Sometimes I have all kinds of things to write about in this blog, and there are other times when I sit down at the computer with no idea what I will come up with to fill the minimum 500 word quota I set for myself every day. Fortunately, one way or another, I always seem to manage to come up with something. My old man used to say, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.

But in writing today’s blog, I had a completely different problem. I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to type, and my fingers all felt like limp noodles when I tried to hit the keys.

No, I’m not sick, just super relaxed. Our friend Jean Damon gave Miss Terry and I full body massages yesterday evening that just turned us both into Jello. Jean was born and raised in the Philippines, where she studied Asian massage techniques before marrying Dave and moving to the United States to become a fulltime RV gypsy. Now they work the rally circuit, selling 303 products, and Jean gives massages.

Jean said she did about 10 massages at our Eastern rally at Elkhart Campground, and another 25 at the Escapade in Goshen. She offered us massages at our Elkhart rally, but we were just too busy to take her up on them. So when we ran into them here at the Orlando Thousand Trails, Jean said we weren’t getting away until she got us on her table. All I can say is wow, it do feel good! If you have never had a professional massage, trust me, you have no idea what you’re missing. Pamper yourself and get one sometime.

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Speaking of RV rallies, I’m thrilled to say that our friends Joe and Vicki Kieva will be presenting two of their excellent seminars at our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma. Joe and Vicki are two of the most well know RV writers and speakers of all time, and having them at our rallies is a real honor for us.

They will be presenting their ever popular  Alaska, the Ultimate RV Adventure seminar, and if you have ever wanted to make the trip north, you don’t want to miss this one. There are plenty of travelogues showing pretty pictures of Alaska, but Joe and Vicki’s presentation is a how-to type seminar telling people how to prepare for a trip to Alaska, and what to expect along the way.

Joe will also be drawing on his experiences as a police officer, and their years of RV travel, to present his Personal Security Tips for RVers seminar. Overall, RVing is one of the safest lifestyles that one could ever choose, but even so, we know firsthand that anyone can run into trouble anywhere. Joe’s seminar shows you the criminal’s point of view, and gives you tips and ideas on how not to become a victim.

Check out Joe and Vicki’s RV Notebook blog, and  be sure to take note of the books and e-books they have advertised in the right hand column. I’ve learned a lot from them over the years, and they’re happy to share their vast knowledge with you too.

For anybody planning an Alaska trip, you can’t have too much knowledge. This rally is going to be a real learning experience on making the big trip north. Besides Joe and Vicki’s seminar, my buddy Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School will be presenting his Preparing To Drive To Alaska seminar, and we will also have an RVing Alaska panel discussion with several folks who have traveled and lived in Alaska participating. So as you can see, we have the topic covered well!

Okay, I’m so relaxed I can’t write another word. I’m headed for bed.

Thought For The Day -  I am not stupid. Everyone else is just smarter than me.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I’m sorry yesterday’s blog was so short, but I was just too punch drunk from two days of parking RVs and putting out fires to function. I’m just as tired tonight, but at least we got back to our motorhome a little earlier (9 p.m.) and I can think straight.

Besides being an expert instructor, my friend Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School really knows how to handle a camera, and he has been busy taking photos here at the rally, and was gracious enough to allow me to use some of them in the blog, so you call can see all the fun you’re missing if you’re not here.

You all know about Good Nick and Bad Nick, but here is a picture of Tired Nick taken Monday night, after operating on adrenalin, nervous energy, and only about six hours sleep in two days. Miss Terry was just as exhausted, but she’s never too tired to laugh. How did a guy who looks like me ever get such a beautiful, intelligent  lady to even give him a second glance? It’s one of the great mysteries of life. 

Here is a shot of the crowd gathering for our official welcoming Monday night, which kicks off the rally. For most of my life, I have had such stage fright that the idea of getting up in front of even a dozen people and speaking terrified me and made me physically ill, but now I’m perfectly comfortable on stage talking to crowds like this, numbering in the hundreds.

After Terry and I welcomed everybody, Sharon and Don Del Rosario came up on stage so Sharon could tell everybody about the small afghans, called lapghans, that she crochets for a wonderful organization called Soldiers’ Angels, that passes them on to wounded veterans. Sharon urged all of the knitters and crocheters in the crowd to consider making a few projects for our troops.

Then a fine young man from the Yuma Marine Air Station, Lance Corporal Benson, spoke to the crowd about the mission of the air station and its role in training combat pilots for overseas deployment.

It did this old veterans’ heart proud to see everybody on their feet, applauding and giving Lance Corporal Benson such respect for all he and the rest of our men and women in the military do for us. I know I wasn’t the only vet there with a lump in his throat, and a tear in his eye.

Once all of the welcoming and introduction duties were handled, I was only too happy to relinquish the stage to David Bradley, who put on a wonderful 90 minute concert that had the entire crowd clapping and singing along to the music.

Yesterday was packed with seminars, and the feedback we are getting on them is very positive. I was told that the geocaching seminar had over 60 people in the audience, and I know we have some new converts to the hobby!

I did a seminar on Gypsy Journal FAQs to answer some of the questions that people always have about the paper and why we do things the way we do, and then sat in on Joe Kieva’s excellent Personal Security Tips For RVers seminar. If you couldn’t make it to the rally, you can order their book by the same title, in either paperback or online as an e-book.

I don’t worry about security here at the rally, because I have Art Fennell to keep an eye on things. With this big guy covering my back, I can sleep tight tonight. Of course, having 5,000 U.S. Marines right across the street helps too!

Our vendors all seemed to be doing good business as people shopped for everything from satellite TV systems to tire pressure monitors, jewelry, and RV insurance. If you need it, it’s probably for sale in our vendor area.

I’ll be doing two new seminars today, Cemetery Stories, and Blogging For RVers. I also hope to find time to sit in on a few seminars myself. Joe and Vicki Kieva are doing a seminar on RVing Alaska, and Judy Bayless is doing her popular The RVing Genealogist, and I hope to take in both.

Before I close, I want to mention again how much I appreciate all of our volunteers, who do so much to help make these rallies a success. And, a very special thank you goes out to Miss Terry, who shoulders so much of the burden in everything we do. While I get to be up on stage goofing off and telling my little stories, she’s the one behind the scenes who makes sure the donuts get ordered every morning, the coffee gets made, the day pass visitors are handled, and a 1,001 other details that I can’t even begin to list. Without her, there wouldn’t be a Gypsy Gathering rally, or a Gypsy Journal at all. They say that behind every great man is a great woman, and I’ll tell you what, behind this very mediocre man is one hell of a lady! I love you, baby.

Thought For The Day – Don’t let your fears stand in the way of your dreams

Saturday night when we got ready to take our showers, we discovered that we had no hot water. Because we are on 20 amp electric here at the Yuma Fairgrounds, we’ve been running the water heater on propane, so my first thought was that we had run out of propane gas. I went outside and checked the tank, because I learned long ago to never trust the idiot lights on RV control panels. But according to the gauge, we had over half a tank.

That led me to the second possible cause of the problem, which I had suspected all along. I opened the cover to our Atwood water heater compartment, and sure enough, discovered several charred wires.

This had happened last October at Elkhart Campground on a very windy day. Apparently the wind had blown the flame from the water heater upward and it fried some wires, which caused the thermal cut-off to short out. That time, it was an easy fix to replace the thermal cut-off, which came two to a package. (Apparently, they fail on a regular basis.)

Saturday had been a very windy day here in Yuma, and apparently the same thing had happened again. This time around I replaced the bad wires and the cut-off, and rerouted the wires to the top of the water heater compartment, hopefully away from the burner, and secured them in place. That solved the problem, and we now have hot water again! I wonder if this is a flaw with all Winnebago motorhomes with the Atwood water heaters, or just something in our particular coach.

I’m not sure which is scarier, the fact that the water heater can apparently flame up like that, or me actually knowing how to diagnose and repair something!

I have had quite a few e-mails from readers wondering how our encounter with the armed burglar has affected us emotionally now that it’s been about three months. They ask if we are now uncomfortable boondocking in out of the way places, or if we now feel paranoid about the same thing happening again.

To be honest, I think that while the incident has caused us to be more aware of things, I don’t think we have changed our lifestyle at all, except for the fact that I never leave home without a “personal protection device.” I never again want to find myself facing a thug with a gun, empty handed.

While inside our motorhome, I feel totally secure. It’s pretty hard to break into one of these things undetected, and I am a very light sleeper, so I have no doubt that I’d be up and waiting to greet anybody who tried to get in while we were inside the RV. I think we both feel a little bit of apprehension when we are away from the coach and return after dark. It reminds us of what happened.

But you have to keep in mind that we had well over ten years of fulltiming behind us before this incident happened, and we could well go another ten or twenty years before anything happened again, if ever. Then again, it could happen tonight. But we refuse to live our lives in fear of what might happen someday. We prepare for the worst, but expect the best.

Our friends Joe and Vicki Kieva have a brand new book out, Personal Security Tips For RVers, which combines their 45 years of RVing experience with Joe’s law enforcement and security management background, to present a practical and useful look at safeguarding yourself, your home, and your RV while you are on the road. It’s an excellent guide, packed with common sense and real world experience.

The Kieva’s book covers everything from how to respond to a criminal confrontation, whether or not to carry a firearm in your RV, important documents to have in your RV, suggestions for creating an Emergency Notification Card for your wallet, and advice on how to obtain medical care while traveling.

You’ll probably never have a problem like we did, but accidents,mechanical breakdowns, bad weather, and illness can disrupt any RV outing. It’s always better to be prepared ahead of time. Personal Security Tips For RVers is a valuable first step in being prepared. You can order a copy of the paperback book at  http://www.rvknowhow.com/books.html, or download it as an E-book for immediate reading at  http://www.rvknowhow.com/ebooks.html#security

Joe and Vicki will be presenting their excellent seminar on Personal Security at our Western Gypsy Gathering rally next week, and I plan to be sitting in the front row. I’ll save you a seat next to me.

Thought For The Day – The true traveler is without goal. It is the absence of goals which creates the ultimate traveler.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I spent most of yesterday updating our Gypsy Journal website and working on details for our upcoming Gypsy Gathering rally March 8-12 in Yuma, Arizona. As of now, we already have about 100 RVs registered, and at past rallies, most of the registrations come in during the last three weeks. So I think we’re going to have a big crowd.

I posted a preliminary rally schedule on our website to give you an idea of some of the seminars we have planned. Please scroll down to the bottom half of the page to view the schedule. This is a preliminary schedule only, and there will be some changes as more seminars and activities are added.

New for this rally will be seminars on oil painting, wine tasting, and Joe and Vicki Kieva’s excellent Personal Security Tips For RVers seminar, just to name a few. Byron Hibshan will also be on hand to tell you how you can get a non-resident concealed weapons permit from Utah, and we’ll have not one, but two seminars on RVing Alaska. We’ll also have seminars on boondocking, choosing a home base for fulltimers, and Mac McCoy’s excellent RV Fire Safety class.  

While the rally dates are March 8-12, Early Birds can arrive on Sunday, March 7 for an extra $15 fee. There is a Good Sam rally going on at the fairgrounds before our rally, and they will be leaving by noon on Sunday. Our people cannot be parked before noon. There is a large parking lot outside the fairgrounds, on 32^nd Street, and RVs can park there until the Good Sam group departs and we can start bringing our people in.

As always, we have had many requests from people wanting to be parked next to friends at the rally. While we cannot absolutely guarantee it, we will try our best to park everybody together who wants to do so. To help us make that happen, please arrive together, or be prepared to park off to the side until the rest of your group arrives. We will have 200 RVs or more to get in and parked in a very short time, and the logistics can be very difficult. Please try to arrive at the fairgrounds with empty waste and gray water tanks, and full fresh water, if possible.

They do not have full hookups at the fairgrounds, but the fairgrounds manager has told me that everybody will have electric, and there are water bibs and a dump station on the grounds.

I am a firm believer in both people in an RV being able to drive it, if only in case of an emergency. Dennis and Carol Hill from the RV Driving School will be at the rally, and Dennis will be presenting two seminars. They have two instructors in Yuma during the season. Dennis said they can give lessons before or after the rally, and they have four different RV parks in the Foothills area of Yuma that they suggest to students. You can contact Dennis at rvschool@wizwire.com for details on driving classes in your own RV.

Another important service we will have at the really is RV weighing by Rick and Joyce Lang from the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF). An overloaded RV can cost you money in the form of increased breakdowns, premature tire wear and failure, and can be downright dangerous. If you want to have your RV weighed, please click the appropriate link and complete either the Truck and Trailer Worksheet or the Motorhome Worksheet before the rally so you can give them to Rick and Joyce and they can get you on their weighing schedule. For more information on getting your RV weighed, you can call Rick at (207) 522-3336.

As you can see, there’s a lot going on. We hope we’ll be seeing you in Yuma!

Thought For The Day – If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday we made a day trip of 90 miles to Victoria, Texas to pick up the January-February issue of the Gypsy Journal from our printer. Victoria is a bustling city of 86,000, and is popular with RV snowbirds who don’t want to go as far as the Rio Grande Valley. The city is big enough to have everything you could want, from big box retail stores to excellent medical services, and rates at the RV parks are affordable.

When we left Alabama for Texas, we were not sure where we would be staying, but we knew we’d be in Victoria to pick up the new issue, so I had our mail forwarding service send our mail there, care of General Delivery. But I made a newbie mistake and didn’t check first to see if they had more than one post office location. Sure enough, they have two.

Fortunately, all it took was one phone call to learn that all General Delivery mail in Victoria goes to the downtown post office on Main Street. In large cities with many post office locations, only one location accepts General Delivery, and one can spend a lot of time running back and forth trying to track down their mail.

With that chore out of the way, we picked up the new issue of the paper, and then stopped to do some banking.

Gypsy Journal subscribers Richard and Patsy King live in Victoria, and had invited us to stop by when we were in town. Richard and Patsy have been to our three Arizona Gypsy Gathering rallies, and are a fun couple we have enjoyed getting to know. We had a nice time visiting with them, talking about our respective adventures on the road, and comparing travel tips.

Speaking of RV rallies, at our Ohio rally in September, well known RV authors and speakers Joe and Vicki Kieva honored us by coming and presenting their last seminars before officially retiring from the speaking circuit. After a distinguished career as the premier RV seminar presenters in the nation, Joe and Vicki had decided it was time to really retire and just enjoy their RV travels, without having a speaking schedule to keep. We have known Joe and Vicki ever since we got on the road, and were honored to work with them at Life on Wheels.

Well, to quote those television infomercials, “But wait, there’s more!” Yesterday I got an e-mail from Joe, saying that they wanted to come to our Arizona rally and give a couple of their seminars! How cool is that? They will be presenting their excellent RVing Alaska seminar, as well as their Personal Security Tips For RVers. After our burglary earlier this month, that’s one seminar I don’t want to miss!  

The next couple of days will be a whirlwind of envelope stuffing to get the new issue in the mail. As soon as that’s done, we’ll head for Arizona, maybe stopping to pick up a couple of stories for future issues of the paper along the way.

Thought For The Day – Falling in love is easy, but staying in love is something very special.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally