Terry and I can really feel the difference in comfort levels between our MCI bus conversion and our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome in this cold weather! The Winnebago is much colder inside than the bus.

When we built the bus, we added a lot of extra insulation to the floor, walls, and ceiling. We were in temperatures down to 10 degrees a couple of times and a couple of electric cube heaters kept us comfortable. Last night it was 16 degrees here in Lexington, Kentucky, we had both furnaces turned up, and we were still chilly! I think we need to look into a catalytic heater. We let our Olympian Wave 8 go with the bus, and now I’m wishing we had kept it! That thing sure put out a lot of heat, and used a lot less propane than the RV furnaces do.

My appointment at the VA hospital Friday went as well as could be expected, and we are leaving today, headed back to the Escapees Rainbow Plantation RV park in Summerdale, Alabama. No place in the country seems to be warm right now, except for maybe the Florida Keys, but we have had to cancel our trip that far south this year. At least Summerdale will be a little warmer than it is here. We’re about 675 miles away, so we hope to be there sometime Sunday afternoon.

Then I have to chain myself to my desk and get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal ready for the printer. The unplanned trip back up to Elkhart to sell the bus, and the burglary that happened there, have put me way behind schedule. The paper should be printing right now, and all we would have to do is get the new issue ready to mail out. I hope our subscribers will understand about the delay. Most folks have been pretty easy going when we’re late, but as a lifelong newspaper publisher, it eats me alive to miss a deadline.

A lot of readers have been asking how we are making out with our insurance company after last week’s incident. One writer went so far as to say that the theft and vandalism were only the start of our misfortune, and the real violation would come from our insurance company. Things are not wrapped up yet, but so far, I get the feeling he was not far off the mark.

I won’t go into a lot of details yet, because I don’t know what the final outcome will be, but so far, it looks like our “disappearing deductible” sure had the right name, because when we needed it, it disappeared! All I will say right now is that I think we’ll definitely be shopping for a new insurance company once all is said and done. Of course, I’m sure that they will be just as bad. What’s that they say about a rose by any other name?  

Meanwhile, Bad Nick is staying inside close to the heater outlet, and he posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled Keep It In Your Pants. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – He who digs a pit for others will fall into it himself.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Being able to adapt to the challenges life throws at us are an essential part of the fulltime RVer’s psychological toolbox. They say that the only thing that stays the same is change, and that’s certainly true whether you live in a sticks and bricks house, or a home on wheels.

No matter how carefully you plan, there will be times when all of your plans go right out the window and you just have to adapt to the new situation and deal with it. If you can’t, you’re probably never going to make it as a fulltimer, because this lifestyle, as great as it is, holds a lot of surprises.

You may plan to be at a certain campground at a certain time, and bad weather, traffic delays, or a mechanical breakdown keeps you from getting there, and instead you find yourself spending the night next to a hog hauler in a truck stop parking lot. You may have registered for your favorite RV rally, expecting lots of fellowship and good times, only to arrive to find the grounds have turned into a sea of mud. You may want to see Alaska, or drive old Route 66 next summer, but an unplanned medical emergency finds you stuck in Paducah.

You can’t foresee everything that will happen to you, but you can be very sure that from time to time, something will happen to get in the way of your plans! Being able to just accept it and roll with the flow will help keep you sane, and make your RVing life much more enjoyable.

When we originally came up here to Elkhart, it was going to be a quick trip in and out – get the bus sold, get a couple of minor issues handled on the RV, make a quick stop at the VA hospital in Lexington, and head back to the warm, sunny South. As you know, those plans disappeared Friday night.

I was able to get my medical appointment rescheduled for Friday, and the folks here at Duncan RV Repair have been scrambling to get us ready to go, and have just about everything finished. But now we have this terrible winter storm tearing the country apart and making traveling unsafe.

We’ve been through more than enough the last few days to need any more challenges, so if the wind keeps blowing, and the roads stay slippery and treacherous, I’ll just call the VA hospital and either reschedule or cancel the appointment, and we’ll sit tight until it’s safe to be out on the road.

Yes, we’d love to put cold, snowy Elkhart in our rearview mirror, and we’re really looking forward to doing so as soon as we can. But being stuck here is a minor inconvenience. Wrecking our RV and injuring ourselves on a patch of icy road would be a tragedy. So we’re sitting tight, watching the weather reports, keeping our fingers crossed, and rolling with the flow. Like I said, sometimes you just have to adapt.

Thought For The Day – Better to do it than to wish it done.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I talked to the owner of the RV shop where our burglary and vandalism took place over the weekend, and he told us to be there when they opened this morning, and he and his crew would do whatever needs to be done to get us back on the road in time to get to my medical appointment at the VA hospital in Lexington, Kentucky Wednesday morning.

Now that we have the mess cleaned up, things look a lot better inside our motorhome. If they can get the glass for the side door and get it installed today, we could leave tomorrow and get to Lexington in time. The day/night blinds also should not take too long to replace, assuming they have or can get them today.

Since Elkhart is the RV Capital of the World, at least we’re in a good place to get the parts needed fast. The slashed seat is another matter; I don’t see how that can be repaired that quickly, so we’ll see what happens with that.

There are things about this crime that just do not make sense to us. For example, they took my netbook computer and the attached cable to our Silverleaf engine monitoring system, which entailed crawling under the Winnebago’s dashboard and cutting the straps that held it in place, and reaching an almost inaccessible plug under the driver’s footrest to unplug it. It would have been much easier to just unplug the cable from the USB port of the computer, or to cut it. My iPod was lying next to the netbook computer and they ignored it. In the bedroom, they took a cheap DVD player, but left a shotgun and expensive camera. They left one rather expensive handgun in a dresser drawer, and took a cheaper Glock that was laying under it. Why? They carried away a 19 inch LCD TV, but left other smaller, more expensive, more portable items where they tossed them. We can’t understand their thinking, but being scumbag thieves, they probably are not Rhodes scholars anyway.

You just knew that Bad Nick had to wade in on this one, and he did with today’s Bad Nick Blog, titled Sometimes You Just Want To Kill Something. Check it out and leave a comment.

The date for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally is coming up fast, and new reservations are coming in every day. Terry and I have been forced to reevaluate and change our position on rally vendors.

When we started holding rallies, we had a policy of only one vendor per each type of product, to give our vendors the maximum opportunity to make a profit. That became a problem because rally attendees wanted more shopping opportunities, and then we were threatened with legal action for “restraining trade” because we would not allow one vendor to come because someone had already registered selling a similar product. We may have prevailed in court, but I don’t need the expense or the hassle.

My attorney advised us to drop that restriction, so we decided that we would allow vendors who sold similar products made by different companies. That opened an entire new can of worms. These days there are a lot of vendors selling three, four, five or more different products, and if they can’t display and sell all of their products, they won’t come. Everybody wants to sell everything, and nobody wants any competition. I tell you, it’s like herding cats trying to keep up with all of them. How can we win?

We have also had several vendors assure us in the past that they plan to attend, and then cancel at the last minute. Meanwhile, we have turned other potential vendors away who sell similar products. In our mail this week we received a registration for a Passport America vendor who had told us in August he wanted to come to the rally, but did not pay a deposit. Meanwhile, weeks later, another Passport America vendor registered and paid. Now the first guy is upset because he feels we sold his space out from under him.

So the new policy, after the Arizona rally, is that any vendor can come to future rallies, no matter what he or she is selling. No matter what we do, we can’t please everybody, and I’m tired of pulling out what little hair I have left trying to do so.

Before I end this blog, I hope you will take a few moments to remember that today is Pearl Harbor Day, and to remember those who lost their lives on that terrible day in 1941. That seems like a lifetime ago for many of us, but to them and their families, it was the end of their lifetime.

Thought For The Day – It is never too late to mend a broken friendship.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Terry and I both want to thank all of you who posted comments on the blog, e-mailed, or called us after reading about our encounter with an armed burglar in our RV. Your concern and support are very much appreciated.

We are okay, but both of us feel totally wiped out, I think myself more than Miss Terry. I have always been able to function during a crisis or emergency situation, but like this time, a day or so later it all hits me at once, leaving me feeling shaky, wrung out, and feeling like I am teetering on a ledge.

I only slept an hour or so Friday night, and ever since the incident, I have been going over it in my head, second guessing myself, and wondering what I could have/should have done differently. Looking back, I keep thinking that the second I realized that we had been victimized, we should have backed off and avoided the potential confrontation that followed. And I keep thinking what could have happened to Terry if he had shot me and she was left alone with him. I am mentally kicking myself over and over again for putting her into that situation. That is the worst part, the what ifs.

Rationally, I know it all happened too fast for me to have had time to think it all through and consider my options, and that I reacted the way my instincts and training told me to do. And it worked out; nobody got hurt (except maybe the intruder’s arm), and we are here to tell the story. But again, there is that nagging “what if.”

Somebody wrote to say that this could have been avoided if we had been in a campground, instead of dry camping in a parking lot. But there are no campgrounds open where we are this time of year. And while we have dry camped in everything from truck stops to rest areas, to the open desert with no problems, this was an RV repair facility’s RV parking area with hookups. The only other time we had a crime issue was in our first month on the road, when somebody tried to steal our pickup truck while were in a Coast to Coast campground in California. So much for the argument of campgrounds over other locations to spend the night.

I also had several people tell me that they would have shot the burglar and worried about whatever happened later. With all due respect, that sounds a lot better in talk than in real life. Once you pull that trigger, you can’t take that bullet back. The legal and civil ramifications that will follow will cost you much more than whatever they may have stolen, not to mention the psychological aftermath.

Taking another person’s life is about the worst experience one can ever have, no matter what the circumstances. You will relive it for the rest of your life, trust me on this one. I’ve been there and still wake up too many nights in a cold sweat.  Would I have shot the guy if he continued to be a threat to our lives? In a nanosecond. Would I regret it forever after? Yes, I would. I’m just very grateful it didn’t come to that.

On another note, our faithful old MCI bus conversion is on its way to California with its new owner, Rich Perry. Rich and his friend  Bill flew in Friday, spent most of yesterday going over the bus from stem to stern, and left about 4:30 yesterday afternoon.

Here is a picture of myself and Rich shaking hands on the deal, while Bill and Miss Terry stand beside us.

Bill has an MCI 7 of his own, and has converted several buses for friends, so I feel confident that he’ll help Rich get our beloved bus to its new home. It was really sad to see her driving away for the last time, but as the old verse says, “to everything, there is a season…”

Before all of this started with the burglary, we had planned to leave Elkhart as soon as the bus sale was wrapped up. Now I’m not sure what will happen. I have an appointment at the VA hospital in Lexington, Kentucky on Wednesday morning, and trying to cancel and reschedule it would be a real hassle. But we may have no other choice. We obviously need to spend some more time inside a repair shop before we can go anywhere. 

Thought For The Day – It is not what you are called, but what you answer to that matters.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Friday our Gypsy Gathering rally ended, and after the morning coffee and donuts, I walked over to Dave and Jean Damon’s fifth wheel trailer, where Jean, a professional masseuse, gave me an wonderfully relaxing massage. Jean was trained in the Philippines, and by the time she got done kneading and prodding my sore, tired muscles, I was so relaxed that it was all I could do just to walk back to our motorhome.

Besides her massages, Dave and Jean were also selling 303 Products at the rally, and they did very well. We first met this nice couple when we were all vendors at the FMCA rally in Bowling Green, Ohio, and struck up an immediate friendship.

Back at the motorhome, Joe and Vicki Kieva stopped in for a chat, and as they were leaving a long series of visitors arrived at our door as rally attendees came to say goodbye before they hit the road. I tried to be good company, but I was so relaxed after my massage that I’m afraid at times it was all I could do to hold up my end of a conversation.

Friday night a bunch of us all went to the China Wok Buffet here in Celina, which I rate in the top percentile of Chinese buffets we have ever visited. It is so good that this was our third visit in the two weeks we’ve been in town!

Here is a photo Miss Terry took of some of our group. That is Nancy Hazelton on the left, and beside her is Mike Loscher, myself, Ron Speidel, and Ken Barker. On the right is Orv Hazelton, and in the background is Brenda Speidel. Elaine Loscher was camera shy, so you can just barely see her arms next to Orv. Billie Barker was off checking out the buffet line when this picture was taken. We all stuffed ourselves, and don’t be too surprised if Miss Terry and I don’t sneak back one more time before we leave Celina for good.

After a busy week of getting up at obscenely early hours, working hard to keep everything at the rally on track, and getting very little sleep, Miss Terry and I played lazy Saturday morning and slept in. Once we woke up, we lay in bed a while, just enjoying some much needed quiet time together, and talking about the week just past.

Once we were up, things got busy really fast. I had no sooner opened our front window curtain and the window shades before somebody was knocking at the door. We had a ton of paperwork to catch up on, as well as settling our account with the fairgrounds for the rally rental, but I’m afraid we didn’t get much done. But that’s okay, we wanted to be sure to spend some time with everybody we could.

Sometimes we feel pulled in a dozen different directions at one time, and we had to tell some people “I’m sorry, we just don’t have the time,” but there are just so many hours in a day. We love visiting with our friends and readers, and we really hate to be rude, but sometimes we have no other choice. We just hope that they will understand.

Today we will drive 215 miles south to Lexington, Kentucky, where I have my annual appointment at the V.A. hospital on Monday morning. As soon as that is over, we’ll turn right around and come back to Ohio and spend a week or so gathering stories for the next issue of the Gypsy Journal, which we need to get printed and mailed before we head south for the winter

Thought For The Day – Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.