Rick Lang from Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) called me yesterday morning to tell me that he and Joyce plan to be on hand at Elkhart Campground on August 29th to greet anybody arriving early for our Gypsy Gathering Rally so they can weigh their RVs if they want it done.

If you have not had your rig weighed before, or if it’s been a while, you should seriously consider having it done. The RVSEF crew are specially trained to weigh RVs, which is not the same as pulling onto a truck scale somewhere and calling it good. Rick and Joyce weigh each axle individually and you get a report that tells you not only your RV’s total weight, but also if you are too heavy on any corner of your RV. This is important information to know, and will help you adjust your load for the safest ride and longer tire life.

Speaking of RVSEF, there is still time to sign up for their excellent RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green, Kentucky June 3-6. This is your opportunity to learn about RV technical issues and lifestyle experiences from some of the top experts in the industry. You can find out more about this great program at the RVSEF website.

I also got a call from Too Crazy Ladies yesterday, confirming that they will be at our rally, making custom name badges for the attendees. Red and Beth are regular vendors at many RV events, and they have built up a huge following of loyal customers over the years.

I have had a lot of people asking if Elkhart Campground has WiFi service available. Yes they do, and it’s free, so you will be able to get online and surf the internet to your heart’s content.

There has been some confusion about the rally dates. The rally starts with RV parking, registration, and welcome on Monday, August 30th, and ends with hitch up coffee and donuts Friday morning, September 3rd. The rally fee covers camping Monday through Thursday night, but if you want to arrive early or stay later, Bob and Gita at Elkhart Campground assure me they will have plenty of room.

Terry and I plan to arrive in Elkhart about the first of August, so we can get all of the pre-rally work done. Then we’ll hang around for a few days afterwards, before we leave for Hershey, Pennsylvania, where we will be vendors and I will be speaking at the Pennsylvania Recreational Vehicle Show September 15 – 19. We won’t be able to make it to the Escapees 50th Escapade, which is September 12 – 17 in Goshen, Indiana. We’ll miss being with our Escapees family, but the Hershey show drew over 37,000 attendees last year, and we can’t miss the opportunity to introduce the Gypsy Journal to so many RVers who have never seen it before.

I have to say a belated Happy Birthday to my son-in-law, Jim Robinson, who turned 29 yesterday. Jim’s a fine young man, and yesterday we took him and Tiffany and the girls out to dinner to celebrate his special day. Of course, somebody let it slip to the waitress that it was Jim’s birthday, and they did the typical thing where several of the waitresses bring out a cupcake with a candle on it and everybody sang Happy Birthday. Jim is a low profile kind of guy, so the rest of us had fun watching him squirm as the center of attention.

Hey Jim, it only goes faster from here on out.

Thought For The Day -Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

The wind has not let up a bit here in northern Arizona, and as predicted, a cold front has moved in and dropped the temperatures quite a bit. The sky is very gray, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it starts snowing!

I talked to my buddy Mac McCoy from Fire and Life Safety yesterday. Mac is in Goshen, Indiana running around in shorts, and I’m freezing my butt off here in Arizona. Life is not fair!

Since it’s been too nasty to go anywhere, Terry and I have been getting a lot done at home. Most of yesterday was spent working on our upcoming Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, which will be held August 30 to September 3 at Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, Indiana.

I have started putting together the seminar schedule, and early indications are that we’ll have an excellent lineup once again. Mac McCoy will be presenting his RV Fire Safety seminar, the folks from Recreational Vehicle Safety and Education Foundation will be doing seminars on RV Weight Safety and RV Tire Safety, the Geeks on Tour have a great selection of computer seminars, I’ll be doing my two new seminars, Cemetery Stories and 100 Miles From Here. Orv Hazelton will present a seminar on Understanding RV Continued Service Plans, and there will also be seminars on bloggng, RV insurance, accessing the internet on the road, RV history, digital photos, RV maintenance, and lots more.

We already have several great vendors signed up, including AGS (recruiting RVers to sell advertising on campground maps) , Lawrence RV Accessories (Tire Traker tire pressure monitoring systems and Progressive Industries electrical management systems), Techno RV (computer accessories), Tastefully Simple (gourmet food mixes), Coyote Sales (Wilson antennas, cell phone accessories and PressurePro tire monitoring systems, Uniquely RV (solar lights), Good Sam Extended Warranty Service, Fire and Life Safety (fire extinguishers and fire alarms), Flags Galore & More (flags and flagpoles), Too Crazy Ladies (custom name tags), M&B Enterprises (diesel engine filters and supplies), Passport America (discount campground memberships), Geeks on Tour (computer education DVDs), MOR/ryde (suspension systems) and Precise Satellite and RV Electric (MotoSat dishes), to name just a few, and we have more vendors signing up every week.

RV sites are going fast for the rally. We only have 27 of our 50 amp full hookup sites left,  and we have 12 of the 30 amp full hookup sites available, and 23 of the 30 amp water & electric sites.  We also have quite a few sites available with 20 amp electric and water. To reserve your site, visit our Rally Registration Page. We’re looking forward to seeing a lot of old friends at the rally, and making some new friends too!

Thought For The Day – Earth First! We’ll strip mine the other planets later.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

Yesterday we took our first short trip in our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, and we love it!

The motorhome has so much storage that getting ready to hit the road was a simple matter of pushing a button to stow the automatic satellite TV dish, pulling in the slides and retracting the leveling jacks, and then unhooking the water and electric connections. After a quick scan of all of our tires with our PressurePro tire monitoring system, I fired up the big Cummins diesel engine and pulled out of our regular RV site at Elkhart Campground.

With our bus conversion, we would have to carry Terry’s big Kitchen Aid commercial mixer and some other stuff back to the bedroom, and used a collection of assorted sized bungee cords to lash everything down. Not because they would fall over, the bus has an incredibly smooth ride, but because we didn’t want anything turning into a missile if we got into an accident.

After a stop at the campground’s propane station to fill our tank, we hooked up the van to our tow bar and were ready to go. Ron and Brenda Speidel, in their Winnebago Journey, and Ken and Billie Barker, in their beautiful older Safari motorhome, were already hooked up and waiting to go.

The most direct route to Fort Wayne, Indiana would have been down U.S. Highway 33 from Goshen, but we took the longer (but faster) route east on the Indiana Toll Road to Interstate 69 and south to Fort Wayne. It added 20 miles to the trip, but because we didn’t have any stop and go traffic in the small towns along the way, we made better time. Besides, I wanted to see how the Winnebago handled on the open highway.

I’m happy to say that it handles just fine, with lots of power and a very smooth ride. Passing trucks didn’t affect us at all, and we had plenty of oomph when I wanted to pass a slower moving vehicle. The motorhome didn’t even seem to notice the heavy van it was pulling.

From Fort Wayne, we traveled east on U.S. Highway 30, a great divided four lane highway. We crossed into Ohio, and before long we were in Van Wert. We stopped at the Murphy USA at the Wal-Mart in Van Wert for fuel, which is not one of my favorite places, but both Ron and I were lower on fuel than we were comfortable with.  

With our fuel tanks topped off, we took U.S. Highway 127 south another 25 miles to Celina. We pulled into the Mercer County Fairgrounds with 163 miles behind us, and even more pleased with the motorhome than we were the day we bought it.

We did have quite a problem getting leveled, mostly because of the site we pulled in to. Finally, after running the jacks up and down half a dozen times, Ron had me pull a few feet forward, which allowed us to get into a position where our HWH jacks could get us level.

With the motorhome leveled out and hooked up to water, electric, and sewer, we were all famished and more than ready for dinner. While in Celina last year for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, we had discovered the China Wok Buffet and enjoyed it so much we went back a couple of times. If anything, it was even better this year, and we all abused our diets and our waistlines.

Tomorrow we’ll be hard at work on pre-rally details. It’s going to be a busy week!

Thought For The Day – Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

Moving is never fun, but I guess the good thing about moving from one motorhome to another is that there isn’t much furniture to lug from the old rig to the new one.

Since the customer traffic at the Carriage RV rally was so slow Monday and Tuesday, yesterday Miss Terry stayed home to start moving her kitchen items from our bus conversion to the Winnebago, while I drove to the fairgrounds in Goshen to man our vendor booth. By the time I got home in the afternoon, Terry and Brenda had pretty much moved and set up all of her kitchen and the bathroom.

The rally was such a bust that I decided not to go back today for the last day of vending. Every day we have spent more time talking to the other vendors, who were just as bored, than we ever did to any customers. The problem is that every day they are off to some tour or event away from the rally grounds. That’s fun for the attendees, but it makes the rally a complete waste of time for the vendors. I can use the time much better to help in getting the move completed. 

Right now we living in a sort of disorganized limbo, because half of our stuff is in the Winnebago and half is in the bus, so whenever we need something, it always seems to be in the other motorhome. But hopefully we can get moved and settled in within the next few days.

Some good news for the RV industry; Dutchmen RV in Goshen, Indiana announced yesterday that it is hiring 50 new employees to fill new manufacturing positions. Company executives said they’ve recently made “internal structural changes to support additional job growth” within the company. Hopefully this is just a start and we’ll see more RV industry workers going back to work in the near future.

I have had a tremendous response to the new Bad Nick Blog, and it has been interesting to read some of the comments and e-mails that have come in. I just posted a new blog entry titled Bad Nick Gets A Discount that I think every frustrated shopper can relate to. 

A few people have commented on the type of Google ads that have shown up on the blog. As expected, some hard core Republican conservative readers are already objecting to the ads pushing a Democratic liberal agenda, and just as many folks from the other side of the fence are upset when the ads Google serves up are about things they disagree with.

I don’t control the ads, Google’s AdSense program automatically inserts them. I just cash the small commission check I get from them to help pay the bills. But here’s an idea from Bad Nick – if you see something that piques your curiosity or interest, by all means, click the ad link and check it out. And if a particular ad offends you, don’t click on it!

Thought For The Day – When I read about the evils of drinking it scared me, so I gave up reading.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

It has been raining for two days now, and I’m sick and tired of it. I know the farmers need the rain to make their crops grow, and it makes for really green lawns and golf courses. But I’m not a farmer, I don’t have a lawn, and I don’t play golf. So right now it’s darned inconvenient! (And yes, it really is all about me!)

We’re like kids the day before Christmas, poking at the gifts wrapped up under the tree and going crazy with anticipation. We want to be outside crawling through all of the bays in our Winnebago figuring out where we’re going to put everything, and moving stuff into it. But yesterday it drizzled all day long, and it is so wet and sloppy outside that we’d be tracking mud all over the new rig, after Ron and Brenda Speidel spent all that time cleaning it, and that’s not going to happen!

I guess it really doesn’t matter, because right now we’re busy getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal stuffed into envelopes and ready to drop off at the mail service Monday morning. And then we’re supposed to be vending at the Carriage RV Club rally in Goshen Monday through Thursday. I’ve heard that timing is everything, but right now, the timing of everything sucks!

Several Winnebago and Itasca owners have e-mailed to urge us to join the Winnebago-Itasca Travelers (WIT) Club, and to plan on going to the big WIT Grand National Rally at Winnebago’s headquarters in Forest City, Iowa next July, which we hope to do. Since I own a Winnebago, but haven’t officially joined the club and learned the secret handshake yet, does that at least make me a half-WIT?

One of the great things about a bus conversion that you can carry a ton of stuff. One of the bad things about a bus conversion is that you can carry a ton of stuff, and usually do! Moving into a different motorhome gives us the incentive to sort through and get rid of a lot of stuff we’ve been carrying around forever, but no longer need or want. Like my big Porter-Cable air compressor, books, some tools, a lot of kitchenware Terry needs to decide on, and clothes we have not worn in so long we forgot we had them.

We’re going to have a tailgate sale day at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally next month for folks who want to set out things for sale, but I hope to get rid of most of our unwanted stuff before then. I’m afraid that if we put them in the Winnebago to take them to Ohio, they’ll end up living in it forever!

For those of you who keep asking, yes, there will be a Bad Nick blog hitting the internet very soon. My pal Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour has been goofing off in Salem, Massachusetts lately, even though I told her to be careful, because they do very bad things to witches there. But between touring all the sites, stuffing herself on lobster, and kayaking in Salem Harbor and Marblehead with hubby Jim, she has got the blog pretty much set up. Look for an announcement any time now. 

Thought For The Day – In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally