The title of this blog is what a Gypsy Gathering rally is all about. We do a lot of laughing and having fun, we learn more about the RV lifestyle, and we love being with our huge extended family of nomads.

I really started the day off with some laughter, and it wasn’t intended at all. Just as I was starting my new Cemetery Stories seminar, the little remote control I use to advance the PowerPoint slideshow stopped working. I checked the switch to be sure it was on, pushed the forward and back buttons a time or two, and said to the audience “Please bear with me, my little thingie isn’t working this morning for some reason.”

Now, I don’t have a dirty mind, but apparently everybody else in the room did, because it erupted in laughter! About then I realized what I had said, and they tell me my face turned about six shades of red. But the show still has to go on, so I grabbed my Blackberry and called Barbara Westerfield, who handles our technical equipment. I was holding the phone up to my ear with my left hand, and I had the microphone I use for my seminars in my right hand. When Barbara answered, I dropped my left hand away from my ear, put the microphone to my mouth and said “Barbara, I need you to come to my seminar room and fix my computer.” That brought another round of laughter from the crowd, because Barbara couldn’t hear me two buildings away over the microphone.

When I began developing our rallies, I wanted them to be a combination of fun and fellowship, mixed with some pretty serious educational seminars. Sort of a hybrid between a regular RV rally and Life on Wheels, and I think we have accomplished that. We had an excellent lineup of seminars here, including many by our vendors. Mac McCoy, who was also a Life on Wheels instructor, has been to every one of our rallies, presenting his excellent fire safety seminar.

Chris Yust, from Good Sam insurance, did a great seminar on the Pros & Cons Of RV Extended Warranties, and several attendees told me they learned a lot in her seminar yesterday.

 Daryl Lawrence, from Lawrence RV Accessories, is an expert on RV electrical systems, and he has has educated a lot of RVers on how their electrical systems are designed and how to get the most out of them. If you combine all of the knowledge and experience of our vendors and instructors, I don’t thnk there is any aspect of RVing and the RV lifestyle that they don’t know about. 

Socializing is always an important part of any RV rally, and everywhere you looked on the fairgrounds this week, there were small groups of friends old and new visiting, swapping lies, and planning their next RV adventures.

Yesterday Kellie Gunn had a birthday, and there was quite a party  for her. I’ve never had 300 people sing Happy Birthday to me, but Kellie sure seemed to enjoy it!

Of course, any time you put a bunch of RVers together, food is always going to be a priority, and last night’s pizza party was no exception. RVers were at their tables with hungry appetites, Miss Terry’s crew of dedicated servers were lined up and ready, Domino’s delivered two truckloads of piping hot pizza,  and we all stuffed ourselves.

I have no idea how she does it, but Miss Terry is able to organize things so well that her crew served hundreds of people in less than ten minutes! Did I ever tell you how much my wife amazes me?  

After everybody had finished eating, country singer Michael Hargis took to the stage for a fantastic concert that had everybody applauding. RV rallies are hard work, whether you’re the one organizing them, one of the volunteers who help make it all happen, or an attendee who is on the go every minute attending seminars, shopping the vendors, and meeting up with old friends. But even though everybody was tired by the end of the day, Michael’s show was so good that he had a lot of couples up and dancing. Thanks for the great show, Michael!

Today is the last full day of the rally, and we still have a lot of great seminars left to offer, and a lot of fun too! If you couldn’t make it to this rally, I hope we see you at one of our events soon.

Thought For The Day – Celebrate something today. Anything!

In yesterday’s blog, I offered a free sample of our test electronic edition, and by the time I turned on my computer in the morning I had 55 people asking for a sample! Another 25 or so e-mailed during the day asking for one too, so I spent a lot of time answering e-mails.

The response has been very positive overall. Almost everybody said it opened very quickly and they liked the format. A couple of people complained that the type was too small to read easily, but if you open it as a PDF file with Adobe Reader, which almost every computer has these days, you can click on the magnifying glass icon to zoom in.

More than half of the folks who got a sample said they would prefer it over the printed version of the Gypsy Journal. One person out of the 75 or so I sent a sample to said there is so much stuff that can be found free online that she could not see the value, but that is okay, we can’t please everybody.

I did find it interesting that she is one of the blog readers who has written several times to say that she would subscribe to an online version, but not a printed one, because of the mailing costs. Like I said, we can’t please everybody, and we don’t expect to. And nobody has to subscribe to either version. I still welcome you as a blog reader and look forward to being able to entertain and maybe even educate you a little bit from time to time. We still have some technical issues to address, but I think we’ll give this a try once those are remedied. Once I’m sure we can make this work on a long term basis, I’ll make a formal announcement here in the blog. Again, this is NOT a replacement for the printed version of the Gypsy Journal. That will continue as always. This is an option for those who, for whatever reason, don’t want a printed edition mailed to them. Okay, moving right along, my friend Dick Reed sent me an e-mail yesterday saying he was really upset when he called his insurance company (Good Sam) for a quote on a car, and discovered that he was talking to someone in the Philippines. Dick wondered why, with all of the unemployed people in this country, Good Sam felt the need to outsource their call center offshore.

Dick said he asked for a supervisor, who told him it was to make sure their customers had someone available 24/7 to answer their calls. Huh? I know a lot of Americans who would be happy for a job, even if it were on the second or third shift! Dick said that when his insurance comes up for renewal, he’ll be doing some shopping. I can’t say as I blame him.

I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that Ken Wiseman has been very helpful in working out a lot of the details of the digital edition of the Gypsy Journal. What I forgot to mention is that Ken and his wife Martha are the driving force behind the RV Navigator website, and for several years they have been providing audio reports, called podcasts, on a monthly basis, covering the RV lifestyle from an on the road perspective. I logged on and spent some time listening, and they are very good. But don’t take my word for it, check it out  for yourself at http://rvnavigator.com/RV_Navigator/RV_Navigator_Home.html.

Thought For The Day – If you can’t fix it with a hammer, you’ve got an electrical problem.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

For whatever reason, once we were parked at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds Tuesday after driving to Albuquerque from Show Low, Arizona, I just could not get to sleep. I tossed and turned all night long, and I think I managed about two or three hours of sleep at the most.

Since we arrived at the fairgrounds after normal parking hours and dry camped in the parking lot, we had to be up early yesterday morning, because the fellow in charge of the parking crew had said he’d be at our rig bright and early to get us moved into our assigned space.

So I rolled out of bed a little after 7:30 a.m., which is long before my normal time, and then you have to consider that our bodies are still on Arizona time, which is an hour later. Needles to say, I was kind of fuzzy headed most of the day yesterday. Yes, even more so than usual!

This place is filling up fast as people arrive for the Affinity rally, and we have run into several people we know, including Tim and Crystal Ryerson, from Inflatable Boats 4 Less, as well as Tim and Sue Daugherty from Sky Med, and Chris and Charles Yust, who represent Good Sam’s Roadside Assistance plan. All of these folks have been vendors at our Gypsy Gathering rallies, as well as Gary and Cheryl Green, who are also parked nearby. Cheryl is a representative for Creative Memories scrapbooking supplies. It was fun visiting with everybody, and just to make the party merrier, Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour arrived and are parked right behind us! We’re all just one big happy family out here on the road.

We have made so many wonderful friendships among the RVing community, and if it is possible, even closer relationships among some of the vendors we see at rallies all over the country.

Another vendor couple we have been close with for years is also here, Jack and Doreen Ingle, from AON Recreational Insurance, which has just undergone a name change and is now called PoliSeek Recreational Insurance. We met Jack and Doreen at our very first RV rally, an Escapade in Lancaster, California, during our first few weeks on the road, and we’ve been pals ever since. Like I said, one big happy family.

Since we’ve been at an RV site with just electric power for the last couple of weeks, with no water or sewer connection, our laundry had piled up. Miss Terry said it was time to either go shopping for a new wardrobe, or wash the ones we have now. So after we were parked in our designated site, we checked out the vending area, and then found a nearby laundromat. Terry much prefers to use the apartment size washer and dryer we have in our bus instead of going out to do this chore, but sometimes that doesn’t work out. We were lucky and found a very clean laundromat where all of the washers and dryers worked, which isn’t always the case.

Back at the fairgrounds, several of us got together for dinner at a Chinese buffet somebody had located, and when we returned from dinner, Jim and Chris Guld came over so Jim could resolve some issues Terry was having with her computer. I don’t know what we ever did without our mobile computer geek buddies! Chris has helped me with getting my two blogs up and running, and whenever I have a hardware issue, I call Jim. If you have not been to one of their seminars yet, be sure you do at your next RV rally. They really know their stuff, and make learning complex things easy and fun.

By the time Jim had things taken care of on Terry’s computer, it was 10:30 p.m. and we were both tired. But we still had to make the bed, and I had to get this blog and the Todays Hero Blog posts ready to go. I’ll tell you what, the bed sure looked nice by the time we were finally ready to turn in!

Thought For The Day – If raising children was going to be easy, it never would have started with something called labor!

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally