It’s no secret that when it comes to critters, I’m prejudiced.

I don’t like cats, I’m a dog person. But I don’t like just any dogs. I abhor yappy little mutts that serve no purpose in life except to make noise and waste precious oxygen. An ill mannered dog of any size is not something I care to be around.

I tolerate well behaved medium sized dogs just fine, and I like big dogs. My preference is for the working breeds, be they spaniels, retrievers, or shepherds. Over the years I have owned a couple of Springer Spaniels that were fine animals, but my favorite dog of all time is the German shepherd. For my money, you cannot find a more intelligent, loyal, or versatile canine companion. I have had several in my life.

However, a German shepherd is probably not the best suited dog for the RV lifestyle, which is why I don’t have one today. In fact, as much as Terry and I both love animals, we don’t have any pets, and have made the decision not to do so for as long as we continue to be fulltime RVers. For our particular lifestyle, vending at RV rallies, doing speaking engagements, and leaving the bus a lot to cover stories for the Gypsy Journal, it just is not fair to have an animal that spends so much time alone. 

For many years we traveled with Terry’s cat, Sasquatch, who came as part of a package deal when we got married. But he wasn’t your run of the mill kitty. He was a hybrid with some lynx, Manx, and Himalayan blood, that tipped the scales at well over 20 pounds in his prime, and looked like a bobcat. He also had several extra toes on each foot and could use them like a hand to grasp things. Even though I don’t like cats, he was a good conversation starter because he looked so unique. Sasquatch passed away a few years back, but he wasn’t the only unique pet we have seen in RVs as we have traveled around the country.

Once, in Lake Conroe, Texas, we met a couple who fulltimed with two parrots. They said the birds loved traveling, and were always drawing a crowd wherever they were parked when they brought them outside. Since parrots can live a long time, the owners had already made provisions in their wills for the adoption of the birds if something were to happen to them. Since then, we have met several other RVers who travel with birds.

I also met a couple once who fulltimed with a collection of snakes, which they used to present educational programs to schoolchildren. I hate snakes even more than I do cats and yappy little dogs, so I took their word for it and did not venture inside their motorhome to see for myself.

While I have never seen them myself, I have met RVers who told me they traveled with ferrets, a skunk, and even a monkey. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know.

My friend Henry Gartner, better known as Flakey the Clown, travels with a couple of rabbits that he uses in his act at RV rallies and shows. Does that qualify them as pets or props? I’m not sure. Just as I wasn’t sure if the goldfish one couple kept in their RV to entertain their cat qualified as a pet, or just pet food.

Perhaps the strangest pet we ever saw in an RV was a baby kangaroo, which is more correctly called a joey. It’s owner came to a Life on Wheels session in Bowling Green, Kentucky when we were teaching there several years back, and people were crowded around wanting to pet and hold the little guy, who just wanted to snuggle up to his human daddy and go back to sleep.

Thought For The Day – Don’t believe everything you think.

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Do you have any idea how early in the morning 7 o’clock comes around? Who the heck came up with that idea?

We’re night owls. I usually don’t start any serious writing until about 9 p.m. and usually get to bed between 1 and 2 a.m. But here at the FMCA rally we have to be in our vendor booth by 8 a.m., which has my body’s internal time clock all messed up. And since I still have to post my blog at midnight local time, by the time I get that done, shower, and get to bed, it makes for a short night’s sleep.

Sales the first day at the rally were mediocre, although that is not uncommon at a rally. Unfortunately we did have something happen that was a first for us, someone came by and shoplifted one of our books right from under our noses while we were talking to other customers. One minute it was there and the next it was gone. It’s not going to change our lifestyle or put us in the poorhouse, but it was darned aggravating. In ten years of fulltime RVing and vending at RV rallies, we have never had a theft before.

I know I’ve said it before, but some of the folks at FMCA events are total snobs. There is a certain elitist attitude that too many of them have that really rubs me the wrong way. One clown came by and wanted to tell us all of the things we are doing wrong and why he would never read a “cheap” publication that wasn’t printed on slick paper with full color photographs. He wouldn’t take a sample copy, didn’t want to buy anything, he just wanted expound on his vast knowledge, while interrupting us as we tried to talk to other customers. A lot of others won’t even say hello or acknowledge you as they pass by. They could sure take a lesson or two from the Escapees when it comes to attitude. I had to jerk hard on Bad Nick’s leash and threaten to put him back in his cage a time or two.

I keep telling Miss Terry that I’m going to start a brand new blog called the Bad Nick Blog where he can climb up on his soapbox and spout off about whatever moves him. What do you think? Should I let him have access to a keyboard?

Several former students of ours from Life on Wheels (LOW) stopped by to say hello, and to tell us how much the things they learned at LOW have made their RVing easier. It’s sad that LOW is gone, but the opportunity to learn is still available at the new RVSEF educational clinic in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania September 13-16. Click the link above to learn more about this great new program. We’ll be teaching there, and I hope we see you there too.

Thought For The Day – Have you ever noticed that the people who tell you to calm down are usually the ones that got you mad in the first place?

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This is our last day here in Show Low, Arizona, so today we’ll be taking care of some last minute details like filling the gas tank for our generator, saying goodbye to our friends here, and mailing out some orders that just came in.

We have really enjoyed our time here in our old hometown, and we know there will be a lot of tears all around when we say goodbye to my daughter Tiffany and her family. Leaving the people we love is always the hardest part of the fulltime RV lifestyle. I know Tiffany would love to have us stay here forever, but she understands how much we love our life on the road, and how much we long to be on the move again.

We have found over the years that sitting still is always expensive for us. Not just in terms of camping costs, but also in terms of lost revenue. When we are moving around the country, vending at RV rallies, and dropping off bundles of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal at RV parks, we see a steady flow of orders coming in for new subscriptions, books, CDs, etc. But when we stay in any one place for a while, that drops off significantly.

We’ve been in Arizona since January, pretty much in three places all of that time, and while our subscription renewals are steady, orders for new subscriptions and our other products have suffered.

Speaking of subscriptions, here is the announcement many of you have been waiting for. We are now offering the Gypsy Journal online, as many of you have requested.

As you know, we have been experimenting with several different options to make this work, and thanks to my pal Chris Guld (who from this day forward shall be known as Mama Geek) of Geeks on Tour, we finally have a solution that will work.

The full paper, in PDF format, will be available online, and you can either read it online or download it to your computer for later reading at your convenience. Readers who subscribe to the online edition will be e-mailed a user name and password when a new issue is uploaded, and a link to the new issue. Readers can search for keywords, and zoom in and out to read a page easily. I’m excited about this new option for our readers, and I know many of you will be, too.

If you are already a Gypsy Journal subscriber, and would like to convert your subscription to the digital edition, just send me an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and I’ll make the necessary changes in our records. If you are not already a subscriber and would like to subscribe to the digital edition, you can click this link Digital Subscription. A one year subscription is $20, and a two year subscription is $35. New subscriptions to the digital edition will begin with the next issue of the Gypsy Journal.

Someone asked how we can control readers who would share their user name and password with others to cheat us out of subscription costs. We can’t, but I believe that most people are basically honest, and I have too many real things to worry about in life to lose much sleep over the few bad apples that may exist.

To see how the new digital edition will look, go to the top right side of this page and you will see a tab that says Digital Edition. Click it and follow the instructions provided.

And for our readers who do not want to go digital, don’t worry, this WILL NOT replace our normal printed edition of the Gypsy Journal. For you, everything will remain the same.

Thought For The Day – Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway!

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