If you have been reading my earlier blog entries, you know that I have said that a motor coach will improve your life, if you let it. I said it will improve your life in many ways. Your coach can take you to places you might not think to go to if you traveled like most "normal" people, carrying your bags and staying in hotels. It can also help you to make friends. Recently for Diane and I, our coach has done both.
This has been a rough year for the two of us. Mike, my best friend and business
Rule 4: Owning a motor coach is a never-ending learning experience -- continued.
Well, I had so much fun coming up with a list of things that I have learned over the five years that my wife and I have been motorhoming, I figured why not write down a few more? So here goes:
I have learned that men need a precise set of directions when parking the coach.
And women know just how to give them. For example:
"I SAID STOP! STOP! DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT STOP MEANS?"
"DON'T BACK UP, YOU WILL HIT IT AGAI
This part of my past is very hard for me to write about. I guess that is why I haven't blogged for over a month and it has been even longer since I wrote the previous part of this story. I guess I am afraid I run the risk of having people read this story and think I am crazy, just like the people in our church, close friends, and eventually family thought my whole family was crazy. They all thought we had "gone off the deep end." I am not sure what good, if any, these words will accomplish. But
I went into the waiting room and had a good cry. My wife's sister held me tight and she said, "It's all right. We don't understand, but we love ya and we'll see you through it and it will all be all right. Clay, you're a good person. We don't always agree, but you're a good person."
She had come on my side enough to minister to me. The sisters went back home with the two girls and left me with the boys. The doctor said, "Make your arrangements to care for your family for several weeks, several
It is the 100th anniversary of the RV industry, so it seems appropriate to make a trip to Elkhart. Actually, I had no idea that it was or is the RV Centennial until I walked through the doors of the RV Hall of Fame in Elkhart, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Diane and I, along with our friends Gary and Janis, have been planning on a trip to Elkhart, Indiana, for some months now. We were hoping to go there this past March 2, but the weather gave us all cold feet. In some places in Ohio there
It was an amazingly (is that a word?) fun thing to watch that ball zoom over the fence, but I, we, still have a game to win.
The Last Inning (The Giants and the Phillies-Part Two)
Once again, I have to corral all my players back into the dugout. They are still whooping and hollering and Chris is really pleased with himself.
"Did you see that coach, did you see that? Blam! Right over the fence. Sorry I hit your van, coach."
I hadn't noticed that the ball bounced off MY car!
"Hey, that's ok
I know someone must be asking that question. I have asked it myself. I don't have a good answer. The bad answer is that there have been lots of distractions the last few weeks. The first distraction being caused by the need to look after a pup named Nickolas.
Diane and I decided to subject him to some pretty extensive surgery that, thank the Lord, appears to be mostly successful. He is missing part of three ribs, some chest wall and a big malignant lump on his side. I have been amazed at how qu
As I write this our precious Nickolas is fading from this world. I gave him the pill that will allow his suffering to end. It is the hardest thing I have ever done, but I had to do it. He has been sick for five days now. He could not hold down any water or food.
This thing came on so suddenly. We rushed him to the vet where they could not find the cause. It would take blood work, more needles more pain and maybe even more surgery to even begin to find out what is wrong. .
It was impossible to
Nickolas is gone to the place where good dogs go. His life on this earth ended just the way he wanted it to end.
In memory of him I reprise these words:
The Human Whisperer
Nickolas, the family pupster here!
I asked Dad if he would let me post again. Last time, I hijacked his blog and posted on the sly. This time he said okay.
I wanted to leave him and Mom a note. They may need what I write here one day.
I am almost 85 years old now, in relative terms, and so I can say that chances are
Or is it Whom? Never mind.
I can't remember the exact quote, but at the end of the movie Seabiscuit, there is a line something like this:
We may have saved a banged up life, but the truth is we found each other and he saved us. The truth is we may have saved each other.
The words printed above are most likely very misquoted, but still, that line describes what has been going on around my house for the last three weeks. Diane and I took a simple trip in the coach, found a dog who has been mov
The Night Before.
It will be a day later than we planned but we are going to St Augustine for New Year's eve. We will do our best to make up the time that we lost. We lost it due to ten inches of snow or maybe it was twelve? It will be a long day on the road tomorrow. Hopefully we will pull into North Beach Campground late Wednesday instead of early in the day. Jeri, Tom and Dilly will arrive sometime Thursday Morning.
I think that due to the snow eating the start of our trip, I will add an
Diane and I have discovered that living in a motor coach simplifies our life. We don't find the small space to be confining. Quite the opposite, it is liberating. Our motor coach frees us from thinking about so many things. She and I normally operate in two different worlds. Diane's world concerns the house, the two men, the cat and the dog that live in it with her. My world revolves around my business, my computers, and my online friends. Most of the time we are in two different parts of the ho
Fire and Rain.
That is the headline of our local paper this morning. I thought of it as the title of my blog entry days ago, but I wasn’t fast enough to use it first.
The headline sure fits our present situation. The Dismal Swamp has been on fire for weeks. The fire has thrown a big cloud of smelly, acrid, blue smoke that moves around which makes being outside an unpleasant experience. The only hope to ending the fire was a time of heavy continuous rain. Well, we are getting that now, as I w
I believe that I am a pretty good motor coach pilot. I still believe that, even though I hit my mailbox while making a sharp turn into our driveway. Obviously I didn’t pull up the street far enough and turn sharp enough, but no real damage done, except to my pride.
My car driving skills while making service calls … that is another thing altogether. I tend to talk on my cell too much while driving. I get distracted by the radio, the voices in my head, and the vehicles in front of me. The last
Last Friday morning I headed out to Lowes to buy a couple of things. I needed a flush valve seal for the low flow toilet in the bathroom next to our bedroom. I put off getting one for days just because I hate anything to do with plumbing. Plumbing is wet and it leaks and it frustrates me. However, a water bill that is bigger than it should be due to a bad toilet frustrates Diane so I found myself at Lowes buying the seal, some light bulbs (the old fashioned kind). I also picked up a Roman Shade
Our sixteen pound turkey is currently relaxing inside my electric smoker. It has been getting the smoke and steamed beer treatment for about two hours now with four to go. I keep checking the remote thermometer and making sure that the bird doesn’t finish its spa treatment too fast. This takes a lot of patience on my part but it will be worth it.
Patience is the key, not just for smoking a good turkey but also to enjoying the Motorcoach lifestyle. In case you don’t already know it, rule numbe
It has certainly been awhile since I posted anything having to do with motor coaching. I guess I could just ignore that fact and just post like I don’t have a care in the world and no time has gone by at all since my last new entry. I won’t do that, however. I will tell you that Diane and I have managed to make it to some chapter campouts where we had some weekend fun with our fellow FMCA and Good Sam members, while still longing for a good long trip on the road.
Three weeks or so ago we final
It is commonly believed that early geographers used this phrase to mark the uncharted areas of their maps. They had not explored these areas and therefore assumed them to be dangerous. The actual wording was Hc Svnt Dracones. The mapmakers would put images of sea monsters on the edges of the map because it was the best way to say there is bad stuff “out there”.
This past August 2nd I turned sixty years of age. I am now entering into uncharted territory. It is for me anyway. Others have been th
In case you missed it the first time when I wrote this years ago, you get to read it now (or again!)
http://www.myrandomviews.com/blog/2015/5/12/ule-4-rules-for-owning-a-motor-coach-number-4-continued
Number 4. (Maybe the Last Rule!)
Owning a motor coach is a never-ending learning experience.
And just when you think you know it all, you find out just how stupid you really are.
I have learned a lot about my coach, more than I ever wanted to know. I have had to study the mechanics of my engine, my slides, and my power seats as well as learn how it is wired for Surround Sound and cable TV. And, how it is plumbed including the ice maker, the fresh-water tank, the whole coach water filter and o
Woof!
The last two entries of this blog have been kind of serious and sad. Too much for me, to tell you the truth. I think we should go back to having some fun. Gramps' rules for owning a motor coach, especially number four, are just that. So, in order to lighten things back up, I have decided to hijack this blog and post one entry for myself. I don't think Gramps (I know him as Dad, but he really is my person) will mind all that much.
This entry is about Motor Coaching, but from a different p
I said that 1968 was a tough year for my family. It was. It was also a tough year for the whole country. The Vietnam War was going badly. Bobby Kennedy was killed. Martin Luther King was killed. There were riots, anti-war demonstrations. Everything and everyone seemed stressed out. Some say the only thing that saved 1968 from being a total loss was the Apollo Eight mission around the moon. I will always remember the Astronauts reading from the book of Genesis and reminding us, me, who was, who i
When I write a blog entry about a current trip in our coach, I tend to just write it in a matter of fact style, like the following:
Well a lot has happened in the last week. Diane and I hosted an FMCA chapter rally at the Deer Creek RV Resort in Galax, Virginia during the last weekend of July. The campground Is located just across the golf course from our home at the Deer Creek Motorcoach resort. Some people call the golf course Derrick's Nine Holes, because I am the person who plays there the
In late November of 1990 I received my December issue of Reader's Digest. I read all the humorous parts of the magazine, and one cover story and then promptly stuck it on a shelf with all the other issues that I still had in my possession.
Soon it was Christmas. At that time all of my three children were young. Christine was fourteen, Jeri was eleven, and Joel was five.
It was a tough time for us. I was unemployed. I had been without work for almost two years. The country was in an economi
Just a note about what is coming next. . . I know that this story has gotten long, but it is about to get much longer. You might want to get cup of coffee or take a break before you continue.
You are about to find out that I have set you up. I have spent a lot of time and words to set you up for a story that I wrote twenty five years ago. It was the first serious short story I have written as an adult. I submitted it to Guidepost Magazine and just basically forgot about it. After a few weeks, I
