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-Gramps-

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  1. -Gramps-

    Tips and Hints.

    By -Gramps-,

    Over the last seven years, Diane and I have learned, discovered, or otherwise stumbled upon a few things that have helped us during our adventures on the road.
    1. Velcro computer wiring straps (available from Wal-Mart of course) can keep your coach vertical cabinet doors from flying open while going down the road and hitting a pot hole or expansion joint or worst yet….rolling over a speed bump. Just slip one thru the cabinet handles and snick it down. They have saved our dishes more than once.
    2. If you have area rugs that you have to roll up to bring in your slide outs then roll them up around a pool noodle. This will keep the rug edges from curling when you lay them out at your next stop. They will lay flat instead.
    3. You can create a wine glass caddy to protect your glassware while traveling by cutting the bottom off a beer cozy (the soft collapsible ones) and slipping it over the glass.
    4. Carry a curved sail needle and some uv resistant thread….you never know when you might need to sew up a hole in a slide topper. Silicone uv resistant fabric spray is a good thing to have as well. A coating of that on your toppers will make them last a lot longer.
    5. Mount a paper towel holder somewhere in a compartment on both sides of your coach. It is good to have one roll near the wet bay and another on the patio side to have access to when cooking outside.
    6. I have found that the best thing to clean a really dirty rubber or fiberglass coach roof with is Murphy oil soap. Clorox clean up will help dissolve stubborn stains including sap. Seal and quick clean the roof with Murphy Squirt and Mop. This will leave a nice shine.
    7. Coach closets don’t get much air circulation, we put dryer sheets in them to help keep locked up clothes smelling fresh. A dryer sheet tossed in the dirty clothes bag or drawer is a helpful thing as well.
    8. Washing a coach can be a tiring pain in the neck and back. I use a long handle adjustable nozzle sprayer with a reservoir that allows you to soap down your rig and then rinse it (available at Wal-Mart for nineteen bucks). If you attach an inline water filter to the hose you will not get water spots. I use a carnauba wax car wash. I prefer ArmorAll Extreme Shine car wash solution.
    9. Turtle Wax Ice spray on synthetic wax is good stuff. You can use it on paint, chrome, vinyl, rubber and glass. In other words it’s good for the whole coach and tow car. It can be used as a cleaner even when you are staying in a campground with water restrictions. Spray it on, rub in with a terry cloth, and rub off with a second cloth. It leaves no swirl marks and blends in minor scratches. You are left with a slick, shiny coach when finished.
    10. It’s a good idea to once in a while go through all your basement compartments and storage boxes. You will find out that you are carrying around things you don’t need anymore and find things you thought you were out of that you do need, like wheel lug nut caps.
    11. Keep a cheap volt ohm meter in your electrical bay along with a flashlight and a gallon of distilled water. Makes it much easier to maintain your batteries and make them last longer.
    12. Things don’t roll around in your bay if you strap them together. These things include fishing rods, washing brushes and brooms, hoses. I found some adjustable ball and bungee straps at Lowes that work really well for this purpose.
    13. Always ask any campground or resort that has wifi if they provide wifi client security. This is more than just a password. Client security protects you from other logged on users. If the campground says no or they don’t know, then you must tell your computer you are logged on to a public wifi and turn off file and print sharing. If you don’t take this precaution you could get hacked by a fellow camper.
    14. I use a mixture of Pine-Sol and water to rise out and sanitize my sewer hoses and wet bay. It works just as well as bleach and doesn’t spot my clothes.
    15. There are cell phone repeaters that work. I use a Z-Boost with dual band uni directional antennas. One is for data, one for voice. I mount them to my ladder with pvc pipes coupled together. I can strap em together and store em in my pass thru storage while traveling.
    16. The moment you think that there is nothing wrong with your coach something will break….like a windshield wiper arm.
    17. If your toilet won’t hold water it could be that the ball seal needs cleaning. There is a groove in the seal that will clog and then it can’t well…seal.
    18. Try to take advantage of every space in your coach. I recently attached a piano hinge to the washer dryer plumbing compartment so that I could store things like grocery bags and collapsible crates in there.
    19. Consider placing a wireless thermometer in your fridge. It’s great for helping you keep your beer and stuff from freezing or getting too warm.
    20. When you find a good rv repair facility make every effort to go there when you have something wrong with your coach that you can’t fix yourself or isn’t an emergency repair. I am talking about things like broken air conditioners, body work, slide out repair etc. We take our coach to Terry Labonte RV service in Greensboro NC.
    That’s all for now but I am sure to come up with some more…after all one of my rules is
    “Owning a motor coach is a never ending learning experience.”
    Derrick
    “Gramps”
  2. -Gramps-
    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 used to look. They talk about how slow I am to get up from my nap in front of the TV. They don't like for me to wear myself out going up and down the coach steps.
    They concern themselves with how hot I am, because I pant a lot. Mom bought me this slick blue water-filled pad to help keep me cool. I am not crazy about it but I sleep on it, and that makes her feel better even if it doesn't do much for me.
    They really worry about a tumor that is growing on my left side. They talk about how much they hope it isn't cancer, but if it is, what they can do about it?
    Mom and Dad, especially Dad, could stand to learn a bit about life from me.
    Like I said, I don't worry. I don't worry about that lump or much of anything else.
    I don't give much thought to the squirrels that I can't chase around the back yard anymore. Actually, I never worried about them when I was younger, either. The moment one takes off up a tree, that's it for me. I find something else to think about-like breakfast.
    I can say for sure that life is far too short to spend time worrying about anything, except dinner.
    I love both of my people a lot. They have always given me a good life. I still have a good life even if things are changing. I can't hear much of anything anymore. I used to hear the brakes on Dad's old truck three blocks away. Mom was always amazed when I went to the door to wait for him, long before he pulled up in front of the house. Now I am sometimes surprised by him at the door instead of the other way around. But that is okay. I still follow him to his office desk, furiously wagging my tail, and he never fails to give my back a good scratch.
    Sometimes Dad is so tense when he gets home at the end of the day. I know it is my job to do something to help him, so giving the dog a good back scratching does as much, if not more, for Dad as it does for me.
    There was a time when Dad and Mom were saying something about Dad having a kidney stone. Dad was in pretty bad shape. I saw him on his knees next to his bed. He was sweating and moaning. The pain was so intense that Dad was starting to panic. I jumped up on the bed to be near him. I kissed his nose and then lay down.
    He put his hands on me and buried his face in my side. I did what I was supposed to do, I soaked up his pain. It took a little while but Dad calmed down and I could sense that he started to feel a bit better. I usually stick close to Mom, but Dad needed me, so I stayed right there with him for the rest of the day.
    During our last trip out in our coach (I like to call it the Bus) Mom and Dad watched this movie about a person who helps to heal horses. This person is called a horse whisperer. Dad says that I am a Human Whisperer. I am not sure what that means, but if being a Human Whisperer means being there for my people, reminding them that life should be lived mostly in the present and that love and kindness are what keeps us going, then that is what I am.
    I love my people. They are like gods to me. They are bigger and stronger than me and I trust them to look after me. I hope my love for them is a reminder that there is a greater power that is stronger and bigger than they are who loves them, too. I think it does.
    Many years ago we were on a camping trip, in a tent; this was before we got our fancy bus. It was a beautiful fall day and Dad grilled T-bone steaks for their dinner. The smell was great. I knew that they would share the best part of these wonderful smelling things with me.
    They would give me the bones.
    I was so excited to get one. Dad looked at me, happily chomping away, and then he looked at the mountains around us and the woods with all its bright colors.
    "This is just a bone," he said.
    "What?" Mom asked. "What are you talking about?"
    "This life and this world is just a bone" Dad said."This is just a taste of what God has in store for those who love Him. We should learn to love life and Him more."
    When the end of my life finally comes, just before I take my last nap, I hope the last thing I see is the love for me in the eyes of my people. I hope the last thing I feel is my Mom rubbing my head and my Dad scratching my back. I hope the last thing I do for them is to whisper that I love them and that life is good, keep on living it well, and thanks for giving me such a good one.
    Nickolas
  3. -Gramps-

    It's a Wonderful Life!

    By -Gramps-,

    Diane and I just finished watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It is certainly one of our Christmas traditions each year, as it is with a lot of people, I am sure.
    We take it a bit further in our house than most. There are IAWL ornaments on the tree, some glass balls, some ceramic with scenes and lines from the movie. Some are small houses and buildings from the movie with a hole in the bottom to allow for a light.
    In my office I have the Bedford Falls Village on display. There are twenty one buildings set up on three shelves. Along with the buildings are the other things you would find in a Christmas village, including cars, figures, street lights, trees and a train. I pay careful attention to which buildings, such as Gower’s Drug Store, Anderson’s Department Store (the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan is located upstairs) the Bedford Falls Bank, City Hall belong next to each other as seen in the movie itself. It is a rather elaborate display.
    I have read the original script for the movie. I have a number of books that relate behind the scenes stories and anecdotes about the making of the movie. One of those books is a coffee table book and one is on my e-reader. I have an autographed picture of the closing scene of the movie. It is signed by Karolyn Grimes, who played George and Mary’s daughter ZuZu.
    I have watched the movie some two hundred times. I have watched a number of colorized versions on You Tube. I know each and every line by heart. I can watch the whole film in my head. It still chokes me up. I still can’t stand the scene where George loses it with his family after Uncle Billy loses 100,546.67 dollars (8000 dollars in 1945.) Let us give ole Billy a little lee way and say it was almost the year 1946. He still lost the equivalent of 92, 812.31 in today’s dollars. No wonder poor George freaked out and kicked over the bridges and buildings he had built. Those scale models represented all his hopes and dreams. He knew that the life he wanted was never going to happen.
    At that moment, George frightened his family and he became a walking dead man or so he thought. He believed he was worth more dead than alive.
    I understand why and how he came to feel that way.
    One Christmas some years back Diane and I threw a fancy “It’s a Wonderful Life” party for some close friends from our church that included a formal dinner. I sent out invitations with pictures from the movie. We came up with a printed menu with dishes like “Uncle Billy’s famous New England Clam Chowder” and “Mary Bailey’s Grilled Chicken with Mango Salsa” served with “Mom Bailey’s Sugar Snap Peas steamed in Balsamic Vinegar with Walnuts”. There was New York Seltzer and Cheese Cake for dessert. The table was decorated with little red plastic bells and fresh red rose petals. Some of our friends had never seen the movie (a shock to me) and they did not realize the meaning of the bells or the petals. They soon found out, but first I wanted them to know why the movie means so much to me.
    I told them the movie had saved my life.
    It happened twenty years ago now. I was finishing up my second year of being chronically unemployed. I had gotten fired from a job I loved ten years earlier, (that is a possible story for another day…..I will tell you this; I didn't deserve to loose that job and the ambitions of a man who wanted to be president of the United States had a lot do with it ending.) I had started a business that failed after forty two months. That failure was directly connected with the murder of my best friend who worked with me. I went to work for the people who bought my failed business but that didn’t work out either. I went to work for AT&T and lost that job a year later. I got a job that I thought would last with the local PBS station that I had worked for once before years earlier, but they had to lay me off due to state funding cutbacks. That happened in November of 1990. It was the last straw so to speak.
    So in March of 1991 at the end of a very bleak winter and with what looked like a very bleaker future, I found myself thinking the whole previous ten years had been a waste. I was a failure. No one would hire me because they didn’t think a man who had owned his own business would want to work for someone else. That is true if you have a choice. I didn’t think I had one. I sent out two hundred resumes because I thought I had to work for someone else or else I and my family would starve and I was extremely tired of being told I was over qualified for the positions I applied for.
    I did manage to find some temporary jobs. I installed microwaves for a military sub contractor. I helped install MRIs for a medical company. Diane demonstrated products at the local supermarkets. She was a gray apron lady which required her to hand out coupons and fry sausage samples. We subsidized our empty pantry from our church’s food bank. My kids qualified for reduced price lunches at school, well because we were flat broke. I refused for the longest time to apply for unemployment because I thought it the surest sign that I was out of hope. I finally did apply and received two measly checks before I went back to full time work.
    However something else happened in between. I could not make myself continue to look for a job. I did have a friend in the phone business offer me a straight commission position with a draw. I could not accept that. The economy was not in good shape and neither was the company making me the offer. They were just being nice to an old friend with a shared common interest, that being phone systems.
    I was miserable, lost and really didn’t care to live anymore. I didn't know how far down a dark road those feelings would take me, but it was far enough to worry my wife and kids.
    Diane started a prayer chain with the hope that if enough prayers were made my situation would change. The situation did change, but first I had to have a change of heart.
    One day I was home by myself. It was early in the morning. Diane was at our church where she was a part time secretary to the pastor as well as the church bookkeeper. I finished cleaning up around the house and decided that I wanted to watch a movie. I opened the cabinet where we stored all our tapes and an old cheap copy of It’s a Wonderful Life fell out onto the floor. I thought to myself why not?
    I put it in the VCR, sat on the floor with my back to the couch and proceeded to watch this old chestnut of a film for the umpteenth time on our thirteen inch television.
    Obviously I had a different viewpoint this time.
    Like George Bailey I was angry at my situation. I was depressed and felt that there was no hope. When George started yelling at his family something started to break in me. When he was in the bar praying I started to cry. When Clarence rescued him, I told myself it was only a movie but I hit rewind and watched it again, and I cried again.
    I sat there on the floor and viewed that movie four times. By the end of the forth time it finally sank in. Life was not as bad as I thought it was. I had friends, great kids and a loving wife. I didn’t think a bunch of people would show up at my door with gobs of money but I knew that all was not lost.
    Frank Capra and his cast helped me realize that I did have a wonderful life, and with the right attitude, some help from above, and with a lot of hard work, I could turn things around.
    I started my business a week later.
    I turned things around. It did take a lot of prayer, help from friends and family, a lot of hard work and we did receive a lot of help from above. There have been setbacks since then. Some have put me down, but not out and that is because I know that I have friends, most of whom drive a Motor Coach. Those friends make me remember that I am not a failure and I do have a very wonderful life.
    It is a Wonderful Life!
    And I hope that every one who reads this has a Very Merry Christmas!
    Derrick
    "Gramps"



  4. -Gramps-

    Navistar RV Report

    By -Gramps-,

    I just finished listening to a large Navistar RV conference call hosted by Bill Osborne, president of Navistar RV. I was invited by email to attend this call some weeks ago. The purpose of the call was to quote: “discuss the direction the company is headed, put the story straight about industry rumors and answer any questions our owners have about the company.”
    The call was directed to current owners and after an opening statement there was a brief question and answer period. This was a one way discussion. Questions had to be submitted in advance. I did not submit one. If I had it would have been one specific to my coach and chassis and those types of questions were not answered during the call. Any questions submitted and not answered would be responded to by e-mail later.
    There were 350 participates and 180 questions asked. As soon as I heard that, I thought that there was no way they could all be answered and that was the case. The questions were grouped by category and answered as such. However, before I get to that let me give a synopsis of Mr. Osborne’s statement which included information about not only Navistar RV but Navistar International, the parent company as well.
    The rumors of Navistar, the parent company, going bankrupt or being sold are completely false. They have a new top management team in place, are currently meeting tailpipe emission standards, have signed a new agreement with Cummins for large bore engines for commercial vehicles. Most importantly they have over 1.5 billion dollars in cash on hand and are in the position to become profitable again this year.
    However Navistar is going to focus on the commercial truck business and to that end they will give consideration to any valuable offer for the RV side of the house. In other words they are looking seriously at selling Navistar RV. They are not looking at bankrupting the RV side of the house, dumping warranties and selling off the assets. That describes what the pre-bankrupt Monaco did, not what Navistar wants to do. They want to make Navistar RV, which includes the Monaco, Holiday Rambler and R-Vision lines a profitable, high quality product company.
    After the statement were the question responses. As I said they grouped the questions and answered accordingly.
    The first group had to do with quality control.
    When Navistar bought the old Monaco Company, they had a plan to turn it around. Mr. Osborne reports they are half way to meeting that goal. They introduced some new products at the recent Louisville dealer show including a new Dynasty coach and a new Vacationer. These products had great success along with the towables. Orders from dealers were up 69 percent for towables and 31 percent for motorized rvs.
    Navistar RV has three parts to their turnaround strategy
    Provide high quality product to their customers.
    Provide products that are innovative to the industry.
    Provide good customer service (during warranty period and aftermarket.)

