When we woke up Friday morning it was raining hard and the wind was blowing. Obviously, we were not going to do any traveling in that kind of weather, so we rolled over and snuggled back down under the covers.

The storm hung on all day long. Sometimes the rain pounded down hard, and other times it was just a steady drizzle, but whatever it as doing, it was not conducive to being outside or traveling.

I spent the day getting a lot of things done online, including loading up Carlyle Lehman’s new Focal Wood website. Carlyle is the Amish craftsman who built the custom workstations, bookcase, and dinette table for our Winnebago motorhome.

I stopped out to see Carlyle at his place in Nappanee a few days ago, and he said that ever since I told our readers about him in the blog, and then Ron and Brenda Speidel mentioned him in their Don’t Replace, Refurbish seminar at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally last month, he has been swamped with work. When I was at his place this week, he had three motorhomes there getting things installed. That’s great, because Carlyle does excellent work and I would recommend him to anybody wanting custom RV furniture.

Besides working on Carlyle’s website, I re-entered all of the telephone numbers into my Blackberry Storm that I had lost when I updated its software the other day. Note to self – back up the darned Blackberry!

It was a lazy day, and sometime in the afternoon I decided that a nap was in order. I stretched out on the couch, and had just fallen into a very good dream when the phone rang. It was Greg White, asking if we were up for dinner. We’re always up for dinner, so we piled into their truck and headed for the local Ryan’s Buffet.

It was the first time I had been outside all day, and the entire campground was one huge puddle! In fact, all of Elkhart was one huge puddle! Greg and Jan had braved the weather to drive their pickup down to Decatur, Indiana to tour the American Coach factory, and they said the wind had been strong all the way down and all the way back. We were glad we had decided to stay put and wait for the storm to move on.

Today the rain is supposed to be over, but the wind may hang on. We would really like to get on the road, and we probably will unless it’s just too windy. But just as I said in yesterday’s blog, there is no place we have to be anytime soon, so we have the luxury of staying or going, whichever seems best.

Thought For The Day – Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience.

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We’re getting down to the wire and I’m hoping we can get everything done here in Elkhart that we need to before we leave. I’m wrapping up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal and hopefully will have it done by tonight so we can take it up to our printer in Michigan on Monday.

Then we need to make a quick overnight trip to Muskegon, Michigan to visit Rocky and Bernie Frees one more time before we begin our winter travels. We’ll get the new issue back from the printer Thursday or Friday, and Miss Terry will spend next weekend stuffing envelopes to drop off at the mail service the following Monday morning.

Meanwhile, I have to put some finishing touches on a website I’m building for Carlyle Lehman at Focal Wood Products and visit him in Nappanee to get his final approval before the website goes live.

And somewhere in that time we need to winterize our bus conversion and move it to its winter storage location. We located an inside storage location, but I still want to have the bus winterized, just in case a bad storm knocks out power for a few days.

I also wanted to get the Winnebago in to Cummins for service, and to a local shop to have a couple of small things done. We may have to wait until we get further south to do that. 

But you know what they say about all work and no play. So yesterday I got away from the computer long enough so we could go to dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant with Greg and Jan White. We first met Greg and Jan when they came to Life on Wheels as students, and I remember that during my Reluctant RVer seminar Jan began to cry. She told me later it was because she felt like I was talking directly to her and addressing many of the fears she had about fulltime RVing. The other day Jan credited me with “talking her in off the ledge” when she wasn’t sure if she could go through with the change to the fulltime lifestyle. Whenever somebody tells me something like that, I am very flattered, and I feel good that maybe I could make a positive impact in their life in some small way. 

Speaking of RV seminars, in yesterday’s blog I told you about my pal Charlie Minshall, the Silver Gypsy. Charlie has offered to come to our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma to present an excellent seminar called Moments in Time:  A 20-year full-time North American RV Adventure that will take you along with Charlie as she lives on a Mexican beach, drives the Trans-Labrador Highway, experiences the Blue Ridge Parkway, discourages a bear on the haul road to Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, takes a Yukon River wilderness canoe trip, and mushes dogs on a glacier. You can bet this is going to be a great seminar, and I plan to be sitting right in the front row!

Even as busy as I’ve been, Bad Nick still found time to write a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Will You Stand By Your Principles? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – The trouble with life is there’s no background music.

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Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person. Never have been, never will be. I used to do a lot of hunting and fishing, but I never subscribed to the theory that you have to roll out of bed at O-Dark-30 just to ambush a bunny rabbit or hook a trout. Those critters are still out there at noon.

I usually do bookwork and research during the day, start writing about 9 p.m., and work until 1 or 2 a.m. before I call it a day. So I seldom get into an upright position before 9 a.m. That’s just what works best for me.

But the last few days I have been up way too early. We had company over the weekend, and Miss Terry said I had to get up and be a good host. Then yesterday I had to have my van in a shop just after 8 a.m. to have some work done on it. And this morning we are taking the Winnebago to Carlyle Lehman at Focal Wood Products in Nappanee to have our custom desks/workstations installed. Carlyle is an excellent Amish craftsman, but those people sure do get up early in the morning! Did I mention that I’m not a morning person?

We’re slowly getting settled into the new motorhome, and once we get the new work stations installed today, we’ll start feeling more organized and at home. It is amazing that our bus was 40 feet long, just like the Winnebago, but the motorhome is six inches wider, and with the living room and bedroom slides, it seems so much bigger inside.

We’ll be here in Elkhart until about the 20^th, then we’ll head over to Celina, Ohio to start getting things set up for our Gypsy Gathering rally. We have had a lot of people offer to volunteer to help out at the rally, but one of the jobs we really need done is someone to come in early and canvass the local businesses soliciting door prizes. Last year the business community in Celina was very welcoming and receptive, but the folks who collected door prizes can’t make it this time around. Anyone feel like pounding the pavement?

I have to make a decision soon about my Today’s Hero Blog. When I came up with the idea, I hoped to be able to showcase the unsung heroes in our world who give of themselves to help others. It’s something I really believe in, but I have been receiving very few submissions in the last month or so, and without input from our readers, it can’t continue. If there is someone special in your life that you think deserves recognition for their good deeds, send me an e-mail and let’s share their story with the rest of the world.

Thought For The Day – It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

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Labor Day weekend. The last big hurrah of the summer traveling and camping season for most people.

It’s going to be a busy weekend here at Elkhart Campground. Already RVs of every size and description are pulling in, and campground owner Bobby Patel tells me they have a lot of camping sites reserved for the entire weekend.

For fulltime RVers like ourselves, most holiday weekends don’t matter much, except for the fact that we have to plan ahead and get a place to park before every campground and RV park fills up with weekend campers. Most fulltimers we know try to get into a park by Wednesday or Thursday before the holiday weekend, and sit tight until about Tuesday of the next week, staying off the highway until things settle down and everybody gets back home.

Besides all of the weekend campers, we have quite a few folks we know here at the campground. Ron and Brenda Speidel have been parked next to us for a couple of weeks now, helping us get moved and settled into our new motorhome. What would we do without these two? Dale and Terry pace have been here for several weeks now, and we have visited with them several times.

Howie and Norah Glover arrived a few days ago, and yesterday Ken and Billie Barker arrived from their home in Missouri, and yesterday Dave and Linda Sand arrived, though we have not had a chance to talk to them yet. Linda is very good about sending me many of the little Thought For The Day sayings I use at the bottom of this blog.

With most of the move completed from the bus, I have turned my attention to creating a website for Carlyle Lehman, the owner of Focal Wood Products in nearby Nappanee, Indiana. Carlyle, an accomplished Amish craftsman, is famous in RV circles for his excellent custom furniture, and he is building a custom desk for me and a desk/workstation for Miss Terry, along with a bookcase, for the Winnebago. If you have had Carlyle build anything for your RV, I would really appreciate any digital photos you might be willing to share for use in Carlyle’s website.

Because I don’t have enough irons in the fire, between publishing the Gypsy Journal, four websites, writing for the RV.Net Blog, and now three blogs of my own, I also get to brag about a new book that I co-authored with Christy Pinheiro titled The Step-By-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit!

The book was published this week and is available on Amazon.com. Here is a link to the book’s website, for anyone interested in checking it out. If there is a book inside of you, get yourself a copy of our new book, and check out my self-publishing website, Publishing4Profit. I’ve supported myself by crunching words for most of my adult life, and it’s a lot more fun than working for a living.

But Bad Nick has been busy too. He just put up a new blog post titled Stick A Label On It. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

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Terry and I want to thank all of you who left comments or sent us congratulatory e-mails in response to yesterday’s blog about our motorhome purchase.

To be honest, Miss Terry had some real misgivings, not about the Winnebago itself, but about what the reaction might be from some of our readers. As longtime blog readers may remember, we were chastised by a couple of folks when I bought a motorcycle a while back, or when I announced that we were shopping for a motorhome. One rather vocal former reader felt that we were “getting rich off our subscribers,” and didn’t feel it was right for him to help pay for my new toys.

I told Terry that I have never apologized for what success I may have achieved in my life. We work very hard, and there has to be some reward now and then. Besides, it’s like my Dad used to say, “Never explain and never apologize. Your friends don’t need it, and your enemies won’t believe it anyway.” We feel very blessed to have so many wonderful friends such as all of you out there, who can share in our happiness and be happy for us. 

Two very special friends are Ron and Brenda Speidel. Not only did they help us inspect the motorhome before we bought it, yesterday they really blew us out of the water.

Terry and I had to drive 70 miles up to Michigan to pick up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal from the printer, and then drive 85 miles back to Mishawaka, Indiana to pick up the envelopes from our mail service. From there we needed to go 30 miles to Nappanee, Indiana for an appointment with Carlyle Lehman, a very talented Amish cabinetmaker who owns a company called Focal Wood and specializes in RV upgrades. We wanted to talk to Carlyle about building a custom desk/work station in our new (to us) motorhome. With that finished, we then had to drive 30 miles back to Elkhart Campground! And all we wanted to do was spend the day getting our new home ready to move into!

Before we left, Ron and Brenda told us that they had thought about getting us a nice lamp as a housewarming gift, but being fulltime RVers themselves, they know that the last thing we need is more “stuff.” So instead, they announced that while we were gone, they were going to clean our new motorhome top to bottom, so that as soon as we got the new issue of the paper stuffed and mailed out, all we had to do was start moving in! Wow! What a wonderful, thoughtful offer! We told them that wasn’t necessary, they have done so much for us already, but Ron and Brenda insisted.

We thought we had a nice looking motorhome when we brought it back to the campground Thursday afternoon, but now it’s even better! Ron cleaned every bay, including the walls and the insides of the doors, vacuumed them all, used 303 on all of the seals and grommets, and lubed and tested every hinge, strut and anything else that needed even the slightest attention. Our sewer bay gleams!

And inside, Brenda was just as busy, removing a few small spots from the carpet, and scrubbing every surface from the bedroom closet to the dashboard. There’s not a hospital operating room any cleaner than the inside of that rig! I daresay that no new RV from any manufacturer ever left the dealer’s lot looking as nice. Ron and Brenda worked hard for hours and the results really show. We thanked them profusely, but they just brushed it off, saying that’s what friends do for each other. (Though they did admit later that somewhere around mid-afternoon, they said to each other “We should have just bought them a lamp!”)

In answer to a couple of questions we have been asked several times; we have two buyers who are interested in the bus, and we hope to find it a good home soon, but nothing has happened yet. It is advertised on our website at Gypsy Journal Bus For Sale, if you know anybody looking for a nice, affordable bus conversion. Several people wanted to know if we are moving our solar panels to the new RV. We’re not sure yet. A lot depends on the deal we make with whomever buys the bus.

And last, but not least, a lot of folks asked how they will be able to recognize us when we’re not in the bus. That’s the idea! Now I can slip into a campground or rally incognito and let Bad Nick off his leash, and nobody will know it until it’s too late!

Thought For The Day – Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

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