Well, I didn’t make my goal of getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal finished yesterday, but I’m close enough that I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unless that light is from an oncoming train, we’re still in good shape. Today I’ll put the finishing touches on the new issue, Miss Terry will proof it again, and tomorrow we’ll take it to our printer in Michigan.

With the paper about done, it’s time to start finishing things up for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, which starts in just two weeks. Greg and Jan are out soliciting door prizes from local merchants today, and will be most of the week. I need to get the artwork to the screen printer for our rally t-shirts, and finish tweaking the seminar schedule.

One new seminar being presented by Whit Reeder, a district manager for a Verizon Wireless provider, will cover smart phone such as the Droids, Blackberrys, and Palms.  Whit says the seminar will introduce folks to a lot of free applications to make life a little smoother, and will save most people up to an hour a day.

We took a short break yesterday to chat with Terry and Dale Pace, who stopped in to say hello. Terry just got out of the hospital, and it’s good to see him up and about.

Later on, we went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse with Greg and Jan, and Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum. They make an excellent steak at Texas Roadhouse, but why do they always have to have the darned music so loud? For me, when I go to dinner with people, the opportunity to talk is a big part of the experience. At Texas Roadhouse, you have to shout to be heard most the time.

Back at Elkhart Campground, our friends Susie Orr, Marlene Hinman, and Carol Hill stopped in to say hello. With that many pretty ladies in our motorhome, and Miss Terry too, I was about to overdose on cute!

I got an e-mail in response to yesterday’s blog, in which I said I raised eyebrows when I referred to Greg White as my “wife” at a local gun show, telling me that I was insensitive to gay people. No, I am just terribly politically incorrect, and I have a sense of humor.

I can’t say that “some of my best friends” are gay, but I do have several gay friends that I really care about, and I think we know each other well enough that they would have let me know if I had offended them. I won’t go into an entire Bad Nick thing here, but lighten up people. Not everything in life has to be drama. If you can’t laugh once in a while, you’re in big trouble.

But Bad Nick knows that some things are not laughing matters, as you’ll read in his new Bad Nick Blog post Ground Zero Mosque. Check it out and leave a comment.

Okay, back to work. I have a paper to finish!

Thought For The Day – When you can’t control the wind, adjust your sails.

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When I checked my e-mail yesterday morning, I had a message from Verizon Wireless that an update for my Blackberry Storm was available, which was supposed to be the latest and greatest thing since sliced bread.

So, being the trusting soul I am, I plugged my phone into my computer, logged onto the Verizon website, and clicked the update button. The process took a few minutes, and then I got a message telling me the download was complete. Quick and easy, right?

Well, yes, except for the fact that the upload wiped out my entire contacts list. The photos I had stored on the phone are still there, even a couple of songs I transferred over from my computer a while back. But every telephone number I had is gone.

Yeah, I know, I could have backed up my information to my computer, but I never thought of it. So I’ll be spending some time digging out business cards and entering all of those numbers all over again. What fun.

There are many features I like about the Blackberry, but after using it for the last few months I have come to realize that my smart phone is smarter than I am by a long shot! I’m sure my seven year old granddaughter Hailey could probably make it do wonderful things, but I get a headache trying to figure what all the buttons are for.

It has been interesting to read all of the e-mails and comments from readers of yesterday’s blog Considering Our Options, about RV extended warranties. Some people feel that an extended warranty is a good investment, and just as many, if not more, seem to think they are not worth the money. I also heard from some folks who did buy extended warranties on their RVs, only to find that the companies issuing the warranties either did not honor needed repairs, or were very slow in paying. Like so much in the RV industry, there seem to be so many snakes selling extended warranties that you have to be very, very careful who you do business with.

I have had some comments from longtime readers who took me to task for buying a factory built motorhome because I have always said that “all RVs are junk and I’d never own anything but a bus conversion.” I don’t know when I supposedly said that, and in looking back over several years of past blogs and issues of the Gypsy Journal, I don’t find any such comment.

Yes, I have said many times that the quality of most factory built RVs is pretty sad, and I have said that a lot of junk has been foisted off on RV buyers by a lot of companies. However I have also said many times, in print and in the seminars I present at RV rallies, that there were four companies whose rigs I would be comfortable owning. Those companies are Heartland, Tiffin, Newmar, and Winnebago. When we started looking for a rig to replace our MCI bus conversion, they were on our very short list.

I love our old bus, and I will always be a fan of bus conversions. For cargo carrying capacity, safety in the event of a crash, longevity, and overall ruggedness, there has never been a stick and staple motorhome built that can compare. When we moved from the bus to our Winnebago, we traded down in those respects. No question about it.

However, our needs have changed. As our granddaughters have gotten older, the bus has become very crowded when they came to visit. We really wanted a coach with a slide. We also do not see ourselves doing nearly as much dry camping as we have in the past, so the huge holding tanks, battery bank, and solar panels on the bus are no longer a necessity.   

Yes, we had many wonderful years in our bus, and it carried us many miles in comfort and safety. Just as it will whomever owns it next. And though we have moved on, we’ll always look when we hear an old Detroit diesel roar to life. Once a bus nut, always a bus nut.

Thought For The Day – It’s frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.

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Quite a few readers have written to tell me that they took their military DD 214 (discharge) to a Verizon company store, as I suggested in a recent blog, and indeed are now receiving 15% off their Verizon bill. Pretty cool! Who can’t appreciate saving a few dollars every month? I think it’s very nice of Verizon to honor our nation’s veterans in this way.

Another blog reader who likes to save money sent me a link to a neat website where she has found some great bargains, www.woot.com. I checked it out, and I can tell you that I’m going to be a regular. The website sells one item per day, and once that item is sold out, that’s it. No back orders, no rain checks, buy them when you see them, because there are no more.

Some of the merchandise is weird, and some is really neat. Yesterday’s item was a two pack of digital emergency roadside flares for just $9.99. Some previous deals included refurbished Asus EeePC 900 Netbook computers for $149.99 + $5 shipping; New Pentax 10MP digital cameras, for $79.99 + $5 shipping; and a two-pack of Vector FM and NOAA Weather Alert Radios with built-in flashlights for $19.99 + $5 shipping. These may not be the latest technology, but what a deal! And the folks at Woot seem to be honest; one item offered recently was billed as the “World’s Crappiest Projector.”

We plan to leave Show Low in about a week and head for Escapade in Sedalia, Missouri. The original plan was to stay here at Show Low Lake Campground until we leave, but now it looks like we’ll move over to the Elks lodge today. We like our site here, even though it just has a 30 amp electric hookup, with water bibs scattered around, and a dump station.

Dee and Diane, the new campground hosts are very nice people and we have enjoyed getting to know them, but Recreation Resource Management (RRM), which runs the campground for the city, seems to be staffed by airheads. When I tried to pay for another week yesterday, the new workamper on duty told me I could not pay for the week here at the campground, which we have been doing up until now. Instead I needed to call RRM’s toll free reservation number. When I did, I was told there would be a $9 charge for a reservation, since I was making it over the phone. Huh? Didn’t I just try to pay in person?

I explained that I did not need a reservation, I was already on the site and had been there two weeks. The girl said that was impossible, the computer showed the site as already occupied. Uh, yeah, that would be me occupying the site! That message didn’t seem to transmit, even though I tried to explain it several times. Then she said I could pay for a week, but since I didn’t have a reservation, I might have to move if somebody reserved the site.

Again I say, “huh?” If I’m in the site and have paid for a week, how can it be reserved by someone else after the fact? But apparently, even if I pay for a week, if I don’t pay the $9 reservation fee, I don’t really have the site, I’m just in it, and I can be told to move if somebody else reserves it. Folks, we really need to add some chlorine to the gene pool!

For the same $15 a night this site costs us with my Golden Access discount, we can move three miles to the Elks lodge, which has full hookups. And I won’t get a headache from dealing with space cadets.

Thought For The Day – The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.

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