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 our last day in Fort Lauderdale, and it sure has been a fast week! Between bad weather and getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal wrapped up, we haven’t gotten to see much during our stay.

But last night Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour took us for a quick tour of some of the city’s highlights when we went out to dinner, and it is obvious that they have a lot of affection for the place. Chris went to high school here, and Jim lived here from 1985 until they went on the road a few years ago. Since Chris’ mom and Jim’s dad and son both live here, they spend a lot of time here at Paradise Island RV Resort.

We drove along the waterfront, where we saw the lights of huge ships making their way down the coast, and stopped to walk on the beach for a few minutes. Since it was dark, we didn’t get to see a lot, but anytime I’m on a beach, I’m a happy camper! We had a very nice dinner at an outside table at a restaurant called Coconuts. On our way in, we stopped to check out this huge pot of paella, a concoction that included saffron rice, lobster, crab, scallops, shrimp, onions, peppers, and assorted vegetables. It looked delicious, but at $26 a serving, we all decided we weren’t quite that hungry! Jim and I had blackened mahi sandwiches, while the ladies had fish tacos, and we finished off with delicious key lime pie. Yummy! While we ate, we watched large boats cruising up the Inland Waterway, and smaller boats coming and going as people stopped at the restaurant’s dock. One of the waitresses took this picture of the four of us at our table. Don’t we look well fed and happy? The restaurant is located right next door to the International Swimming Hall of Fame, which honors the achievements of famous swimmers, divers, water polo players, synchronized swimmers, and people involved in life saving activities. Did you know that the late radio and television personality Art Linkletter was  a world-class swimmer, or that if it weren’t for a bad bout of poison oak, he would have participated in the 1932 Olympic Trials. A college backstroke champion, Linkletter might well have earned a spot on the US Olympic swimming team. I wonder what direction the famed humorist’s life might have taken, if it weren’t for a bad rash?

We had a good time visiting with Jim and Chris at dinner. Besides being the world’s best mobile computer geeks, they are also accomplished kayakers and scuba divers. Miss Terry has always wanted to learn how to dive, which I had hoped she could do this winter. I think hearing all of Jim and Chris’s stories of their underwater adventures really whetted her appetite to try it!

Even though we didn’t get to play tourist very much, we did get some things accomplished in our time here, or rather, I should say, Chris got some things accomplished for me. Over time we will be moving all of our websites off the Yahoo servers, and she has a lot of the groundwork done for that. She also helped me with an ongoing problem I’ve been having with e-mail messages disappearing after I open them, or not getting to me at all, another problem that seems to have its origins with Yahoo. Thanks Chris, I really appreciate all of your help.

Thought For The Day – Why is the man you hire to invest all of your money called a broker?

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

I try to be a nice guy, and I think most of the time I come pretty close. But there are times when I just have to be a jerk. Or at least some people think that I’m being a jerk.

It has happened a couple of times in the last few days.

I got an e-mail from a lady who purchased our RVers Guide To Fairgrounds Camping a while back, and was upset because one of the fairgrounds had raised their rates and we didn’t have the new rate listed. She wanted to know what kind of satisfaction I was going to offer her.

I replied that while we are constantly updating our guides, it would be impossible for us visit each and every place on a repeated basis to check on any changes. But we do send out inquiries twice a year asking for any changes. If they don’t give us updated information, we can’t reflect those changes.  We have a disclaimer in the first page of the guide that we are not responsible for changes in site fees, availability, or access. I also asked her what “satisfaction “ she expected on a $7.50 guide that still lists fairgrounds with RV camping sites in states from border to border.  

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer!

I got a second complaint on the same fairgrounds guide, this time because a gentleman stopped at a fairgrounds in Wisconsin to spend the night, and they told him that their RV sites were closed for the season and the water was turned off. He told me he expected us to not only refund his money, but also to pay him for his night at a campground he did eventually find open. Well, that’s just not going to happen. I did mention that it was Wisconsin, in December, right?

Back in August, just before our rally in Elkhart, Indiana, a vendor came by Elkhart Campground while Terry and I were laying out the vendor sales area, and demanded that we move him because he was too close to another vendor selling a similar product. We agreed to do so, and spent some time shuffling vendor spaces to make him happy.

A few minutes later I got a call from the campground’s owner because he was in the office making demands on who would be parked near him. So I had to stop what I was doing to go put that fire out, and to apologize to the campground’s owner for his rude behavior.

Then, a day before the rally started, he called me to say that he could not attend the rally because his wife had a medical emergency that required a trip back to California. He also said that his expected merchandise had not arrived, and asked for a refund, even though we don’t give refunds on last minute booth cancellations. But because of the emergency, I told him that we would refund his vendor fees, to help cover the cost of their unexpected trip back to California. Even though we had been turning away vendors because we were full, which meant we would lose money.

However, once the rally had started, this same vendor came through the campground, putting fliers on all of the RVs, advertising his products, which of course ticked off the dealers who had paid for their vendor sites. So obviously, he did not have to go back to California for a medical emergency, and he did have merchandise if he was distributing fliers trying to sell it.

I called him about it, and told him I didn’t appreciate that, and that if he wanted to sell his stuff at our rally, he needed to come and set up the booth he had reserved. He hemmed and hawed, but never came back.

So he didn’t get his refund, and yesterday he e-mailed me wanting to know why. I told him why, and that he would not be attending any of our future rallies either. I’m a pretty easygoing guy, and I believe in doing what I can to accommodate my customers.

But sometimes I have to draw a line. I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like being taken for a fool. That’s when the jerk in me comes out.

Thought For The Day – You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

News flash! As it turns out, you can watch TV in an RV after all! Who knew?

You may remember that I reported in a blog last week titled You Can’t Watch TV In An RV that Dish Network was supposed to bring us a new high definition DVR receiver, but on the morning of the appointment, the Dish installer told me that “you can’t watch TV in an RV,” and no matter how much I argued with him, or with the folks at Dish Network’s customer service center, the company position was that it just couldn’t be done. Never mind that we have had Dish Network all along in our RV, just like tens of thousands of other RVers, it just can’t be done.

After that happened, the owner of a local independent Dish installation company, ADO Electronics (321) 231-0355, called Dish for us, and knew who to talk to and what to say. Dish agreed to send somebody back out yesterday. He told us that if the second Dish installer wouldn’t do the job, to let him know.

Sure enough, yesterday morning a second Dish installer arrived, and within an hour or two he had our new receiver installed and hooked up to both our front and rear TVs, and we were good to go. We’re watching TV in an RV! Who would have thought that was possible?

Since he had to pull the old original equipment TV out of the cabinet in our bedroom to hook it up, we took the opportunity to dispose of that TV and replaced it with a 20 inch LCD Vizio we’ve been carrying around for that purpose ever since we got our Winnebago, but never got around to doing. The installer was a very nice young man, and when we asked if he had any need of the older TV, he was happy to take it for his son’s bedroom.

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer!

The new HD DVR is cool. It’s a single box with two receivers built into it, and we can watch and record two different stations at the same time. How cool is that?

The only problem was that, after the installation we didn’t have our east and west coast distant network feeds, so I called All American Direct, who provides distant network service for Dish. The nice tech there deleted our old receiver and entered the serial number of our new receiver into our account, and within about five minutes our east and west coast feeds were back.

Well, they were back, but the on-screen menu that shows the upcoming programming just said No Info in every time slot. I called Dish back, they had me reboot the new receiver, and the updated program information downloaded. Life is good!

I wasn’t sure if we would have to reprogram our Winegard Trav’ler automatic rooftop satellite dish for the new receiver, but we pushed the button to stow it, and then deployed it again, and it went right up and locked onto the signal with no problem. Hopefully it will do the same thing at our next location.

With that out of the way, we went to a late lunch/early dinner (linner) at a nice Chinese buffet in Orlando, called Billy Wong’s, with Dave and Jean Damon, 303 vendors we know from the RV rally circuit. We had a nice meal, and lots of interesting conversation.

Speaking of our next location, we’re due to leave the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve on Sunday, and the plan has been to go down to Fort Lauderdale and spend a day or three bothering Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour, and then to go on down to Key West. But with the cold front that is coming through the area, even Key West will be much cooler than it was on our visit two years ago. I’m not sure if we’ll want to do much kayaking unless it warms back up. We’re hoping for rising temperatures soon!

Thought For The Day – It’s no coincidence that there’s only a one letter difference between “garage sale” and “garbage sale.”

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally