I spent most of yesterday working on a website for Carlyle Lehman at Focal Wood Products. Many people are surprised to learn that while the Amish people live a much simpler lifestyle than most of us, with their horses and buggies, they do in fact make use of many modern conveniences, including telephones, electricity, and even the internet.

Every Amish community has its own rules as to how much of the “English world” (as they call life among the non-Amish), they can incorporate into their homes and businesses. While the Amish don’t own or drive cars, they will hire someone to take them where they need to go if it is too far for their buggies, and crews of Amish workers at local factories car pool in vans driven by non-Amish co-workers.

If you drive past the Amish farms on some of the back roads here in northern Indiana, you will see small wooden structures at the end of the driveway at every third or fourth home. These are shared telephone booths, where they can make and receive calls relating to business. But these booths are not heated and do not have a seat, to prevent them from spending much time chatting. We often see newspaper advertisements for items for sale, with a telephone number and the notation “Call between 7:30 and 8 a.m.” Those are the hours when they will be monitoring the telephone to receive calls. For businesses such as Focal Wood Products, they have a voice mail system, so if we call when Carlyle is busy, we leave a message and he calls us back. It’s not quite as convenient as calling a traditional business, but it works for them.

In the case of his website, Carlyle received permission from his community to have one to advertise his products, but he cannot build or maintain it himself. That’s where I got involved, and it’s been an interesting experience working with someone whose culture is different in so many ways from our own.

I mentioned a while back that I have co-authored a new book on self-publishing, titled The Step-By-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit. Last week I received my first copy of the book, hot off the press, and I’m very pleased with it. All of the credit goes to my co-author, Christy Pinheiro, who conceived the project and handled all of the production details. For more information, here is a link to the book’s website. Check it out; you too could be a published author!  

One of the things I suggest on my self-publishing website, Publishing4Profit, is producing small niche guides aimed at very targeted markets. Examples would be our Guide to Free Campgrounds and Overnight Parking Places, and our Guide to Casino Camping.

I don’t know if Dale Sumner from Mobile RV Medic, Inc. spent any time reading the website or coming to any of my seminars, but he recently published a very good guide, titled Basic RV Electricity and Protection, which is an excellent primer for anyone who owns an RV. Dale packs a lot of excellent information into the book, without getting buried in technical details that the average RVer could not understand. If you want to know what happens when you plug your RV’s electrical cord into a campground’s pedestal, and how to avoid overloading the circuit, and how to protect your rig from problems, this is an easy to understand guide that is well worth the money. You can order your copy at www.lulu.com/basicRVelectricity or e-mail Dale at sales@mobileRVmedic.com.

Of course, if you’re staying at an upscale RV resort such as Retama Village in Mission, Texas, you won’t have to worry about things like electrical problems. My friend Jack Mayer owns a couple of RV lots at Retama Village, and Jack and some of the other lot owners have set up a website, Retama Rentals, to market their lots when they are not staying on them. We paid a visit to friends at Retama last winter, and I can tell you it’s the nicest RV resort we have ever seen! So if you’re thinking about spending some time in the Valley this winter, check out Jack’s website.

While I was busy building a website this weekend, Bad Nick wrote a new post for the Bad Nick Blog titled We’re Going To Lose The War On Terror. Check it out, it will give you something to think about.

Thought For The Day – Anything in the future will always look better because there’s always something wrong in the present.

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Labor Day weekend. The last big hurrah of the summer traveling and camping season for most people.

It’s going to be a busy weekend here at Elkhart Campground. Already RVs of every size and description are pulling in, and campground owner Bobby Patel tells me they have a lot of camping sites reserved for the entire weekend.

For fulltime RVers like ourselves, most holiday weekends don’t matter much, except for the fact that we have to plan ahead and get a place to park before every campground and RV park fills up with weekend campers. Most fulltimers we know try to get into a park by Wednesday or Thursday before the holiday weekend, and sit tight until about Tuesday of the next week, staying off the highway until things settle down and everybody gets back home.

Besides all of the weekend campers, we have quite a few folks we know here at the campground. Ron and Brenda Speidel have been parked next to us for a couple of weeks now, helping us get moved and settled into our new motorhome. What would we do without these two? Dale and Terry pace have been here for several weeks now, and we have visited with them several times.

Howie and Norah Glover arrived a few days ago, and yesterday Ken and Billie Barker arrived from their home in Missouri, and yesterday Dave and Linda Sand arrived, though we have not had a chance to talk to them yet. Linda is very good about sending me many of the little Thought For The Day sayings I use at the bottom of this blog.

With most of the move completed from the bus, I have turned my attention to creating a website for Carlyle Lehman, the owner of Focal Wood Products in nearby Nappanee, Indiana. Carlyle, an accomplished Amish craftsman, is famous in RV circles for his excellent custom furniture, and he is building a custom desk for me and a desk/workstation for Miss Terry, along with a bookcase, for the Winnebago. If you have had Carlyle build anything for your RV, I would really appreciate any digital photos you might be willing to share for use in Carlyle’s website.

Because I don’t have enough irons in the fire, between publishing the Gypsy Journal, four websites, writing for the RV.Net Blog, and now three blogs of my own, I also get to brag about a new book that I co-authored with Christy Pinheiro titled The Step-By-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit!

The book was published this week and is available on Amazon.com. Here is a link to the book’s website, for anyone interested in checking it out. If there is a book inside of you, get yourself a copy of our new book, and check out my self-publishing website, Publishing4Profit. I’ve supported myself by crunching words for most of my adult life, and it’s a lot more fun than working for a living.

But Bad Nick has been busy too. He just put up a new blog post titled Stick A Label On It. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally