When we got up yesterday morning it was 12 degrees in Elkhart, Indiana! That’s to damned cold for any sane person to be living in, which apparently explains why my pal Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum is spending the winter there. 

But, at least the wind had died down, the sky was clear, and they got the repaired driver’s seat reinstalled. With even colder temperatures on the way, Terry and I decided to make our escape while we could. We settled up with Duncan RV Repair, hooked our van to the back of the Winnebago and pulled out about 11:30 a.m.

When I first plug in our PressurePro tire monitoring system, we get a warning signal if the tire pressures are low, which they will be after a cool night. But we had been in very cold weather for days now, and it took forever for the tires to warm up enough for the warning alarm to stop beeping. Terry scanned all of our tires pressures to be sure they were okay and we kept on rolling. Nothing short of a wheel falling off the rig was going to make me stay one minute longer.

We retraced our route south on U. S. Highway 31 to Indianapolis from a week earlier, picked up the I-465 bypass to the east, and got off on Interstate 74 eastbound. For the first 75 miles or so we had some snow blowing across the highway, but the roads were pretty dry overall. There were a few wind gusts that caught us by surprise, but nothing so bad as to be dangerous.

We entered Ohio for a few short miles, and then took the I-275 loop around Cincinnati, veering back into Indiana for a short stretch before we crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky.

Our Ultimate Advantage has a digital thermometer on the dashboard that measures outside temperature, and as it climbed from 12 degrees in Elkhart up to 18 in Indianapolis, and then 28 degrees as we drove south on Interstate 75 in Kentucky, I told Miss Terry we were having a heat wave. The temperature had risen by over 100% in just a few hours!

We stopped at the Flying J in Walton, Kentucky, and got another scare as some idiot in a small car went flying out of the parking lot as we were pulling in, driving up on the curb with two wheels to get past us, with inches to spare.

While I was filling our fuel tank, I saw an older couple with an Allegro Bus who were having problems trying to dump their holding tank. The man apparently has some physical problems, so his wife was bent over fighting something inside the sewer bay. I asked if I could help, and discovered that the plastic access hole cover in the bottom of the bay had been wet when last screwed in and was now frozen in place.

Since the configuration of the bay was such that the sewer hose had to come up from the bottom to attach, there was no way the lady could hook up her hose. I got a large screwdriver and a hammer out of our toolbox, and after several hard whacks on the end of the screwdriver was able to free the cover. Then the hose was too cold and stiff to want to stretch enough to reach the dump station, so I helped them with that and held it in place until the husband could get his foot on the end of the hose to secure it. My good deed for the day done, I finished filling our tank, shivered my way back into the motorhome, and off we went.

We pulled into Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington about 5:30, just as the sun’s last light was disappearing from the sky. Every year they decorate the Horse Park for the Southern Lights Christmas display, and it is pretty impressive. But not so impressive that I want to stay any longer. Its a few degrees warmer than Elkhart, but still way too cold. I have some medical stuff to deal with at the VA hospital this morning, and we hope to be back on the road quickly. I know that somewhere there is a palm tree with my name on it, and I’m gonna find that darn thing even if it kills me! 

Thought For The Day – A short pencil is better than a long memory.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

If you don’t like the weather in the Midwest, wait ten minutes and it will probably change. A few days ago I was complaining in the blog that it looked and felt like winter, and yesterday it was so hot and humid, it felt like we were in the Amazon.

Finally, the new issue of the Gypsy Journal is finished and today we’ll drive up to Michigan and drop it off at the printer. It feels good to get that out of the way.

Of course, while my work is out of the way, Terry’s will start once we pick up the finished papers from the printer in a few days. Then she’ll go into high gear getting thousands of envelopes stuffed and ready to mail out. Each envelope has a distinctive bar code, and if even one of them gets out of order, everything comes to a screeching halt when they reach the post office, so Terry has her own method of doing the job and will not allow me or anyone else to help her. Each time she has, it has taken longer to get things sorted out again than if she did it herself.

Her job will be a little bit easier this time, because quite a few readers have switched over to our new digital edition, so she’s got 100 or so less envelopes to deal with. Once the printer approves the job and lets us know it’s good to go, I’ll be uploading the new issue, and sending out an e-mail with a link and password to our digital subscribers. I’m a bit nervous, just because this is the first time we will officially do the digital edition, but I think it will be okay, and I have Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour, my technical wizard, on speed dial.

Today is Miss Terry’s birthday, and once we get the paper to the printer, we plan to drive over to Muskegon and visit with Berni and Rocky Frees. We’ll take Terry out for a nice dinner, and probably go back to Berni and Rocky’s place for a rousing game of Mexican Train. Happy birthday, Terry! You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, baby, and I love you more every day.

Yesterday afternoon, Richard and Patsy King arrived at Elkhart Campground in their beautiful Allegro Bus. Richard has helped us with parking RVs at our Arizona rally the last three years, and Patsy, his long suffering wife, is always a joy to be around.

Richard’s mother, Dorothy King, is with them on this trip. Dorothy will be 91 years young in September, and is an absolutely beautiful lady. She still lives on her own, and while she’s entertaining the kids by playing gypsy right now, she can’t wait to get home to Victoria, Texas because she is missing her weekly bingo game with her cronies. Richard took a picture of Miss Terry and me with Dorothy, and I sure look happy with those two pretty ladies, don’t I? I hope I’m half as spry as Dorothy is when I’m her age. Heck, I wish I was that spry now!

Thought For The Day – Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally