The old saying “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” dates back to the story of the Trojan Horse, when the Greeks besieged the city of Troy during the Trojan War. According to legend, after a long siege, the Greeks built a huge wooden horse, and concealed a small force of their best soldiers inside. Then they boarded their ships and sailed away.

The besieged Trojans thought that they had outlasted their enemies, and opened the gates to the city and pulled the horse inside as a victory trophy. That night, after the Trojans all went to sleep, the Greeks hidden inside the horse force crept out and opened the city gates to the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back, under cover of night. The Greek army entered and seized the city of Troy, ending the war.

The purpose of this history lesson is to tell you that while you might want to avoid Greeks bearing gifts, Geeks bearing gifts are something else altogether!

Yesterday evening Jim and Chris Guld, from Geeks on Tour, showed up at our door with grilled lobsters that Jim had caught while scuba diving just off the beach, here in Fort Lauderdale. Those things were huge!

Jim and Chris supplied the main entree, and Miss Terry filled out the menu with wild rice pilaf, stir fried mixed vegetables, and fresh sliced Heirloom tomatoes. Everything was delicious, and I guarantee you nobody went hungry!

After dinner we sat around visiting for a couple of hours, and Chris showed me a trick or two with G-mail, Windows Live Writer, and Microsoft Streets & Trips. And, of course, we swapped a lie or two, and solved a good number of the world’s problems in the process.

It’s been wonderful having this one on one (or actually two on two) time with Jim and Chris, away from all of the hustle and bustle of an RV rally. Thanks for all your time, help, and especially your friendship, Jim and Chris! It’s been a lot of fun!

Since the weather is supposed to cool back down next week, we have scrubbed our original plans to go to the Keys, and instead, today we’re leaving Fort Lauderdale and are traveling to the Peace River NACO preserve in Wauchula, Florida.

We’ll hang out there until we get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal back from the printer and mailed off, and hopefully we’ll get in some kayaking on the Peace River, if the weather cooperates during our stay.

We’ve only got a few weeks left in Florida before we have to start west to get ready for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma March 7-11. During that time, we want to get back to Pinellas Park for a family gathering, and we’d love to spend a few days around Crystal River, and maybe at Cedar Key, if we can.

Bad Nick has been busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Blame Your Parents, Not Us. check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you have changed.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Today is moving day for us. We are leaving the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve this morning, headed for Paradise Island RV Resort in Fort Lauderdale, about 220 miles south.

The “quicker” route is to get over to Interstate 95 and take the superslab south, but what fun is that? If you’ve been on one interstate highway, you’ve been on all of them. We prefer the “blue highways” that show us small town America, and where we can travel at a slower pace.

So instead, we are going to take U.S. 27 south, through Sebring and around Lake Okeechobee, hook up with Interstate 595, and take it to 95. Then it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump north to the campground.

Our friends Jim and Chris Guld, from Geeks on Tour, are staying at Paradise Island this winter, and we’re looking forward to spending some time with them, away from all of the hectic activity of an RV rally, which is usually where we cross paths.

We have had a very good time here at the Thousand Trails, and this is one campground we’ll be returning to again. Now that we have used up our allotted 50 nights per year that we get “free” under our Thousand Trails membership, any other stays are $5/night, which is a darned good price on a full hookup RV site! We do have to come back to this area in the next few weeks to have the nice folks at Camping Connection do our latest Norcold refrigerator recall, but during the winter the Thousand Trails keeps pretty full, so I don’t know if they will have an opening for us.

A while back, a gentleman named Ladd Lougee, an outdoor and fitness enthusiast, wrote me that he came up with the idea for a better travel chair when he was camping in the Mammoth Lakes area of the California Sierra Nevada Mountains. Ladd said that after squirming around in his chair in discomfort for the hundredth time, he asked if anyone else had a sore back from using the typical camping chairs. He was very surprised to hear that nearly everyone else in his group did as well. So Ladd said he set out to build a better chair, the result being the Strongback Chair.

Okay, a lot of companies and people contact me, telling me that they have come up with the newest and best whatever, from computers to books to widgets, and I have to admit that usually I’m a skeptic. Most of these outfits simply send me an e-mail press release and expect me to publish it, but I don’t do things that way.

I write back and tell them that if they want to send me one of their products to review I’ll look at it. But, they must be willing to accept the fact that if it is good I’ll say so, and if I think it’s crap, I’ll say that too. I seldom hear back from them after that. I’m never sure if they are just looking for free publicity, or if they don’t have enough faith in their product to let me try it. But Ladd offered to send me a chair to evaluate in his first e-mail. That’s always a good sign.

The chair arrived a couple of days ago, and after sitting in it a while, folding it up and stowing it in its nylon carry bag, and pulling it out to sit on again on different types of terrain, from grass and gravel to blacktop, it is absolutely the most comfortable camp chair I have ever sat in.

The chair is big and roomy, it has solid padded arm rests, a drink holder, and can hold up to 300 pounds, and best of all, its design incorporates a frame-integrated lumbar support that gives my lower back excellent support. Strongback Chairs come in two models, the Zen for smaller people, and the big, roomy Elite model that Ladd sent me.

My only problem with the chair is that Miss Terry likes it just as much as I do, so now we have to fight over it! Or maybe there’s going to be a new chair in her Christmas stocking this year?

Thought For The Day – Stop global whining!

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Can you believe  that three months from today, our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally will begin? That may seem like a long time to you, but believe me, from our perspective, it’s coming up fast!

There is a tremendous amount of work involved in planning and pulling one of these events off. With over 225 RVs attending, and a ton of walk-in visitors who are staying at local RV parks, it’s a real juggling act to have enough different seminars to meet everybody’s needs. Not to mention the logistics of providing morning coffee and donuts for everybody, making sure the different seminar rooms have the equipment each speaker needs, and that we don’t have two seminars in the same time slot that compete too heavily with each other. And did I mention the evening entertainment, or feeding several hundred hungry people pizza in a matter of minutes at our pizza party? All of of that is after we get all of those RVs in and parked!

I’ve been giving our seminar lineup a lot of thought. One part of me says that there are already a lot of events with seminars on the basic RV stuff like how to hook up campground utilities, basic RV systems, RV tires, etc. So maybe we should concentrate more on seminar topics that folks can’t get everywhere else, like the seminars we had on Kayaking For Beginners and Bicycling For RVers at our Eastern Rally in Elkhart this summer. But then again, if you’re a brand new RVer coming to your first rally, you need those basic seminars.

I’d like to see more seminars on RV destinations, places to go, and things to do when you get there. If anybody who is going to be at the rally has an idea for a seminar that they’d like to put together along those lines, or on any topic, for that matter, or maybe a craft class, send me an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and tell me about it.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do about T-shirts for the Arizona rally. Everybody says that they want rally shirts, but we have to order at least 100 to get the pricing that we can afford. Then, we usually end up with 40 or more shirts left over, which means we lose money anyway. Somebody suggested that we only take pre-orders that are paid in advance, but then people at the rally say “I wanted one too!” So I’m just not sure if we’ll have shirts in Yuma or not. 

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer!

Several people said that we could just donate the leftover shirts to charity, and that sounds good, but it’s still money that we spent and received no return on, and as a business, the idea is to make a profit. 

Miss Terry found a use for some of the T-shirts that we had left over from the rallies. The other day she made a rug from several leftover shirts. Looks cool, doesn’t it? The bits of yellow, black, and white you see in the rug are the printed logos from the T-shirts.

Speaking of my beautiful bride, two people have expressed condolences to us in the last few days over the loss of Terry’s mom. I don’t know where that rumor got started, and while we appreciate your concern, Terry’s mom, Bess Weber, is alive and well, and just as feisty as ever. My parents have been gone for many, many years, but Terry’s parents, Pete and Bess are still healthy, active, and very involved in life, their church, and their family’s activities. I know a lot of people half their age that are not in as good shape.

We only have a week to go on our Buy One, Get One Free Holiday Special Offer. A lot of folks have taken advantage of the savings, and there’s still time for you to renew or extend your subscription, and get a free subscription for somebody on your Christmas shopping list too! Just click the link below, while there‘s still time

Whatever you’re doing today, I hope you take a moment to remember our fellow countrymen who were lost 69 years ago today during the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. That terrible Sunday morning changed the world forever, just as the terrorists attacks of 9/11 did. The only difference is that back then, our nation had the cajones to kick ass and take names, as we used to say in the military.

Hey, I’m starting to sound like Bad Nick, so I’ll stop for now, but check out his latest Bad Nick Blog, titled Silly Sarah, and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – No matter how bad you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

We only have a couple of days here in Gettysburg, and we had planned to spend yesterday playing tourist. There is so much to see and do here that we could never cover it all, but we had hoped to at least get to the new National Parks Visitor Center. But things didn’t go exactly as planned.

Miss Terry has not been feeling 100% since we spent 11 hours a day standing on the ice rink at the Hershey RV Show last week, and whatever has been hanging around in the background came to the forefront yesterday.  She woke up feeling pretty puny, with a sore throat, headache, congestion, and generally achy all over. So we decided that a quiet day at home might help her get to feeling better.

Of course, you can’t get Terry to take it easy, so for her a “quiet day at home” involved hours wading through the paperwork from our recent Elkhart rally and the Hershey show, and doing a couple of loads of laundry.  I spent most of the day working online, answering e-mails, and contacting vendors and potential entertainers for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally, which will be March 7-11, 2011 in Yuma. I’m hoping David Bradley, who was a hit at this year’s rally, will come back and put on another show for us.

Also, due to popular demand, we’re bringing our Cactus Queen Beauty Contest back. We skipped it last year, because we thought that people might be getting tired of it, but a lot of folks let us know that they missed it. Besides, it’s just so darned much fun!

For some reason, the links on the Rally Registration Page were not working, so I fixed that problem, and now you should be able to just click the link and register. A lot of the vendors who were at the rally this year have already told us that they want to come back, because they had such good sales. And we’re looking forward to having them back, with all kinds of bargains for our rally attendees.

By late afternoon, Terry was feeling a bit better, so we drove into town and looked at some of the neat old houses and storefronts. I first visited Gettysburg back when I was in the Army, and fell in love with all of the history and charm of the famous old town and the surrounding area. If I was ever willing to get off the road (which I hope never to do), and if I had to live in a place where it snows (which I definitely hope never to do), I could live here.

Maybe I watched too many old movies growing up, but I love fedora hats, and all of my life, I have always wanted a good one. Wandering around Gettysburg, we found a neat little shop called Wilderness Lodge Leather & Hat Shops, where they had a fantastic selection at excellent prices. Such a good selection at such good prices that by the time we left, I had three new hats, two felt and a nice Panama straw!

What does a guy who lives in a motorhome need with three hats, when he already has an excellent medium brim Stetson? Miss Terry says it’s because I work hard and I don’t drink, smoke, play golf, or blow money in a lot of other ways, and I deserve them. And who am I to disagree with her?

Gayle Underwood, who was on duty behind the counter, is a history nut; a retired history teacher, and a wealth of information about Gettysburg. We spent quite a bit of time talking with her, and she gave us a lot of tips about places to see and things to do.

By then we were both hungry, and Gayle recommended  O’Rorkes Eatery & Spirits, almost across the street. Jerry, one of our regular blog readers, had also recommended O’Rorkes, so we walked across the street and tried it out. They were busy and there was a 20 minute wait for a table inside, but the hostess said we could get an outside table right then. It was a pleasant, warm evening, so we said okay, and enjoyed watching all of the tourists passing by as we had a fabulous meal.

Here is Miss Terry looking over the menu, which ranged from seafood to steaks and prime rib. She chose the salmon, and I had a New York strip, and both were delicious.

Then we drove out through part of the old battlefield, just to see how it felt in the dark, under a full yellow moon. It was a lot more peaceful than it was here in  July of 1863, for sure!

Thought For The Day -  It’s the small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Today is the last day of the Hershey RV Show, and it couldn’t end soon enough for us. We are worn out physically and mentally, and just want to go to bed and sleep for about 48 hours straight.

All week long the show promoters and other vendors have been telling us “Just wait until Friday and Saturday. This place will be a madhouse!” Well, Friday came and went, and it was nothing special. A little busier than earlier in the week, but still very slow by RV rally standards.

Yesterday (Saturday) the Giant Center was packed in the outside RV display area, and on the upper indoor vendor area. But for much of the day down on the main vendor floor, it was a still pretty slow. We would have occasional rushes, when the crowds were so heavy that nobody could stop and talk to a vendor even if they had wanted to (and most didn’t want to), but then things would slow back down again.

And just like the rest of the week, by 6 p.m. everybody had pretty much disappeared, and all of us vendors spent the next two hours staring at each other across the aisles. When we got back to our motorhome, parked at the Hershey Thousand Trails campground, Terry added up our sales figures for the day, and we had taken in even less money on Saturday then we had on Friday! So much for the predictions of huge sales Friday and Saturday.

The folks running the show claim that last year they had over 37,000 attendees, and said this year the show was going to be even bigger. Yesterday, they said that from Wednesday to Friday of this week, they had just over 15,000 people coming through the gates. I very much doubt that figure is accurate, based upon what the vendors saw. And even if it is a true figure, there’s no way they will come anywhere near that 37,000 figure by the end of the day today. A lot of vendors and show attendees have told us that the show was much better when it was held in Harrisburg. I think it would have to have been, because it darn sure couldn’t have been any worse!

At least we got to make some new friends while we were here, and we also got to see some folks we have not seen in a while. Yesterday, Paul and Marti Dahl stopped in to say hello, and it was nice to talk to them. Paul is a Chief Warrant Officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, and Marti is a nursing home administrator. They are counting the days until they can retire and travel fulltime in their Class A motorhome. 

Another couple we got to talk to for a while were blog readers Ed and Blondie, whose last name fails me now, I’m afraid. But they were fun people, and they also sat in on my Highway History and Back Road Mystery seminar.

Sean Magee really flattered us when he told us that he drove 90 minutes to come to the show, just to see Terry and me. I really felt a connection with Sean, he’s a very special guy who has a lot of love for his fellow man, and especially children.

There were others who stopped by our vendor booth to say hello, and I’m sorry, both Terry and I are so foggy right now that we just cannot remember everybody’s names. But we really were happy to see all of you, and we really appreciate the time you took to stop and introduce yourselves.

Today is a shorter day, only 8 hours instead of the 11 we’ve been working all week. Of course, then we have to pack everything up and load the van before we’re finally through with this sad excuse for an RV show. Miss Terry and I have an agreement that if I get forgetful someday and say I want to come back here again, she can bash my head in with a frying pan, and then drag my bleeding carcass out to the curb and leave it.

Thought For The Day – Hard work never killed anyone, but why give it a chance?