We spent the day yesterday with our friends Jim and Shar Lewis, who had invited us to their beautiful home in Pinetop for dinner and a visit. It was a great day, with the comfort that old friends of many years just naturally share.

There are two or three men in this world that I consider to be my true brothers, and Jim is one of them. We’ve shared a lot of good times and bad over the decades, and I know there is nothing he wouldn’t do for me, or I for him.

Today Jim owns a small used book store here in the mountains, but when I met him a lifetime ago he was a guard at the Arizona State Prison. His resume also includes being a decorated Vietnam med-evac helicopter pilot, aerial surveyor, pilot for logging operations in the Pacific Northwest, fighting forest fires by helicopter, and massage therapist, of all things. Besides that, he’s a fine guitarist and cowboy singer! So he always has a lot of great tales to tell.

Jim and Shar have been talking about hitting the road, either as fulltime or extended travel RVers, so they had a lot of questions about our travels and RVing in general. We love sharing all of the great things about fulltime RVing, and they seemed to love hearing about it. Do we have some new converts to the RV lifestyle? I guess only time will tell.

We had planned on a two or three hour visit, but the time went by so fast that eight hours had passed before we finally said our goodbyes and headed home. When we arrived back at the Elks campground in Show Low, we noticed a couple more RVs had arrived in our absence.

Today we are going to spend some time with daughter Tiffany and her family, and maybe throw some steaks on the grill. I also hope to get some more work done on the schedule for our upcoming Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally.

I hope that whatever you are doing today, you take a few moments to remember the reason for this holiday, and the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I can live in peace and enjoy the freedoms we have.  Our country has a lot of problems, but it’s still the greatest place on earth to live, and we can thank our veterans and those who died for all of us for that.

Thought For The Day – A veteran, whether active duty, retired, National Guard, or Reserve, is someone who, at one point in his or her life wrote a blank check made payable to The United States of America for an amount of ‘up to and including my life.’

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I spent yesterday just goofing off. I had to send a fax to an insurance company, so I went to our bank, only to learn that this is a service that they no longer offer to customers. In a small town, with  no office supply stores, it took a couple of misses before I found a printing shop with fax service.

From there I drove another ten miles up the mountain to Pinetop-Lakeside, where I stopped at my friend Lyle Worman’s Pinetop Sporting Goods store. Lyle and I go back at least a lifetime, and we’ve gotten into misadventures from the Mexican border to the Painted Desert in that time. We didn’t get to visit much though, because he had a steady steam of customers coming and going.

Lyle said business had been dead until I showed up. I suggested that maybe he put me on the payroll, but the best I could get out of him was a stale piece of Halloween candy that I swiped off his desk.

When  I left Lyle’s shop, I went to Pinetop Book Exchange, a great little used book store that another longtime friend, Jim Lewis, owns. Jim and I go back as far as Lyle and I do, and when I still lived here we were the Three Musketeers. In fact, at one time or another, both of them lived with me for a year or more.

Jimmy was pretty busy too, but we swapped a few lies, and decided that the older we get, the better we used to be. Among his many talents, Jim is also a massage therapist, and he has a massage table right there in his book store. So when I told him that I was having twinges in my back, he threw me down on the table, kneaded here and pushed there, gave me a twist or two, and when I got back upright I was all better again!

A while after I arrived, Jim’s pretty wife Shar came into the store, and we chatted until almost closing time. They have not seen our motorhome yet, and mentioned that they were looking forward to seeing the Winnebago. But Miss Terry was home working on some projects (hey, we can’t both goof off all day!), and I was sure she wouldn’t appreciate me bringing home unannounced guests, so I suggested they drop by another time. The great thing about longtime close friends is that you can say “not now” and they understand and don’t get offended.

When I got back to the Elks Campground in Show Low, Miss Terry had the washing machine going, the place was clean and freshly vacuumed, and she was just finishing putting up the other set of  Levolor blinds in our bedroom. I felt guilty because she had been working all day while I was out playing, but she assured me that things usually go quicker and easier if I’m not underfoot. Yeah guys, I trained that woman well!

But I’m not a total clod. When Terry got finished, I took her out to dinner instead of making her cook. (Can’t you just hear that old male chauvinist pig country song Put Another Log On The Fire playing in the background?)

Whenever people ask Terry why she puts up with me, she always says it’s because I make her laugh and I let her cry. I got a chuckle out of her at dinner, when our waitress asked if I wanted a refill on my Coke. I asked her for half a glass, and when she brought it back, I said “I’m sorry, miss, I guess I forgot to tell you that I wanted the top half of the glass filled, not the bottom.” The young lady started to apologize, but then she realized what I had said, and we all had a giggle.

After dinner we made a quick stop at Safeway for a few things, and on our way out, Terry noticed that the Customer Service counter had a sign saying that they had fax service available. Go figure.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the State Lines app for the iPhone. As it turns out, State Lines creators Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard are also fulltime RVers, and they developed this valuable tool with folks just like us in mind. I downloaded the app to my iPad, and I’m very impressed. They put a lot of effort into developing a first class resource that all travelers will appreciate. Cherie and Chris told me that a full size version of the app to better fit the larger iPad screen is in the final stages, and that an eBook version for those without iPhones or iPads is also in the works.

Another great iPhone/iPad app lists all Escapees RV parks nationwide, with information including location, address, number of RV sites and amenities, contact information, and much more. It’s a free app that you can download at this link. 

While I was goofing off all day, Bad Nick was hard at work pounding out a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Bitten By The Boycott. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – My wild oats have turned into prunes and All Bran.

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First of all, Miss Terry wants me to thank the many, many people who left birthday wishes on the blog or on Facebook or Twitter, and sent so many e-mails. You all really helped make the day special for her, and made her feel very loved.

After dropping the new issue off at the printer yesterday, we drove to Muskegon, Michigan to visit my cousin Berni Frees and her hubby, Rocky. Many of you will remember Rocky and Berni from their time on the road as fulltimers. Berni is a massage therapist who worked a lot of kinks out of the muscles of our RVing friends, and Rocky was an RV tech with many satisfied customers.

Unfortunately, it turned out that it wasn’t the right time in their lives to become fulltime gypsies, and they have settled down in Rocky’s old hometown. We miss sharing life on the road with them, but their trusty old Winnebago Adventurer is always packed and ready to go on a weekend trip.

There is family that you associate with because you have to, and then there is family you think of more as dear friends and would go out of your way to spend time with, and Rocky and Berni fit into the latter category. We always have a wonderful time with them, and it had been way too long since our last visit.

They greeted us with hugs all around, and we instantly fell into that comfortable teasing and banter we always enjoy together, like the many months apart never happened and we had just seen them last week.

Since it was Miss Terry’s birthday, we went out for a nice dinner, and then back to their place for cake and ice cream, and a game of Mexican Train that lasted well past midnight. Poor Rocky and Berni had to get up early this morning, but at least Terry and I could sleep in.

Just as I need my puppy fix every so often, Terry needs a kitty fix now and then, so she enjoyed their cat, Medora. We both love animals, though I’m a dog person and doesn’t like cats very much, and Terry is a cat person who is allergic to most dogs, but we have agreed that we will not have another pet as long as we travel. We spend too much time away from the bus chasing down stories for the Gypsy Journal, dropping off sample copies, doing speaking gigs, and working as vendors at RV rallies, and it is not fair to an animal to be cooped up inside alone for that much time. So we have loaner critters we visit with, scattered around the country. Think of it as furry grandkids – we get to come and play with them when we want to, and then we take off again and leave all the responsibility to someone else!

Thought For The Day – Whether you think times are going to get better or get worse, sooner or later time will prove you right.

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