I wrote in yesterday’s blog that a cold front was going to bring high winds to northern Arizona, and that our trip to Flagstaff to get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal was going to be interesting.

The wind started blowing hard about three a.m., and all night long it slammed into our Winnebago. At 9 a.m. it was looking pretty grim, and I had a bad feeling about the trip to Flagstaff. Experience has taught me that sometimes I need to listen to that inner voice that warns me of things, and I told Miss Terry that we were going to sit tight for a while and see how things went. There was no sense in endangering ourselves, or getting caught on Interstate 40 if the Highway Patrol closed it.

Throughout the morning, we had rain, sleet, hail, and wind gusts up to 55 miles per hour.  I called the newspaper in Flagstaff that does our printing, and the pressroom foreman said it was just as nasty there. Sure enough, just after noon, they closed Interstate 40 due to blowing dust and high winds, and the highway became a big parking lot the rest of the day. I’m sure glad we decided to wait it out!

About 4 p.m. the wind finally eased up, the sky started to clear a little bit, and I managed to take this picture of a rainbow over Juniper Ridge RV Resort.

A few minutes later and we had mostly blue sky and patchy clouds overhead.

The delay in picking up the paper won’t affect getting the new issue into the mail. We were supposed to stuff the envelopes and get them back to the mail service in Flagstaff Monday morning, and we can still meet that deadline. We’ll just have to push a little harder to get it done.

With our day’s travel plans changed, we just stayed home and relaxed. It was too cold and nasty to go anywhere anyway.  I worked on my family tree on Ancestry.com, adding some newspaper birth and death notices that I found searching Google.

I also spent some time reading online reviews and news stories about the new Apple iPad. I wasn’t too impressed with this new gadget when I first heard about it, wondering what it could do that my laptop computer can’t. But after playing with a couple of them in stores, my thinking has changed 180 degrees. The iPad isn’t a computer, and it isn’t an iPhone or an iPod Touch. It’s an entirely different creation, incorporating some of the features of all of the above, and I can see dozens of uses for it, from cruising the internet to reading e-books and online newspapers, as well as using it for a GPS, and on and on.

The first generation models are WiFi only, but the new 3G units will be in stores the end of the month, and I am going to take a long, hard look at one when they become available. Have any of you blog readers acquired an iPad yet? I’d be interested in hearing your impressions of it.

While I was goofing off, Miss Terry caught up on her paperwork for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally and ran a couple loads of laundry, then started a new crochet project. All in all, it was a quiet day inside our motorhome, while the storm raged outside.

Today, if the weather cooperates, we’re headed to Flagstaff.

Thought For The Day – Okay, who stopped the payment on my reality check?

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

We spent some time yesterday installing a wireless backup camera in my cousin Beverly’s car. Bev has some real problems with arthritis, and twisting around in the seat of her car to see behind her as she backed out of parking spaces was a real problem for her.

As with any project we undertake, Miss Terry did most of the work. She spent over 20 years running commercial glass shops, doing a lot of automotive work. So removing the plastic covering on the inside of Bev’s Trail Blazer so she could run the power wires for the camera was a piece of cake for Terry. One of the few things I know how to do is a little bit of electrical work, so I hooked up the wiring so the camera comes on when the car is put in reverse, and then we put everything back together.

The hardest part was attaching the camera to the license plate mount. Arizona has a new law saying you cannot cover the state name on a license plate with a frame or any other device, so we could not mount the camera through the two top bolts that hold the license plate in place. The two holes at the bottom of the plate led to rubber inserts in the tailgate, and it was a bear to get the screws to tighten up. Finally Miss Terry rummaged through her pile of goodies and came up with some vinyl inserts that would take the screws.

Not content to show off her mechanical skills, Terry cleaned up and then prepared a delicious homemade lasagna dinner. Yummy!

After Bev left, we needed to run to the store, and as I turned onto the Interstate 10 frontage road, I noticed a Highway Patrol car following close behind me. Then he flipped on his overhead lights. I knew I was not speeding, so I thought maybe I had a turn signal out or something.

Once I had pulled over, the officer walked up to Terry’s window, since there was no shoulder and I was in the right lane, in rush hour traffic. I asked what I had done wrong, and he told me my license plate sticker was expired, because it said 08 on it.

I was sure we had current registration, and mentioned that we are due to renew in August, the 8th month of the year. In South Dakota, where we are registered, the month you expire is printed in large numbers on your sticker, and the year is smaller and on the side of the sticker.

The officer took our registration, walked back to the rear of the van and confirmed that we have a valid sticker, then returned to say that yes, we were legal, but it sure wasn’t an “officer friendly” way to do things, and that he was going to write us a warning ticket to record the traffic stop. So I got a warning ticket for an “obscured license plate.” No fine or court action involved, just a warning. Hey, warn the folks in Pierre! I didn’t design the van’s sticker, I just drive the darned thing!

I had a similar incident several years ago, when we used the Escapees in Livingston, Texas as our home address. In Texas, the registration sticker goes in the bottom left corner of your windshield.

We were visiting Terry’s grandkids in Wyoming when a policeman pulled me over because I didn’t have a sticker on my license plate. I showed him the sticker on my windshield, and he insisted that it belonged on the license plate. The Texas sticker is large than a wallet sized photograph and would cover a good portion of the license plate. I happened to have the paperwork that came with our registration in the glove box, including the instructions to “display in lower left corner of windshield.”

The officer read that, then called his supervisor, who arrived with another officer. The sergeant actually had the dispatcher call someone in Texas to confirm that I had the sticker in the correct place. Finally they handed my drivers license back to me, told me “your state has a dumb way of doing things” and sent me on my way. Your tax dollars at work.

I appreciate everybody who visited my new Todays Hero Blog and sent e-mails saying how much you enjoy it. I hope you’ll become regular readers, and share some of your heroes with the rest of us.

Thought For The Day - There is no achievement without goals.