Tuesday morning we were up by 7 a.m., which is way too early for anybody with common sense, but we wanted to get up to RV Renovators in Mesa, Arizona to get our Norcold refrigerator recall work done. No matter how early I have to get up, my body has its own time clock, and I still have to post my blogs after midnight, so I didn’t get to sleep until after 2 a.m. I sure hated to hear that alarm clock ring!

Then, for some silly reason, I had the old Helen Reddy song I Am Woman going through my head all night. Don’t you hate it when some tune gets stuck on automatic replay in your brain and you can’t stop it? Geez, at least it could have been something by some artist I like, maybe Jimmy Buffett or Billy Joel! Then again, maybe I didn’t have Helen Ready singing to me all night long. Maybe it was Miss Terry, sending me some sort of subliminal message not to mess with the Boss Lady!

We left Tra-Tel RV Park in Tucson right at 9 a.m. and had an easy run north to Eloy, where we pulled into the Flying J for fuel. Our motorhome was filthy, and there is a truck/RV wash right across the street, and since the nice folks at RV Renovators had told us our job would be quick and easy, we decided to get the rig washed first. They did a great job, a wash, wax, hand dry, tire treatment, and Rainex on the windshield, all for $93. Hey, you couldn’t get me to do all that work for that little money! Ask Miss Terry, she’s tried!

Of course, since I had just gotten the coach looking all spiffy, every bug in the state of Arizona with a death wish decided to end it that morning, and by the time we got to RV Renovators, the front end of the motorhome was plastered with bug guts. Yuck. Hey woman, stop that damned roaring and bring me a wet rag so I can clean this thing!

Office manager Cinda Nelson gave us a warm welcome, and she’s so darned pretty it was worth the trip from Tucson just to see her. We have heard a lot of good things about RV Renovators, and I’ll tell you what, I was impressed. The entire crew is friendly, and they let us know that they really wanted to make us happy. Here are Cinda, paint and refinish specialist Jesse Hilaire, and service writer Eddie Clayton.

Bill, one of the techs, went right to work on our RV while Cinda gave us the grand tour.

RV Renovators does everything from RV service, to body work, windshield replacement, fiberglass repair, major upgrades, and overhauls. This Class C is getting new skin, and it looks like quite a project.

This motorhome is having a major rebuild. This is what your coach looks like with the slide out. Be sure to fasten your safety straps when you go down the road!

This Class A is getting a new floor installed. We may replace the carpeting in the front of our Winnebago with some type of laminate flooring one of these days.

Hmmm…. I wonder if Miss Terry would let me have this for a tow car? It looks like it would be fun to play with.

Cinda had told us our repair would take about an hour, but you just know nothing is ever that easy for me. Bill ran into a problem getting the refrigerator to come loose, and after a few failed attempts to figure out why it wouldn’t move so he could get behind it and do the upgrade, a phone call back east to a Winnebago expert revealed that not only is our Norcold attached to the side wall like in most RVs, it is also bolted down through the roof! So Bill got a ladder and went up on top, where he peeled away the caulking, removed the screws, and then a plastic cowling. Still no luck. The darned refer would not budge!

Further investigation revealed that the refrigerator is also sealed to the compartment floor with some type of silicone adhesive. When Winnebago builds a motorhome, they don’t cut any corners.

By then it was late in the day, and the folks here needed to get an authorization from Norcold for the extra labor involved, since this is billed as a “quick and easy” job. Of course, Norcold was closed by then, so that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.  Cinda, Bill, and everybody else were apologizing all over the place for the unexpected delay, but what the heck, things happen.  If you live the RV lifestyle, you have to be able to roll with the punches sometimes. It’s no big deal, we know we’re in good hands, and we don’t have to be anyplace special anytime soon.

They parked us behind the shop, inside a secure fenced yard, and gave us a key to the gate so we could come and go as we pleased. David and Lynn Cross, whom we met at our Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma in March, are here getting some work done too, and our motorhome is parked next to their beautiful Executive. We had 50 amp electric, and we were very comfortable. Today’s a new day, and I’m sure they’ll get things taken care of with Norcold.

One final note, I said in yesterday’s blog that Miss Terry and I were betting on how long it would take the Apple Store in Tucson to get my 3G iPad in, and Terry said they’d contact me as soon as we got to Mesa. Darned if she wasn’t right! A few minutes before we arrived at RV Renovators, they notified me that it had arrived. I need to have Terry start buying lottery tickets. She is woman, hear her roar!

Thought For The Day – Old age is when you still have something on the ball, but you are just too darned tired to bounce it.

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Note to self – If we ever hold another Gypsy Gathering rally at a commercial campground, we will require attendees to make their own reservations directly with the campground. The original plan was that the campground would have us handle the rally reservations, but it has become a nightmare as some people make reservations with us, some make them directly with Elkhart Campground, and some make reservations for the rally dates with us, but separate reservations for the days before and after our rally directly with the campground. At this point we know we have 30 and 50 amp full hookup sites left, but neither we nor the campground know how many of each.

We don’t mark up the camping fees, but the campground has weekly and monthly rates that may be less than the rally camping rates, which has left us scratching our heads when trying to help attendees who may be arriving early or hanging around after our rally to wait for the Escapees Escapade two weeks later in Goshen. Plus, people don’t understand that if they want extra days, the daily rate does not include the 7% local sales tax.

Note to self – I really like the Koni shocks that Redlands Truck & RV installed on our Winnebago Ultimate Adventure motorhome after our Western Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma back in March. They give us a superb ride, the handling is great, and I would recommend them, and Redlands, to anybody.

Note to self – The Verizon internet service we’re getting from our air card here at Tra-Tel RV Park in Tucson is as slow as what we experienced a few months ago in Apache Junction. At that point, Verizon said it was because so many snowbirds were in Arizona, using up the bandwidth. Okay, that makes sense, but now it’s May, the campground is more than half empty, the snowbirds have packed up their RVs and hit the trail. So what’s their excuse now? We had much faster service in the small town of Show Low than we are experiencing here in the big city.

Note to self – I can’t please everybody, but some people ask so much that it’s not even worth trying, so don’t worry about it. I got an e-mail from a fellow who has been a regular blog reader and for the last couple of years, though we have never met. He is staying in a campground north of Phoenix, and is interested in getting a Silverleaf VMSpc engine monitoring system like I use in our motorhome, and has been asking me a lot of questions about how it performs. The other day he wrote me that he has the same engine/transmission combination that I do in our RV, and was planning to come to our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. He asked if he could borrow my Silverleaf system to use on his trip to Indiana to help him decide if it was worth the investment. My first response was no, followed by NO! I replied that I had never met him, I wasn’t in the habit of loaning expensive equipment to strangers, and that I needed it for our own trip to Indiana. I have pasted, in part, his response: “I bet you never shared your toys with the other kids when you were a kid either did you? I hate selfish people!!!! You wont see me at your rally or reading your stupid blog ever again!!!” Uh, okay, I’ll miss you (I guess). Where do these people come from, and how do they get my name?

Note to self – Whatever kind of onions I got into Friday were really, really nasty, because all day yesterday I still felt terrible and couldn’t keep anything down. There has to be an easier way to lose weight.

Note to Mom – It’s been a long time since you left us, but it was much too soon. I love you and I miss you every day. I wish you could have been here to know Miss Terry, you would have loved her, and I know she would have loved you too. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Thought For The Day – Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there. If your mom is still alive, be sure to tell her today how much you love her, because someday you will wish you could.

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I bet you’re wondering how I can tie those two topics into one blog, aren’t you? The easy way to do it is to say that I have some relatives that are pretty much vegetables, but that would be too easy. It would be true, but too easy, and I never take the easy way out. That’s why I get the big bucks, baby!

Yesterday, after her medical appointment, my cousin Beverly, Miss Terry, and I went to visit Vivian Leve, another cousin who lives here in Tucson. Vivian’s sister Sharon was also there, and we enjoyed catching up on everybody’s lives since we saw them last.

My Uncle Jack lives with Vivian and her husband, and it was great to see him again, because he’s always been one of my favorite relatives. Uncle Jack will be 85 in a few months. and he’s slowed down a lot, but he was having a good day and seemed very much like his old self.

We decided to go out for lunch, and after a bit of discussion of who liked what, we settled on the Red Robin restaurant in the Tucson Mall. The food was good, but the air conditioning was turned way down, and even though it was in the mid-90s outside, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we could see our own breath.

I am very allergic to onions, and whenever we go out to eat, I always emphasize to our server that no onions be included in my food, or even touch it. I’m not sure what happened, because our waitress assured me that she would stress that to the kitchen crew, but about the time we were finishing our meal, I started to get sick. We left the  mall, and by the time we got back to our motorhome at Tra-Tel RV Park, I was really in distress.

I won’t go into all of the unpleasant details, but I ended up spending the next few hours laying down on the couch reviewing all of the reasons I needed to stay alive, because at that point, I really didn’t want to be. This happens a couple of time a year to some degree, but it’s been a long time since I have had such a severe episode.

Finally, a little after 5 p.m. I began to feel almost human again, so we ran out to do some banking and a couple of other chores, and then came back to the RV park, where we spent the evening inside, doing not much of anything.

Yes, even fulltime RVers get sick sometimes, we have bad days sometimes, and occasionally we even get bored. But that never lasts long, because there is always something fun to do, whether it is exploring a new place, revisiting a familiar favorite, or just relaxing under the awning with friends new and old.

We were concerned about the fact that our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage doesn’t have the extra insulation that we built into our MCI bus conversion. But even though it is pretty warm outside, we have been very pleased with how well the basement air conditioner in the motorhome has been performing here in Tucson. 

Thought For The Day – If at first you don’t succeed, do it the way your wife told you!

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One of the greatest things about the RV lifestyle are the many wonderful friends we have made. As with most fulltime RVers, many times we find that these friendships are deeper and more fulfilling than those we had with folks back in our old lives, living in sticks and bricks.

Like our lifestyle itself, RV friendships are different than other relationships we may have had in the past. Sometimes we only see our RVing friends once or twice a year, depending on where our travels take us. But we keep in contact with e-mail, on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, by reading their blogs, and through the RV grapevine.

There are times when we will make plans to meet up with fellow RVers someplace for a day or a week, and other times when the meetings are more serendipitous. We have pulled into and discovered friends we have not seen in months parked in the site next to us, and we have stopped for lunch at a highway rest area and found friends parked there doing the same thing. Once, in Indiana, we were at a fuel stop on the Indiana Toll Road when our friends John and Margie Conda happed to pull up to the fuel island next to us. Things like this happen so often that we’re not even surprised when they do anymore.

Yesterday, we had lunch with two of our very special RV friends, Jerry and Suzy LeRoy. They have a lot at the Escapees co-op in Benson, about 35 miles south of Tucson, and when they learned that we were going to be here for a few days, they called and suggested we meet for lunch.

We decided on Mimi’s Cafe at Wilmot and Broadway, on the east side of Tucson, because it is closer to Benson than the Mimi’s on the north side of town near Tucson Mall, and only a mile or so from my cousin Beverly’s apartment.

We met at 1 p.m. and had a wonderful lunch as we talked about our different adventures since we last crossed paths, compared notes on family relationships, and solved most of the problems of the world. Before we knew it, our luncheon had stretched out for three hours, and our friends had to get on the road to get back to Benson. Time really does fly when you’re having fun!

Here is a picture of Jerry, Suzy, and Miss Terry outside the restaurant just before we parted company.

I asked Jerry and Suzy if they would take a bundle of Gypsy Journals to the Escapee park for us, and they were happy to oblige. Whenever we can pass a bundle of sample papers on to RVing friends to distribute in their travels, it helps us spread the word about our efforts. Many times when we receive a new subscription order, it includes a note saying that they picked up a copy of the paper at such and such RV park, someplace where we’ve never been.

After we left Mimi’s, we stopped at Jo-ann Fabrics so Terry could pick up some yarn she needed for a project, and then we went to Beverly’s place, where I spent the next three hours trying to delete cookies and spyware in an effort to speed up her laptop computer, which has slowed down to slightly less than snail speed.

I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I called another RVing friend, my pal Greg White, and asked for suggestions, since Greg made his living resolving computer issues for folks. He suggested some things to try and clean the laptop out, but I wasn’t making much headway. Since Beverly has a medical appointment on our side of town today, we didn’t want to keep her up too late while I struggled with the laptop, so we called it a night and headed home. I’ll take another shot at her computer today or Saturday.

Back at Tra-Tel RV Park, we watched some TV, answered a few e-mails and I wrote my blog post before we headed for bed.

Today, after Beverly’s doctor appointment, we are getting together for lunch with two more of my cousins, Vivian and Sharon, who also live here in Tucson.

Bad Nick is not nearly as much a social butterfly as I am, so he spent yesterday writing a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Did He Push Humpty Off The Wall Too? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

As RVers, we all find ourselves in strange towns, wondering where the good places to eat are located. One good resource for us is Road Food, both the book and the website. We have discovered some real delights there, from the Brick Pit Barbecue in Mobile, Alabama, to Don’s Drive-In in Traverse City, Michigan, which has the best strawberry milkshakes we have ever tasted.

Yesterday, my cousin, Berni Frees, sent me a link to the Wheel of Lunch website, and just for giggles, I tried it out. Since we are in Tucson, I entered the zip code of Tra-Tel RV Park, and the first choice was one of Miss Terry’s favorite places, La Fuente Mexican Restaurant.  I gave it a second spin and it came to another place I’ve enjoyed in the past, the Bum Steer. Then I entered my daughter’s zip code in Show Low, Arizona, and it came up with El Rancho, one of our favorite Mexican restaurants in the country. Cool! I know it’s only an advertising gimmick, but what the heck, it’s fun.

Speaking of lunch, today we’re having lunch with a couple of very good friends, Jerry and Suzy LeRoy, who are driving up from their place in Benson to meet us at Mimi’s Cafe. Jerry and Suzy were not able to make it to our Yuma rally this year, so we’re looking forward to seeing them.

We’ve been having a frustrating time trying to get the recall upgrade for our Norcold refrigerator done. We got a letter from Norcold a few weeks ago, along with a number to call for a referral to a shop that could do the job. We were in Las Vegas at the time, and headed for Kingman, Arizona from there, so they gave us the name of a shop in Kingman.

We called, and the shop’s owner told us that he didn’t have the part in stock, but assured us that by the time we got to town he’d have it. As soon as we got to Kingman I called him, and was told it would be in the next day, and he’d call me as soon as it arrived. Of course, no phone call came, so I called late that the next afternoon, and got the same story. Tomorrow for sure. This went on for several days, and finally I called the day before we left town, and was assured the part would be there that afternoon, and they would call me the minute it arrived. Of course, no call came in, and it wasn’t until three days after we left Kingman that they finally called to say that it had arrived before we left, but they forgot to call us.

When we arrived in Show Low, Terry called Norcold again, and they gave us the name of a repair shop there. We called, got the same story (the part is out of stock, but I’ll call and get one right in), and we never heard from him again). Over the next four weeks, Terry called back several times, and the story never changed.

So yesterday, Terry called Norcold again, and asked if RV Renovators in Mesa, Arizona is an authorized shop to do the recall work. We have heard good things about this company, and our friends Tom and Barbara Westerfield had a lot of work done there just before our Yuma rally. Yes, RV Renovators is an authorized shop, but guess what? They don’t have the part in stock. They promised us they will get it in and be able to do the upgrade on Friday of next week. We are cautiously optimistic at this point.

Another frustration has been my search for an Apple 3G iPad. The only shops in Tucson that carry them are the Apple store and Best Buy. But nobody has one in stock, and they sell out the minute they arrive. They all have the WiFi model, but not the 3G. I guess the gadget is just too new yet, and everybody wants one. I’ll just wait until the big rush is over, and eventually I’ll locate one.

I’ve heard from several blog readers who have found them, and all are very pleased with their performance. The only negatives I have heard are about the poor service on AT&T’s 3G network. We left AT&T years ago for Verizon’s faster, more reliable service, but since the iPad only works on the AT&T system at this point, and I don’t want to invest in a secondary MiFi device to get online with Verizon when we’re away from the motorhome, it is what it is. 

Thought For The Day – Time is the best teacher; unfortunately it kills all of its students!

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