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It’s still unbelievably cold here in Fort Lauderdale, but at least the wind has stopped. We’d like to do some sightseeing while were in this area, but between having to get the new issue of the paper finished, and the weather, I don’t know if we’ll do much of anything but stay home and work.

I got an e-mail from my friend Tom Owen down in Key West yesterday, and he said they tied a record low, set in 1952, and that folks on that tropical island are running around in winter coats, gloves, mufflers and longshoreman caps. Tom said that the wind chill was 30 degrees in Key West! We won’t be going to the Florida Keys this year after all!

Speaking of the cold weather, I have been exchanging e-mails with a couple who are staying in their RV, in a relative’s driveway in the upper Midwest, until after the holidays. They wrote to ask for advice because their water lines were frozen, and I suggested that they put a droplight in their utility bay with a 25 watt bulb. That’s what we did when we were stuck in northern Michigan years ago during Terry’s battle with cancer, and it kept it toasty warm in the water bay.

They replied that their son didn’t want them to do that, because it would run up his electric bill. I also suggested they use heat tape on any exposed water lines, but the lady wrote back and said that was an “awful lot of trouble” and asked me if there wasn’t a simpler way to solve the problem. Uh, yeah, there is. Turn the key and get the heck out of there!

My friend Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour spent most of the afternoon yesterday helping me make some changes in our e-mail program, laying the groundwork for migrating our websites to another host, and talking about where we want to go with our online business in the future. The technology is changing on a daily basis, and it is amazing what we can now offer our readers online.

Later in the afternoon, Chris and her hubby Jim treated us to a wonderful seafood dinner at a restaurant called Catfish Deweys,  that is a local landmark. I had the blackened seafood platter and Miss Terry had blackened catfish, and both were excellent. Thanks Jim and Chris!

Bad Nick has been quiet for a while because he has been on strike, protesting the cold weather. But he finally got of his duff yesterday and posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled Snappy Comebacks. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – You shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back sometimes.

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I think we missed a turn somewhere along the way south, and instead of Fort Lauderdale, we ended up at the South Pole! I mean really, 33 degree overnight lows just 30 miles from Miami? Really? Isn’t that just a little bit ridiculous? Uh huh, global warming, sure. Would somebody get that damned penguin off my patio!

Yeah, I know, they are having blizzard conditions in Indiana and Michigan. I don’t care! I’m not in Indiana or Michigan! I left Indiana and Michigan and came to warm, sunny Florida!  Did I mention it was 33 degrees here overnight?

Yes, I’m sniveling. Get used to it. I intend to snivel until it hits at least 72 degrees and stays there. And don’t be surprised if I throw in a pout, a tantrum or two, and some serious bitching until it warms up!

Yesterday my friend Chris Guld, from Geeks on Tour, spent several hours with us, going over a lot of technical issues with our websites and e-mail. I would really like to move all of my websites off the Yahoo servers and to some other hosts. Over the years, Yahoo has messed things up so many times, and their technical support is terrible when you call with a problem. But I didn’t want to try moving to a new hosting company until Chris was available to help deal with any problems that might come up.

Chris has some concerns about moving the websites, and I’m not sure what we’ll end up doing yet. I defer to her in things like this, because that lady has more computer knowledge in her little finger than I do in my whole pasty, flabby body.  

Late in the day we went to the post office to mail out some orders, and when we came back, we stopped at J.C. and Beverly Webber’s beautiful Country Coach motorhome for a tour. Wow, what a palace on wheels!

The four of us went out to a great Chinese restaurant for dinner, called the Dragon Gourmet Buffet. The selection was huge, and everything was hot, fresh, and delicious.  

Even with the unseasonably cold weather, this is still snowbird season in Florida, and this great You Tube video pretty much sums things up. It’s just as applicable if you’re in the Rio Grande Valley; Yuma, Arizona, or any other snowbird roost. check it out, I guarantee you’ll get a giggle.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that something inside our door lock got out of synch, and we had to have a mobile tech fix it. Yesterday when we started out the door, I stuck my key in the lock to turn it, and the entire lock cylinder fell out! We can still secure the door with the deadbolt, but I think it’s time to just replace the entire thing and be done with it.

The door’s been acting flakey ever since I slammed it on the burglar’s hand last year, even though the RV repair shop took it off the Winnebago and put it in a jig to straighten it. Apparently you’re not supposed to use your door as a weapon. Who knew?

We still don’t know where we’re going when we leave here on Sunday. The weather still looks funky, so we probably won’t go down to the Keys after all. I want to spend our time there kayaking and playing in the water, not sitting inside shivering.

I had better close for now, before I launch into another rant.

Thought For The Day -The measure of a man is not whether he falls down, but whether he gets up again.

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News flash! As it turns out, you can watch TV in an RV after all! Who knew?

You may remember that I reported in a blog last week titled You Can’t Watch TV In An RV that Dish Network was supposed to bring us a new high definition DVR receiver, but on the morning of the appointment, the Dish installer told me that “you can’t watch TV in an RV,” and no matter how much I argued with him, or with the folks at Dish Network’s customer service center, the company position was that it just couldn’t be done. Never mind that we have had Dish Network all along in our RV, just like tens of thousands of other RVers, it just can’t be done.

After that happened, the owner of a local independent Dish installation company, ADO Electronics (321) 231-0355, called Dish for us, and knew who to talk to and what to say. Dish agreed to send somebody back out yesterday. He told us that if the second Dish installer wouldn’t do the job, to let him know.

Sure enough, yesterday morning a second Dish installer arrived, and within an hour or two he had our new receiver installed and hooked up to both our front and rear TVs, and we were good to go. We’re watching TV in an RV! Who would have thought that was possible?

Since he had to pull the old original equipment TV out of the cabinet in our bedroom to hook it up, we took the opportunity to dispose of that TV and replaced it with a 20 inch LCD Vizio we’ve been carrying around for that purpose ever since we got our Winnebago, but never got around to doing. The installer was a very nice young man, and when we asked if he had any need of the older TV, he was happy to take it for his son’s bedroom.

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The new HD DVR is cool. It’s a single box with two receivers built into it, and we can watch and record two different stations at the same time. How cool is that?

The only problem was that, after the installation we didn’t have our east and west coast distant network feeds, so I called All American Direct, who provides distant network service for Dish. The nice tech there deleted our old receiver and entered the serial number of our new receiver into our account, and within about five minutes our east and west coast feeds were back.

Well, they were back, but the on-screen menu that shows the upcoming programming just said No Info in every time slot. I called Dish back, they had me reboot the new receiver, and the updated program information downloaded. Life is good!

I wasn’t sure if we would have to reprogram our Winegard Trav’ler automatic rooftop satellite dish for the new receiver, but we pushed the button to stow it, and then deployed it again, and it went right up and locked onto the signal with no problem. Hopefully it will do the same thing at our next location.

With that out of the way, we went to a late lunch/early dinner (linner) at a nice Chinese buffet in Orlando, called Billy Wong’s, with Dave and Jean Damon, 303 vendors we know from the RV rally circuit. We had a nice meal, and lots of interesting conversation.

Speaking of our next location, we’re due to leave the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve on Sunday, and the plan has been to go down to Fort Lauderdale and spend a day or three bothering Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour, and then to go on down to Key West. But with the cold front that is coming through the area, even Key West will be much cooler than it was on our visit two years ago. I’m not sure if we’ll want to do much kayaking unless it warms back up. We’re hoping for rising temperatures soon!

Thought For The Day – It’s no coincidence that there’s only a one letter difference between “garage sale” and “garbage sale.”

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Sometimes it sucks to be me. Oh, the life of a hard working fulltime RVing newspaper publisher! Will the grind never end?

Yesterday I slept in until about 10 a.m., which isn’t really sleeping in for me, because that’s about the time I usually wake up. But Miss Terry wasn’t there to snuggle and cuddle up with like she usually is, so I had to just lay there all by myself and drowse off and on for a while before I finally drug myself out of bed.

And just in time, because Terry was busy making me a batch of her delicious crepes, with strawberry jam, for breakfast! I checked my e-mail, then read some of my favorite RV blogs. Greg White had finally posted something, after taking a day off; Dennis Hill was bragging, and deservedly so, about the pork butts he was smoking in Texas; my pals Joe and Marcia Jones are leaving Key West in search of new adventures; Stu and Donna McNicol’s blog had some new pictures of their puppy; and Mike McFall’s had pictures of his cat. Then I popped into Facebook to check in on all of my friends there.

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With all of that done and breakfast finished, we goofed off for several hours, and then decided to get some paddling in on Lake Hancock. We’re getting better at inflating my Sea Eagle PaddleSki 435 kayak, but Miss Terry and I both agree that we need to contact Tim at Inflatable Boats 4 Less and order one of their electric pumps to make the job even easier. Even so, in less than 10 minutes the boat was ready to go and I was paddling away from the launch.

We paddled to the south side of the lake, to check out this derelict old sailboat, which somebody apparently pulled up to shore and abandoned. At one time this was somebody’s pride and joy, and now it’s just rotting away. I wonder how it got into this sad condition.

We paddled around the lake for about 90 minutes, crossing over to the far side and back, stopping occasionally to rest and just enjoy the water.

Miss Terry has the sharpest eyes of anybody I’ve ever known. We can be rolling down the highway at 60 miles per hour, and she’ll point out antelope grazing in a meadow, or a hawk resting on a fence post.

She spotted this osprey perched high in a tree beside the lake, and paddled over to take its picture. With the things she can turn out with her cheap little Olympus point and shoot camera, I think Terry needs to move up to a digital SLR. But the pocket size camera is handy and she always has it with her. A larger camera might end up spending more time in its case, instead of being carried all of the time.

We also saw all of these turkey vultures sitting together. How many can you count?

The sun was sinking low in the sky when we came off the water, and by the time we got the boats dried off and stowed away, and got back to the motorhome, it was starting to get dark. We spent the evening watching TV and cruising the internet.

So there you have it, my hardworking day. Unlike most working folks, I don’t even get Sunday’s off! Yeah, it sucks to be me.

Bad Nick didn’t have it any easier. He worked yesterday too, posting a new Bad Nick Blog installment of the popular Dumb A$$ Report. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – A true friend is one who thinks you are a good egg, even if you are half-cracked.

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None of us like wasting money, and in today’s economy, a lot of people are finding ways to save every penny they can. But when does thrift become less advantageous than the effort or inconvenience required to achieve it?

One example is an RVer I know who never purchases fuel at stations near an interstate exit, because he says that more often than not, he can save two to three cents per gallon by driving an extra mile or two into town. Okay, so let’s say he has a 100 gallon fuel tank, and he waits until the gauge is at the 1/4 tank level. He puts in 75 gallons of fuel, and saves $2.25 (based on 3 cents per gallon savings). But how much fuel did he burn driving the mile or two into town and back to the highway? Not to mention the hassles of dealing with surface street traffic in a big rig. And again, he tells me that more often than not he saves money. That means there are times when he doesn’t pay any less. Then those extra miles actually cost him more than if he filled up at the exit!

When it’s convenient, we usually fill up at Flying J truck stops, because they traditionally give RVers a penny a gallon discount on fuel, most have dedicated RV fuel islands, an RV dump station, and allow RVers to park overnight. I don‘t go to Flying J because of the discount, although I am happy to get it. I go because I appreciate their RV friendly-attitude.

However, there are some Flying J locations, such as Kingman, Arizona, that I will bypass to pay a little more somewhere else, because the layout of that particular Flying J makes it extremely difficult to get in and out with a big rig. Since we have a 100 gallon tank, and I seldom let our fuel level get below half, saving 50 cents is just not worth the hassle.

We all know that we can save fuel driving at 55 miles per hour, as opposed to 65 or faster. But just how much fuel can we save, and is it really worth it? A few days ago, while driving along Interstate 95 in southern Georgia, I did a test. I set our cruise control at 65 miles per hour and carefully monitored our Silverleaf VMSpc engine monitor. Over a 20 mile distance, we averaged 7.3 miles per gallon.

Then I dropped our speed down to 55 miles per hour, and reset the cruise control. Over the same flat terrain, we averaged 7.7 miles per gallon. So yes, at 55 miles per hour, we can save fuel. (By the way, ignore the 101 MPG rolling MPG on the readout, that was because I coasted into the rest area where Terry took this picture. Also ignore the 0% coolant level, my rig doesn’t have a sending unit for that, and I need to reconfigure the Silverleaf display to remove it.)

I’m terrible at math, but if I punched the right buttons on my calculator, that means that on a 1000 mile trip, on all flat terrain, we could save just over 7 gallons of fuel. Let’s assume that fuel is $3 per gallon. That’s a saving of about $21.

However, at 65 miles per hour, we were keeping up with traffic on the busy freeway. At 55 miles per hour, we had traffic piling up behind us waiting for an opportunity to get into the left lane and pass, and several times eighteen wheelers rushed up on our rear end and tailgated until they could get past. We did not feel safe driving at 55 in that kind of traffic.

Dry camping is another example.  We often pull into a WalMart, truck stop, or highway rest area to spend the night when we’re on the road. But we do it for the convenience more so than the economy. I don’t want to have to get off the highway and drive two or three miles to an RV park, unhook our tow vehicle, and back into an RV site, then hook up the campground utilities. And then in the morning I have to reverse the entire process.

When we dry camp like that, we usually run our generator for an hour or two while we watch TV and I use my desktop computer to check e-mail. That’s a couple of bucks worth of fuel, and worth it to me. However, if there is a convenient Passport America campground with pull-thru sites for $10 to $12 a night just off the highway, I’d as soon go there and have hookups.

If there is no handy WalMart or truck stop, I know RVers who will drive past that $10 or $12 campground and drive as much as five for six miles into town to dry camp at an Elks or Moose lodge. Again, is the effort worth the savings?

So what about you? What will you do to save a buck?

Thought For The Day – Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

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