Can you believe Christmas is coming up in just over a month? Where does the time go? One minute you’re toasting the New Year and singing Auld Lang Syne, a week or two later you’re watching fireworks on Independence Day, and the next thing you know, they’re ringing bells in front of WalMart and you’re listening to Christmas carols on the radio.

I want time to slow down! I’m getting older and starting to realize that someday I’ll probably have to grow up too, but I’m in no hurry to get there!

Even the individual days seem to fly by. Yesterday we met Walter Cannon, executive director of the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF), and his lovely wife Amy for lunch at a nice little restaurant called Caffe Chocolat in Titusville. We had a nice lunch and chatted for a while, and before I knew it, three hours had passed!

We have known Walter for a long time, but it was nice to have the opportunity to just sit and visit away from all of the activity of an RV rally or show. We had never met Amy before, and she is a delightful woman whom Miss Terry really hit it off with.

Last year RVSEF tried to hold an RV education conference similar to the old Life on Wheels program, but downturns in the RV industry kept it from happening. I was sorry it was cancelled, because it is something that the RV world really needs. Long before we became instructors for Life on Wheels, Terry and I went there as students in our first year on the road, and it really helped us transition to the RV lifestyle.

Walter is a persistent guy, and he truly believes in the need for an educational program for RVers, so he regrouped and now plans to hold an RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green, Kentucky June 3-6, 2010. If you are a new or wannabe RVer, or even a seasoned road warrior, I really urge you to attend. It is a great investment in your RVing lifestyle.

When we left the restaurant, we drove a few miles west of town on State Route 50 to Christmas, Florida to check out Fort Christmas Historical Park, which includes a replica of a Seminole War fort and several old Cracker style houses.

Unfortunately, time had gotten away from us (do you see a common thread here?) and the buildings were already closed for the day. But we strolled around under the live oak trees, with their cloaks of Spanish moss draping their leaves, and just enjoyed the solitude. We hope to get back for a better look at the place while we’re in this area.

Among the things left to do on my bucket list is to see an alligator in the wild, and there are a lot of the critters here in Florida, so that shouldn’t be all that hard to accomplish. But in several trips through the Sunshine state, I have yet to see one.

A park ranger at Fort Christmas suggested we stop at a boat launch about halfway between the park and The Great Outdoors, where we are staying. He said it was not uncommon to see ’gators in the water or sunning on the banks there. We stopped to check it out, but there was an airboat firing up, and several trailers for other boats, and not an alligator to be seen. Terry said with all the noise and activity there, any alligator who might have been around had moved to quieter territory. Hopefully I’ll get to see one before we leave the South this year.

Thought For The Day – There will never be a time when life is simple.

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We were out of bed earlier than usual yesterday morning and hit the ground running, and didn’t slow down until well past midnight. Sometimes there just are not enough hours in the day.

We’re leaving Elkhart Campground today and driving 150 miles to Muskegon, Michigan for a week to spend some time visiting with my cousin Berni and her husband Rocky. We had several last minute things to get done before we left, not the least of them being laundry.

Elkhart Campground has full hookup pull through 50 amp sites, but the site we prefer has just 50 amp electric and water. That’s not a problem, because we have a large waste holding tank, so we only have to hit the dump station every couple of weeks. But Terry can’t do laundry with our onboard washer and dryer,so I dropped her off at the campground laundry, then ran to the post office to mail out some orders.

Back at the campground, I stopped to check in on Terry, and she was just putting the clothes in the dryer. While she was finishing up the laundry, I checked our propane tanks, and one was empty, so I drove up to the office to have it filled. When we built the bus conversion, we opted for a pair of portable propane tanks instead of a stationary onboard tank, because it makes it easier to refill. Instead of having to drive the bus to a propane station, I just take one of the tanks, as needed.

By then Terry was finished, so we ran to Wal-Mart to pick up some items. A few minutes after we got home, Jack and Paula Conrad, from Arcadia, Florida stopped over to visit. Jack and Paula have a very nice MCI bus conversion, and every year they host a large New Years bus rally in Arcadia.

We had a nice visit, and by the time they left, it was time to unload some of the bundles of papers in the van so we could load our kayaks and bicycles back in, and then reload the papers around them. While we were doing that, longtime Gypsy Journal subscribers Pete and Patty Gioia stopped by to say hello. Pete and Patty are a neat couple that Terry and I both enjoyed meeting, and we look forward to seeing them again in our travels.

With the van finished, there was still laundry to put away, a bed to be made, and blogs to write before we could begin to think about getting to bed.

We have a lot planned in the next few weeks. We’ll spend a week in Muskegon, and then we will return here for a couple of days, and head over to Bowling Green, Ohio to be vendors at the big FMCA rally July 20-23. As soon as the rally is over we’ll be on our way to Traverse City, Michigan for Terry’s annual oncologist checkup. 

August 3-7 will find us vending at the Newmar Kountry Klub Rally in Goshen, Indiana, if the nice lady in charge of the vendors ever sends me the necessary paperwork. I’ve talked to her twice now and each time she was going to e-mail it to me immediately, but I’m still waiting. We’ll have a week or two to catch our breath, and then August 24 – 28 we’ll be back in Goshen to vend at the Carriage Travel Club Grand National Rally.

With those events behind us, we’ll be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania September 13 to 16 for the RV Lifestyle, Education & Safety Clinic held by the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF).

When we lost Gaylord Maxwell last year, Life on Wheels ended, which left a big hole in the education options for RVers. I was delighted when Walter Cannon, the head honcho at RVSEF, called to tell me that he was going to hold the new event, and asked me to present some seminars. If you have been lamenting the fact that you never got to attend a Life on Wheels conference, now is your chance. Several of my fellow Life on Wheels instructors will be participating in the RVSEF program. I hope we see you there.

As soon as we’re finished with the RVSEF educational clinic, we’ll be burning up the highway back to Celina, Ohio for our own Gypsy Gathering rally September 28 to October 2. This will be our second Eastern rally, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

I have posted a tentative schedule on the rally page on our website, just scroll down to the bottom of that page and check it out. This is NOT the final schedule, we’ll be adding several other seminars and doing some fine tuning before the rally date, but it will give you an idea of some of the offerings we have in store for you.

After that is all over, and after some appointments at the V.A. hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, we will be more than ready for some downtime.

We plan to head to Florida for a while, and I’m hoping that if I whine and snivel hard enough and long enough about needing a vacation, our pals Tom Owen and Diane Rojewski will invite us back to their houseboat in Key West for a week or three. By then, I’ll be ready for a tropical getaway.

Thought For The Day – I finally got my head together, now my body is falling apart.

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More bad news for the RV industry. Yesterday it was announced that Monaco Coach Corporation had given termination notices to the remaining members of their workforce. Most of those employees had been on furlough since Mid-December, 2008.

In an article on www.cnnmoney.com, the company says it is still hopeful of some way to resolve their financial issues. But when you consider that their stock opened at 46 cents a share yesterday and closed at 6 cents by the end of the day, it doesn’t look good.

You may recall a blog I wrote on February 5 on my predictions for the RV industry, in which I said that the companies that ignore their customers’ needs would go by the wayside.

I said in that blog that Monaco was a company I could not recommend to new RVers, based upon the problems owners of their coaches have shared with me over the years.

You have to figure that when people are sticking things like this on their coaches, they’re pretty ticked off!

With so many companies closing up, and even more in trouble, you have to wonder who’s next.

But there is also good news on the horizon. A while back I reported that Walter Cannon from Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) is holding an RV Lifestyle, Safety and Education Clinic at the Wildwood Conference Center at Harrisburg Area Community College in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania September 13 – 16, 2009.

For people who wanted to attend Life on Wheels, which closed recently following the death of its founder, Gaylord Maxwell, this is a great opportunity to attend an excellent lineup of classes on all aspects of the RV lifestyle. Walter has asked me to present several of my seminars at this new event, and I know that some of the other Life on Wheels instructors will be there too. We’re looking forward to seeing a lot of you there. Contact RVSEF at the link above for an e-mail announcement about the new program.

When our latest mail delivery caught up with us, a couple of people who ordered books or subscriptions asked that we not share their mailing addresses with anyone else. Never worry about that. As fulltimers RVers, we know what an expense and hassle junk mail is. We respect your privacy, and we never sell or share our mailing list with anyone.

It ticks me off enough getting spam in my e-mail. Having to pay to get junk mail forwarded to me, or paying a mail service extra to sort my mail and throw it away, really makes me mad.

We did business with a commercial mail house called Lake Michigan Mailers in Grand Rapids, Michigan one time last year, ever since then, I have been getting solicitations from them, as well as a ton of e-mail. I have asked them repeatedly not to send me their junk mail, and they just ignore me. How quick do you think I’ll be to ever spend another nickel with this outfit?

One reason we don’t belong to the Good Sam Club is the mountain of junk mail they bury their members in. Within a week of joining, ten years ago, we started getting junk mail from them. I requested that they take me off their junk mail list, and was ignored. Finally I wrote a nasty piece about them in the Gypsy Journal and sent a copy to the president of the club. Miraculously we were off the mailing list! But we never renewed our membership because I don’t like an outfit that ignores my needs so they can try to sell me something.

I learned a long time ago that when any company or organization mistreats me, voting with my pocketbook is the best response.

Thought For The Day - We have to learn to be our own best friends, because we fall too easily into the trap of being our worst enemies.

Great news for RVers and wannabe RVers who wanted to attend Life on Wheels!

Walter Cannon, Executive Director of the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) announced yesterday that RVSEF is holding an RV Lifestyle, Safety and Education Clinic September 13 – 16, 2009 at the Wildwood Conference Center at Harrisburg Area Community College in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

In the last few weeks, Walter has discussed the new program with me a couple of times, and we have been exchanging e-mails. I am really excited about it. Walter and RVSEF are proven entities in the RV industry, and if anyone has the business acumen and the industry contacts to create a successful RV education program, Walter is the man.

Walter tells me that he will be bringing in many of the former Life on Wheels instructors, and from our conversations, I know that the program will be long on education without the “fluff” classes that had crept into the Life on Wheels schedule in its last year or two. 

Attendees at the new program will learn about the different types of RVs available and how they will fit an individual’s needs, how to properly and safely operate their RVs, and come away with the knowledge and confidence to enjoy all that the RV lifestyle has to offer.

Special focus will be given to understanding how an RV’s different systems work, and how to maintain and operate them; warranties, insurance and roadside assistance programs available for RVers; and the RV lifestyle and how to get the most out of it. RV driver training will also be available, and attendees can arrange to have their rigs inspected for safety, and weighed by a RVSEF certified weighing crew.

For more information call RVSEF at 321-453-7673 or e-mail them at staff@rvsafety.com. You can visit the RVSEF website at www.rvsafety.com.

Terry and I will be leaving Mission, Texas today headed toward Arizona. We have a couple of stops to make along the way, and I don’t now how cell phone reception will be along our intended route. So if you log on tomorrow and don’t see a blog, don’t get excited. We haven’t been beamed up by aliens or sold into servitude. We’re just exploring America’s Outback.

Thought For The Day – Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.

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