It was another chilly day here at the Orlando Thousand Trails campground, so we spent most of the day at home. The bad news is that being stuck inside too long really gives me cabin fever. But, the good news is that we’re getting a lot of things accomplished.

Yesterday I found a mail service in Orlando and made arrangements for them to handle sending out the new issue of the Gypsy Journal that is somewhere on a truck between Michigan and Florida, making it’s way south. We should have the papers in a couple of days, and then we’ll get them mailed out. Between the holiday printing schedule, which is always a hassle, bad weather, and problems with new production equipment at the printer’s, we’re running late. But as I wrote a few days ago, every December we run into something to delay us, no matter how hard we try to plan ahead.

Once that was taken care of, I uploaded the new digital issue of the paper, and sent e-mail notifications to all of our digital subscribers.

Meanwhile, Miss Terry has been busy sorting cabinets and drawers and piling stuff up on the counter. I asked her what she was up to and she said it was early spring cleaning, and anything that wasn’t useful was just taking up space and adding weight to the motorhome going to the dumpster. I was very quiet the rest of the day, just trying not to get noticed.

We have some changes coming for the new year. My pal Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour has been working on moving us to a new web server, and making some changes in our blog format.  We’ll be taking it live in the next few days, but here’s a sneak peak at the new blog format. Look it over and let me know what you think.

At first glance, it looks very similar to the present blog, but the comments will be easier to post and access, the new format automatically displays links to related blog posts, the links in the left column to the rest of our website are more contemporary, and best of all, it won’t be on the Yahoo servers, which have given us so much grief over the years. Chris still has some tweaking to do, but I think it’s a big improvement.

You may notice that there is a tab at the top to Miss Terry’s Kitchen. Don’t get too excited, Terry isn’t ready to commit to a cooking blog yet, but if we push her far enough out on that limb, she may have to. Or, she may just break that limb off and beat me with it!

In the afternoon, Denny and Cindy Henderson came by to pick us up, and we went to dinner at a nice restaurant called Oakwood Smokehouse and Grill in Clermont. Denny and I had the rib platter, Terry had chopped barbecued pork, and Cindy had a burger. Everything was delicious. At one time we were fans of Sonny’s Barbecue, which has locations all over the Southeast, but on our last few visits, we were disappointed in the food.  Given the chance, I’d opt for Oakwood Smokehouse any time.

Back at the campground, I unhooked our water hose so it would not freeze overnight, then came inside and got some writing done before it was time to go to bed.

Bad Nick did some writing too, and posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled You Can’t Make This Stuff Up! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.

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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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The RV world lost an icon yesterday, when Joe Peterson, co-founder of the Escapees RV Club, passed away. I have been privileged to meet Joe many times over the years at Escapades and other RV events, and he was always a cheerful, friendly, outgoing gentleman.

When Joe and his lovely wife Kay founded the Escapees, way back in 1978, they had no idea what they had started. Over the years they nurtured and guided their little organization until it grew into one of the largest, and in my opinion the very best, RV clubs around. The legacy Joe has left is something the rest of us will enjoy and benefit from for years to come.

This is a loss for all of us, but a double hit for the family; I’m told that Joe’s son-in-law, Bud Carr, also lost his father just a week or so ago. Please keep them in your prayers.  

We had visitors yesterday! Jim and Dee Walter, who are staying at an RV park a couple of miles up the road, stopped in to say hello. We had a good time talking about the RV lifestyle, sharing a joke or two, and comparing our favorite apps on our Droid smart phones.

After Jim and Dee left, Terry and I drove a mile or so south of the campground to Pioneer Park, a county park that includes a small museum, campground, and boat launch on the Peace River. Here are a couple of pictures, one upriver and one downriver. If we get a chance to paddle our kayaks while we’re here, I think we’ll use the launch at Pioneer Park, because the one at our campground is much steeper and looks like it would be harder to use.

We booked two weeks here at Peace River, and while the campground is okay, the town doesn’t have much to offer. Yesterday we had dinner at the Panda Chinese buffet, and it being a small town, we didn’t have high expectations. As it turned out, we were still disappointed! If we could change our stay and get back into the Orlando Thousand Trails, we’d leave and head back up that way. There’s a lot more to do and see in that area. We’d like to get some paddling in while we’re here, but the weather report for next week is looking pretty grim, so I don’t know if we’ll get to do that or not.   

I mentioned smart phone apps above,and if you have an iPhone or iPad, you might be interested in a brand new app that the nice folks at Technomadia just brought out, called Coverage?. This is a simple app that lets you see where you can expect to get 3G and roaming signals in the continental U.S. for AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile. Yes, you can go online to the different carriers’ websites and get the same info, but Coverage? allows you to do so offline, wherever you happen to be.

These are the same folks who put out the excellent State Lines app, which no RVer should be without. Check out Coverages?, I think you’ll find it useful. They also publish an e-book titled Answers to the Common Excuses not to Travel Full-Time that I have heard good things about. I need to order a copy and check it out.

One final thought on technical things before I close. I have been having  e-mail problems for quite a while now. Sometimes e-mails never get to me,  other times they show up, but disappear from the server before I can read them, or ones I have saved for future reference go missing. 

While we were in Fort Lauderdale last week, Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour, switched me over to G-mail, but since our websites are still hosted on Yahoo for the time being, our e-mail first goes through the Yahoo servers, and that is where we seem to have the problem. So if you e-mailed me and I didn’t get back to you, please try again. Also, I lost some e-mails from folks who asked us to stop by while we were in their area, and I had no way to re-contact them. My apologies.

Bad Nick has been busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Armed Citizens Fighting Back. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Why be difficult, when with a little bit of effort you can be impossible?

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I got a call from my daughter Tiffany the other day, telling me that her grandfather, Jim Zipf, had passed away. Even though I had not seen the man in almost 25 years, and even though Tiffany’s mother and I had parted company long, long ago, I was still sorry to hear the news. I always liked Jim, and we got along very well.

Tiffany and I were talking about families, and how she has now lost all of her grandparents, her aunts and uncles on my side of the family, and other people she loved. I hated to tell her that as she gets older, it will happen again and again. We never know when our own, or somebody else’s time on this earth will end.

One of the things I love about the RV lifestyle is that it gives me the freedom to visit family and friends in every corner of the country. Since we hit the road over twelve years ago, I have been able to reestablish relationships with cousins I had not heard from in years, high school and Army buddies I had lost contact with, and recently, my nephews and a niece, right here in Florida, that I had not seen in over 25 years. It is amazing that so much time can pass, yet with many of these people, we have been able to pick up right where we left off, and the connection is still just as strong.

In one case, I’m glad I did, because I was able to visit with one of my best friends from high school several times before he died suddenly earlier this year. Like I said, we never know.

The RV lifestyle also has allowed Terry and I to see places and do things that we had only dreamed of before. How many people can say that they have paddled their kayaks in the Florida Keys, or ate fresh lobster in Maine, or watched the leaves turning on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, or been serenaded to sleep by coyotes in the Arizona desert?  How many have been able to walk the hallowed ground at Arlington, or roamed the narrow streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans? Many RVers have done all that and more in the same year!

Sometimes I burn Miss Terry out, because I want to be going and doing all of the time, and once in a while she needs some down time to recharge her batteries. I need that too, but I have known so many people who were always going to do something “someday” and never made it, because their calendar ran out before “someday” arrived.

I know that we need to stop and smell the roses now and then, but there are so many new adventures and old favorite places waiting for me just around the next bend in the road and over the next hill. I want to get to them all while I still can!

Thought For The Day – Making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as making a ‘life’.

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Never underestimate the power of positive sniveling! It actually warmed up a bit in Fort Lauderdale yesterday, and it looks like the worst of this cold spell is about over. The forecast for the next three days is for highs in the mid-70s, and sunshine! Whatever will we do?

Yesterday morning J.C. and Beverly Webber came by to say goodbye and pick up a bundle of Gypsy Journals to drop off at their next stop, then they headed on down the road toward Marathon Key.

After they left, Terry and I ran some errands, stopping at the post office, bank,  and WalMart. I have to be honest and say that even if the weather was good, this area is just too darned busy for our taste. We much prefer a slower pace, and this is a big city, with all of the hustle and bustle that any big city has.

Paradise Island is a clean RV park, and the staff are all very friendly and helpful, but it’s an older place, with very tight spaces, and for us it’s really just a convenient place to park while we visit our friends Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour. If we wanted to play tourist in this area, it would be a good base from which to do so.

Fort Lauderdale is called the “Venice of America” because of the more than 300 miles of waterways that wind past parks, estates, and luxury hotels. If it was warmer, I’d have my Sea Eagle PaddleSki in the water doing some exploring while we’re here!

For some reason, I had started feeling really puny while we were out, and it felt like my cold or flu from a couple of week ago was returning. Back at the motorhome, I took some Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold Formula and took a nap. I woke up an hour or so later, and felt better, so whatever it was seems to have passed.

I called my daughter Tiffany in Arizona and we talked a little bit about what the grandkids wanted for Christmas, and then I went online and ordered a couple of items for them. Isn’t online shopping great? No parking places to find, no crowds pushing and shoving, no packages to wrap, and no long lines at the post office to stand in. Isn’t technology a wonderful thing?

So many people seemed to enjoy the link I posted to a You Tube video about Florida snowbirds in Tuesday’s blog that I found a new one to make you giggle. This isn’t a video, just a funny holiday parody that appealed to my warped sense of humor, so turn up your sound and enjoy!

Chris has been working hard on our website relocation, and tells me she’s making headway. I’m glad she’s the one doing all of this confusing technical stuff, because I get a headache just thinking about it!

Chris and Jim are a real RV success story. When we first met several years ago, they were in the early days of operating their mobile computer education business, and since then we have watched the Geeks on Tour grow into the recognized experts in the RV world. Their seminars are popular at RV rallies nationwide, and they have taught literally thousands of RVers how to get the most out of their computers. They also offer online education for those who can’t make it to one of their seminars. Check out their website to learn more.

Thought For The Day – Wealth is a crutch for those who can’t handle poverty.

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