It’s a good thing that we don’t spend more time with Terry’s cousin Carolyn and her husband Mel because it’s really hard on my waistline. Yesterday, Carolyn made Mel a chocolate cake, and I just could not in good conscience let him do to his skinny little body what I’ve done to mine, so I helped him eat a goodly portion of it. Hey, with me the damage has already been done, and besides, what are friends for, right? Don’t worry about it Mel, let her keep right on baking. I’ve got your back.

I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that we saw a very nice 38 foot 2001 Winnebago Ultimate Advantage diesel pusher at a local dealer over the weekend, and yesterday we went back and took it for a test drive.

Wow! We were impressed! Heck, let’s be honest, we fell in love! We’ve looked at a lot of very nice RVs over the years, and several that we could be comfortable in, but this one really stood out. It just screamed “Buy me!” My Dad used to say, “When something is right, you just feel it,” and this feels right to us.

It handles like a dream, has a ton of upgrades, rides great, and would work just fine for our needs. I had never driven a rig with the 330 horsepower Cat engine in it before, and I was really amazed at how well it got up to speed coming onto the freeway. Miss Terry also took a turn behind the wheel, and was very pleased with the way it drove.

They made us a very good offer, and we are going to look long and hard at putting a deal together. Several things would all have to click at once, including the sale of our bus to a person who has expressed a strong interest in it. So we’re not there yet, but if the stars all align just right, we just may be able to pull it off. Wish us luck.

Some of you may remember my April 23^rd blog, in which I wrote about an RVer who had a headlight out on his pickup truck while we were in Albuquerque for the Affinity rally. He stopped at an auto parts store to buy a replacement light, and on the way back to the fairgrounds a policeman pulled him over and, after asking him several times if he knew he had a headlight out, which he acknowledged, and showed the officer the replacement light. The officer then gave him a summons, and told him that if he had said he did not know the light was out, he’d have only received a warning instead of a ticket. As I wrote in the blog about the incident, I really didn’t feel that was right.

The other day I got an e-mail from the gentleman who received the ticket, telling me that he was so upset he hung around and went to court to fight it, and won. He said the judge told the officer that he was sure the local police had better things to do that bait honest citizens into admitting guilt to a minor infraction, and then giving them a ticket for it.

I’m usually a very strong supporter of law enforcement. I come from a family full of cops. But this time around I have to agree with the judge. I think justice was served.

Thought For The Day – Middle age is not user friendly.

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A few days ago I posted a blog with photos of RVs damaged by a tornado that hit the NACO Natchez Trace campground near Hohenwald, Tennessee. That wasn’t Mother Nature’s only assault on the RV world lately.

On Friday another nasty storm, accompanied by a tornado, tore through Saint Francois State Park near Bonne Terre, Missouri, where our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel are camp hosts. Brenda said they had five inches of rain, and they had a hectic time evacuating people to storm shelters. She told me it was one of the most frightening experiences she has ever had.

Not much rattles my pal Ron, who has pretty much seen it all in his career as a police officer and police chief, but he said it was bad enough that he felt much better inside the storm shelter.

Fortunately for our friends, their beautiful Winnebago diesel pusher was parked on high ground, but nine visitors’ RVs were flooded out, and six of them were totaled.

We’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll have good weather during our trip east this week, and while we’re at Escapade in Sedalia, Missouri. One reason we are giving ourselves over a week to travel the 1200 miles to Sedalia is to give us the leeway to hunker down and wait out any storms that lay in our travel path.

Our old MCI bus conversion came from the factory with just basic gauges – speedometer, air pressure gauge, oil pressure and temperature gauges, and battery gauge. I quickly got tired of using a wooden dowel rod to check my fuel level, so one of our first priorities was to add a fuel gauge. One gauge I really wish we had was a tachometer. 

At a bus rally last October I managed to pick up a digital tachometer for the bus, but the darned thing did not come with a mounting bracket. After looking at 4×4 and marine shops all over the country from the Florida Keys to Arizona, yesterday we went to Lowe’s here in Show Low and Miss Terry managed to come up with a couple of items that we could combine to create a makeshift mount.

That all came together fine, but when I hooked it up, the darned tach turned out to be dead! With power and a ground connected, we should have a reading of all zeroes with the engine off, but there is nothing. I checked the power going in, and it is good, so all I can figure out is that something must be bad inside the gauge itself.

As many of you know, we have decided it is time to upgrade from our bus to something bit newer and with a slide so we’ll have some room when the grandkids come to visit. Yes, I know it will be quite a change for us from a bus to a production built motorhome, but we’re ready. Several people have sent us information on used diesel pushers, and while we appreciate that, many have been way out of our price range.

We’re looking for a 38 to 40 foot diesel pusher with at least a living room slide, a minimum of a 300 horsepower engine, and somewhere in the $50K to $70K price range. Some of the brands and models we have looked at and liked include Winnebago, Newmar, Holiday Rambler, and Allegro. While we are not fans of Fleetwood, we have seen a couple of nice American Dream and American Tradition coaches we liked. We would prefer to buy from a private party instead of a dealership, but we would not rule that out.

If you know of something that fits into the above criteria that might meet our needs, I’d appreciate you sending me a quick e-mail. Maybe you have a friend who is thinking about trading their coach in and not getting anywhere with the dealers on a trade-in basis. If so, send them my way.

Thought For The Day – Don’t argue with an idiot; people watching may not be able to tell who is who.

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Regular blog readers may remember a post I wrote on February 27 titled Just Shut Up, in which I said that sometimes silence is, indeed, golden. A Gypsy Journal reader at the Affinity rally said he learned that while in Albuquerque.

He said that when he arrived at the rally grounds it was late in the day, and someone on the parking crew informed him that one of his headlights was burned out.

The next evening he and his wife went to a local restaurant for dinner with some friends, and he had forgotten about the headlight until they were leaving the restaurant and one of their dinner companions spotted it and told him. On the way back to the fairgrounds, he stopped at an auto parts store and bought a replacement headlight.

He said it was dark by then and he was a block from the fairgrounds when a police officer going the opposite direction made a U-turn and pulled him over to tell him his headlight was out. He said he told the officer that he knew it, and in fact had just bought a replacement bulb not 5 minutes earlier.

He told me that the officer then said, “So you are admitting to me that you know you are driving an unsafe vehicle, which is a misdemeanor?”

He again told the officer that he had just bought a replacement headlight, and the officer again said “So you are admitting that you knew the headlight was out, and you are driving the vehicle?”

My friend said “Yeah, if you put it that way, I guess so.”

Then the cop issued him a ticket for violation of Section 66-3-801 of the state motor vehicle code. Once he had signed the ticket, the officer told him “If you had told me you were not aware of the burned out headlight, all you would have gotten was a warning ticket with no fine.”

I’m not sure I would have believed him if he hadn’t shown me the ticket, and his wife confirmed his story.

Now folks, I’m usually a big supporter of law enforcement. Our policemen and women do a job I’d never want to have to do. But this sucks. I know my way around Albuquerque a little bit, and on the area of Central Avenue around the fairgrounds, you can buy a hooker, any kind of drugs you want, or anything else that comes to mind. And yet this officer had time to hassle an old guy and his wife in an out of state pickup, because he told the truth. That just isn’t right.

Thought For The Day – There can be no failure for a man who has not lost his courage.

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