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Ramblings of a Motorhoming Melancholic?

Entries in this blog

 

Parties, Christmas, Then Head South

Two weekends ago Diane, Teddy and I took the coach for a cold, wet weekend to Beth Page campground in Urbana, Virginia. From Portsmouth it is about a ninety minute drive up I-64 to State Highway 17. It would be a lot quicker if not for slow drivers and lots of stop lights. I didn't mind so much because we were not in a big hurry. We left around two in the afternoon on Friday and the nights festivities would not start until five. The purpose of this trip was to rally up with our fellow Colonial
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Who Is Rescuing Who?

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
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Skipping Thanksgiving

Skipping Thanksgiving. (A running blog entry) Wednesday: Diane and myself are skipping the traditional Thanksgiving this year. We are presently sitting in site 41 at the Anvil Campground in Williamsburg, Virginia. Skipping the traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings, along with all the work that involves, didn't sit too well with some family members. I say too bad! Diane and I need some time to ourselves. Time with less stress, less responsibility. We need a time to heal from the lo
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Better than Chocolate

It is very quiet around the house. There is no tapping of little doggie nails on the hardwood floor. No tinkling of a metal dog tag against the side of the food bowl. There is no cheerful crunch of the doggie eating his breakfast. Life continues to go on. Diane will laugh at a joke, e-mailed to her from one of our friends, when it arrives in her mailbox. She will cry when a sympathy card, snail mailed by one of our friends, shows up in the standard mailbox. She also cries after taking a phone c
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Good-bye, Our Litttle Friend

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
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At Rest.

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
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A Premonition?

Yesterday morning started out normal, almost. I woke up with the memory of a disturbing dream. I was walking Nickolas, our cocker spaniel, down a long faded green hall. It reminded me of an old high school corridor, or maybe an old office building. It had a polished dirty brown vinyl tile floor. There were exposed fluorescent lights, the long two-lamp kind that flicker and make a lot of ballast noise. At the end of the hall was a metal door with a reinforced glass window in the top half. The bot
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Still Fighting

This is a very strange thing to report, but Nickolas is back at the small animal hospital at NC State School of Medicine. It has been a long and very weird night. It seems that the pain pill I gave our dog, a dose big enough to knock out a full grown man, didn't do much to our dog but allow him a couple hours of very deep sleep. Diane who had been keeping vigil beside him, out on the deck the whole time wating for him to finally slip away, came to the door to speak to me. I was looking out the
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Why Don't He Write?

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
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The Rally

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
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The Last Inning: Giants and Phillies Part Two

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
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The Giants and the Phillies

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
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A bit about Wi-Fi

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
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It has been a year

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
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Better Than New!

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
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Pilgrimage to Elkhart, Day 2

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
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Pilgrimage to Elkhart, Day 1

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
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I Had a Strange Dream: Part 2-The Dream

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
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The Course of Dreams

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
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I Had A Strange Dream: Part 1-The Setup

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
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Today

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
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Not So Good Coach Moment: Road Rage?

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
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Not So Good Motor Coach Moment: Stuck!

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
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The Richmond RV Expo

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
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Restless

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
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