Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That’s life, and I guess if, in the end, your personal scoreboard shows more wins than losses, it was worth the effort, wasn’t it? Yesterday we did some winning and some losing, but I think we still came out ahead.

After stopping to have our propane tank filled, and paying our bill at the Escapees Sumter Oaks Campground in Bushnell, we left and headed back to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve, which is actually about eleven miles south of Clermont, Florida. We took the route that George Sharrer suggested, through Webster, and shaved ten miles off the trip, compared to the way we came in a week earlier.

The trip went fine except for one airhead woman who was parked on the shoulder of the road at a fruit stand on State Route 50. As I was coming by, she pulled out onto the highway directly in front of me and made a U-turn and headed westbound. I slammed on my brakes, hit the horn, and managed not to run over her. Terry was following me in the Explorer, and said the lady had a totally perplexed look on her face as she went by, like “What did I do?”

There’s a reason we take the time to secure everything inside our motorhome before we hit the road. In a stop like that, a laptop computer, toaster, or even a hardback could become a deadly missile, inside an RV. Okay, nobody got hurt and I kept the Winnebago on the road, so I guess I won that one. 

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We had hoped to get the same site we had before at the Thousand Trails, but it was already taken, so we got one nearby that wasn’t nearly as level. It took two or three tries, and some 12×12 oak squares under the front wheels to get us parked. We’re still a little low in the front, but not so much as to affect anything. So I guess we lost that one.

A couple of times now our door latch has jammed and not wanted to release so we could open the door.  By shaking the door while we worked the latch, we’ve been able to get it open each time. It happened again yesterday while we were trying to get set up in our RV site. I stepped outside and closed the door, and couldn’t get it to open up again. Fortunately, the driver’s window was open, so I got out my Beanstalk ladder and Terry climbed inside, only to find out that she couldn’t open the door from the inside either! She eventually took the screws out of the lock plate and was able to manipulate the lock mechanism to get it to open.

We tried to figure out what the problem was, a neighbor came over and looked at it, I went online to Winnebago’s website and looked at some diagrams for our coach, and I called my Winnebago guru, Ron Speidel for his input. We were still scratching our heads when a mobile RV tech named Henry Bender came by and offered to help. It took Henry about a half hour to fix the problem, which was a flange inside the lock mechanism that had gotten worn, which allowed the handle to slide past it instead of engaging to move the bolt. Henry bent it into the proper position so it would engage properly, put everything back together, and $40 later our door worked again. So I spent $40, but got a working door. Can we call that a draw?    

We have been Dish Network customers for at least nine years, and our Standard Definition receiver was ancient technology, and worn out even before the burglars threw it on the floor and stomped on it last year. Since then it has given us problems every time we’ve moved. It seems like every time I turn on the TV, both Dish and DirecTV are offering as many as four new receivers, and free installation, to entice new customers to sign on. I called Dish and told them I wanted one of those fancy new HD receivers that will allow me to record shows if I’m busy or watching something else. 

The customer service rep hemmed and hawed, and then said that they would give me a receiver, but that I would have to pay a $95 service fee to have it installed. Huh? Installed? I have an automatic HD antenna on the roof, all I need to do is plug it in and go, right? Apparently not, he said. Only a “technician” can do that.

I told him I wasn’t going to pay $95, and he suggested that I go to Best Buy and purchase the same receiver, which I could plug in myself. Apparently the Best Buy receivers don’t require a “technician” to install them.

I learned a long time ago that if you get to the right person and raise enough hell, you can usually get results. So I asked to speak to a supervisor, who blew me off. I told her no problem, I would happily cancel my service and switch to DirecTV, which would give me free receivers and free installation.

That’s when things changed. She transferred me to a “Customer Loyalty Supervisor” named Tanya, who had no problem giving me an HD receiver with which we can watch two different programs on our two TVs at once, and waived the $95 installation fee. The “technician” is supposed to be here Thursday afternoon to install it. So I won another one. If I remember my grade school math, that’s one loss, two wins, and a draw. Not bad for a Sunday, I guess.

Actually, I lost another one, but you’ll have to read Bad Nick’s new Bad Nick Blog post, titled Voting With My Wallet to find out about that one. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Living well is the best revenge, but you have to let go of the old to embrace the new.

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Saturday night when we got ready to take our showers, we discovered that we had no hot water. Because we are on 20 amp electric here at the Yuma Fairgrounds, we’ve been running the water heater on propane, so my first thought was that we had run out of propane gas. I went outside and checked the tank, because I learned long ago to never trust the idiot lights on RV control panels. But according to the gauge, we had over half a tank.

That led me to the second possible cause of the problem, which I had suspected all along. I opened the cover to our Atwood water heater compartment, and sure enough, discovered several charred wires.

This had happened last October at Elkhart Campground on a very windy day. Apparently the wind had blown the flame from the water heater upward and it fried some wires, which caused the thermal cut-off to short out. That time, it was an easy fix to replace the thermal cut-off, which came two to a package. (Apparently, they fail on a regular basis.)

Saturday had been a very windy day here in Yuma, and apparently the same thing had happened again. This time around I replaced the bad wires and the cut-off, and rerouted the wires to the top of the water heater compartment, hopefully away from the burner, and secured them in place. That solved the problem, and we now have hot water again! I wonder if this is a flaw with all Winnebago motorhomes with the Atwood water heaters, or just something in our particular coach.

I’m not sure which is scarier, the fact that the water heater can apparently flame up like that, or me actually knowing how to diagnose and repair something!

I have had quite a few e-mails from readers wondering how our encounter with the armed burglar has affected us emotionally now that it’s been about three months. They ask if we are now uncomfortable boondocking in out of the way places, or if we now feel paranoid about the same thing happening again.

To be honest, I think that while the incident has caused us to be more aware of things, I don’t think we have changed our lifestyle at all, except for the fact that I never leave home without a “personal protection device.” I never again want to find myself facing a thug with a gun, empty handed.

While inside our motorhome, I feel totally secure. It’s pretty hard to break into one of these things undetected, and I am a very light sleeper, so I have no doubt that I’d be up and waiting to greet anybody who tried to get in while we were inside the RV. I think we both feel a little bit of apprehension when we are away from the coach and return after dark. It reminds us of what happened.

But you have to keep in mind that we had well over ten years of fulltiming behind us before this incident happened, and we could well go another ten or twenty years before anything happened again, if ever. Then again, it could happen tonight. But we refuse to live our lives in fear of what might happen someday. We prepare for the worst, but expect the best.

Our friends Joe and Vicki Kieva have a brand new book out, Personal Security Tips For RVers, which combines their 45 years of RVing experience with Joe’s law enforcement and security management background, to present a practical and useful look at safeguarding yourself, your home, and your RV while you are on the road. It’s an excellent guide, packed with common sense and real world experience.

The Kieva’s book covers everything from how to respond to a criminal confrontation, whether or not to carry a firearm in your RV, important documents to have in your RV, suggestions for creating an Emergency Notification Card for your wallet, and advice on how to obtain medical care while traveling.

You’ll probably never have a problem like we did, but accidents,mechanical breakdowns, bad weather, and illness can disrupt any RV outing. It’s always better to be prepared ahead of time. Personal Security Tips For RVers is a valuable first step in being prepared. You can order a copy of the paperback book at  http://www.rvknowhow.com/books.html, or download it as an E-book for immediate reading at  http://www.rvknowhow.com/ebooks.html#security

Joe and Vicki will be presenting their excellent seminar on Personal Security at our Western Gypsy Gathering rally next week, and I plan to be sitting in the front row. I’ll save you a seat next to me.

Thought For The Day – The true traveler is without goal. It is the absence of goals which creates the ultimate traveler.

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We wanted to be on the road by about 9 a.m. yesterday, but that didn’t happen. We were up early, and Miss Terry got the inside of our Winnebago ready for the road, while I made a stop at the dumpster, and then went up to the office at the Thousand Trails campground to tell them we were checking out a couple of days early. Our case of hitch itch just needed scratched.

Back at our RV site, I unhooked the utilities, and then Terry ran in our slides. The bedroom slide went fine, but when the living room slide started coming in, big chunks of ice started falling down from the top, along with cold water. The slide suddenly came to a stop about eight inches away from being all the way in.

I was outside, and had Terry run it back out, and then try to bring it back in again. It came another inch or so more than the first time, then stopped again. The problem was that the rain we had a few days ago had frozen and formed thick chunks of ice on the slide topper, which were jamming the slide. Terry went up the ladder on the back of our motorhome, I handed her up a broom, and she swept the top of the slide topper clean, dislodging chunks of ice about ¾ of an inch thick and up to six inches across.

With that chore done and Miss Terry safely back on terra firma, we retracted our leveling jacks, and then Terry noticed that our automatic Carefree patio awning was out about four inches. We had not used the awning since we arrived at the Thousand Trails, and I suspected that water had also accumulated inside and frozen, pushing the awning out. Sure enough, we extended the awning and more water and ice fell out. Did I ever mention that cold weather RVing sucks?

With everything finally buttoned up, I scrolled through the display on our PressurePro tire monitoring system, and then pulled out of our RV site and made a stop at the propane station to fill our tank, then Terry drove the van back up to the office to pay for the propane, came back, and we hooked the van to our tow bar. With all of the delays, it was 10:30 by the time we finally got on the road.

I really don’t like driving through San Antonio, so this trip we tried the Loop 1604 around the east side of the city. The first five miles or so were regular two lane road, with a couple of traffic signals, then the loop became a divided highway two to three lanes wide. There was still a lot of traffic, but we rolled along fine, and eventually rejoined Interstate 10 on the north side of San Antonio. I think the loop was better than driving through town on I-10, but I’d still rather avoid the city altogether.

Once we were out of the metropolitan area, the rest of our day was just a lot of long, boring miles counting the road kill. We pulled into a couple of rest areas for potty stops and to do a walk around the motorhome and van, checking our tow bar connection, tires, etc. Late in the afternoon, with the sun sinking slowly into the western sky (sorry, I couldn’t resist that one), we pulled into the WalMart in Fort Stockton, hoping to dry camp for the night.

Terry had called ahead and asked permission, and the lady she spoke to said we were welcome to park overnight, and to please park at the western end of the parking lot. This is a small WalMart, not a SuperCenter, and when we arrived, there were a half dozen or so motorhomes and fifth wheels, and there was no way we could park without the rear end of the van sticking out into a lane of the parking lot. We decided they had enough RVs at Camp WalMart that evening, so we got back onto the highway and drove another 45 miles to Saddleback Mountain RV Park, a Passport America park a few miles west of Balmorhea. We had covered 485 miles in a little over eight hours of driving, which is a long day on the road.

This is a small campground with nothing much to recommend it, except for price and convenience. It is just off the highway, and has long pull through full hookup sites with 30/50 amp electric, for $10 a night with the Passport America discount. It’s not a place we’d spend any time, but for a safe overnight stay, it was a good deal.

Today we’ll go on to Salt Flat, where we’ll spend a day or two visiting our friends Mike and Pam Steffen, before we continue our westward trek.

Thought For The Day – I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

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Fulltime RVers always say that their plans are written in Jell-O, and that’s a good thing, because it gives us the flexibility to go with the flow. Even when the flow is taking us where we don’t want to go!

I have bad news, and good news, and more bad news to share with you. The first bad news is that we have had a change of plans and had to cut our Florida visit short. The good news is that we have received a deposit on our MCI bus conversion and soon it will have a brand new owner. The second bad news is that we have to meet him December 4^th in Elkhart, Indiana. Yes, Indiana in December! Can you say cold?

So yesterday we were out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7:30 a.m. and started preparing to leave The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida. I wanted to be on the road by 9 a.m., but we were low on propane, and nobody was going to be available at the resort’s propane station until 9. Okay, how long can it take to get propane? We’d be on the road by 9:15 at the latest. Yeah, right?

I unhooked our utilities while Miss Terry stowed things away inside the motorhome, plugged in our PressurePro tire monitoring system, and started to scan our tires when an alert started beeping, telling me that our right outside dual was low on air. How low, you ask? It was down to eighteen pounds pressure! That’s not a good thing!

Our Winnebago diesel motorhome has an onboard air compressor, and came with a coiled plastic air hose to fill tires and such. I had never used it, but I drug it out of one of our storage bays, only to discover that it was kinked and cracked in three or four places. Totally useless.

The Great Outdoors has its own RV service facility, Eagles Pride, which is conveniently located next door to the propane station. It was a short drive, and I knew I could get there okay with the second tire on that dual side carrying the weight. After taking on propane, which took longer than expected, I walked over to Eagles Pride and asked if they could air up the tire and take a look at it. They said no problem, pull it up in front of one of their service bays.

That’s when I discovered that I had locked the motorhome door and left the keys inside! This day was rapidly going downhill. Fortunately (for me, at least), I had left the sliding window open next to the driver’s seat. I boosted Miss Terry up, she slid the screen out of the way, and crawled inside to open the door.

Ever the optimist, I was hoping that I had burned up all my bad karma, and maybe the flat tire was because I had not screwed on the PressurePro sensor cap correctly and had accidentally allowed the air to seep  out.

No such luck, the tech at Eagles Pride found a bolt stuck in the tread of the tire. They are not set up to repair tires, so they recommended a shop in Cocoa, about twelve miles away. With the tire aired up, we drove to the shop and it took an hour or so for them to take off the tire, remove the bolt and make the repair.

Finally, we hit the road, and rolled north on Interstate 95. We pulled into the Flying J in Saint Augustine for fuel, and since it was almost 2 p.m., had a late lunch. We were back on the road by 2:30, continued north to Interstate 10, and turned west. We were so far behind schedule that I had given up any hope of putting too many miles behind us this driving day. But traffic was light and we scooted right along, making good time.

We don’t like to drive at night, but we pushed it as far as we could, and just as the last light was fading from the sky we pulled into the Flying J at Midway, Florida, just west of Tallahassee. They have several designated RV parking spaces in their parking lot, and we slid in between two other motorhomes and settled in for the night. Including our detour south to Cocoa to get the tire fixed, we had covered 330 miles, which was a good day of driving after all.

Today we’ll have an easy run of 225 miles to the Escapees Rainbow Plantation RV Park in Summerdale, Alabama. We plan to stay there until after Thanksgiving, and then we’ll have a straight shot north up Interstate 65 all the way to Indiana.

That’s assuming, of course, that there are no other last minute changes of plans or problems to get us sidetracked.

Thought For The Day – Plant yourself in good soil if you want to bloom.

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Yesterday we took our first short trip in our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, and we love it!

The motorhome has so much storage that getting ready to hit the road was a simple matter of pushing a button to stow the automatic satellite TV dish, pulling in the slides and retracting the leveling jacks, and then unhooking the water and electric connections. After a quick scan of all of our tires with our PressurePro tire monitoring system, I fired up the big Cummins diesel engine and pulled out of our regular RV site at Elkhart Campground.

With our bus conversion, we would have to carry Terry’s big Kitchen Aid commercial mixer and some other stuff back to the bedroom, and used a collection of assorted sized bungee cords to lash everything down. Not because they would fall over, the bus has an incredibly smooth ride, but because we didn’t want anything turning into a missile if we got into an accident.

After a stop at the campground’s propane station to fill our tank, we hooked up the van to our tow bar and were ready to go. Ron and Brenda Speidel, in their Winnebago Journey, and Ken and Billie Barker, in their beautiful older Safari motorhome, were already hooked up and waiting to go.

The most direct route to Fort Wayne, Indiana would have been down U.S. Highway 33 from Goshen, but we took the longer (but faster) route east on the Indiana Toll Road to Interstate 69 and south to Fort Wayne. It added 20 miles to the trip, but because we didn’t have any stop and go traffic in the small towns along the way, we made better time. Besides, I wanted to see how the Winnebago handled on the open highway.

I’m happy to say that it handles just fine, with lots of power and a very smooth ride. Passing trucks didn’t affect us at all, and we had plenty of oomph when I wanted to pass a slower moving vehicle. The motorhome didn’t even seem to notice the heavy van it was pulling.

From Fort Wayne, we traveled east on U.S. Highway 30, a great divided four lane highway. We crossed into Ohio, and before long we were in Van Wert. We stopped at the Murphy USA at the Wal-Mart in Van Wert for fuel, which is not one of my favorite places, but both Ron and I were lower on fuel than we were comfortable with.  

With our fuel tanks topped off, we took U.S. Highway 127 south another 25 miles to Celina. We pulled into the Mercer County Fairgrounds with 163 miles behind us, and even more pleased with the motorhome than we were the day we bought it.

We did have quite a problem getting leveled, mostly because of the site we pulled in to. Finally, after running the jacks up and down half a dozen times, Ron had me pull a few feet forward, which allowed us to get into a position where our HWH jacks could get us level.

With the motorhome leveled out and hooked up to water, electric, and sewer, we were all famished and more than ready for dinner. While in Celina last year for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, we had discovered the China Wok Buffet and enjoyed it so much we went back a couple of times. If anything, it was even better this year, and we all abused our diets and our waistlines.

Tomorrow we’ll be hard at work on pre-rally details. It’s going to be a busy week!

Thought For The Day – Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

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