hours is $8.33 an hour. And that does not include the time involved in receiving and setting up the inventory, fuel for a generator to light the tent at night, rental of a credit card machine and cash register, as well as a few other expenses the job required, or the time to pack everything up and take it back to the warehouse. It also did not factor in the loss due to theft, or heaven forbid, if we got robbed.

Even if we would have been willing to invest the time, that is when our next issue of the Gypsy Journal is due to be printed and mailed, so we would not have had the time anyway.

I’m curious if any of you blog readers have sold fireworks, Christmas trees or pumpkins, and how it worked out for you. Care to share your experiences?

Thought For The Day – Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

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It has been raining so hard here at the fairgrounds in Sedalia, Missouri that some RVs are either going to have to be towed out, or else sit in the same spot until it eventually dries out.

We started out vending outside, which is usually our preference, but the rain was making it impossible to do business. Even under our canopy, our books were getting ruined and nobody was going to stop and stand in the rain to visit. To make matters worse, as I was doing my nightly ritual of painting Miss Terry’s toenails as she soaked in a bath of warm milk and eucalyptus oil, I noticed that she was beginning to grow webs between her toes.

Something had to be done, and my good buddies Jack and Doreen Ingle from PoliSeek Insurance (formerly AON) sprang to the rescue. They had reserved two indoor vending spaces, and only needed one, so yesterday morning Jack arranged for us to move inside next to them. Thanks Jack and Doreen, we really appreciate your generosity.

There are a lot of great vendors at Escapade. My friend Orv Hazelton told me that he and Nancy had discovered a crack on the cover to their seven year old Fantastic Vent on the way to the Escapade. Orv mentioned this to Jim Wood, the vendor for Fantastic Fans, here in the Indoor Market, and Jim said that he’d take a look at the unit yesterday. Orv said when he and Nancy got back to their coach after being out wandering around, they discovered that Jim had installed a new vent motor, cover, and fan blade! This clearly wasn’t a warranty issue, just superb customer service from Fantastic Fan and Jim Wood. 

Even though we have four bars of EVDO service on our Verizon cell phones here at the fairgrounds, we are experiencing very slow internet service until late at night. I guess the cell towers are swamped with so many RVers here, until everybody goes to bed.

Speaking of Verizon cell phones, my contract allows me to get a new phone every two years, and I am about due. I really like the looks of the Blackberry Storm, and the idea of getting my e-mail even when I’m away from my computer appeals to me. The other Blackberry models don’t have the touch screen, and my fat little fingers have a problem with the tiny buttons on them. Do any of you readers have a Blackberry Storm? If so, I’d like to hear your feedback on it.

I played with somebody’s iPhone yesterday and really liked it, but they are not available on the Verizon network and won’t be for a year or so, if then.

Okay, I guess the score is Bureaucrats 1, Common Sense 0. A year or so ago I wrote about Ray & Kathleen Robinson, who have built a railroad on their 40 acres in Oregon as a hobby, and how the local bean counters were trying to force them to close it down. According to a blog post titled Last Chance At A Railroad, Dan Chance writes that after a prolonged battle, the Robinson’s have had to concede defeat. Read all about this miscarriage of justice on Dan’s blog. Did I ever mention how much I dislike bureaucrats?

Thought For The Day – You’re getting old when getting lucky means you can find your car in the WalMart parking lot.

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Several blog readers have written to ask what the status is on the Winnebago motorhome we looked at earlier this week. Thank you for your interest, but unfortunately, it’s not going to happen at this time. Our private financing fell through, so we’re back to square one. We’re very disappointed, but I guess it’s just not our time yet.

Yesterday we drove down to Sedalia to check things out before going into Escapade on Saturday morning. There are already a bunch of Escapees there who arrived early for pre-rally events or to work on the rally staff. We saw several people we know, including Dee Holt, our longtime friends Ron and Jerrie Lea Hopf, and Art and Caroline Fennell.

Sedalia seems like a nice town, with a population of about 20,000 people. We noted several of our favorite restaurants, so we know we’ll have plenty of places to get together for dinner with all of our RVing friends while we’re in town.

Here’s a heads up for anyone coming into Sedalia from Interstate 70 via U.S. Highway 65. Just as you come into town there is construction on a bridge and the road is down to just one ten foot wide lane, with traffic alternating in crossing. It’s only a short distance, but be aware that there may be delays with all of the RVs coming into town.

Back at the Higginsville Fairgrounds, my buddy Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour spent some time helping me with some internet issues. I am always amazed at how much this attorney-turned-geek knows about computers and the internet. She makes tasks that mystify me seem easy.

Later on Chris’ husband Jim threw some chicken and sausage on the grill, Miss Terry whipped up some goodies, and we had a nice little cookout. We enjoyed sitting at one of the picnic tables next to the walking path here at the fairgrounds, having our meal and visiting.

We’ve had an interesting experience not once, but twice lately. People who have picked up a copy of the Gypsy Journal somewhere or read the blog have noticed the names of old friends they have lost contact with mentioned, and contacted me to see if it was the same person. Both times it was, and I have forwarded on their messages and e-mail reunions have taken place. How cool is that?

Thought For The Day – Good fellows are a dime a dozen, but a true leader is priceless.

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