Before we were even dressed yesterday morning, somebody was knocking on our door, and it seemed like the line of people stopping by never ended until well after dark. It was not a good day to get much accomplished.

I spent over an hour on the telephone with Jim Guld from Geeks on Tour as we tried to figure out why my laptop computer will not communicate with my Cradlepoint wireless router. I can pick up the WiFi signal for the campground, as well as from another RVer parked near us, but not my own. Try as he might, even the resourceful Jim could not resolve the problem, and he finally had to admit defeat and suggested that I call the techs at the 3G Store and see if they could help. I never got to them, because more people were coming by to say hello, to see our new desks, and to see the Winnebago.

After I got off the phone with Jim, I called Dell to tell them that my desktop computer had died, and while I was talking to their tech folks, a half dozen or more people came knocking on the door. Miss Terry was out running some errands, so I tried to juggle two conversations at once with each new visitor.

Most quickly realized that I was busy and excused themselves, but one couple just parked themselves on the couch and started talking, even though I had to ask them to wait several times as I tried to follow tech support’s instructions to revive the computer. At one point, the husband said “It looks like we caught you at a bad time,” and I agreed and said that there probably could not have been a worse time. But they never took the hint, and continued to ask me questions about the new motorhome even as I continued talking to Dell’s tech support. Arrgh!

We really do enjoy visiting with our readers, but sometimes I wish we were just a little more anonymous. Or that folks were a little more courteous when they drop in and see that we’re in over our heads.

The good news is that Dell was very responsive to my call, and because I signed up for their small business extended warranty when I bought the desktop computer, they are sending out a repairman today or tomorrow, whenever the needed parts arrive. If he can’t get me up and running, they will either repair or replace the computer within five business days. That’s pretty good service.

Today is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our country. I hope each of you will take a moment or two to remember those who were lost, and to remember how we all felt on that day. We may have buried the victims of the attacks, but let’s not bury the memories, or our determination to punish those responsible.

Bad Nick has some thoughts about 9/11 that may not be politically correct, but then again, when is he ever politically correct? Read his thoughts at They Were Not Heroes. 

Thought For The Day – My train of thought jumped the tracks.

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Miss Terry has been busy the last couple of days finishing a project on our MCI bus conversion.

When we started the conversion, we left the escape hatch in the roof of our bus, which was in the bedroom, accessible. When we had our tripod mounted HughesNet satellite dish, we installed a custom roof mount on the bus for it, and I would boost Terry up onto the roof and she would deploy the dish. She got so good at it that many times we could be online with both the Internet and satellite TV in less than ten minutes from the time we opened the hatch.

Now, this did make for some interesting experiences. Once we were parked here in our favorite spot at Elkhart Campground and Terry’s foot was in my cupped hands and she bounced up and down, doing our standard “One, two, three, and up” routine. Once she was up on the roof, the fellow in the motorhome parked next to us said “I’m sure glad to see you! I thought I was going nuts. I kept seeing this head popping out of the roof of your bus and then disappearing!”

We replaced the satellite dish with a Verizon air card and Cradlepoint router, assisted by a Wilson Trucker antenna and Wilson amplifier from the 3G Store a couple of years ago. Once we took the satellite dish and mount off the roof, Terry never had a reason to crawl up there again, so we decided to close in the hatch.

The last few days she has been busy staining wood and sealing around the hatch. Today we put the finished wood up and it looks great! But by the time the job was completed, Terry was more than ready to call it a day.

While Terry was busy putting a last coat of stain on the wood, I made a quick run to the post office to mail out a couple of orders, then stopped at the Verizon store to tell them to cancel the VZ Navigator option on my Blackberry Storm. It’s neat to have a fully functioning GPS in my cell phone, but we already have a GPS, and I couldn’t justify the $10 extra a month for the feature.

Our friend Al Hesselbart, historian for the RV Hall of Fame Museum, has been promising to take us out to dinner ever since I accused him of being a cheapskate a year or so ago, but the timing never seemed to work out. So yesterday just about the time we were wrapping up the bus ceiling, Al called and suggested we drive up to Lunker’s, a neat sporting goods store in nearby Edwardsburg, Michigan for dinner. Lunker’s has an excellent restaurant called the Angler’s Inn, and our dinner was wonderful. Did you ever notice that food tastes just a little bit better when somebody else is picking up the check?

Back at the bus, we returned a couple of telephone calls, and I wrote this blog post, edited the new Todays Hero Blog post, and by then it was time to start thinking about bed.     

Thought For The Day – If you have to choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.

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Yesterday was the first vending day at The Rally, and while vendors in the past have told me they did gangbuster business at earlier events, so far I don’t think anyone here in Albuquerque is setting any sales records.

That may be partly due to the fact that the rally attendees are parked at the Balloon Fiesta Park, and all of the vendors and seminars are here at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds. Those two locations are thirteen miles apart, so the attendees have to stand in line to ride buses to the fairgrounds and then stand in line again to ride a bus back to their RV at the end of the day.

A lot of people seem to be very unhappy about that. Throw in the fact that yesterday we had a mixture of rain and snow all day and all evening, and the wait for the buses was over an hour, and it wasn’t a recipe for success. I heard several people say they were not buying anything because they didn’t want to carry it around with them all day long, and then have to hold it while they stood in line for the bus, and then try to figure out how to get it on the bus. I guess if you were buying a book or a pocket tool, it wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but it you bought something like a lawn chair or a TV dish, you’d really have a transportation problem. I told Terry a guy with a van could make a few bucks just delivering things from the vendors out to the buyers’ RVs at the Balloon Park.

I’m sure glad we’re parked here on the grounds. When the vendor area closed at 5 p.m. yesterday, the line waiting in the cold rain for the bus was over two blocks long! We had considered going to the Neil Sedaka concert last night, until we discovered that it was at the Balloon Park, and was being held in a tent! No way were we going to drive that far in the rain to sit in a tent in this weather! Instead we had dinner with Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour and Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum, returned to the bus, and spent the evening returning e-mail and listening to music from the iPod, played thorough our Bose SoundDock.

Even though we didn’t do much business yesterday, it was nice to be able to help out Al Hesselbart at the RV Hall of Fame Museum’s booth. Al did his seminar on The History of RVs during the morning, and we knew when he was finished, because we got slammed with people coming by the booth to pick up a museum brochure or for more information.

It was also nice to take a break from the booth and wander around checking out the vendors. I finally had the opportunity to met Alex from the 3G Store, where I purchased our Cradlepoint wireless router, Wilson antenna and Wilson amplifier for our internet connection back when we switched to a Verizon air card from our old HughesNet internet dish. Alex and I have exchanged e-mails for a long time, and he really helped me out when I had some technical problems a while back, so it was nice to put a face with a name. I also got to meet the president of 3G Store, Michael Ginsberg, and we spent quite a bit of time visiting. He showed me some new stuff coming down the technological highway that I think are really going to excite RVers once they hit the market.

Another person I was happy to finally meet was Lance Kropf, from Guaranty RV Super Center in Junction City, Oregon. Quite a few RVers I know have had good purchasing experiences when dealing with Lance and his company, and he’s a good buddy of my pal Mac McCoy, which gives him several extra stars next to his name in my book.

Speaking of Mac McCoy, somebody asked if I wasn’t afraid that Mac would be offended by the way I picked on him in yesterday’s blog. Heck no, Mac has a great sense of humor and loves to have fun, and anybody who is going to hang around me knows that they’re fair game. (Besides, if I don’t put pictures in a blog post, Mac doesn’t look at it anyway. Anything more than a two syllable word gives him a migraine.)

Thought For The Day – How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

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