The kids have grown up. They are doing other things now...working, raising kids, taking pictures, playing music.....
http://www.myrandomviews.com/blog/2015/5/9/couch-cushion-fort-musical-interlude
I think photography is in my DNA. One of the things that fostered my interest in becoming a shooter is the fact that my Dad was one for many years. He shot thousands of pictures of places he traveled to while serving in the U.S. Navy, both at sea and shore duty. His pictures also included travels at home, to the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia as well a trip to Canada in 1967. Dad’s camera was always recording images of birthday parties, holidays, and trips to the beach.
Now my daugh
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
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
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
According to my outdoor wireless thermometer it is currently 43 degrees Fahrenheit. I am sitting comfortably in my motorcoach listening to two things ... a worship CD and the intermittent sound of ice falling inside the fridge. I am defrosting and so is the fridge. As you may have gathered from my previous blog entries, or lack thereof, I have been pretty much frozen in place at home maintaining my business. Our coach has just been sitting waiting for us to come back to it.
This last Tuesday
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
Well it is another new year. I am sure that we all hope it will be a good one. This last one was a bit tough for my shrinking household. We lost a grandson, my wife lost her mother, our son moved out on his own (well that is a bittersweet thing). However, there were a lot of things that happened, friends we made, places we visited, and memories that were created this last year that allows me to appreciate 2011. One thing is for sure, I sill enjoy being a part of the motor coaching community. No
I have been meaning to write the second part (the better part) of our trip to Melbourne, Florida to see our daughter and Gavin, our new grandson. However, my writing has been delayed by a web site move, a pinched nerve in my neck (I can't feel two of my fingers on my left hand) and other related work stuff. Also it is an anniversary, a sad anniversary which has turned my thoughts towards another grandson and just how precious a life can be, even if it is a short one.
I wrote this last year. I d
As a kid I enjoyed serial stories in magazines. Works of fiction published one chapter at time. I read them and couldn't wait for the next installment. The next chapter.
The number one thing that all good fiction writers say is common about writing is that writing should be about something that you know about. I know about communications, photography, history, RVing, and I know about myself and my family. I have also read that you should write about something that you love. I love all the abov
This past weekend, Diane and I took the coach, the dog (can't leave home without him!) and the grandboys to Virginia Beach, Va. We stayed in the premier sites at the Holiday Travel Campground. The premier sites are a bit larger pull-thrus than the rest of the sites. The campground is about 40 minutes from our home. We left about 2:45 in the afternoon and arrived about 3:30 or so.
We didn't do much the first night except grill some burgers while the boys explored the playground next to us. Later
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
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 thought I would tell a happy story. It is a picture story, about what we have done, and where we have been, the first half of this past year. I have heard that pictures are worth a lot more than words.Take a look, if you please: Half Year in Pictures
1. I leave a baseball cap on the dash whenever I am driving the coach. I don’t wear it all the time but it sure comes in handy when the sun is low and shines thru the gap in our double automatic windshield shades.
2. While we are on the subject of windshields. I replaced my stock Monaco wiper arms with ones with standard sized J-Hooks. I purchased them from Diesel Equipment Corp in Greensboro NC. Now I can use any length frameless replacement blade, easily purchased from an auto parts store or
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
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
Today I am thinking about one of the things in my life that I am passionate about, something that goes well with owning a coach.
That something is Photography.
When I was a young boy I took pictures with a Kodak Brownie box camera. While attending broadcasting technical school in Washington D.C. in 1972, I tried my hand at shooting transparencies (slides) with my dad’s old Agfa 35mm rangefinder with a bellow lens. I had some success with it, during daylight hours anyway. When the first Pan
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
This blog entry doesn't have anything to do with the motor coaching lifestyle. Not directly, anyway. But the event does have a lot to do with how much I appreciate the friends that RVing has provided to my wife and I. Friends who have helped me get through the loss that I wrote about in The Course of Dreams. That story was about the second time I lost a close friend.
This story is about the first.
WAYNE
In the summer of 1984 I moved my start-up small business out of my home into a small off
I wrote the story about Wayne two or three years ago, maybe longer. I don't really remember when I wrote it to tell you the truth. I wrote it in response to a young lady who was a member of a Medal of Honor online gaming clan who posted a request for prayer on our clan forums. Her fiance had just been killed in a car accident and she was devastated. The story was originally addressed to her. Shannon was her name. For the most part that was the end of it until two days ago. That was when I got th
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