We find that a day out running around or playing, balanced out by a day at home, seems to work best, when we can do it. After our day of kayaking Tuesday, we spent Wednesday here at the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve.

In mid-morning, our friends Dave and Jean Damon came by to say hello, and to welcome us to this area. We first met Dave and Jean when we were vending at an FMCA RV rally in Ohio a while back, and hit it off well with them.

They sell 303 Protectant products, and Jean is also an excellent masseuse, whose services are in great demand everywhere they go. A couple of years ago, Jean gave me a massage after our Gypsy Gathering rally in Celina, Ohio, and by the time she was done kneading and working on me, I was so relaxed that I could hardly walk back to our motorhome!

Dave and Jean spend a lot of time in this area, so they were able to fill us in on some good places to eat and shop, and because Dave is the kind of guy who doesn’t pull any punches, he also told us about a couple of places to avoid.

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While Dave and Jean were here, Terry happened to look outside and spotted a gopher tortoise. We have seen a lot of these critters over the years, and I am always amazed at how fast they can move when they want to.

Gopher tortoises have been around for over 60 million years, making them one of the oldest living species known to man. They  live in underground burrows that average 30 feet long, and can go down as deep as 20 feet. Can you see the dirt this guy is throwing up as he heads underground?

It’s burrow is right next to our RV site, and we’re happy to have it as a neighbor. It’s a lot better than a yappy little dog!

Terry spent much of the day catching up on paperwork, while I pretty much goofed off. I had several e-mails to answer from readers wanting more information on the PaddleSki inflatable kayak that I wrote about in yesterday’s blog, and also several from folks asking about our upcoming Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally. I don’t have the rally schedule ready to post yet, there is still a lot of finalizing to do, but I guarantee you that we will have some great seminars to meet every interest!   

During the afternoon, I went over to the Activity Center here at the campground and dropped off a bundle of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal, then drove down to the campground’s dock and boat launch to check things out. I arrived just in time to see a fellow coming off the water in a very nice paddle-drive Hobie fishing kayak. He showed me a couple of nice bass he had kept for dinner, and told me that during his last hour on the water, they were hitting on about every fourth cast he made.

The other day I wrote about discounts that businesses are offering veterans in honor of Veterans Day. The RV Business website reports that Carefree RV Resorts has announced a new veterans discount program.  The company is offering veterans a year round 50% nightly discount, on a space available basis, at 35 RV parks in Florida, Texas, New Jersey, North Carolina and California. Check it out, you might save some money on a very nice RV site for a few days.

Bad Nick was busy yesterday posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Like A Bad Rash. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Who says nothing is impossible? I’ve been doing nothing for years.

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If you ever watched the popular Headlines bit on the Tonight Show, where Jay Leno shows what should be blatant typos and misprints in newspapers, you might wonder how anybody could be so dumb as to let something like that slip through. 

Trust me, it happens all too easily. After a lifetime in the small town newspaper business, I know that no matter how carefully you proofread and how sure you are that there are no errors, as soon as something hits the pressroom, the gremlins go to work and everything goes to hell.

I’m proud to say that one of my own newspaper front page headlines once made Jay Leno’s show, when I referred to the Arizona Department of Public Safety (their name for the Highway Patrol), as the Department of Pubic Safety. I missed it when I typed the headline, the spell checker didn’t catch it, the proofreader missed it, the two girls laying out the newspaper missed it, and the guys in the pressroom missed it. But the moment the paper hit the newsstands, everybody spotted it and the phone started ringing off the hook!

Even knowing that things like this happen all of the time, I was still kicking my own butt yesterday when Brenda Speidel noticed a conflict in room assignments on the rally schedule. I never saw it, Miss Terry never noticed it when she proofed the schedule, nor did Brenda when she also proofed it. That would be too easy. We had to wait until after I had paid for hundreds of copies of the schedule to be printed before we caught the error. What can I say? My buddies back home in Arizona would have just shaken their heads and said “Nick happens.”

Speaking of schedules, I had another of those frustrating things happen yesterday that give Bad Nick justification for coming out, but then it turned comic, and eventually worked out okay.

Several weeks ago I called the V.A. hospital in Lexington, Kentucky to make an appointment for my annual medical exams. Because my Primary Care provider recently retired, I had to be assigned to a new medic, and the appointment was set for October 5, right after our rally. Yesterday I received a notice in the mail telling me to call and schedule my appointment, so I called back to tell them I already had.

The lady on the phone said she did not see me on the schedule, and after checking, she said there had been an error and my appointment had been entered for a different patient, who doesn’t even have the same Primary Care provider. Then she said she the next opening available to me was October 29.

That would have really messed up our travel plans, and I asked her why they couldn’t take out the wrong patient’s name and insert mine into that timeslot instead, and she said because it was already taken by the other patient. “But he doesn’t see that Primary,” I told her, “So he won’t show up, because he doesn’t know he has that appointment scheduled. All you have to do is change names, I show up as originally scheduled, and all is good.” She started to tell me again that the time slot was already filled, but about that time I dropped the telephone, and when I went to pick it up, I managed to push the disconnect button.    

I immediately called back, reached another clerk, and told her what I had done and that I didn’t want the first lady to think I was being rude and had hung up on her. She said no problem, she’d pass that on, and they’d see me October 29.

The call ended, and just as I was telling Miss Terry that our travel schedule was going to have to change, the phone rang again, and it was the original clerk, who said after she lost my call, she started to tell another clerk about this stubborn patient who “just didn’t get it,” when suddenly it hit her that yes, she could just delete the phantom patient’s name and put mine back in the original time slot, since he didn’t see that Primary anyway! What can you do but laugh? All’s well that ends well.

Dropping my phone and then disconnecting my call wasn’t my only telephone adventure yesterday. I think I’m phone challenged.

Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour were here, and Chris was checking out my Blackberry Storm. After they left, I returned a phone call that had been interrupted earlier. As I was talking, I started moving some pillows around on the couch and rummaging around on my desk. Terry asked what I was looking for, so I asked the person on the other end to hold on a second, and then told her “My phone. I don’t know where Chris put it when she was done looking at it.”

She gave me one of those looks you usually reserve for the village idiot, or my weird cousin Terry up in Michigan, and then said “Dear, you’re talking on your phone. It’s up against your ear.”

What can I say? Nick happens.

Thought For The Day – If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

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

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

Regular blog readers may remember a post I wrote on February 27 titled Just Shut Up, in which I said that sometimes silence is, indeed, golden. A Gypsy Journal reader at the Affinity rally said he learned that while in Albuquerque.

He said that when he arrived at the rally grounds it was late in the day, and someone on the parking crew informed him that one of his headlights was burned out.

The next evening he and his wife went to a local restaurant for dinner with some friends, and he had forgotten about the headlight until they were leaving the restaurant and one of their dinner companions spotted it and told him. On the way back to the fairgrounds, he stopped at an auto parts store and bought a replacement headlight.

He said it was dark by then and he was a block from the fairgrounds when a police officer going the opposite direction made a U-turn and pulled him over to tell him his headlight was out. He said he told the officer that he knew it, and in fact had just bought a replacement bulb not 5 minutes earlier.

He told me that the officer then said, “So you are admitting to me that you know you are driving an unsafe vehicle, which is a misdemeanor?”

He again told the officer that he had just bought a replacement headlight, and the officer again said “So you are admitting that you knew the headlight was out, and you are driving the vehicle?”

My friend said “Yeah, if you put it that way, I guess so.”

Then the cop issued him a ticket for violation of Section 66-3-801 of the state motor vehicle code. Once he had signed the ticket, the officer told him “If you had told me you were not aware of the burned out headlight, all you would have gotten was a warning ticket with no fine.”

I’m not sure I would have believed him if he hadn’t shown me the ticket, and his wife confirmed his story.

Now folks, I’m usually a big supporter of law enforcement. Our policemen and women do a job I’d never want to have to do. But this sucks. I know my way around Albuquerque a little bit, and on the area of Central Avenue around the fairgrounds, you can buy a hooker, any kind of drugs you want, or anything else that comes to mind. And yet this officer had time to hassle an old guy and his wife in an out of state pickup, because he told the truth. That just isn’t right.

Thought For The Day – There can be no failure for a man who has not lost his courage.

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