A few months ago I didn’t even know what a podcast was, and now we’re the topic of one! How cool is that?

For those of you who don’t know what a podcast is, basically it’s a digital media file that you can view or listen to online, or download from the internet. Kind of like a radio broadcast that you listen to on a computer, an iPod, or an MP3 player. There are millions of podcasts floating around in cyberspace, ranging from short movies (think U Tube), to talks on any subject you can think of, from technology to religion, to politics, as well as musical podcasts. Many producers have their own regular podcasts.

A while back a gentleman named John Huggins contacted me and told me that he and his wife Kathy have a website and produce a weekly podcast called Living The RV Dream, which they produce from their motorhome as they travel around the country fulltime. John asked if they could interview us, and we arranged to get together. Wednesday afternoon they arrived and we had a very nice visit, then John set up his digital recorder and we sat down for the interview.

We talked about our life as fulltime RVers, about the Gypsy Journal, and about our upcoming Gypsy Gathering rally. I’ve conducted a lot of interviews in my newspaper career, and I’ve been interviewed myself before. John and Kathy are real pros, and they kept the process flowing smoothly. Miss Terry isn’t quite as comfortable when she’s put on the spot, but she did a fine job and helped carry the conversation well. The podcast is live now, and you can listen to it here.

In previous podcasts, John and Kathy have interviewed folks like Fleetwood executives Dave Coffin and Justin Humphreys about the future of Fleetwood; Mark Nemeth from the Escapees RV Club; and Ron and Opal Erickson, a country and gospel duo who have been working the RV circuit for years. Other podcasts have covered things like the Escapees Bootcamp Program for new RVers, getting their RV’s thermo pane windows repaired at a Florida business specializing in refurbishing RV windows, RV fire safety, and their travels around the country. I’m hooked! All of their podcasts are available free online, and it’s like having an RV radio program on my computer. Check out their website and our interview, they are a great resource for both new and experienced RVers. I was so impressed with John and Kathy that I asked him to do a seminar on podcasting at our rally, and he readily agreed.

John had originally said they needed about an hour of our time, but we had such a fun visit with them that it stretched out a couple of hours, and then we piled into their car and headed to the nearby Texas Roadhouse for dinner. The time flew by, and all told, I think we were together about five hours! Isn’t the RV lifestyle wonderful? We meet new friends wherever we go!

While Terry and I were learning about podcasts, Bad Nick was busy too, writing a new Bad Nick Blog post titled You’re Fired! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Live the life you love, and love the life you live.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I talked to the owner of the RV shop where our burglary and vandalism took place over the weekend, and he told us to be there when they opened this morning, and he and his crew would do whatever needs to be done to get us back on the road in time to get to my medical appointment at the VA hospital in Lexington, Kentucky Wednesday morning.

Now that we have the mess cleaned up, things look a lot better inside our motorhome. If they can get the glass for the side door and get it installed today, we could leave tomorrow and get to Lexington in time. The day/night blinds also should not take too long to replace, assuming they have or can get them today.

Since Elkhart is the RV Capital of the World, at least we’re in a good place to get the parts needed fast. The slashed seat is another matter; I don’t see how that can be repaired that quickly, so we’ll see what happens with that.

There are things about this crime that just do not make sense to us. For example, they took my netbook computer and the attached cable to our Silverleaf engine monitoring system, which entailed crawling under the Winnebago’s dashboard and cutting the straps that held it in place, and reaching an almost inaccessible plug under the driver’s footrest to unplug it. It would have been much easier to just unplug the cable from the USB port of the computer, or to cut it. My iPod was lying next to the netbook computer and they ignored it. In the bedroom, they took a cheap DVD player, but left a shotgun and expensive camera. They left one rather expensive handgun in a dresser drawer, and took a cheaper Glock that was laying under it. Why? They carried away a 19 inch LCD TV, but left other smaller, more expensive, more portable items where they tossed them. We can’t understand their thinking, but being scumbag thieves, they probably are not Rhodes scholars anyway.

You just knew that Bad Nick had to wade in on this one, and he did with today’s Bad Nick Blog, titled Sometimes You Just Want To Kill Something. Check it out and leave a comment.

The date for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally is coming up fast, and new reservations are coming in every day. Terry and I have been forced to reevaluate and change our position on rally vendors.

When we started holding rallies, we had a policy of only one vendor per each type of product, to give our vendors the maximum opportunity to make a profit. That became a problem because rally attendees wanted more shopping opportunities, and then we were threatened with legal action for “restraining trade” because we would not allow one vendor to come because someone had already registered selling a similar product. We may have prevailed in court, but I don’t need the expense or the hassle.

My attorney advised us to drop that restriction, so we decided that we would allow vendors who sold similar products made by different companies. That opened an entire new can of worms. These days there are a lot of vendors selling three, four, five or more different products, and if they can’t display and sell all of their products, they won’t come. Everybody wants to sell everything, and nobody wants any competition. I tell you, it’s like herding cats trying to keep up with all of them. How can we win?

We have also had several vendors assure us in the past that they plan to attend, and then cancel at the last minute. Meanwhile, we have turned other potential vendors away who sell similar products. In our mail this week we received a registration for a Passport America vendor who had told us in August he wanted to come to the rally, but did not pay a deposit. Meanwhile, weeks later, another Passport America vendor registered and paid. Now the first guy is upset because he feels we sold his space out from under him.

So the new policy, after the Arizona rally, is that any vendor can come to future rallies, no matter what he or she is selling. No matter what we do, we can’t please everybody, and I’m tired of pulling out what little hair I have left trying to do so.

Before I end this blog, I hope you will take a few moments to remember that today is Pearl Harbor Day, and to remember those who lost their lives on that terrible day in 1941. That seems like a lifetime ago for many of us, but to them and their families, it was the end of their lifetime.

Thought For The Day – It is never too late to mend a broken friendship.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Okay, I goofed, and I know it’s my fault. But I’m still mad about it.

A week or so ago we were discussing life insurance, and I logged onto Geico’s website to get a quote. The form I filled out included my telephone number, and ever since I get at least one, and usually two or three, calls a day from someone hustling insurance.

I’ve told them over and over again that I have the information I wanted, and if I decide to purchase a policy, I’ll contact them, but to please not call back. Of course, it does no good. They still call.

Now, I don’t know if Geico is any better or worse than any other insurance company. To be honest, I just choose them because I like their commercials with the cavemen and their cute little gecko spokesman. But if I get one more telephone call, I’m gong to track that pesky lizard down and stomp him flat! Folks, never, ever give out your telephone number!

Thursday night we had terrible thunderstorms that lasted for hours. We have crank out style jalousie windows on our bus conversion, and usually we can leave them open no matter how hard it rains. But this storm brought high winds with it that blew under the windows, and I woke up to rain splashing me in the face.

The storm put on a spectacular light show that just went on and on. Then yesterday afternoon and evening we had several more storms roll through, though they did not last as long. I went outside to take some trash to the dumpster and the ground was just saturated.

It was a good day to be inside writing, and I managed to get a lot done. Meanwhile, Miss Terry decided to put her amazing cooking skills to use, and made us a delicious dinner of shrimp scampi with linguini Romano. Yummy!

Since the television signal kept cutting in and out, we listened to music from our iPod played through the Bose docking system and just had a quiet day, with the only drama provided by the weather.

I’ve only got a few pages left to finish for the new issue of the paper, and we’ll be dropping it off to the printer Monday morning. Then we plan to run over to Muskegon, Michigan to visit with my cousin Berni Frees and her hubby, Rocky, and for a nice birthday dinner for Miss Terry. It’s been too long since we’ve seen Berni and Rocky, and we need a dose of the good natured nonsense that only they can provide. 

Thought For The Day – Enjoying life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning how to play in the rain.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

I’ve always been a dinosaur. I like being a dinosaur. It’s comfortable. It’s easy. It makes life much less complicated. I don’t have an iPhone, I don’t do text messages, and I don’t speak geek.

But lately I’ve noticed a certain amount of geekness slipping into my life. I blame a lot of it on Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour. She’s a carrier, sort of the Typhoid Mary of Geekdom.

It’s an insidious thing, this geekness. You start out just dipping a toe into the waters of technology to see what it feels like, and the next thing you know, you’re in over your head.

I was perfectly happy running my little travel rag, and then someone convinced me that I needed a website to help promote the Gypsy Journal. That took a while to get a handle on, but it worked out okay and over time our website has become very popular. But just like rabbits, one website begets two, and two begets three, and before I knew it, I had four websites.

When the blogging thing came along, I thought it was nonsense. Who in the world would waste their time reading something like that? Well, you know what happened there. I’ve been blogging for a couple of years now.

Enter Chris Guld, who hounded me into converting my blog to the WordPress format by giving me a hundred reasons why it would be easier to produce and format, would reach a higher readership, and allow the readers to post responses, creating a dialogue.

The next thing I knew, Chris was telling me that a lot of our readers would like an online edition of the Gypsy Journal. We’ll never stop publishing a printed version, but I finally caved in and uploaded an electronic edition of the current issue to a company who handles digital publications. It looks pretty good, and yesterday I sent out a link to it to several of our readers to get their feedback. I’d like to let you all take a look, but since this is just a test run, the company hosting it will only allow a limited number of views.

Here’s where I am with this so far: The cost is extremely expensive, and we’d need at least 500 subscribers to the electronic edition to make it financially viable. The feedback I have received so far is mixed. Some people liked it, some said they would not be bothered, and some said they would read it, but it would take some getting used to.

Do we have 500 readers out there who want to spend $20 a year for an electronic edition of the Gypsy Journal? A lot of you keep asking for it, even demanding. I guess it’s time to put up or shut up. If you’d step up to the plate and subscribe, send me an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and let me know, and we’ll see what the response is.

As for you readers who don’t want to give up your printed paper, no worries. If we do go with an electronic edition, it will only be an alternative way to subscribe, and the printed version will still remain just as it is.

Okay, you’d think that now that Chris has me blogging and looking at online publishing, she’d be happy. Guess again! At the Affinity rally in Albuquerque last week, she told me that if I didn’t Twitter, I was one step above Cro-Magnon man. I’d heard of Twitter, and like blogging, I wasn’t impressed at first (or second) glance. Twitter is a bunch of geeks sending each other short messages telling each other what they are doing now. Huh? Who cares if I’m going into McDonald’s for lunch? And it’s nobody’s business if I have a magazine in hand and am headed for the bathroom. Who cares?

Apparently, a lot of people do! Some people have thousands of followers on Twitter. Chris and her hubby Jim explained to me that while, yes, there is a lot of nonsense on Twitter, it can also be a good marketing tool and a way to stay in touch with our friends and readers, and to update them on what we’re up to. If I post a new blog, or start a new project, or whatever, I can post with a “Tweet” on Twitter and get immediate responses. So now you can follow us on Twitter under the user name GypsyJournal (no spaces). But don’t expect me to tell you where I’m having lunch (unless you’re buying, of course). And when I head back to the library, just leave me alone, okay? That’s my time!

So there it is. I went to bed a dinosaur one night, and woke up the next day and had websites, blogs, an iPod, a GPS that talks to me, a Kindle e-book reader, and now I’m Tweeting on Twitter.

But if I were honest, I’d admit that it’s really not Chris Guld’s fault. I have nobody to blame but myself, when it comes right down to it. I’ve seen all of those Just Say No commercials, and I knew better. But those darned geeks have such neat toys! Who can resist? I need to find a meeting where I can stand up and get it off my chest.

“Hello, my name is Nick, and I’m a geek.”

Thought For The Day – Some folks wear their halos much too tight.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday was the first vending day at The Rally, and while vendors in the past have told me they did gangbuster business at earlier events, so far I don’t think anyone here in Albuquerque is setting any sales records.

That may be partly due to the fact that the rally attendees are parked at the Balloon Fiesta Park, and all of the vendors and seminars are here at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds. Those two locations are thirteen miles apart, so the attendees have to stand in line to ride buses to the fairgrounds and then stand in line again to ride a bus back to their RV at the end of the day.

A lot of people seem to be very unhappy about that. Throw in the fact that yesterday we had a mixture of rain and snow all day and all evening, and the wait for the buses was over an hour, and it wasn’t a recipe for success. I heard several people say they were not buying anything because they didn’t want to carry it around with them all day long, and then have to hold it while they stood in line for the bus, and then try to figure out how to get it on the bus. I guess if you were buying a book or a pocket tool, it wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but it you bought something like a lawn chair or a TV dish, you’d really have a transportation problem. I told Terry a guy with a van could make a few bucks just delivering things from the vendors out to the buyers’ RVs at the Balloon Park.

I’m sure glad we’re parked here on the grounds. When the vendor area closed at 5 p.m. yesterday, the line waiting in the cold rain for the bus was over two blocks long! We had considered going to the Neil Sedaka concert last night, until we discovered that it was at the Balloon Park, and was being held in a tent! No way were we going to drive that far in the rain to sit in a tent in this weather! Instead we had dinner with Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour and Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum, returned to the bus, and spent the evening returning e-mail and listening to music from the iPod, played thorough our Bose SoundDock.

Even though we didn’t do much business yesterday, it was nice to be able to help out Al Hesselbart at the RV Hall of Fame Museum’s booth. Al did his seminar on The History of RVs during the morning, and we knew when he was finished, because we got slammed with people coming by the booth to pick up a museum brochure or for more information.

It was also nice to take a break from the booth and wander around checking out the vendors. I finally had the opportunity to met Alex from the 3G Store, where I purchased our Cradlepoint wireless router, Wilson antenna and Wilson amplifier for our internet connection back when we switched to a Verizon air card from our old HughesNet internet dish. Alex and I have exchanged e-mails for a long time, and he really helped me out when I had some technical problems a while back, so it was nice to put a face with a name. I also got to meet the president of 3G Store, Michael Ginsberg, and we spent quite a bit of time visiting. He showed me some new stuff coming down the technological highway that I think are really going to excite RVers once they hit the market.

Another person I was happy to finally meet was Lance Kropf, from Guaranty RV Super Center in Junction City, Oregon. Quite a few RVers I know have had good purchasing experiences when dealing with Lance and his company, and he’s a good buddy of my pal Mac McCoy, which gives him several extra stars next to his name in my book.

Speaking of Mac McCoy, somebody asked if I wasn’t afraid that Mac would be offended by the way I picked on him in yesterday’s blog. Heck no, Mac has a great sense of humor and loves to have fun, and anybody who is going to hang around me knows that they’re fair game. (Besides, if I don’t put pictures in a blog post, Mac doesn’t look at it anyway. Anything more than a two syllable word gives him a migraine.)

Thought For The Day – How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally