We picked up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal Wednesday, and Miss Terry has been busy stuffing envelopes to get everything ready to go in the mail.

We’re excited because this is our 10^th Anniversary Issue. Where did the time go? And we’re just getting started, there is still so much we want to see and do. We won’t be hanging up the keys anytime soon.

One thing we do hope to do soon, though, is to replace our bus with a different rig. The bus has been a great home on wheels for us for eight years, but we’re to the point where we’d like something a bit newer, and with a slide or two. As our granddaughters get older, it’s getting pretty cramped in here when they come to visit us.

The bus would make a great coach for someone who doesn’t put on the miles we do every year, or who spends most of their time east of the Rocky Mountains. In fairly flat country it runs fine, but out here in the mountains, it slows way down on some of the steep grades. If you’re interested in a nice older bus, check out the ad link for it under this Bus For Sale link.

We’ve looked at several replacement coaches, and we have a couple of options we’re considering. One coach we have not actually seen yet is an American Dream diesel pusher. I really don’t like anything to do with Fleetwood products, but my pal Mac McCoy from Fire and Life Safety has an American Tradition, and he tells me that the American Coach line is a completely different animal than other Fleetwood models. Who else out here has an American Coach? I’d like to hear your feedback.

Whatever coach we eventually end up with, we know that we’ll have to do some customizing to accommodate operating our business on the road. One place we’ll be checking out is a company in Decatur, Indiana called From Trees to These, which makes custom cabinetry and desk units for RVs. Mac McCoy has had them do some upgrades to his coach, and I’m really impressed with the quality of their work.

Something that comes up frequently when talking to wannabe fulltimers is what to do with everything they can’t take with them. Someone on the Escapees forum was commenting that he can’t get nearly what he paid for some of this stuff, and is wondering how best to sell it.

When we were selling our stuff off years ago to go fulltime, we took the position that yes, we paid $400 for something, and all we can get for it is $150. But we had the fun of using it, and that counts for something. Whatever else we lost was the price of buying our freedom to hit the road.

I talked to Walter Cannon from the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF), and he says things are coming together very well for their new  RV Lifestyle, Education, & Safety Clinic, which is scheduled for September 13-16 in Harrisburg Pennsylvania. If you regret never making it to a Life on Wheels conference, make your plans now to be in Harrisburg for this new educational opportunity

Thought For The Day – Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

So what do you do if you run a company that supports the RV industry, and most of your customers go out of business?

If that company is Decorator Industries, of Elkhart, Indiana, you put on your thinking cap and come up with a way to keep your employees working. Decorator Industries was a major supplier of window coverings to RV manufacturers, and with that business disappearing, the company has come up with a neat line of bags and totes made from leftover material, and is keeping at least some of their employees working, hopefully until things turn around. You can read more about this story at my friend Jaimie Hall’s blog post on it titled Out of the RV Ashes on the RV Home Yet? blog.

I think this is a great idea. We spend a lot of time in the Elkhart area, and our hearts ache for the many great folks there who have lost their jobs. I heard from Al Hesselbart at the RV Hall of Fame Museum in Elkhart a while back, and their attendance numbers are way down. If you’re headed through the Midwest, be sure to stop at the museum and see their wonderful collection of antique RVs. The museum is just off the Indiana Toll Road (Interstates 80/90) at Exit 96, and they have plenty of room for RVs to park. It’s a stop that should be on everybody’s bucket list.

Well, we have solved the problem of the Mysterious Wet Spot. The day after I reported on the problem, Miss Terry was working at her computer and looked down to see a trickle of water running from the bottom of our refrigerator in the direction of the rug that got wet.

The RV site we are parked in slopes downward at the front, and we’re not sitting level. It seems that when the refrigerator went into defrost mode, some water escaped and ran across the floor. By morning, when we discovered the wet rug, the trail of water had evaporated between the refrigerator and the rug, but left the previously reported on wet spot.

And as for the clown who suggested to Miss Terry that maybe it as time she admits she has a “Depend-able” husband, there will be paybacks!

We are always on the lookout for off the beaten path adventures and destinations, and here’s a link to a neat interactive map called Hidden Treasures of North Florida that someone posted on the Escapees forum. We’ve spent quite a bit of time in that area, and visited several places on the map, but there are some listed we never knew about until now. I’ve bookmarked it for our next trip to the Sunshine State.

Thought For The Day – Opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.

Wow, I announced in yesterday’s blog that registration was open for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally, and e-mails starting pouring in! We must be doing something right, because we already have both returning vendors and attendees registering already.

If you are a member of the Escapees internet forum and find an e-mail in your in box saying you have a new private message, delete it. Just about anybody who is registered with the forum got the same e-mail, and it’s spam that will take you to a Russian teen sex website.

Don’t blame the Escapees. They are victims too. The sleazebag who launched the e-mails registered with the Escapees forum, jumped through all of the hoops necessary to get an account, and then sent out his garbage.

Someone asked me why a person would go to all of that trouble, and the answer is, obviously, money. You say that you’d never subscribe to a pornographic website? The creeps doing this don’t care if you do or don’t. They make money either way.

Just as we have Google ads on our websites and the blog, and we make a small commission every time a reader clicks on one of those ad links, these guys have set up a code that shows the clicks they set up are coming from them, not a legitimate website. So when you click on their “private message” link, you are really clicking on a link to a website that pays them a commission for every visitor. They can make a lot of money very fast doing this, and as soon as one victimized website discovers their intrusion and blocks them, they move on to the next one.  

This was a real problem a few years ago, and several good websites eventually shut down because they grew tired of constantly fighting this kind of trash.

How can you protect yourself from scams like this? It’s simple, but you have to be alert all of the time. Don’t click on links sent to you in any unsolicited e-mail. In the case of one like this, go to the actual website (Escapees, in this case) and check your messages there.

Also, read the URL address where an e-mail comes from. Is it something you recognize? Read carefully, is it similar, but not exact? When in doubt, don’t click.

A good virus program and a spam filter, such as AVG and Ad Aware can catch a lot of what comes to your inbox. Run them religiously. But remember, there are all kinds of jerks out there creating malicious crap to send out, and as soon as the good guys find a way to stop one, fifty more come up with something new to make internet users’ lives miserable. It’s just one of the woes of life in our high tech world.

Thought For The Day - The person who goes the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare; the “sure thing” boat never gets far from shore.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally