This part of northern Indiana is a stronghold of the Amish people, and wherever you travel around the communities of Elkhart, Goshen, Nappanee, and the surrounding area, you are likely to see Amish women  in their simple handmade dresses, their heads covered in white kapps, and men wearing black straw hats or stocking caps.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the Amish people, including that they will not ride in automobiles, use electricity, or telephones. Drive anywhere around here and you will encounter horse drawn buggies and wagons on the roadways.

But, while they do not drive automobiles, the Amish will ride in them, and they frequently hire a non-Amish driver to take them to restaurants, stores, or other places too far to conveniently reach by buggy.

Drive any Amish back road in this region, and you will see small white structures in some yards that look like an enclosed telephone booth, and that is exactly what they are! Their religion does not permit a telephone in the house, and the “phone haus” is built for function, not comfort. There is no heat or cooling, and usually no chair. This is a place to do business, not sit and gab! If an Amish person advertises something for sale, they will include the telephone number and instructions to “call between 7 and 8 a.m.” or whatever time suits their schedule.

Yesterday, we drove out to Nappanee to visit with our friend Carylye Lehman at Focal Wood Products. Carlyle is a fantastic craftsman who built the desk units in our Winnebago motorhome last year, and he has a fast growing reputation with RVers for top quality custom wood furniture.

The tools in Carlyle’s shop are all powered by electricity, courtesy of a huge 40 KW diesel generator.  So as you can see, while the Amish do avoid many of the “modern” conveniences of our way of life, they have embraced some technology to give them the ability to conduct business.

We have also found it interesting to see Amish buggies lined up at the drive through window at McDonald’s, or to note such goodies as Pepsi and potato chips in their shopping carts at WalMart.

All day yesterday the wind blew hard, with gusts up to 40 miles per hour. If the wind lets up a little bit, we plan to leave Elkhart Campground today and start making our way eastward toward the Hershey (Pennsylvania) Thousand Trails preserve, where we will have a vendor booth at the Hershey RV Show next week.

It’s about 600 miles to our destination, and we’ll do it in two days. I have no idea where we’ll be tonight, but there is always an RV friendly WalMart, a truck stop, or someplace else to get off the road for the night.

Thought For The Day – Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after.

We’re getting down to the wire and I’m hoping we can get everything done here in Elkhart that we need to before we leave. I’m wrapping up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal and hopefully will have it done by tonight so we can take it up to our printer in Michigan on Monday.

Then we need to make a quick overnight trip to Muskegon, Michigan to visit Rocky and Bernie Frees one more time before we begin our winter travels. We’ll get the new issue back from the printer Thursday or Friday, and Miss Terry will spend next weekend stuffing envelopes to drop off at the mail service the following Monday morning.

Meanwhile, I have to put some finishing touches on a website I’m building for Carlyle Lehman at Focal Wood Products and visit him in Nappanee to get his final approval before the website goes live.

And somewhere in that time we need to winterize our bus conversion and move it to its winter storage location. We located an inside storage location, but I still want to have the bus winterized, just in case a bad storm knocks out power for a few days.

I also wanted to get the Winnebago in to Cummins for service, and to a local shop to have a couple of small things done. We may have to wait until we get further south to do that. 

But you know what they say about all work and no play. So yesterday I got away from the computer long enough so we could go to dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant with Greg and Jan White. We first met Greg and Jan when they came to Life on Wheels as students, and I remember that during my Reluctant RVer seminar Jan began to cry. She told me later it was because she felt like I was talking directly to her and addressing many of the fears she had about fulltime RVing. The other day Jan credited me with “talking her in off the ledge” when she wasn’t sure if she could go through with the change to the fulltime lifestyle. Whenever somebody tells me something like that, I am very flattered, and I feel good that maybe I could make a positive impact in their life in some small way. 

Speaking of RV seminars, in yesterday’s blog I told you about my pal Charlie Minshall, the Silver Gypsy. Charlie has offered to come to our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma to present an excellent seminar called Moments in Time:  A 20-year full-time North American RV Adventure that will take you along with Charlie as she lives on a Mexican beach, drives the Trans-Labrador Highway, experiences the Blue Ridge Parkway, discourages a bear on the haul road to Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, takes a Yukon River wilderness canoe trip, and mushes dogs on a glacier. You can bet this is going to be a great seminar, and I plan to be sitting right in the front row!

Even as busy as I’ve been, Bad Nick still found time to write a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Will You Stand By Your Principles? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – The trouble with life is there’s no background music.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I stole the title of today’s blog from our dear friends Ron and Brenda Speidel, who presented an excellent seminar by the same name at our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rallies this year and last. One of the most popular seminars at our rallies, the Speidels show RVers how they can save tens of thousands of dollars by upgrading and refurbishing their current motorhome or fifth wheel trailer instead of buying a new one.

Ron and Brenda know what they are talking about; they have turned their stock 2002 Winnebago Journey DL motorhome into a palace on wheels with the addition of a new custom full body paint job, custom built computer work station/dining table, replacing the original kitchen sink with a larger style, and several other projects. Most people who see their coach cannot believe that it is almost eight years old! It looks like a much newer, much more expensive motorhome.

Yesterday we visited their rig to admire their latest addition, a beautiful wood floor installed by Brad and Hall, an RV furniture dealer here in Elkhart, Indiana. Monday they will take the Winnebago to another local shop, Duncan RV Repair, where a new shower unit will be installed.

While they have invested some money in upgrading their RV, Ron says it has been a fraction of what it would have cost them to buy a different motorhome.

There is probably no better place in the country than the Elkhart area to refurbish an RV. Long known as the RV Capital of the World, you can find shops offering every service needed to complete any RV upgrade project here, as well as RV supply and surplus parts stores that have anything you might need. Some of the best known companies that we have dealt with ourselves, or whose work we have seen are listed below:

Phoenix Commercial Paint, (574) 238-5668 – Michele Henry does first class custom RV full body paint jobs for much less than anybody else in the RV industry. Most folks who have shopped the competition can’t believe the prices she quotes, and when they see the end result, they are always delighted.

Focal Wood Products (574) 773-4268 – We are just two of Amish craftsman Carlyle Lehman’s many satisfied customers. He’s the man to see for custom RV furniture.

Brad and Hall (574) 522-7435 – For RV furniture and flooring, the crew at Brad and Hall have seen many RVers driving out with a smile.

Duncan RV Repair (888) 738-6226 – For everything from general RV repairs to custom installations, these folks can do the job right the first time. 

RV Surplus (574) 264-5575 – When we built our bus conversion, we saved a fortune by shopping at RV Surplus, where they have anything and everything that goes in, on, and under an RV.

Sierra Custom Interiors (574) 848-1300 – Michael Greene builds custom interiors for horse and cargo trailers, and has a lot of creative ideas you might be able to tap into.

Master Tech RV Services (574) 522-6224 Master Tech offers a full line of services, from repairs and upgrades, to paint and graphics.

These are just a few of the companies here that can help you transform that plain vanilla RV into a custom home on wheels that will serve you well for years to come, for much less than the cost of purchasing a new RV. So if you’ve been thinking about buying a new RV, think again. You may be able to get what you want for a lot less than you would expect to have to pay!

Thought For The Day – Growing old beats the alternative of dying young.

I spent most of yesterday working on a website for Carlyle Lehman at Focal Wood Products. Many people are surprised to learn that while the Amish people live a much simpler lifestyle than most of us, with their horses and buggies, they do in fact make use of many modern conveniences, including telephones, electricity, and even the internet.

Every Amish community has its own rules as to how much of the “English world” (as they call life among the non-Amish), they can incorporate into their homes and businesses. While the Amish don’t own or drive cars, they will hire someone to take them where they need to go if it is too far for their buggies, and crews of Amish workers at local factories car pool in vans driven by non-Amish co-workers.

If you drive past the Amish farms on some of the back roads here in northern Indiana, you will see small wooden structures at the end of the driveway at every third or fourth home. These are shared telephone booths, where they can make and receive calls relating to business. But these booths are not heated and do not have a seat, to prevent them from spending much time chatting. We often see newspaper advertisements for items for sale, with a telephone number and the notation “Call between 7:30 and 8 a.m.” Those are the hours when they will be monitoring the telephone to receive calls. For businesses such as Focal Wood Products, they have a voice mail system, so if we call when Carlyle is busy, we leave a message and he calls us back. It’s not quite as convenient as calling a traditional business, but it works for them.

In the case of his website, Carlyle received permission from his community to have one to advertise his products, but he cannot build or maintain it himself. That’s where I got involved, and it’s been an interesting experience working with someone whose culture is different in so many ways from our own.

I mentioned a while back that I have co-authored a new book on self-publishing, titled The Step-By-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit. Last week I received my first copy of the book, hot off the press, and I’m very pleased with it. All of the credit goes to my co-author, Christy Pinheiro, who conceived the project and handled all of the production details. For more information, here is a link to the book’s website. Check it out; you too could be a published author!  

One of the things I suggest on my self-publishing website, Publishing4Profit, is producing small niche guides aimed at very targeted markets. Examples would be our Guide to Free Campgrounds and Overnight Parking Places, and our Guide to Casino Camping.

I don’t know if Dale Sumner from Mobile RV Medic, Inc. spent any time reading the website or coming to any of my seminars, but he recently published a very good guide, titled Basic RV Electricity and Protection, which is an excellent primer for anyone who owns an RV. Dale packs a lot of excellent information into the book, without getting buried in technical details that the average RVer could not understand. If you want to know what happens when you plug your RV’s electrical cord into a campground’s pedestal, and how to avoid overloading the circuit, and how to protect your rig from problems, this is an easy to understand guide that is well worth the money. You can order your copy at www.lulu.com/basicRVelectricity or e-mail Dale at sales@mobileRVmedic.com.

Of course, if you’re staying at an upscale RV resort such as Retama Village in Mission, Texas, you won’t have to worry about things like electrical problems. My friend Jack Mayer owns a couple of RV lots at Retama Village, and Jack and some of the other lot owners have set up a website, Retama Rentals, to market their lots when they are not staying on them. We paid a visit to friends at Retama last winter, and I can tell you it’s the nicest RV resort we have ever seen! So if you’re thinking about spending some time in the Valley this winter, check out Jack’s website.

While I was busy building a website this weekend, Bad Nick wrote a new post for the Bad Nick Blog titled We’re Going To Lose The War On Terror. Check it out, it will give you something to think about.

Thought For The Day – Anything in the future will always look better because there’s always something wrong in the present.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

Several people have shown us the excellent cabinets, furniture, and RV accessories that Amish craftsman Carlyle Lehman creates at his company, Focal Wood Products LLC, in Nappanee, Indiana. So when we got our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, we paid a visit to Carlyle and talked to him about building a set of custom desks/workstations for us.

Miss Terry and Ron Speidel put their heads together and came up with a design, we ran it by Carlyle, and he went to work. Yesterday we drove the motorhome out to his place and Carlyle installed everything. All I can say is wow!

Unlike Terry and Ron, I can’t visualize things. I need to see the finished product. I am just amazed what they can sketch out, do some measuring, and come up with! Carlyle built us each oak desks customized to our individual needs.

Mine, in the foreground, has a regular drawer on the left side, and below it a slide out tray where our HP laser printer sits. The center has a pull out keyboard drawer, and the right side has two file drawers.

Between the two units Carlyle installed a matching bookshelf, and then we come to Terry’s unit. Hers has two regular drawers on the left, along with a file drawer. The center has a pull out oak dining table, with leaf, that slides in for travel or space savings. Below the table, two double doors lead to a storage area with shelf.

On the right, there is a pull out tray for her laptop computer, and then a door opening into another storage cabinet with another shelf in it.

Even with the RVs living room slide in, we still have enough room to move about comfortably, and with the slideout extended, the units take up less space than the two recliners and original table that were in the motorhome when we got it. We are very pleased with the results of this upgrade, and after years of working at a tiny desk, I feel like I’m in a regular office now.

Back at Elkhart Campground, Ron and Brenda couldn’t wait to see how everything came together, and were suitable impressed. If you are thinking about upgrading or refurbishing your RV’s interior, I very highly recommend Carlyle and Focal Wood Products.

Unfortunately, now that I have my brand new workstation, it seems like everything I use has stopped working. When I got ready to write the blog, I fired up my Dell desktop computer and we smelled something like hot electrical wires and then the computer went dead. I just bought the thing in March, so I’ll be on the phone to Dell first thing this morning.

Okay, having your desktop workhorse computer die on you sucks, but that’s why I have a backup laptop computer, right? I got my Dell laptop out, fired it up, and it would not connect to the internet thought our Verizon air card and Cradlepoint router. It shows that I have an excellent signal from the router, but every time I tried to go online, it gave me a message saying I had limited or no connectivity. I knew the air card and router were working, because Terry could get online with her laptop.

I tried all of the limited things I knew how to do, and finally gave up and stuck the air card into my laptop and went online just fine using the Verizon VZAccess Manager software. I’m sure this is a simple problem my pal Jim Guld from Geeks on Tour can fix, but it really raises my frustration level when the gremlins get to messing around inside my computers. They are my tools, and I don’t like it when my tools don’t cooperate.

Thought For The Day – The older I get, the better I was.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally