Please be careful where you walk, because my butt’s dragging and I don’t want you to step on it! And our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally doesn’t even officially start until today!

Yesterday was the early vendor set-up day, and my friend Mike Loscher and myself were over in the big building a little after 9 a.m., getting a couple of final details wrapped up, before we opened the doors and let the vendors in to start getting their booths ready for the rally.

It’s great to see so many of our vendor friends here for the rally. We’ve worked alongside many of them for years while operating our own vendor booth at RV rallies coast to coast, so we understand what vendors need, and try very hard to provide it for them at our events.

Here is our pal Daryl Lawrence from Lawrence RV Accessories. Daryl has a brand new item, the Tire Traker Tire Pressure Monitoring System, as well as the excellent Progressive Industries Electrical Management Systems, which we have used for years, both in our MCI bus conversion, and now in our Winnebago diesel pusher.

You can see all kinds of goodies at an RV rally, from safety items like the automatic engine bay fire suppression systems that my pal Mac McCoy sells, to camping chairs and other goodies to make your RV travels more fun and more comfortable.

Flags Galore is offering every kind of flag you could ever want to find, in every size imaginable.

Dwane and Janet Trannum from Almost Heaven Micro Fibre spent most of the day hauling their inventory in and stocking their booth. I sure hope they sell a lot, because I don’t want to have to help them carry it back out to their van!

John and Karen Knoll stopped by the RVSEF weighing site here at Elkhart Campground to have Rick Lang weigh their truck and fifth wheel before they parked on their assigned RV site for the rally.

By the end of the day, everybody had worked hard, and most of the vendors were set up and ready to go. I locked the building up about 5 p.m., and then Dennis Haddix from Makarios RV and his pretty wife (whose name escapes me, I’m afraid) pulled in. They had the bed of their Itasca motorhome covered with inventory for their booth, so I opened the building back up long enough for them to unload enough that they could get through the night. Dennis is also the founder of ChatRV.com, a relatively new online forum for the RV community.

Of course, no RV rally has officially started until Red and Beth from Too Crazy Ladies have their booth set up and open for business!

Today is the official registration day, and Miss Terry and her crew of hardworking volunteers will be busy getting everybody checked in, passing out name badges, and answering questions.

One nice thing about having the rally at a campground instead of a fairgrounds is that we don’t have to have a parking crew. The folks just stop at the RV park office and check in, and Bob and Gita send them to their RV site.

When we were visiting with campground owners Bob and Gita Patel late yesterday afternoon, I think they were feeling a bit overwhelmed, but also delighted. They said that this rally will be the first time in all of the years that they have owned Elkhart Campground that they will be completely full! That should help their bottom line a little bit!

Thought For The Day – Count your life by smiles, not tears. Count your age by friends, not years.

Did you ever have one of those days where you remember waking up and getting out of bed, and the next thing you know, you’re falling asleep and wondering where the day went? That sums up yesterday for me.

Josh Leach, from Bradd & Hall,  was knocking on our door before we were up yesterday morning, having come by to drop off some company brochures and a check to cover their sponsorship of Tuesday morning’s coffee and donuts at our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. We jumped into some clothes and visited with Josh for a while, and by the time he left, somebody else was here asking about the rally schedule.

From there, the day was just a blur of fielding telephone calls, answering e-mails, greeting folks who arrived early at Elkhart Campground for the rally, and getting last minute chores done. Red and Beth from Too Crazy Ladies arrived in the late morning, and I spent some time helping them select a site for their motorhome and vending trailer.

About the time I was finished with that, a potential vendor showed up asking if we had any indoor booths left. I told him no, but that we could get him into an outdoor space, which he declined. A short time later, one of our vendors who had reserved a double booth came by to tell us that due to a medical issue, he had to cancel at the last minute. I sure wish I had known that an hour earlier, when I turned away the other vendor

Our close friends, and stalwart rally volunteers, Mike and Elaine Loscher arrived and got settled in, and we had a nice little visit with them in our Winnebago. Then Terry and I took off to get some things done away from the campground, including picking up the rally T-shirts from the screen printer, stopping at the bank, post office, and to fill our van’s gas tank.

Then we went by Heartland Recreational Vehicles to pick up brochures to distribute at the rally. Heartland has also agreed to be a sponsor for our coffee and donuts, on Wednesday morning. For those who are staying on at Elkhart Campground after the rally, rather than traveling on the busy Labor Day weekend, Heartland is holding a special factory tour just for our rally attendees, at 10:30 a.m. on Friday morning. It will be a great opportunity to see how the fastest growing RV company in the industry does things.

Back at the campground, a large crowd had gathered for a happy hour under the tent we rented for the rally. The crowd included several folks who are staying in Goshen working on the upcoming Escapees RV Club Escapade rally, and included Escapees head honchos Bud and Cathie Carr. We had dinner plans, but we told everybody to have fun, and they seemed to have a pretty good handle on doing just that.

Terry and I, Greg White, Mike and Elaine Loscher, and Stu and Donna McNichol had a nice dinner at North Garden Chinese Buffet, and a lot of fun joking around and enjoying the company of good friends. If there has ever been any encounter of three or more fulltime RVers that did not include food, I’ve never heard about it!

By the time we got back from dinner, visited with our friends Russ and Debbie Davis, who had arrived while we were out and were parked right behind us in their beautiful truck conversion, talked to a few other people, and Miss Terry got her bike ride and walk around the campground done, it was getting late. I wrote my blog and it was bedtime. Where did the day go?

I may not know where the day went, but Bad Nick spent part of it writing a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Stuck In The Dark Ages. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – If you are traveling just for the fun of it, how can you be late getting anywhere?

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

There are already a lot of folks here at Elkhart Campground for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, and with the rally just a few days away, more are rolling in every day.

Wednesday afternoon, our good friends Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour arrived, having just driven across the country from Redmond, Oregon to get here. I was so happy to see them that I forgot myself for a moment or two, and actually scratched their French poodle, Odie, behind the ears.

Jim and Chris are presenting nine seminars at the rally, including Managing Digital Photos With Picassa, GPS Navigation & Trip Planning, Google Earth, E-Mail Issues On The Road, Every RVer Needs A Blog, Blogging – Beyond The Basics, Picassa – Beyond The Basics, Internet Love Story – Living & Working On The Road, and Internet Connections On The Road. That’s a lot of information to be shared. Jim and Chris have a tremendous following, and their seminars are always packed.

Then, yesterday evening two of our favorite people in the world, Stu and (Froggi) Donna McNichol, pulled in next to our Winnebago. We’ve known Donna for a long time, ever since she was one of our students at Life on Wheels, and we got to meet Stu at our Western rally in Yuma, Arizona in March. We instantly felt a bond with Stu, and we enjoyed our time together there. I have kept up with their blog, 2 Taking A 5th, just to see what new adventures they have had.

Another couple we have known a long time, Joe and Marcia Jones, also arrived a couple of days ago. We haven’t had time to tour their beautiful new to them Kountry Star diesel pusher, though we have seen plenty of pictures in their Chasing the 70s blog.

There are so many other folks here that I can’t remember everybody’s names, but it sure is great to see everybody.

Yesterday, I made what I hope are the final changes to the rally seminar schedule. Since we ran out of rooms, some of the seminars will be in the big tent we rented, and hopefully that will work out okay for everybody. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

While I was busy with that, Miss Terry went to Office Max to pick up the name tag blanks for the rally, then to Sam’s Club and WalMart to buy the coffee, hot chocolate mix, tea, sweetener, creamer, Styrofoam cups, and everything else we’ll need for the morning coffee and donuts at the rally.

It costs us over $1,000 for the coffee and donuts, cups, etc that we go through at a four day RV rally, so we were delighted when we got a message yesterday that the nice folks at Bradd & Hall furniture here in Elkhart wanted to sponsor them for one of the rally days, to help offset our costs. How cool is that? Bradd & Hall is a major retailer of RV furniture, and last summer when we visited their showroom, we found some great deals on chairs, sofas, and tables.  They also have RV flooring, day/night shades, and other goodies for your motorhome, bus conversion, fifth wheel, or travel trailer.

We’re getting down to the wire now, and there is still a lot to do before the rally starts. But we’ve got a lot done already, and a lot of folks here who are ready, willing, and able to pitch in for whatever needs done.

Thought For The Day – Don’t worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

The folks from Grand Rental Station were supposed to be at Elkhart Campground about 10 a.m. yesterday morning to set up the tent we rented for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. But at a little before 10, I looked across the campground and realized that there was a big tent where there hadn’t been one the night before!

I was disappointed, because I wanted to get some pictures of the process, but not to worry, my buddy Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School was there with his camera, and recorded the event for posterity.

The first step was to lay out the 50×70 foot tent. It covers the campground’s whole basketball court!

Then they set up the side posts and staked them down. The stakes go 42 inches into the ground, because if a strong wind were to come along, they don’t want the tent flying away to Toledo.

They used this nifty machine to raise the two tall center poles.

Dennis said the crew obviously had a lot of experience, because everybody knew what to do and when, and the tent went up like clockwork.

And here is the tent, all set up and ready for our rally to begin. We really appreciate the great service from Nate and the rest of the crew at  Grand Rental Station. They are real professionals.

Of course, no job like this can take place without a lot of sideline quarterbacks making sure every detail is handled just right. Fortunately, we have a lot of guys here who were willing to volunteer for that duty.

The ladies, on the other hand, preferred to spend their time line dancing. I’m not sure which group had more fun.

Speaking of having fun, the people who are already here at the campground waiting for the rally to start have been practicing hard, and they seem to have that down to a science.

Here’s my pal Frank Hinman, cooking burgers to feed the hungry masses. Frank never offered me a burger. I think either he or Dennis Hill ate mine for me because I was busy. Thanks for the help, guys.

Not everybody is a party animal. My dear friend Nancy Hazelton makes adaptive clothing for wounded service members, as part of a non-profit program called Sew Much Comfort.

With approximately 40 wounded servicemen and women returning to the United States each week, there is a real need for clothing that will accommodate patients’ medical devices, such as prosthetics, braces and casts, or for those suffering burns and nerve damage. A lot of the clothing has Velcro seams to make it easier for these brave men and women to dress, or to allow room for their special needs.

Each month, Sew Much Comfort distributes over 1,200 clothing items and comfort accessories to combat medical units, hospital wards, VA clinics, wounded warrior barracks, and military medical facilities in the United States and abroad. Without the special clothing that people like Nancy create, many of our wounded troops would have only standard hospital gowns as their only clothing.

Nancy knows all about the needs of our country’s active duty military personnel and veterans.  Before she retired and ran away to became an RV gypsy, Nancy was my Primary Care Provider at the Veterans Administration hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. She is married to a Vietnam veteran, and her two sons, David and Daniel, are both officers in the United States Army. Nancy may be retired, but she continues to serve our nation’s war veterans. Those are just some of the reasons I love and respect this special lady so much.

If you want to help with this wonderful program, either through a donation, or by helping to sew clothing for our vets, log onto the Sew Much Comfort website to learn more.

Thought For The Day – Remember the three R’s: Respect for self, Respect for others, and Responsibility for your actions.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

Yesterday was a “fix-it” day. I had a couple of things that needed done around the motorhome, and with only a few days left before the Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally starts, it seemed liked a good day to get them out of the way.

So, I stood back and let  Mr. Fix-It, aka/Greg White, do his thing. What, you expected me to pick up a tool? Are you nuts? Do you have any idea how much havoc I can wreak with something as simple as a Phillips screwdriver, or a crescent wrench? Before I’m allowed to even walk past something like a Dremel Tool or an electric pencil sharpener, we have to file three dozen different forms with the government, a couple of insurance companies, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The first order of business was to fix the brake lights and turn signals on the van, which work fine except when hooked up to the motorhome while we’re towing.Then they weren’t working at all.  Greg said we needed to start at the source, the motorhome, and work our way back toward the van. Since my total involvement in this project was basically saying “Uh huh” and nodding like I knew what was going on, I said “Uh huh” and nodded, just like I knew what was going on.

Fortunately, Greg did know what was going on, and he discovered that a couple of wires had come loose inside the plug that fits into a receptacle on the bumper of the van. The whole plug looked pretty funky, so we (Greg) decided to get a new one.

After a quick trip to a nearby trailer supply shop and the purchase of  a new plug,  we (Greg) discovered that wasn’t the only problem. There was still no power at the plug. After some testing and some head scratching, we (Greg) decided that the actual converter box, which feeds the signal from the Winnebago’s wiring to the van, was also bad. We (Greg) think that the loose wires in the plug caused some kind of short that fried the converter box. It was too late in the day to get another box, so we (Greg) will finish that job today.

But we (Greg) weren’t done yet! A few days ago we (Miss Terry and I) bought a new Winegard Wingman TV antenna upgrade to go on the crank-up batwing antenna on our roof for better digital signal reception. So we (Greg) climbed up on the roof of the motorhome and installed it. “We” sure had a busy day!

But “we’re” not done yet! Today “we” will get the new tail light converter box and we (Greg) will get that job finished.

A couple of months ago, the original television that came with our motorhome died, and we (Miss Terry and I), bought a new Samsung LED model to replace it. We like the new high definition TV, but there was a problem. Late last year we (Miss Terry and our pal Mark Didelot) installed a digital converter box in the motorhome, to pick up local TV stations with our crank-up  batwing antenna. This was necessary because after all “air” broadcasts went digital, our old TV could not pick up their programming without the converter box.

Now that box isn’t needed, and may be causing problems getting the digital signals over the air from local stations. So we (Greg) will take it out.

I sure hope all this gets done without any hassle, because we (me) needs a nap after just reading all of this! 

Thought For The Day – Why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot them?

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!