Friday our Gypsy Gathering rally ended, and after the morning coffee and donuts, I walked over to Dave and Jean Damon’s fifth wheel trailer, where Jean, a professional masseuse, gave me an wonderfully relaxing massage. Jean was trained in the Philippines, and by the time she got done kneading and prodding my sore, tired muscles, I was so relaxed that it was all I could do just to walk back to our motorhome.

Besides her massages, Dave and Jean were also selling 303 Products at the rally, and they did very well. We first met this nice couple when we were all vendors at the FMCA rally in Bowling Green, Ohio, and struck up an immediate friendship.

Back at the motorhome, Joe and Vicki Kieva stopped in for a chat, and as they were leaving a long series of visitors arrived at our door as rally attendees came to say goodbye before they hit the road. I tried to be good company, but I was so relaxed after my massage that I’m afraid at times it was all I could do to hold up my end of a conversation.

Friday night a bunch of us all went to the China Wok Buffet here in Celina, which I rate in the top percentile of Chinese buffets we have ever visited. It is so good that this was our third visit in the two weeks we’ve been in town!

Here is a photo Miss Terry took of some of our group. That is Nancy Hazelton on the left, and beside her is Mike Loscher, myself, Ron Speidel, and Ken Barker. On the right is Orv Hazelton, and in the background is Brenda Speidel. Elaine Loscher was camera shy, so you can just barely see her arms next to Orv. Billie Barker was off checking out the buffet line when this picture was taken. We all stuffed ourselves, and don’t be too surprised if Miss Terry and I don’t sneak back one more time before we leave Celina for good.

After a busy week of getting up at obscenely early hours, working hard to keep everything at the rally on track, and getting very little sleep, Miss Terry and I played lazy Saturday morning and slept in. Once we woke up, we lay in bed a while, just enjoying some much needed quiet time together, and talking about the week just past.

Once we were up, things got busy really fast. I had no sooner opened our front window curtain and the window shades before somebody was knocking at the door. We had a ton of paperwork to catch up on, as well as settling our account with the fairgrounds for the rally rental, but I’m afraid we didn’t get much done. But that’s okay, we wanted to be sure to spend some time with everybody we could.

Sometimes we feel pulled in a dozen different directions at one time, and we had to tell some people “I’m sorry, we just don’t have the time,” but there are just so many hours in a day. We love visiting with our friends and readers, and we really hate to be rude, but sometimes we have no other choice. We just hope that they will understand.

Today we will drive 215 miles south to Lexington, Kentucky, where I have my annual appointment at the V.A. hospital on Monday morning. As soon as that is over, we’ll turn right around and come back to Ohio and spend a week or so gathering stories for the next issue of the Gypsy Journal, which we need to get printed and mailed before we head south for the winter

Thought For The Day – Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

In yesterday’s blog, I offered a free sample of our test electronic edition, and by the time I turned on my computer in the morning I had 55 people asking for a sample! Another 25 or so e-mailed during the day asking for one too, so I spent a lot of time answering e-mails.

The response has been very positive overall. Almost everybody said it opened very quickly and they liked the format. A couple of people complained that the type was too small to read easily, but if you open it as a PDF file with Adobe Reader, which almost every computer has these days, you can click on the magnifying glass icon to zoom in.

More than half of the folks who got a sample said they would prefer it over the printed version of the Gypsy Journal. One person out of the 75 or so I sent a sample to said there is so much stuff that can be found free online that she could not see the value, but that is okay, we can’t please everybody.

I did find it interesting that she is one of the blog readers who has written several times to say that she would subscribe to an online version, but not a printed one, because of the mailing costs. Like I said, we can’t please everybody, and we don’t expect to. And nobody has to subscribe to either version. I still welcome you as a blog reader and look forward to being able to entertain and maybe even educate you a little bit from time to time. We still have some technical issues to address, but I think we’ll give this a try once those are remedied. Once I’m sure we can make this work on a long term basis, I’ll make a formal announcement here in the blog. Again, this is NOT a replacement for the printed version of the Gypsy Journal. That will continue as always. This is an option for those who, for whatever reason, don’t want a printed edition mailed to them. Okay, moving right along, my friend Dick Reed sent me an e-mail yesterday saying he was really upset when he called his insurance company (Good Sam) for a quote on a car, and discovered that he was talking to someone in the Philippines. Dick wondered why, with all of the unemployed people in this country, Good Sam felt the need to outsource their call center offshore.

Dick said he asked for a supervisor, who told him it was to make sure their customers had someone available 24/7 to answer their calls. Huh? I know a lot of Americans who would be happy for a job, even if it were on the second or third shift! Dick said that when his insurance comes up for renewal, he’ll be doing some shopping. I can’t say as I blame him.

I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that Ken Wiseman has been very helpful in working out a lot of the details of the digital edition of the Gypsy Journal. What I forgot to mention is that Ken and his wife Martha are the driving force behind the RV Navigator website, and for several years they have been providing audio reports, called podcasts, on a monthly basis, covering the RV lifestyle from an on the road perspective. I logged on and spent some time listening, and they are very good. But don’t take my word for it, check it out  for yourself at http://rvnavigator.com/RV_Navigator/RV_Navigator_Home.html.

Thought For The Day – If you can’t fix it with a hammer, you’ve got an electrical problem.

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