The old saying “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” dates back to the story of the Trojan Horse, when the Greeks besieged the city of Troy during the Trojan War. According to legend, after a long siege, the Greeks built a huge wooden horse, and concealed a small force of their best soldiers inside. Then they boarded their ships and sailed away.

The besieged Trojans thought that they had outlasted their enemies, and opened the gates to the city and pulled the horse inside as a victory trophy. That night, after the Trojans all went to sleep, the Greeks hidden inside the horse force crept out and opened the city gates to the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back, under cover of night. The Greek army entered and seized the city of Troy, ending the war.

The purpose of this history lesson is to tell you that while you might want to avoid Greeks bearing gifts, Geeks bearing gifts are something else altogether!

Yesterday evening Jim and Chris Guld, from Geeks on Tour, showed up at our door with grilled lobsters that Jim had caught while scuba diving just off the beach, here in Fort Lauderdale. Those things were huge!

Jim and Chris supplied the main entree, and Miss Terry filled out the menu with wild rice pilaf, stir fried mixed vegetables, and fresh sliced Heirloom tomatoes. Everything was delicious, and I guarantee you nobody went hungry!

After dinner we sat around visiting for a couple of hours, and Chris showed me a trick or two with G-mail, Windows Live Writer, and Microsoft Streets & Trips. And, of course, we swapped a lie or two, and solved a good number of the world’s problems in the process.

It’s been wonderful having this one on one (or actually two on two) time with Jim and Chris, away from all of the hustle and bustle of an RV rally. Thanks for all your time, help, and especially your friendship, Jim and Chris! It’s been a lot of fun!

Since the weather is supposed to cool back down next week, we have scrubbed our original plans to go to the Keys, and instead, today we’re leaving Fort Lauderdale and are traveling to the Peace River NACO preserve in Wauchula, Florida.

We’ll hang out there until we get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal back from the printer and mailed off, and hopefully we’ll get in some kayaking on the Peace River, if the weather cooperates during our stay.

We’ve only got a few weeks left in Florida before we have to start west to get ready for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma March 7-11. During that time, we want to get back to Pinellas Park for a family gathering, and we’d love to spend a few days around Crystal River, and maybe at Cedar Key, if we can.

Bad Nick has been busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Blame Your Parents, Not Us. check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you have changed.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Our Gypsy Gathering rally ended yesterday, and in spite of morning rain and afternoon wind, RVs departed the Mercer County Fairgrounds here in Celina, Ohio headed in every direction. The greatest majority of them are headed south.

That’s right, it’s time for the annual snowbird migration. Over the next few weeks, every highway in the United States will be carrying RVers away from the snow and cold weather that will descend on the northern portion of the country in the months ahead.

Some will be headed to Florida, others the Texas Gulf Coast or the Rio Grande Valley, while others will spend their winter in Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California.

Many RVers have a favorite campground they return to every year to spend the winter among friends, while others (Terry and I included), prefer to wander around from place to place during the winter months, stopping here and there for a few days or weeks at a time.

Our current plans (which are always chiseled in Jell-o) call for us to start the winter in Florida, where we will spend some time in Key West, and the rest just aimlessly exploring. I’m sure we’ll show up at the Escapees Sumter Oaks campground near Bushnell, and the Thousand Trails Peace River preserve in Wauchula. Our pals Jim and Chris Guld say this is one of their favorite kayaking places. We spent three weeks in Crystal River a few years ago, and may go back and see if we can spot a manatee or two.

When we leave Florida, we’d like to stop at the Escapees Plantation RV park in Summerdale, Alabama. We have always enjoyed the Alabama Gulf Coast, and we’re ready for a return visit.

We have to be in Yuma, Arizona for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in March, so we’ll probably start heading west in late January or early February to give us plenty of time to get there without being rushed, and to have some time to spend with our family there before we get too wrapped up in rally activities.

So where do you plan to spend the winter? Are you a snowbird who goes to one place and stays put, or do you flitter about like Terry and I do?

Speaking of our rallies, we have some news to share on that front. We have set the date and location for our 2010 Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. It will be August 30 to September 2 at Elkhart Campground, in Elkhart, Indiana.

We chose these dates and location for a couple of reasons. One frequent comment on our rally feedback forms is that many attendees want full hookups with either 30 or 50 amp electricity. At Elkhart Campground we will have both partial and full hookup sites, with attendees’ choice of 30 or 50 amp power available.  This will also place rally attendees and vendors in the area in time for the Escapees Escapade rally in Goshen, Indiana two weeks later.

We have also made a change in our vendor policy for future rallies. In the past we have limited vendors to only one vendor per type of product at each rally, but starting with Yuma, we will be allowing competing vendors to register, as long as they are not selling the same name brand products.

For example, if a vendor is selling Brand A dry wash products, we will also admit a vendor selling Brand B dry wash products. This has been a frequent demand by rally attendees to give them more shopping options, and after talking to the vendors at this rally, they say they think it’s a good policy change. We do too.

Thought For The Day – I’m a walking storeroom of facts, I’ve just lost the key to the door!

I was listening to one of comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s segments on Blue Collar Radio on Sirius yesterday, and he said comedians don’t have to make up jokes, all they have to do is look around them and write down what they see. I agree completely.  

We have seen so much insanity and nonsense just going about our day that it would make great stand up material. And what we don’t see, our readers share with us.

Take, for example, this photo I received yesterday from Gypsy Journal readers Dennis and Donna Miller. They spotted this while vending at the Iowa State Fair. Now, that’s Redneck Engineering if I ever saw it.

Or how about this one, taken in Michigan? How do people come up with stuff like this? Why do people come up with stuff like this? Wouldn’t you like to be parked next to them at your favorite campground?

Compared to those two examples, this homemade VW camper looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

I think the bus conversion crowd, of which we were a part for many years, has some of the finest (or worst) examples of ingenuity I have ever seen. While there are many, many well planned and well built bus conversions out there, we have seen some that left us scratching our heads and saying “huh?”

One such rig that comes to mind was a fellow with an MCI 8 like ours that we ran into at Elkhart Campground. He couldn’t wait to show me his water tank system. Instead of installing his fresh water tank in his rear bay, like 99.9% of bus converters do, he had mounted a group of large diameter PVC pipes, capped on each end, on the roof of his bus. He had them plumbed together and a green garden hose going down the side of his bus and into a hole he had drilled in the side.

He explained that this way, he didn’t have to buy a fresh water tank, he had more bay space available, and it was gravity fed, so he didn’t have to buy a water pump. And because he had painted the tubes black, they absorbed the sun’s heat, and he didn’t need a water heater! Sure, he had to crawl up a ladder with a hose to fill his “tanks,” and sure he was a little top heavy, but think of the money he saved!

We have also gotten some laughs at the way people handle walking their dogs in RV parks. In Crystal River, Florida, we saw a gentleman who had trained his dog not to go potty until he put a paper towel under its rear end. Once he did, the dog squatted, did its business, and the man picked up the towel by the corners and deposited it in the trash.

Another fellow carried a wooden pole with a small shovel looking device on it, and his dog was trained to deposit only onto the shovel blade, making cleanup quick and easy. Well, except for that crappy shovel he had to stick in his RV’s bay.

What dog obedience school did these folks take their pets to? It’s only been in the last year or so that Miss Terry taught me to go inside when nature calls, instead of heading for the nearest tree. I’m glad she did, because we were in the desert at the time, and the nearest tree was 150 miles away!

Thought For The Day – If the shoe fits……buy it in every color.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally