We are into our annual slowdown in our printing schedule.

We try to have each issue of the Gypsy Journal printed and mailed by the middle of the month preceding the issue date, and five issues a year, we are usually able to meet that deadline. But every year, when it’s time to print the January-February issue, that schedule goes out the window. No matter where we are in the country or which newspaper we are using to do the printing, and no matter how far we plan ahead, we run into scheduling problems.

This is caused by several factors, including heavier than usual printing schedules, as stores are printing and mailing out special holiday advertising inserts, at the same time that press rooms are shorthanded as employees take vacation days. Because we are not a weekly or even monthly job on their schedule, we get shoved to the bottom of the pile while they take care of their regular customers’ needs. We understand it, we expect it, but it’s still frustrating.

So, like every year, the newest issue of the paper is going out later than we want it to. It’s at the printer now, and hopefully they’ll have it back to us early next week so we can get it mailed out. In the meantime, we appreciate everybody’s patience.

We have made a change to the way we do our printing, starting with this issue. Until now, we have used different printers in different locations around the country, wherever we happened to be when it was time to go to press. This has been problematic at times, and with the changes in the industry, it has only gotten worse. We never know what kind of quality we’re going to get with a new printer.

Another major problem is that the size of most newspaper pages is getting smaller and smaller, and we have resisted going to the newest size reduction. But, it has been increasingly hard to find newspapers that continue to print on our size paper at times. Last year we had to leave Alabama earlier than we had planned and drive all the way to south Texas to get printed, after last minute changes at the printer we had used in this region in the past. This year we thought that we’d have to go all the way back to Indiana from Washington, DC to get printed, when the newspaper we had planned to use switched paper sizes on us. Fortunately, we found a printer in Virginia at the last minute, but it was stressful.

So we have contracted with one of the newspapers who prints us in Michigan when we are in the Midwest to do all of our printing in the future. They have recently upgraded their systems and added the ability to allow us to upload our files to them via the internet, and once each issue is printed, they will ship it to us by truck.  They could actually handle our mailing too, but in addition to the papers we mail out, we also have several thousand extra printed of each issue, which we distribute as samples at RV rallies and RV parks we visit in our travels.

This will add quite a bit to our cost for each issue, but it will give us consistent quality from a printer we are comfortable with, and who understands our unique needs.  I’m sure we’ll have a glitch or two along the way, but we’re confident that in the long run, it will all work out.

I’m still adding new seminars to the schedule for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally, March 7-11 in Yuma. I still have quite a few time slots to fill in, but it’s coming together. I have posted a very preliminary seminar schedule on our rally registration page to give you an idea some of the offerings we will have. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check it out. We’ll have over 60 different seminars by the time we’re done, so there’s sure to be plenty to meet everybody’s interest. As I said, this is just a preliminary schedule, and there will be lots of changes and additions by the time the rally starts. Be sure to register early, we’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Thought For The Day – We can’t go back in time and have a different beginning, but we can start today to make a new ending for ourselves.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Well, I didn’t make my goal of getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal finished yesterday, but I’m close enough that I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unless that light is from an oncoming train, we’re still in good shape. Today I’ll put the finishing touches on the new issue, Miss Terry will proof it again, and tomorrow we’ll take it to our printer in Michigan.

With the paper about done, it’s time to start finishing things up for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, which starts in just two weeks. Greg and Jan are out soliciting door prizes from local merchants today, and will be most of the week. I need to get the artwork to the screen printer for our rally t-shirts, and finish tweaking the seminar schedule.

One new seminar being presented by Whit Reeder, a district manager for a Verizon Wireless provider, will cover smart phone such as the Droids, Blackberrys, and Palms.  Whit says the seminar will introduce folks to a lot of free applications to make life a little smoother, and will save most people up to an hour a day.

We took a short break yesterday to chat with Terry and Dale Pace, who stopped in to say hello. Terry just got out of the hospital, and it’s good to see him up and about.

Later on, we went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse with Greg and Jan, and Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum. They make an excellent steak at Texas Roadhouse, but why do they always have to have the darned music so loud? For me, when I go to dinner with people, the opportunity to talk is a big part of the experience. At Texas Roadhouse, you have to shout to be heard most the time.

Back at Elkhart Campground, our friends Susie Orr, Marlene Hinman, and Carol Hill stopped in to say hello. With that many pretty ladies in our motorhome, and Miss Terry too, I was about to overdose on cute!

I got an e-mail in response to yesterday’s blog, in which I said I raised eyebrows when I referred to Greg White as my “wife” at a local gun show, telling me that I was insensitive to gay people. No, I am just terribly politically incorrect, and I have a sense of humor.

I can’t say that “some of my best friends” are gay, but I do have several gay friends that I really care about, and I think we know each other well enough that they would have let me know if I had offended them. I won’t go into an entire Bad Nick thing here, but lighten up people. Not everything in life has to be drama. If you can’t laugh once in a while, you’re in big trouble.

But Bad Nick knows that some things are not laughing matters, as you’ll read in his new Bad Nick Blog post Ground Zero Mosque. Check it out and leave a comment.

Okay, back to work. I have a paper to finish!

Thought For The Day – When you can’t control the wind, adjust your sails.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

It was a busy weekend, what with getting the bus sold, cleaning up the mess inside our motorhome from the burglary, and dealing with all of those issues. Then, yesterday morning we woke up to an inch or so of snow on the ground and very slick roads.

It was only ten miles from where we spent the weekend, inside the building at Phoenix Commercial Paint to be out of the weather, back to the RV repair shop where the burglary occurred, but we saw three accidents on the way there. You would think that folks who live in a place where it snows every winter wouldn’t need to learn to drive on slippery roads all over again each year, but apparently they do.

A crew went right to work on our motorhome and got a lot accomplished in a very short period of time, but there was no glass available anywhere locally to fit our door window, it needed to be shipped directly from Winnebago, in Forest City, Iowa. Since the entire country seems to be under a winter storm alert, the folks at Winnebago said they would do their very best to get it shipped overnight, but couldn’t promise anything.

It was apparent that no matter how hard they tried, there was no way our RV was gong to be ready to roll out of here in time for me to make it to my appointment at the VA hospital in Lexington, Kentucky Wednesday morning. We were faced with either rescheduling the appointment, no easy task with the VA’s heavy workload, or leaving the RV here, driving to Lexington in the van, and then back. At 350 miles each way, that wasn’t an appealing option. I called the hospital, explained my situation, and lucked out. They had an open slot on Friday morning, and I grabbed it. Now we have a little more time to work with, and hopefully the weather will cooperate just a little bit and the glass will arrive on schedule, in time to get it installed.

Rather than drive back to Phoenix Commercial Paint for the night, they moved our rig into the paint booth here, where we are nice and toasty and feel secure, away from the creeps who prowl the night looking for an easy score. It looks like this will be our home for a couple more days.

Terry and I want to thank every body who has shown their love and support in so many ways. We have so many e-mails and blog comments that we just don’t have time to reply to each one individually, but we read all of them, and you have made a very rough time in our lives a lot easier. A special thanks to our friends Rick Schafer and Marcia Gantz, who live about an hour away in Michigan. They are leaving on a trip for a week or so, and called to offer us the use of their home if we needed a place to stay. What wonderful, caring friends we have!

Thought For The Day – Experience is the mother of wisdom.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Getting to know other RVers is one of the best parts of this lifestyle!

For the last few days, Bruce and Linda Fay have been parked next to us at Elkhart Campground in their nice looking older Itasca Sunrise motorhome. Yesterday before they left to go back home to Michigan, they stopped over to say goodbye. Bruce and Linda were at our recent Gypsy Gathering rally in Celina, Ohio, but we were so busy there that we didn’t really have time to talk, so it was nice to have a few minutes to visit.

Later in the afternoon, Greg White invited us to go to dinner with he and his wife Jan, to celebrate Jan’s birthday. We first met Greg and Jan at one of our rallies in Arizona, where Greg managed to get his diesel pusher stuck pulling out of the Casa Grande Fairgrounds, and I teased him in the blog about it. Greg has a great sense of humor, and took it in stride.

They were also at our rally in Celina, and then came back here to Elkhart. We have enjoyed getting to know them better in the last couple of weeks, and Greg has helped me out with several projects. In fact, today we have a couple more planned that I know I could not tackle on my own.

On the topic of rallies, I have added an Early Bird Registration link to our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma March 8-12. Originally it was my understanding that because the fairgrounds are having a Good Sam rally just before our event, we would not be able to have our regular early bird arrival. But I talked to the folks at the fairgrounds Friday, and they tell me the Good Sam group will be leaving the fairgrounds on Sunday, March 7. Early birds coming in for our rally can arrive anytime after noon on the 7^th. If you have been to one of our rallies before, you know how much fun they are, and if you haven’t had the chance yet, I hope you’ll join us in Yuma.

Hardworking Miss Terry finally finished all of the mailing and the new issue is on its way to subscribers all over the country. It’s always a relief when the last envelopes get to the post office and we can breathe a big sigh of relief until next time around.

A couple of our readers e-mailed me during the weekend to give me their winter addresses. Unfortunately, the papers were already stuffed into envelopes and in the system, so I was not able to pull them out and change the addresses. If your paper does not get forwarded to you, please let me know. And if you are getting ready to head for your favorite snowbird roost, be sure to let us know your winter address for next issue.

While Miss Terry was working hard on the mailing, Bad Nick posted a new Bad Nick Blog called AT&T Salutes Vets With One Finger. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – People always talk about the importance of cleaning their homes but they rarely talk about cleaning their minds and souls.  What unwanted stuff are you carrying within you?

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

The title of today’s blog says it all. That’s how I feel sometimes, including right now. About the time I think I have a good handle on something, some unforeseen and unexplainable problem shows up.

After a couple of years of experimenting, we launched our digital edition of the Gypsy Journal several issues back, and after a lesson from my friend Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour and a short learning curve, I managed to upload the digital issues to the web with no problems.

But yesterday, when I tried to upload the new issue, it wouldn’t go. The Ipswitch file transfer program kept asking me for the user name and password to our FTP site, and when I entered it, I got an error message telling me to re-enter the information again. I could log directly onto our FTP site with my user name and password, so I knew it was correct, but it just wouldn’t work using the file transfer program.

After hours of frustration, just about the time I was going to call Chris Guld and ask for help, the darn thing logged right on and worked just fine. I didn’t do anything different, and it was the same user name and password I’d been entering all along. Go figure.

I know that computers are wonderful tools, and I wouldn’t want to go back to the old days before we had great things like websites and internet access. I just wish the darned gremlins would stay out of them!

We got our bus conversion winterized Wednesday, and yesterday morning we dropped it off at the building where we’re going to store it this winter. Even though it is going to be inside, out of the winter weather, we drained the water heater and all of the lines and filled them with RV antifreeze, just in case of a power failure or something like that. We probably overdid it, since we had never winterized an RV before, but we wanted to be safe, rather than sorry.

We had hoped to have the bus sold by now, and have several people who are interested, but we’re just about out of time and don’t plan to hang around here much longer. One gentleman asked if we would delay our departure until November 1^st, which is the earliest he can get here, and if he confirms he’s coming for sure, we’ll wait. But Elkhart Campground is closing in just a few days, so that’s about as long as we can stretch it.

Subscribers Greg and Jan White are parked behind us here at Elkhart Campground, and Greg has been helping me with a couple of last minute projects I wanted to get done on our motorhome before we hit the road for our winter travels. I sure appreciate your help, Greg!

We picked up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal at our printer yesterday, so the next few days will be a mad rush to get all of the envelopes stuffed and mailed out. As we were driving up to Michigan to get it and back, Miss Terry commented that we are very lucky. Even though we don’t like the cold weather, we get to see some spectacular fall colors, and then we can leave before the snow starts piling up.

Yeah, even with contrary computer programs and other little problems, I guess life is pretty good after all.

Thought For The Day – I believe in sharing the road with other drivers. They can have the part behind me.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally