After reading the Thought For The Day in yesterday’s blog (When you go into court, your fate is in the hands of twelve people who aren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty), two different wannabe fulltimers e-mailed me to ask how fulltimers handle civic obligations such as voting and jury duty. Do they have to return to whatever town they are domiciled in to cast their votes, or if they are chosen for jury duty?

When we started our fulltiming lifestyle, we chose Texas as our legal domicile, and our mailing service was with the Escapees in Livingston. Two or three times over the years we received notices of jury duty. In each case we just called the Polk County courthouse, explained that we were Escapees and were traveling in another part of the country, and that we would not be back in the area for several months. In each case, we were dismissed, and asked to stop in and volunteer for jury duty the next time we were in Livingston for a while.

A couple of years ago, we switched our domicile to South Dakota. We have not received any jury summonses so far, but my understanding is that if we do, all it takes is a telephone call and an explanation that we are out of state, and we’ll be dismissed.

Voting, no matter where you are domiciled, can be done by absentee ballot. Just contact the local authority that handles such things and request an absentee ballot. Fulltimers do it all the time.

Another question I get frequently is how does one renew their driver’s license if they are fulltimers. It depends on the state. In Texas, we renewed online once, and most states have that service available. Some states allow you to renew your license online or by mail one time, and then require you to appear in person the next time around.

Some states require drivers past a certain age to appear in person and take an eye test to renew their licenses. License renewals usually fall on your birthday. In every state that I know of, you can renew your license anywhere from 30 to 90 days in advance, so if your birthday falls in the middle of the winter, you can usually go earlier and get it done, rather than returning to someplace like South Dakota (a popular domicile state for fulltimers) in the middle of January or February.

Texas also requires an annual vehicle safety inspection, and depending on which county you are registered in, you may also need an emissions test to renew your license plates. Polk County, home of the Escapees, does not require an emissions test. You do not have to return to Texas to renew your license plates, it can be done by mail or online. You are only required to get a safety inspection when you bring the vehicle into Texas, so if you are traveling, you do not need to return to get a safety inspection. Just get it done the next time you are in Texas. In our bus conversion, we once went several years without a safety inspection, because we were not in Texas during that time period. South Dakota does not require a vehicle safety or emissions inspection.

Life on the road is a lot of fun, and even though we do have to handle things like jury duty, voting, and renewing licenses, none of them are a major obstacle. With a little planning, a telephone call or two, or a few minutes online, any of our civic obligations are a piece of cake. 

Thought For The Day – Don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

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Through a herculean effort on the part of Miss Terry, we got the new issue of the Gypsy Journal mailed out, and now we can take a deep breath and relax. At least until next time.

In yesterday’s blog, I wrote about how Cheryl Howarth from Miller Insurance helped us get the ball rolling with National Interstate following our burglary, and I mentioned that another agent, from a different agency, also intervened on our behalf.

At that time I did not have her name available, but I do now. It was Gina Shaver, from Epic Insurance in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Gina’s office phone number is 605-271-8100, and her company website is http://www.epic-ins.com/.  She is another agent whom I highly recommend. I like supporting the people who support me. Of course, that’s a two way street, as some other people are now well aware of.

As I wrote when I first reported on our crime, RVing is a safe activity overall. But, as I also stated, crime can and does happen anywhere. Most of the crimes suffered by RVers are petty. Unsecured bicycles and coolers have a way of walking off in campgrounds, if their owners go away and leave them. Most of the reports of this activity we have heard about occurred in state parks.

A couple of years ago in Quartzsite, there was a rash of thefts of portable generators. Some were stolen even when chained to the owners’ RVs. The thieves cut the cables with bolt cutters and carried them off. Bicycles also were disappearing in Quartzsite about the same time.   

But crimes of violence, while uncommon in the RV world, do happen, as our experience, as well as this story in the Bandera County Courier show http://www.bccourier.com/Archives/News_detail.php?recordID=091210N5.

According to the news story, a couple camping at the Medina Lake Thousand Trails in Lakehills, Texas were accosted by two teenagers wearing ski masks who pointed a gun at them and said “Give me all your money or I’ll kill you.” As it turns out, the gun was a BB gun, and the boys were at the campground with their grandparents.

These two punks were damned lucky. If they had pointed a BB gun at somebody else, they may have found out their victim was carrying a real gun. Just because their gun wasn’t real doesn’t mean a victim wouldn’t have been justified in blowing them away. In the dark, who can tell?

As I also reported earlier, our only other crime related incident happened in our first months on the road, when somebody tried to steal our pickup while we were in a Coast to Coast campground in California. So much for the “security” of campgrounds, even membership campgrounds!

Still, you have to keep in mind that in over ten years of fulltime RVing, including hundreds of nights spent dry camping in every corner of the nation, those were the only criminals we have come into contact with. Most folks living in even a medium sized city rub shoulders with all kinds of thugs every day, and never know when they might become a victim.

By using common sense, choosing a well lighted area when spending a night in a parking lot, keeping your doors locked and your valuables out of sight, and by being aware of your surroundings, you will go a long way toward avoiding becoming a victim of crime. Remember, the most effective weapon you own is right between your ears, and you don’t need special training or a permit to possess it. So use it.

Thought For The Day – It’s never too late to be what you might have been.

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I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail asking where we are with the insurance company, following our burglary to our motorhome. As regular blog readers know, at first we were having a real hassle with our insurance company, National Interstate, and when we called our agent, PoliSeek, they told me they didn’t get involved in problems like that and referred me back to the same claims adjuster at National Interstate who was giving us all the problems.

After I wrote about the problem in the blog and it became a topic of discussion on several RV internet forums, most notably the Escapees, people started calling their agents and National Interstate asking if they could expect the same lack of service if they had a claim.

Cheryl Howarth from Miller Insurance in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and another agent from South Dakota, both of whom have a lot of RV owners as customers, took it upon themselves to contact National Interstate on our behalf. The response from the company was immediate, and within an hour or so the same claims adjuster who had been giving us grief was on the telephone bending over backwards to accommodate our every need.

We now have been reimbursed for all of the items that were stolen or vandalized, except for one small check that we should receive this week, and as I understand it, the shop in Indiana that did our repairs has also been paid, except for two sets of day/night shades that we are still waiting on the factory to send to us.

Fourteen days after our burglary, a representative from PoliSeek called in response to the internet uproar that had resulted, and the next day her supervisor called. They wanted to know what they could do to help, and I told them that they were too late, other agents had handled the problem for us. The supervisor told me that it really wasn’t their job to deal with the insurance company for us. In other words, they’ll take our money, but they don’t want to get involved if we have a problem. So why have an agent in the first place?

As soon as life gets back to normal after the holidays, we will be talking to Cheryl at Miller Insurance about placing all of our business with her. From all of the good feedback I have gotten from customers of Progressive, I think that’s who we’ll end up with, if Cheryl represents them. She has earned our business, and I’d much rather she makes a commission on our insurance policies. PoliSeek has seen the last penny they’ll ever get from me. If you are looking for RV insurance, or are thinking about moving your business, I’d readily recommend Cheryl. I’d recommend the agent in South Dakota as well, but I never did get her full name or the name of the agency she works for.

While Miss Terry was busy stuffing envelopes yesterday, Bad Nick wrote a new Bad Nick Blog post titled The GPS Made Me Do It. Check it out and leave a comment. 

Thought For The Day – A friend is someone who reaches for your hand, but touches your heart.

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We spent most of the day yesterday playing tour guide at the RV Hall of Fame Museum to members of the Heartland Owners Club, who were in the area for their annual rally. It was a lot of fun.

Here is a picture of Terry sitting with her new friend, Poker Alice. Poker Alice was a famous lady gambler and madam who was well known in Deadwood and Sturgis, South Dakota in the old days for her luck with cards, the cigars she smoked, and the .38 revolver she carried in a pocket in case some card sharp tried to cheat her. I wrote a story about her which is in my book Highway History And Back Road Mystery. Of course, this isn’t the real Poker Alice. That luminary died in 1930 and is buried in Sturgis. But this likeness of the old gal on display at the museum is pretty accurate.

Things got off to a slow start, because of a scheduling mix up so Terry and I, and several other volunteers called in for the occasion, spent the first couple of hours just chatting with regular visitors to the museum. Then the chartered buses pulled up with the Heartland group and the floodgates opened. Over 150 folks from the rally had a good time seeing all of the neat old RVs on display, and we had a good time visiting with them.

In ten years of publishing the Gypsy Journal, we have been approached by several RV manufacturers about advertising, but Heartland is the only one we have accepted advertising from, because they convinced me that they build a quality product and stand behind it.

The Heartland owners we talked to at the museum were just as impressed. The factory is located here in Elkhart, and they sent a small army of service techs to the rally to handle any problems owners had with rigs. Everybody was impressed with how accommodating they were. One comment I heard was “They promised less and delivered more.” A fifth wheel does not fit our needs or lifestyle, but if Terry and I were going to buy a fifth wheel, Heartland would be the first and last one we looked at.

I also talked to some of the vendors who were at the Heartland Rally, and all of them were impressed with the reception they got and the amount of business they did. I really wish we would not have been sick so we could have attended.

Unfortunately, we did have a Bad Nick sighting at the museum yesterday. One of the most unique vehicles in the collection is this wild custom motorhome called Star Streak II, built on a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado chassis, which has been featured on the Discovery Channel.

I enjoyed taking visitors into the RV to show them its many unique features, including a large screened roof vent. One family had a little boy who immediately started flipping switches and pulling on things.

His father immediately chastised him and told him not to touch things, but you know how kids can be. In no time at all he was reaching for a toggle switch on the wall and I told him “Be careful there, I’m not sure which switch it is, but one of them operates the ejector. A while back we lost a nine year old who touched it and went right through that hole in the roof. We looked for him everywhere, but the place closes at 5 o’clock, so what could we do? He still hasn’t turned up.”

The boy’s eyes were bigger than the RVs’ hubcaps, and his mouth was hanging so far open a sparrow could have flown in. I couldn’t resist taking it a step further, so I said “The security guard says sometimes late at night he hears the boy’s voice calling out, but it’s a big place and he’s an old man, so who knows?” The boy stuck his hands deep into his pockets and never took them out until he was well clear of the RV! Bad Nick!

I had another one of those small world events that happen to me all of the time while I was giving some folks a tour of the Cadillac motorhome. Paul Jones, the man who built it, was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the car has two West Point emblems mounted on the front fenders.

Back when I was a young solder, about 100 years ago, I spent a couple of years at West Point as a firearms instructor. (Sleep well tonight, I helped train the guys running the Army today!).

As one couple was looking at the RV, the husband saw the emblems and commented that he was sure familiar with them. “Were you a cadidiot?” I asked him, using the slang term we enlisted men assigned to the Academy used for cadets. “No, but I was a firearms instructor there,” he replied. As it turns out, he had the same job I did, only about four years before my arrival! How cool is that?

Thought For The Day – Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.

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We spent Wednesday night dry camping in the designated RV parking area at the Route 66 Casino, and thought we might have a problem with our Onan 5500 generator.

We fired it up to run our rooftop air conditioner and all was going along fine, with the generator putting out 123 volts according to the meter on our Progressive Industries EMS system. Suddenly the voltage dropped to 104 volts and the EMS cut out, as it is designed to do in low voltage situations. We turned off the air conditioner and the reading was still 104 volts. With the EMS not engaged, which allows no power to come through, and thus no load on the genset, we were still reading 104 volts.

I let the generator sit for about an hour and fired it up, and it was putting out 123 volts again. But soon it did the same thing, dropping to 104 volts and staying. The AC was not on this time, and all we were using was 9 amps according to the EMS. We had last used the genset about three weeks ago and it was working fine then.

Yesterday morning we left the casino about 9:30 a.m., after waiting for rush hour traffic in Albuquerque to calm down, and headed east on Interstate 40. I think rush hour is actually 24/7 in Albuquerque, and construction zones with lane closures are just a fact of life there, but we managed to thread our way through it all and began to long uphill climb out of the valley. We were in the right hand lane, radiator misters going and moving slow, but we made it okay.

Terry fired the generator up again and we ran the rooftop air conditioner for about four hours with no problems, so I guess the gremlins who were causing problems the night before were taking the day off.

We traveled 190 miles to Tucumcari, where we left the interstate and took U.S. Highway 54 northeast. Add the depressing little town of Logan, New Mexico to your list of places to avoid. There were signs posted  all along the highway through the rundown downtown (what there is of it) saying “No Overnight Parking” and one sad looking RV park next to the railroad tracks. As we were coming into town a group of about nine young men were in an altercation alongside the road that looked like it was going to get violent very quickly.

We crossed into Texas, and tried to hold our breath as we drove past the huge cattle feeding operations near Dalhart. I like the aroma of beef sizzling on the grill a lot more than I do when it’s on the hoof in the muck.

I was looking forward to passing through Hooker, Oklahoma, home of the Hooker Horny Toads ball team. The last time we visited Hooker, I got a giggle out of the sign in front of a building identified as the Hooker Chamber of Commerce. I had no idea they were that organized!

There was a lot of road construction in Hooker, and one sign I really wanted to stop and get a picture of said “We’re building a better Hooker for you” but there was no place to pull over. I wonder if they take custom orders…..?

Before long we crossed into Kansas at Liberal, home of the fantastic Mid-America Air Museum, which we did a feature on a few years ago. Liberal is also home of the Dorothy’s House Museum and an annual Wizard of Oz celebration.

I knew that one of my ex-wives was back in Arizona, but that left one still unaccounted for, so I kept a sharp eye out for witches until we were out of town. One can’t be too careful.

A half hour or so after we left Liberal, we came to Meade, home of the Dalton Gang Hideout, which we will visit tomorrow. We are parked for the night in the Meade city park, which allows free RV parking. There are a few water bibs scattered about, and the park has a dump station. We are sharing the park with a couple from South Dakota in a small fifth wheel, who stopped by to say hello, and a tiny Toyota camper from California.

We covered 456 miles yesterday, which was more than we had planned to drive, but it was a good day, the bus was running smooth, and traffic was light, so we just kept on rolling. It’s good to be back on the road again!

Thought For The Day – No one ever achieved worthwhile success who did not find themselves with at least one foot hanging over the brink of failure.

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