Life gets in the way while you’re making other plans. We had originally planned on being vendors at the FMCA rally in Albert Lea, Minnesota next week, but decided against that and came over to Indiana to take part in the Heartland Owners Rally at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds in Goshen today and tomorrow. As it turns out, we’ll miss that event too.

Terry is on her fourth day of antibiotics, but still feeling bad, and Wednesday night it hit me hard too. I woke up feeling like I had been rode hard and put away wet.

I went to see the same nurse practioneer Terry did on Monday, and she said no, it’s not the flu after all, just colds that have turned into really bad sinus, ear, and upper respiratory infections. So now we’re both on a diet of antibiotics and other meds.

I called Jim Beletti, head honcho at the Heartland Rally and expressed our regrets, but told him we are going to skip the rally. We are just not up to vending for eight or nine hours a day and we don’t want to run the risk of making everyone else at the rally sick just to sell some books and subscriptions. We dropped off some door prizes and a few bundles of sample copies of the Gypsy Journal, and hopefully folks will pick them up and read them, which could result in an order or two.

When we stopped at Wally World to get one of my prescriptions filled, we were disappointed to see two RVs, a fifth wheel and a big diesel pusher, with their jacks down on the pavement and the slide room out on the motorhome. We were even more disappointed to see Escapees RV Club stickers on both rigs. It was just after 5 p.m. and the people from the motorhome were crawling into a car to drive away as we saw them.

Folks, this kind of thing does more to hurt us being welcome to park on private business parking lots, and to make us look bad in the eyes of the public, than a lot of RV park owners complaining to city councils that we are taking money out of their pockets. In fact, it gives those same RV park owners more ammunition to use against us. If you are not familiar with the Escapees’ Good Neighbor Policy on overnight parking, check it out at the link provided. It is up to all of us to be good guests so we will be welcomed back again. 

Thought For The Day – Nothing’s impossible for those who don’t have to do it.

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Escapade is over, and are we tired! Standing around in a vending booth for eight hours a day may not seem like hard work, but believe me, it takes its toll. Poor Miss Terry has it much worse than me, because she gets stuck in the booth most of the time while I’m off visiting with the other vendors, trying to drum up advertising business and support for our own Gypsy Gathering rallies.

In terms of sales, this was our absolute worst Escapade ever. We had better sales at our very first Escapade, back when nobody knew us and the only things we had to sell were our Guide to Free Campgrounds and subscriptions to the Gypsy Journal.

Most of the other vendors I talked to were also reporting dismal sales. Part of that no doubt is because of the economy, but a lot had to do with the terrible weather and the fact that attendees were parked a long distance from the vendor building and had to either wade through the mud to get here, or wait for the open golf carts or the handful of minivans they were using for shuttle trams.

Having put on quite a few rallies ourselves, we know that you can’t control the weather, but everyone seemed to agree that the logistics of getting people transported around the fairgrounds could have been handled better.

I think the only folks who made any real money at this Escapade were the local tow truck drivers, who have been busy for three days pulling people out of the mud. Our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel came over for a couple of days from St. Francois State Park, where they have been hosting, and once we closed our vendor booth down yesterday, we drove around watching the action. It took a while to get this beautiful Allegro Phaeton out of its parking place, but the tow truck driver really knew his business, and he got the job done, then moved on to the next stuck rig.

Even though the Escapade was a bust financially, we did have a great time seeing so many friends we have not crossed paths with in a long time. RVers love to eat, and we had dinner out every night with one group of friends or another. I think I put on at least five extra pounds this past week!

From here, we had planned to go to Albert Lea, Minnesota for an FMCA rally. But, after looking at the forecast attendance numbers, and knowing how poorly past FMCA area rallies have been for us, we have decided that driving several hundred miles north and spending several hundred dollars to hopefully break even just doesn’t make sense. So instead we are going to wander over toward Mark Twain Lake, near Hannibal, Missouri for a while, and then head further east to vend at the Heartland Owners Rally in Goshen, Indiana in early June. By the time we get that rally behind us, we’ll be ready to get the next issue of the Gypsy Journal printed and mailed out.

Thought For The Day – Borrow money from pessimists – they don’t expect it back.

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I spent most of yesterday setting up my new computer, loading all of the programs I use into it, and transferring projects I had been working on from my laptop to the new desktop unit.

Even though the laptop and the desktop are both Dell computers using Windows XP, there were still enough things that were different that it took me a while to get things set up optimally for my use. It’s nice to have a full size computer to work on again.

While I was doing all of that, Miss Terry was sorting through cabinets and cubbyholes, doing some Spring cleaning and deciding what to keep and what to pitch. Even after ten years on the road fulltime, we still find things we’ve been carrying for years and have not used.

Sometime in the evening I started sniveling about being famished (and trust me, when it comes to food, I can out-snivel the best of them!). So Terry made a delicious dinner of fried chicken with a crispy coating that just melted my the mouth. It was so good that I ate until it hurt, and I still wanted more.

A couple of days ago I wrote in a blog post that Terry and I were recognized with the honor of bringing in more new members to the Escapees RV Club than anyone else. In our mail this week, we had a note from Escapees Executive Director Angie Carr telling us that two more members have joined on our referral. We’re pretty proud of that.

As I’ve written before, our travel plans are always set in jello. This summer we had planned to explore the Pacific Northwest, but now we’re looking at another plan. We want to try to put some money away to either upgrade our bus or buy a newer rig, and by aggressively working some rallies, hopefully we can do that.

We think we’ll go to Escapade in Sedalia, Missouri in May instead, and then work several RV rallies in the Midwest and East this summer.

Of course, as you well know, anything can change at a moment’s notice. But right now we’re looking at the FMCA Midwest Area Rally in Albert Lea, Minnesota in June, the FMCA International Convention in Bowling Green, Ohio in July, and the FMCA Northeast Area Rally in Essex Junction, Vermont in August. I’m also scheduled to teach at the new RVSEF RV Lifestyle, Education, & Safety Clinic in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in mid-September. Then we’ll be in Celina, Ohio for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally September 28 to October 2. And who knows, we may find a rally or two along the way to pop into.

What was that I said about slowing down? I think that was just a campaign promise.

We have been talking about getting a vendor spot at The Rally, Affinity’s big event, which will be in Albuquerque in April. But between the cost of the booth and the fee for RV parking, we’re looking at an investment of over $1,000 for the rally. We’d have to sell an awful lot of subscriptions and books to make any money at that rate.

Thought For The Day - The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is to decide what you want.

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