Yes, it’s miserably cold here in central Florida. Yes, I am chilled to the bone. Yes, it sucks. But I shall not snivel. Yesterday evening we watched news coverage of the blizzard that is blanketing the east coast, and all of those folks stranded in airports, and others who were busy shoveling snow, or getting stuck. Compared to them, we have it good.

But just because I’m not going to snivel doesn’t mean I have to like it! If my fingers ever thaw out enough that I can type again, I plan to write a strongly worded editorial!

We knew the weather was going to be ugly yesterday, and we had no place to go and nothing to do, so we slept in, then stayed in bed snuggling for a long time, because neither of us was in a hurry to get out from under the covers. When we finally did get up, we wore our sweats all day long, and put on our warm Teepee Creepers sheepskin slippers. While Miss Terry has to have her morning kick start, I don’t drink coffee. But I sure didn’t turn down the cup of hot chocolate she made me for breakfast!

I spent the day catching up on a backlog of paperwork I had let pile up, and managed to make a big dent in it. Terry kept busy doing some laundry, puttering around the kitchen, and working on some other chores she needed to get out of the way.

It never got much above 50 degrees all day long, and the wind kept gusting up. Looking out the windows, we saw very little activity most of the day, except for a few people bundled up, walking their dogs. That’s another reason I don’t have a pet. I love dogs, but I’ll go play with theirs when it warms up, and leave the dog walking in the cold to them.

We love our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, and it has so many nice features we didn’t have in our MCI bus conversion. The one place where it is lacking is in insulation. When we built the bus, we put several layers of different kinds of insulation in the floor, ceiling, and walls. We didn’t have a furnace in the bus, but with an Olympian catalytic heater, or a small electric heater, we  stayed warm and toasty even when outside temperatures got  down below freezing several times.

The Winnebago has two furnaces, a heat pump, and we use space heaters as needed, but it was still cold inside it yesterday. But I’m not sniveling!

Since the overnight temperatures were going to be in the mid-20s for the next few days, I went out in the late afternoon and disconnected our water hose to keep it from freezing.

Today and tomorrow look like more of the same thing. Terry has been saying that she needed a few days of down time to spend at home, and it looks like she’s getting her wish. but I’m not sniveling!

Thought For The Day – I used to be lost in the shuffle. Now I just shuffle along with the lost.

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Readers have been asking me for an update on how we like our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, now that we have lived and traveled in it for almost six months, as compared to the MCI bus conversion we built and lived in for over eight years.

Overall, we are both very happy with the Winnebago, though we have had to make a few adjustments. We love having the extra room the bedroom and living room slides give us. However, we actually had more inside storage room in the bus, due to the extensive cabinetry that Miss Terry designed and built for it.

But, even though we had three huge bays underneath the bus, we still have more basement storage in the Winnebago than we did with the bus. The reason for that is that one entire bay of the bus was used for our holding tanks, which do not take up bay space in the Winnebago, and also because half of one bay in the bus held our house battery bank and inverter, and half of the third bay held our twin propane tanks, plus the fuel tank for our Onan gas generator.

We had a huge gray/black waste tank in the rear bay, and when we were parked in a campground with full hookups, we could turn a diverter valve and let the gray water run directly into the sewer, which meant we could go a long time without dumping the waste tank. In the Winnebago we have to dump the black tank about every seven days. We could probably stretch that if we were boondocking and being very careful, but the difference in tank capacity is really noticeable.

After our first night in the Winnebago, we could really tell the difference in insulation between the two rigs. We built a lot of insulation into the bus, and it was both quieter inside, and much warmer (or cooler, depending on the season), than the motorhome. But, the bus had a single rooftop air conditioner that was vented directly inside, which was much nosier when running than the ducted basement air conditioner in the Winnebago.

After driving across the country in the Winnebago, I don’t know how I lived with the tired old Detroit diesel in the bus for so long. These days I think nothing of cruising up long grades at 60 miles per hour, passing eighteen wheelers, instead of crawling along in the right lane with the radiator misters on at fifteen miles per hour, hoping some eighteen wheeler didn’t run over us. The Winnebago definitely has more power and gets better fuel mileage than the bus did, but I find that I don’t have as much confidence in the Winnebago’s exhaust brake as I did the Jake brake in the bus when going down steep grades.

Everything in life is a tradeoff. Terry misses the household style refrigerator, gas range with oven, and separate washer and dryer that we had in the bus. But, the larger kitchen area and the spacious bedroom/bathroom layout of the Winnebago is much more comfortable. She’s learning to live with the Winnebago’s microwave/convection oven, and the Splendide RV washer/dryer combo.

When you add in a lot of creature comforts and handy accessories, such as cruise control, automatic HWH leveling jacks, automatic Winegard rooftop TV dish, two gas furnaces, and a heat pump, for us the Winnebago comes out the winner.

Several readers have asked us if we will be at the Winnebago Grand National Rally in Forest City, Iowa in July, if we’ll be vendors, and if I’ll be presenting any of my seminars at the rally. The answers are yes, probably, and I don’t know. Yes, we plan to attend the rally, we’ll probably be vending (I haven’t registered yet), and I don’t know if I’ll be presenting any seminars. I haven’t been invited to do any, and the inquiry I sent was never answered. But if you are a Winnebago owner and will be at the rally, and would like me to do a seminar or two, why not give the folks in Forest City a shout or an e-mail? They have no idea who I am, since we have not had our coach that long, but if they see there is an interest, they might invite me to do a couple of seminars.

Speaking of RV seminars, while our schedule won’t allow us to be at the RVSEF RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green, Kentucky, June 3-6, Walter Cannon has come up with an excellent RV education program filled with great seminars. There is a 10% discount for anybody registering for the conference before March 1^st, so if you plan to attend, register now and save yourself some money on this excellent program. 

Thought For The Day – Virtue is the only true nobility.

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RVs and wintertime do not mix well. Trust me, I know. Years ago when Miss Terry was being treated for cancer, we spent several weeks in Traverse City, Michigan during the winter, when snow piled up several feet deep around our motorhome, and the temperature dipped into the single digits every night.

At the time we had our Pace Arrow Vision, which we came to call the Motorhome From Hell, and it showed many of its shortcomings during that ordeal. We went through huge amounts of propane just trying to stay warm, and the best we ever managed was to take off the worst of the chill inside the RV.

Of course, the best way to deal with cold weather is to get as far south as you can go, before the snow falls. But just in case you find yourself stuck in cold weather, here are some tips that can make it more comfortable.

RV furnaces are notorious energy wasters. Just stand outside your RV the next time you have the furnace on and feel all of that heat blowing out the exhaust. That is wasted propane that you are paying for. Small electric cube heaters help a lot to ward off the cold, if you have sufficient electrical power to run them. We found that catalytic heaters such as the Olympian brand are great in an RV. They use much less propane than an RV furnace, and do not require 12 volt power to run a heater fan. 

In a motorhome, the windshield conducts a lot of cold to the interior of the rig. Keeping the windshield covered with bubble foil can help reduce this. Foam inserts in the roof vent openings also helps keep the cold out.

Using some type of skirting material, be it plywood, plastic tarps, or even bales of hay to surround the bottom of the RV helps insulate from the ground up and makes a big difference inside.

The low temperature was not the only thing we had to contend with. In an occupied RV during cold weather, condensation quickly builds up inside, and it can create a real mess. Keeping a roof vent or windows open to circulate the air isn’t an option unless you want to freeze. We found that products like DampRid, which can be found at WalMart or Camping World, help a lot, but you can never completely eliminate the condensation problem. We spent a lot of time armed with towels, wiping down every glass or metal surface, and the interior walls of our motorhome.

Many RVs are supposed to have “winter packages,” which include heated plumbing bays, but in reality, a lot of them don’t come anywhere close to being able to handle really cold weather. We found that a clamp-on utility light with a metal reflector, which you can find at any hardware store, fitted with a 25 watt bulb, can keep a closed utility bay toasty warm and prevent pipes from freezing.

None of these ideas will make your RV feel like a sauna inside, but hopefully they will help keep you more comfortable if you have to spend time in very cold weather. But remember my own personal motto, and consider adopting it as your own: When it snows, Nick goes!

Thought For The Day – A bad worker always blames his tools.

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Terry and I can really feel the difference in comfort levels between our MCI bus conversion and our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome in this cold weather! The Winnebago is much colder inside than the bus.

When we built the bus, we added a lot of extra insulation to the floor, walls, and ceiling. We were in temperatures down to 10 degrees a couple of times and a couple of electric cube heaters kept us comfortable. Last night it was 16 degrees here in Lexington, Kentucky, we had both furnaces turned up, and we were still chilly! I think we need to look into a catalytic heater. We let our Olympian Wave 8 go with the bus, and now I’m wishing we had kept it! That thing sure put out a lot of heat, and used a lot less propane than the RV furnaces do.

My appointment at the VA hospital Friday went as well as could be expected, and we are leaving today, headed back to the Escapees Rainbow Plantation RV park in Summerdale, Alabama. No place in the country seems to be warm right now, except for maybe the Florida Keys, but we have had to cancel our trip that far south this year. At least Summerdale will be a little warmer than it is here. We’re about 675 miles away, so we hope to be there sometime Sunday afternoon.

Then I have to chain myself to my desk and get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal ready for the printer. The unplanned trip back up to Elkhart to sell the bus, and the burglary that happened there, have put me way behind schedule. The paper should be printing right now, and all we would have to do is get the new issue ready to mail out. I hope our subscribers will understand about the delay. Most folks have been pretty easy going when we’re late, but as a lifelong newspaper publisher, it eats me alive to miss a deadline.

A lot of readers have been asking how we are making out with our insurance company after last week’s incident. One writer went so far as to say that the theft and vandalism were only the start of our misfortune, and the real violation would come from our insurance company. Things are not wrapped up yet, but so far, I get the feeling he was not far off the mark.

I won’t go into a lot of details yet, because I don’t know what the final outcome will be, but so far, it looks like our “disappearing deductible” sure had the right name, because when we needed it, it disappeared! All I will say right now is that I think we’ll definitely be shopping for a new insurance company once all is said and done. Of course, I’m sure that they will be just as bad. What’s that they say about a rose by any other name?  

Meanwhile, Bad Nick is staying inside close to the heater outlet, and he posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled Keep It In Your Pants. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – He who digs a pit for others will fall into it himself.

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We all knew it was coming. I warned you. Well, the day has finally come. Bad Nick has his own blog! It went live Tuesday at www.BadNickBlog.com and I officially disavow anything the little munchkin does from here on out. Miss Terry was worried that I might offend somebody, but I reminded her that it’s not me at the wheel of this new blog, it’s Bad Nick. And we all know how he can be.

I reminded her of the days when I published small town newspapers, when if I didn’t get a half dozen or more calls from irate readers when the new issue hit the streets, I didn’t feel like I had done my job well.

This new blog has absolutely nothing to do with the RV lifestyle. It’s just a soapbox for sounding off about topics that don’t fit in the RV blog. Some political commentary, some common sense, some observations on life in general, and a touch of nonsense now and then. Check it out and leave a comment and let Bad Nick know what you think. 

Okay, on to other things; Monday night we moved our Select Comfort airbed over to the new rig and spent our first night in our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome. That sure was nice!

Because we have an open bedroom/bathroom floor plan, except for the water closet, the bedroom really feels roomy. A couple of issues came up – we noticed right away the difference in sound levels between our bus conversion and the Winnebago. We put so much insulation into the bus that it is very quiet inside. Elkhart Campground is less than a mile, as the crow flies, from the Indiana Toll Road, and in the Winnebago we noticed a lot more traffic noise.

The other thing is that the bed in the new rig is in the slide, and Terry’s side of the bed is to the rear, and is accessed by two carpeted steps that lead up to the cedar lined closet. In the middle of the night she got up to go to the bathroom, and coming back to bed she forgot about the steps and stubbed her toes when she walked into them. I don’t think she’ll do that too many times before she remembers!

As it turns out, the Carriage rally has been a total bust in terms of sales. Every day they load folks up in busses or form car pools and go off to tour something, leaving us vendors twiddling our thumbs and staring at each other across the vacant aisles. In my Highway History and Back Road Mastery seminar yesterday afternoon, I had a total of three people in the audience. That’s a long way from the 250 or more people I have presented it to at other venues!

There is no use in both of us sitting there being bored when so much needs done here, so Miss Terry is going to stay at the campground today and start moving some stuff over to the Winnebago and getting it arranged the way she wants it. I’m not sure which one of us comes out better on that deal.

Thought For The Day – You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

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