Back when we were doing the bus conversion thing, we knew several bus nuts who took their coaches to Mexico to have them painted. We never considered it, because even at bargain Mexican prices, we just didn’t feel comfortable taking our MCI into Mexico.

Yes, I know that a lot of RVers, even some of my blog readers, enjoy traveling in Mexico. and sing its praises. That’s fine for them, but it’s not our thing. I’ve seen some Mexican paint jobs that looked pretty good, but I’ve seen some really botched ones too.

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen one this bad until yesterday, when we stopped in to visit with Michele Henry at Phoenix Commercial Paint. Michele told us that this Country Coach was painted in Mexico, and by the time its owner was back across the border, the paint was blistering and peeling on the bumper.

Soon afterward, the gel coat on the rear cap started bleeding through. All because of a lack of good preparation before they started painting, and shoddy workmanship.

So yes, the owner saved some money by going south of the border to get his coach painted. But like most things in life, you get what you pay for. With the great work Michele and her crew do, for so much less than what other shops charge, I don’t know why anyone would drive all the way to Mexico and take a chance on getting  a paint job like this instead.

Here is one of Michele’s employees buffing a motorhome she is finishing up on. Now that’s a good looking paint job! We keep saving our pennies, and one of these days we may be able to have Michele work her magic on our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage.

Yesterday we dropped off the new issue of the Gypsy Journal at our printer in Allegan, Michigan, and since Greg and Jan White had never been up in that area, they went with us. Jan really liked all of the pretty country scenery and small towns we passed through along the way.

When we left the printer, we drove to Portage, Michigan to have lunch, and browsed in a couple of stores; Gander Mountain for Greg and I, Bed, Bath and Beyond for Miss Terry and Jan, and Barnes and Noble for all of us.

Back at Elkhart Campground, I caught up on e-mail, and checked some of the RV blogs I try to read on a regular basis, then went for a walk around the campground. Or at least I tried to go for a walk.

First I noticed a couple trying to get a small refrigerator into their fifth wheel, and I stopped to give them a hand. Once we had it inside, I resumed my walk, and was stopped by a couple who wanted to talk about their frustrating attempts to have the husband teach the wife how to drive their RV. They both agreed that it wasn’t working, and I strongly suggested that they go talk to Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School. Some couples just don’t seem to be able to work together on things like that, and though the husband didn’t want to spend the money on a driving lesson (which is a great investment, in my opinion), I told him that it was a lot cheaper than a divorce!

I didn’t make it far before another couple called me over to their awning to ask about the seminars at our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. They didn’t have internet access to check the schedule at the bottom of the Rally Registration Page on our website, so I tried to remember all of the seminars we have scheduled. But with some 60 different seminars, I couldn’t remember each and every one. They wanted to know about as many as I could remember off the top of my head, and they asked a lot of questions about several of the seminars. I told them that I’d have the finished schedules printed up ahead of time, so they would have time to decide which ones they wanted to attend. Then the husband said, “Oh, we won’t be here. We’re headed for Pennsylvania in a couple of days, and then we’re going to New England to watch the leaves changing. We just wanted to know what we’d be missing.” Huh? I’m straining my brain and slapping bloodthirsty skeeters just so they could do some mental window shopping? I bit my tongue, and wished them a safe trip.

We’ve got a lot to do in the next few days, including picking up the new issue from the printer on Thursday, stuffing all of the envelopes and getting them mailed off,  proofing the design for the rally T-shirts, deciding on the layout of the vendor building, and a lot more. And I’ll probably need a nap or two somewhere along the way!

Thought For The Day – If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody.

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After reading yesterday’s blog, RVing’s Top 10, my friend Connie Bradish suggested maybe we needed a Bottom 10 list, and suggested, in no particular order:

1. A major dumping event, like the hose comes off and it’s all over.
2. A tire blowout, especially if it’s the right front tire.
3. Being sunk up to your rear axles in a designated camping spot.
4. Being sunk up to your axles in a non-camping spot.
5. Dragging the tow car behind the RV because it’s still in gear.
6. Driving a back road, and coming up to a bridge with a 10 foot maximum clearance, you need 13 feet and you have to stop, unhitch and turn the coach around, all while blocking traffic.
7. Driving a road you shouldn’t be on, like the southwest road around Lake Tahoe in you big RV and tow car.
8. Having a husband and wife disagreement while backing into a site, accompanied by funny hand signals from one partner to another.
9. Having a pet get out, and you can’t find them.
10. Hitting a low rock, post or cone, or an overhang of a building or a tree, damaging your coach.

Connie admitted that she and her husband Pete have scored 10 out of 10 on this list. I think we’ve missed just one, which is having a pet slip out the door, never to be found. When Miss Terry’s cat, Sasquatch was still with us, he was quite the escape artist, but he never went far.

But 9 out of 10 on the Rock Bottom list isn’t a bad (or in this case, good) record. Less than a week into our fulltming life, we were camped in a fairgrounds in Torrington, Wyoming, on our way to Life on Wheels in Moscow, Idaho. We had the place to ourselves, so I had nobody but myself to blame when I pulled out of our site and turned too soon, swinging the back end of our shiny new Pace Arrow motorhome into the concrete pedestal that held the water and electric hookups.   

I was just sick, and to Miss Terry’s credit, she didn’t shoot me, or even thump me with a rolling pin. Believe me, there was nothing she could have said to me that was worse than I was calling myself. I was still kicking myself three days later when we got to Moscow, where I met Dick Reed, founder of the RV Driving School. When I told him my sad tale of woe, Dick took my by the hand and led me to the back of the row where the instructors’ RVs were parked.

“Do you see the ding in that one,” Dick asked. “That belongs to Bill Farlow. Bill did that on a tree stump last year. This one here is Charlie Minshall’s rig. See that ding? Lord know what Charlie hit. And this one here, with the dented bumper belongs to…” By the time our tour was finished, I felt a lot better about my own mishap, and I had made a friend for life.

We’ve been stuck and we’ve been really stuck, and it’s never fun. This picture was taken at an RV park in Ohio a few years back. It had been raining for days, and we were nervous about pulling onto grass, but when we arrived, the park owner told us another bus had just left the same site. It must have been a Volkswagen bus, because our MCI promptly sunk up to its rear axle!

But anybody can get stuck in soft ground. In Bremerton, Washington, I proved that it is possible to drive a bus up a hill so steep that your front tires are on the pavement, and your rear bumper is digging into the pavement, but your drive tires are three inches in the air!

I also proved that while you can drive into that situation, you cannot drive back out of it! Getting out requires a very large tow truck, the police department to stop traffic, the fire department’s haz-mat crew to clean up the 36 gallons of radiator coolant that spills when the the tow truck cable snags a hose, and the local news crew. Did I mention I was going the wrong way up a one way street at the time?

When all was said and done, I asked the police officer in charge of the scene how big a ticket I was getting, and he replied “What with the tow bill, the radiator coolant you need to buy, the hose you need to replace, and the roses you’ll need to buy your wife to make up for this, I couldn’t in good faith give you a ticket. I’m a married man too!”

I also remember driving out of one of our first RV parks, and how everybody waved at us as we drove past. I commented to Terry about how nice everybody was, and wave right back. It wasn’t until I got to the street and glanced in my rear view mirrors that I noticed that I had left all of our window awnings out. Of course, at that point there was no way I was going to stop and get out, so I just drove away, while poor MIs Terry hung out the windows unhooking the awnings as we went!

So yeah, I could easily do a Rock Bottom 10 – been there, done that, and a few more. How about you? What were some of your worst RVing goofs?

Thought For The Day – Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

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I received an e-mail yesterday from a fellow who attended several of my classes at Life on Wheels, informing me that he is getting out of the RV lifestyle after two years on the road.

That happens sometimes. This fulltime RVing isn’t for everybody. Some folks try it and find that they miss the family and friends, and usually the grandkids, that they left back in their hometown. Others find a place they really love and decide to settle down there permanently. Sometimes a couple discover that while they do okay in a house or apartment, living in the close confines of a motorhome or fifth wheel trailer is just too much “togetherness.” There are also those who just don’t adapt well to the mobile lifestyle, and once in a while we hear from people who say they just cannot afford the RV lifestyle.

In this gentleman’s case however, his reason was that he is just, in his words, “tired of throwing money at this damned RV to keep it running.” We know what it’s like to have a lemon RV; our first motorhome was a Fleetwood Pace Arrow Vision that just disintegrated going down the highway. After eighteen months on the road, we finally dumped it and bought the MCI bus that we converted and lived in for over eight years.

However, after reading more of his long e-mail, I quickly realized that this fellow is unrealistic in his expectations for any RV, or any other vehicle, for that matter. Here is his explanation of the money he was “throwing” at his RV to “keep it running,” cut and pasted from his e-mail:

We’ve had this ’98 American Dream for two years now, and it had 82,000 miles on it when we bought it. We have put another 17,000 miles on it since we started fulltiming. In that time I have had to have the windshield wipers and arms replaced, for $75, replaced the switch for the automatic step for $49, replaced the water pump for $149, oil change and filter for $199, generator oil change $99, replaced two steer tires $800, and replaced original TV with LCD flat screen $500. And that doesn’t include fuel or campground fees!”

Now, I was never very good in math class, but according to my trusty calculator, the above comes to $1871. That’s not bad for two years of fulltiming in a twelve year old motorhome with almost 100,000 miles on it!

I would assume that the tires were probably the original ones, and if they were, they definitely needed replacing. We just replaced all six of our original tires, with less than 40,000 miles on them. The tread was still excellent, and the sidewalls looked fine, but I considered it an investment in our safety.

I do not see the windshield wipers, step switch, or water pump as extraordinary replacement items. Things do wear out and break down once in a while. As for the oil changes on the motor and generator, those are maintenance items, and  a part of owning any vehicle, whether it be an RV or a passenger car.

I’m not sure if the final item he listed, the TV, was a replacement or an upgrade, so I won’t comment on that. The original TV in the front of our Winnebago motorhome just gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago and we had to replace it. Again, things do break down once in a while.

Anyone expecting to buy an RV and never having to spend any money on its upkeep is just not going to happen. Especially an RV that experiences the wear and tear of fulltiming, instead of just being a carport queen that is only used for an annual vacation and an occasional weekend at the lake. When you factor in that this fellow bought an older RV with a considerable number of miles on it, I would be amazed if he didn’t have to spend some money on it.

I’m curious, how many of you fulltimers or extended time travelers  have an annual budget for maintenance and repairs, or have an idea of what you spend in a year for upkeep. Care to share?

Bad Nick doesn’t have an RV to take care of, so he spent his time yesterday posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Shake And Bake Celebrities. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – My mind works like lightning, one brilliant flash and it’s gone.

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Is there any greater treasure than the people you love in this life, and those who love you?

Yesterday Terry and I spent the day visiting with two very special people, who have helped enrich our lives in so many ways that I could not begin to count them all.

We met Tim and Ann Moran at our very first Escapees RV Club Escapade rally, in Lancaster, California in 2000, and there was an immediate bond that has stayed strong through all the years that followed. Maybe it was slogging through the mud to get to our motorhome, the four of us laughing and giggling like school kids as we slipped and slid across the muddy racetrack where the RVs were parked that let us know that we had met kindred souls.

In the years that followed, we all have had our ups and downs, and Tim and Ann have been there for us when we needed friends the most. During the darkest days of Terry’s battle with cancer, Tim was a strong shoulder I could lean on. In the hard times that followed as she recovered from her illness, and we recovered from the terrible financial hit it had given us, Tim and Ann were always there. At one point when we were not sure if we could carry on, they stepped forward and made it happen.

When we bought our MCI bus, Tim and Ann drove to Kingman, Arizona and spent two or three weeks helping us as we started the conversion project. We could not have done some of the big jobs early in the conversion, such as enclosing the sides and cutting in the new RV window openings, without Tim’s help.  

Tim has been facing some serious health issues that have caused them to make the decision to stop fulltiming and settle down close to his doctors. It had been way too long since we saw our friends, and visiting them was the reason we came to the Titusville area.

We spent the day together yesterday, enjoying a tour of their new home, and the opportunity to just be together.

Tim is a feisty retired Navy Chief Petty Officer with a positive attitude you just can’t help but admire. His illness has knocked him down several times, but like the stubborn little Irishman he is, he just gets back on his feet, shakes it off, and charges right back into the fight. I know he’s going to win this battle, because he’s just too damn stubborn to throw in the towel.

Tomorrow Tim and Ann are taking us on a tour of the local area, and we’re looking forward to spending more time with our friends, and learning more about Florida’s Space Coast.

While we were off visting, Bad Nick wrote a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Sometimes It’s Because You’re A Jerk.

Thought For The Day – You cannot plow a field by turning it over in your mind.

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With only 33,000 miles on it, our 2002 Winnebago diesel pusher is like new in many ways. The previous owner kept in inside a heated barn most of the time, and only used it for vacations and short trips with the grandkids. Miss Terry and the other ladies who have seen it all agreed that the stove had probably never been used, for example.

But the motorhome did have one noticeable flaw; one of the decorative stripes was chipped up in several places for some reason. So yesterday Michele Henry, from Phoenix Commercial Paint, spent several hours with a heat gun removing the old stripe, and this morning we are taking the Winnebago to her shop, where she will repaint the stripe in the original color.

We’d love to have one of Michele’s custom full body paint jobs, but there is just no room in the budget for it right now. Still, she can work wonders, and while the motorhome looked nice before, we know it will be even more attractive after Michele gets the new stripe on.

She will need to keep the motorhome overnight, so we are going to be back in the bus for one more night. I told Terry it’s sort of like having a weekend getaway place until we sell the bus.

Several fulltimers who have been RV shopping have written to tell me that they have been having trouble getting bank financing, and asking me who financed our rig. Over the years, I have had several fulltimers tell me they have experienced problems getting financing, even though they had very good credit.

We worked with Eileen Gilmore, an assistant branch manager with Alliant Credit Union in Chicago. We joined Alliant after meeting Eileen at Escapade in May, and she worked with us to get things set up to be sure we qualified. She has done everything she said she would do, and we are very pleased with our experience working with her. If you are shopping for a new or late model RV, I suggest you give Eileen a call at (773) 462-9642 or e-mail her at egilmore@alliantcreditunion.com, and tell her I sent you.

At the same time we joined Alliant, we also joined Community Resource Credit Union, which is based in Texas, and also had a booth at Escapade. One of the reasons we joined Community Resource is that they are part of the Shared Network, which in theory gave us the convenience of access to hundreds of affiliated credit union branches all over the country who also belong to the network. We were told that we could go into any Shared Network credit union anywhere in the country and it would be just like if we were at one of Community Resource’s own branches.

Well, not exactly, as it turns out. We made a couple of small deposits at Shared branches here in Indiana, and it took anywhere from two to three weeks minimum for them to be credited to our account. I could mail a deposit to our regular bank and have it credited before that!

As if that were not frustrating enough, when we took in cash to get a cashier’s check when purchasing our motorhome, we had to jump through all kinds of hoops and get a manager’s approval.

I called Community Resource to complain, and was told that while we could use any of the Shared affiliate credit unions, we had to wait for them to forward the deposits to Texas, which could take at least two weeks. Or, to speed things up, we could take photocopies of the checks we were depositing, as well as the deposit receipt from the Shared branch, and fax them to Community Resource in Texas. Yeah, that sure sounds convenient!

I had a better idea. I just closed the account.  

But before I close this blog post, Bad Nick wanted me to tell you that he has a new post in the Bad Nick Blog titled Yes, Racism Plays A Role. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – One nice thing about egotists; they don’t talk about other people.

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