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
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
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
One of the things that is on my Motor Coach Bucket List is to travel to as many Major League baseball parks as I can.
I love the game of baseball. Like motor coaching, baseball has many metaphors for life. I have loved the game much, much longer than I have loved the rving lifestyle.
I have been to a number of major league games. My first one was a weekday night game in late spring of 1989. It was the first home game of the Cincinnati Reds after the Pete Rose Scandal hit the news. There was an
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 I have a little bit of time left, but only a little.
I don't worry about the end of my life. Mom and Dad do that for me. They comment on how white my face is compared to how it u
It's been awhile since I blogged and a lot has happened since the 23rd of May or whenever it was since I last posted.
I say a lot has happened, but not really. Diane, Nickolas and myself traveled to our spot at Deer Creek Motorcoach resort, the one in Galax, Virginia, not Florida. Barry, the owner and developer, asked me to point that out.
While there, I did my best to improve my golf game and beef up our Wi-Fi. The golfing was fun ... more about that later.
A bit about our Wi-Fi.
It is n
It has been a year, this week, since I started blogging here at FMCA.com. Boy, time sure flies when you are having stress. I have had a boat load of just that over the last year, I am talking about stress.
It started building up more than usual around Christmas 2008 after I realized something was physically very wrong with Mike, my friend and business partner. By late March he was gone. Many of you know the story. He "passed over," to use that innocuous phrase, just after our trip to the FMCA
Click on any thumbnail above to see a lot more pictures!
Gary, Janis, Diane and I are good friends. We travel together and we both own the same coach. It is a Holiday Rambler Vacationer XL, model 38PLT built on the Workhorse UFO chassis. The UFO has the engine in the rear and it is gas not diesel. We get a lot of comments when we pull into a campground together or separately.
For example:
"Man, your coach sure is quiet, what's wrong with it?"
(Nothing)
"Well, it sure is a funny sounding Die
For the last week and a half I have been sick. The first couple of days I was forced to just lay around the house drinking Alka-Seltzer Cold remedy (every four hours) and feeling sorry for myself.
Last Saturday afternoon around 2:30 p.m., I decided that I had had enough of being ill. I drank my last seltzer, put on some shorts and my mowing shoes. I mowed the yard, then trimmed and edged it. I also pulled all the weeds out of the flowerbeds. When I was done, I was tired and sore but I felt much
Saturday morning was sunny, but a bit chilly. Gary and I broke camp and pulled in our slides. He had not put his main one out because it just did not work smoothly. We discovered, the night before, that my main slide had a fraying cable so it would not be deployed for our second night. This would make the interior of the coach a bit tight but that was the breaks so to speak.
The night before, while Gary and I were repairing my bedroom slide out topper/telephone pole mishap we had a visitor fro
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
Just a few days before I had this dream Diane, while walking Nickolas our dog, was attacked by a Pit Bull. It almost killed her. Mayber that event triggered the dream. Who knows, the human mind and spirit are wonderful mysteries.
I Had a Strange Dream Last Night
I had a strange dream last night. I was having trouble sleeping. My eyes hurt. I couldn't take the light from the clock on my stereo on top of the dresser. I finally heaved myself out of bed and moved a glass candle holder in front of
It's Easter Morning. This is a morning to celebrate Life, new life. I can see it out my office window. I see it in my grand boys; they are here in my office, playing on my computers. Because it is such a good morning I have the urge to share something with you, something that celebrates life.
In October 2002 Diane and I went on an eight-night cruise. The ship was Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas. We were there to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. Joel would be entering college the n
Well today was a rare day. Actually it has been a beautiful day. I took advantage of the great weather and did some work on our coach. I installed a Trik-l-Start to keep the chassis battery charged. The install was quite easy to do. I mounted the thing in my outside front wiring bay under the drivers seat. I read the directions first so that may have helped prevent a problem. I aslo added an over the door awning arm lock. I think there should have been two of them to begin because I ordered th
This past weekend we traveled to Shawboro, North Carolina for a camp out with our Good Sam's Chapter. Four coaches were there and our small group had a great time. Friday night it was a quick group dinner of steamed shrimp, potato and bacon soup, cornbread, tossed salad with blue cheese crumbles and plenty of good cookies for dessert. Then the ladies played Mexican Train while us men shot the breeze for awhile and then we played a number of hands of King's Corner. Saturday morning it was scrambl
We have all had them, moments when we are so overjoyed to be motorhome owners and those other moments, the ones where you take a deep breath and ask yourself: "Why did I ever buy this big blasted thing?"
Stuck!
A few years ago, when Diane and I were still Bounder owners, we spent Christmas with my parents and my daughter Christine's family. We took the rig down to their home in Lexington, N.C., and parked it in their backyard. It was not a bad place to camp. Dad provided power and water and h
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
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 have two installments of Eighteen Months to write, but I need a break from it. I feel the need to post something about Motor Coaching.
Our coach is still stuck in the driveway. Not literally, but figuratively. Weather and time constraints have conspired together to keep it parked right where it is for some two months now without moving an inch. Boy, do I have the itch to (notice the word inch and itch are very close) to get away.
With the idea that going somewhere is better than nowhere and
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
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
I suspect that many readers of this here blog of mine (notice my use of a bit of Southern Speak) wonder what most of my last few entries have to do with motor coaching. My initial response is: not much.
However, there might be a connection.
I have a restless nature. I can't sit still for long periods of time doing nothing. I have to be reading, writing, watching something very interesting, and usually commercial free, on the LCD. I might play a World War II FPS online. For you non computer gam
I have been suffering from a bad case of the blahs, so I have not made a blog entry for some time. You could call it a case of the blags. Today, however, I seem to have a sudden burst of energy. I am looking out my office window at my snow-covered coach and at the 10-inch-thick white blanket that is covering my front yard as well as the rest of the neighborhood and I feel inspired to write something.
What, I don't know. I have not done any RVing lately. Nothing except trying to keep my coach w
There are so many memories washing about in my head. Putting them down "on paper" is not all that easy. Some come out bright and fresh, others faded and worn. All become more comfortable with time.
The baked cookie ornaments on our tree were created for a special family Christmas that took place in Martinsburg, West Virginia in 1980. My aunt Hazel invited all of her family and her husband's family to spend the Holidays in a very large two story unheated garage. No one was allowed to bring any
Diane and I had a pleasant and mostly uneventful Christmas. I was busy trying to cure a large phone system suffering from hiccups for some days leading up to The Big Day. As a result I became a last-minute shopper (I have always believed I work best under pressure) and visited Macy's on Christmas Eve in the late morning. I intended to purchase just the RightSomething for my wife. Apparently many other procrastinating men had the same idea.
After carefully shopping I found a Murano blown-glass h
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