    To that end Navistar RV has initiated a comprehensive technician training program, has moved techs from the closed Oregon facility to Wakarusa. They have initiated a quality control program at their factories which includes bonuses for workers who stop defects from going out the door. This takes some time due to the fact that dealers have a 300 day inventory on their lots and so a lot of coaches are still being sold that were made before the new programs went into effect.
    New dealers and service facilities include what are called tier 2 facilities (dealers who don’t carry the product but will service) are being signed now.
    Platinum service plan is now being implemented and the first platinum dealer is Alliance Coach.
    Second group of questions dealt with Navistar RV's market exposure including dealers and products.
    New dealers are being signed. They are not located in all states and that has been a problem for service, but is being worked on. Products are being improved. New ones will be offered. The Monaco Signature series will be making a return. There is a possibility of a re-launch of the Safari and Beaver lines now that Navistar has the ability to find high bore engines for larger coaches. The Trip and Vista coaches, as of today, are being discontinued. The orders for those coaches have been disappointing and it is painfully obvious the market will not support that line any longer, (if it ever did, in my opinion).
    Next set of questions dealt with EPA emissions.
    All Maxxforce engines meet current EPA tailpipe emission standards either directly or through credits. All engines will be SCR in the future.
    There was a question about parts availability for older coaches. Navistar RV is committed to providing part support directly when possible. It is sometimes difficult because some part suppliers have gone out of business but alternative channels will be provided.
    Mr Osborne also addressed the reason that Navistar RV did not honor warranties for coaches sold by the pre-bankrupt Monaco.
    This is how I understood it.
    He explained that they were not allowed to pick up those warranties by judgment of the bankruptcy court. Each bankruptcy is an individual case and some RV companies that went bankrupt and were purchased along with those obligations. That did not happen in this case. Monaco ran out of operating cash. They did not own any debt to suppliers or financial institutions. Their liabilities were payroll and warranties and the court relieved them of both.
    That ended the question period of the call. The call ended with Mr Osborne once again assuring us owners of the company’s commitment to quality and great customer service. He appreciated our participation, informed us that he hoped to do this again in the future. He also told us the call would be available on the Navistar website soon.
    Gramps.
  5. -Gramps-

    A Few More Tips and Hints

    By -Gramps-,

    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 Wal-Mart.

    3. Rescue Tape works as advertised. I carry three rolls of it, Red, Orange and Clear. It can fix a hose, a broken patio umbrella and there are lots of useful reasons to have a roll in a drawer.
    Capillary action (sometimes capillarity, capillary motion, or wicking) is the ability of a liquid to flow in narrow spaces without the assistance of, and in opposition to, external forces like gravity.
    Do you read that? Water can go against gravity, flow UP, if the conditions are there. So here is hint number four…it’s a bit long but I suggest you read it.
    4. If you have a Monaco or Holiday Rambler coach with the rubber black gutters at the bottom of the side of each of your slideouts then you need to take a close look at the bottom of the floor of each slideout, especially the main one. That piece of rubber was installed to catch the water running down the side and not let it run under the slideout where it gets wicked up by the plywood floor. There is an exposed wooden edge underneath the main slideout that is well, too exposed. The rubber gutter helps to prevent a leak problem but it doesn’t quite do the trick. The gutter funnels a lot of water to the front bottom corner of the slideout causing the floor to delaminate and then it starts to soak up water and it swells and the cycle just gets worse until one day mushrooms are growing out the bottom of your slideout. Not good. I discovered this was happening to my coach. I had a lot of rotten wood which I blew out with an air compressor and then filled the void with spray in stop gap foam in a can. Then I glued a piece of rubber sweep over the edge of the slideout so the water could not defy gravity and run underneath any longer.
    If you discover you have this problem you can limit the exposed edge of the floor by running a line of deck screws through the bottom of the floor until they are flush! Don't leave any exposed screw head or it will get caught when the slide goes in and cause a lot of grief.


    6. Learn where your ice maker shut of valve is located. You don’t want to be caught by surprise and have to turn off the campground water to your coach because you can’t figure out how to turn off the water to the icemaker…not to mention the damage a leak can do to your fridge electronics.
    7. After you learn where your shutoff valve is, I suggest you replace the standard plastic tubing water supply line to your ice maker solenoid with a reinforced ice maker hose. Why risk a leak from a broken water line caused by the fact it moves when the coach moves? This part is available at Lowe’s for around 15 bucks depending on the length. I bought a six foot one. It took about twenty minutes to connect it. The line from the solenoid to the ice maker (the metallic blue in the picture) is not as critical. It is not under constant pressure.


    8. If your fridge was part of the recall and you now have the heat sensor relay box installed I have a hint for you. Those boxes are known for tripping and not resetting. When that happens your fridge will not turn on unless you bypass the relay. I learned a trick...you can reset the relay with a magnet. Just rub it on the back of the box until you hear a click.
    9. I have a rechargeable flashlight/night light plugged into a bathroom socket. Its in the middle of the coach and comes in handy during an emergency, like the dog needs to go out in the middle of the night and I don’t want to turn on the lights in the coach.
    10. I carry a CharGriller table top grill. It is a small kettle grill with cast iron grates. Best portable charcoal grill you can get. It fits in the basement but large enough to cook a mean six pound beer can chicken. This grill is available on line or at Lowe’s for around sixty nine dollars.
    http://www.lowes.com/pd_11236-49769-11236_0__?zipCode=23703&masthead=true&firstReferURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lowes.com%2Fpd_11236-49769-11236_0__%3FproductId%3D3049705%26Ntt%3Dchargriller%26pl%3D1%26currentURL%3D%253FNtt%253Dchargriller%26facetInfo%3D&catalogId=10051&catalogId=10051&productId=3049705&pl=1&findStoreErrorURL=StoreLocatorDisplayView&selectedLocalStoreBeanArray=%5Bcom.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%404f164f16%2C+com.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%4051c651c6%2C+com.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%4054765476%2C+com.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%4057265726%2C+com.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%4059d659d6%5D&currentURL=%3FNtt%3Dchargriller&Ntt=chargriller&langId=-1&langId=-1&URL=TopCategoriesDisplayView&mastheadURL=TopCategoriesDisplayView&storeId=10151&storeId=10151
    11. Do you have a dog that likes to spend a lot of time on the dash? Diane and I made a custom fit dash mat. We purchased comfort rugs…those things that usually go in a kitchen or laundry room and are designed to be easy on the feet. They are made out of the same thing that mouse pads are made from…urethane rubber. We trimmed the rugs to fit around the instrument panel and it looks really good on the dash. The rubber clings to the dash so it is not necessary to attach the two mats together. Our new dash mat is really easy to clean. I used the left over scrap material to make some matching coasters and a mouse pad for the coach.


    Well, that is all the hints I can think of at the moment. I suspect that some more will pop into my brain and I will add to this list if that happens.
    Gramps.
  6. -Gramps-
    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 Panda Bears arrived from China at the Washington National Zoo, I attended the acceptance ceremony, hosted by Pat Nixon. I was up in the press stands snapping away. I still have those pictures.
    A few years later I found myself high in the mountains above Nogales, Arizona. As a network news cameraman (videographer), I was there to tape the assembly of one of the first network broadcast satellite dishes built in the southwest. I was running around with a heavy shoulder mounted portable video camera, with a battery belt strapped to my waste and carrying a three quarter inch video tape recorder. I taped the building of the dish, which was mounted on a platform overlooking a five hundred foot drop. The techs building the dish, one was my brother, had to strap themselves to the dish legs to keep from falling to the rocks far below. I captured on tape a number of beautiful sunsets and sunrises. My brother did the same with his Olympus OM-1 35mm SLR film camera.
    Later, after watching my recordings and knowing what was on his exposed film, I decided that I had to get my own 35mm camera. A few months later I visited a catalog showroom in Norfolk, Virginia where I purchased a Minolta XG-1 SLR along with an accessory package that was composed of a bag, a cheap 135mm lens, a flash, and a lens cleaning kit. This purchase started a long love affair with photography which would include many more cameras, and lenses, lots of reading, including the 16 volume Time-Life photography library (which I still own), and one day a complete color darkroom set up in my wife’s laundry room. I stored mixed chemicals and boxes of paper in the refrigerator. This was not always popular with all members of my family.
    I became a semi-pro photographer. I use the term semi-pro because I did not do it to make a living but I did make money at it. I made money shooting weddings, portraits, and other special events. I also made money selling my pictures at art shows. I was one of the photographers at the PBS television station I worked at. My function as video engineer, both in the studio and on remote locations, gave me an opportunity to shoot still shots behind the scenes. These shots were displayed in bank lobbies and libraries around this area and I sold copies to various people who saw them. My pictures were also published a few times in the local paper. The money I made went to feed my habit of taking pictures. It paid for film, chemicals, paper, and new equipment. I also entered a number of photo contests sponsored by local camera shops and cities. I won a few prizes, none of great monetary value, but winning meant a lot to me. The contest gave me the chance to meet other shooters, some of which became friends, and I learned a lot from them.
    I had my darkroom for about four years and then the opportunity to start my own phone business presented itself. I then had to make a decision about what was going to get most of my time and energy. I thought about what the head photography curator of the Chrysler Museum said to me when he was judging the photography at one of the local outdoor art shows where my work was on display. He asked me if I really took the pictures. He was pointing to one in particular when he asked this. Taken a bit back I answered with an emphatic Yes. He then told me I did good work and to keep at it.
    To make a really good picture took two shots, one in the field and one in the darkroom. To give up my darkroom meant giving up my ability to make the kind of finished art I wanted to make. However, I needed to make money to take care of my growing family, so it was a sad day when I sold my easels, large darkroom timer, trays, color developing drums, really good Saunders C760 dichroic color photo enlarger and watched them go out my back door.
    I went into film withdrawal. I threw myself into the phone business and didn't touch a camera again for months.
    Eventually I did get back into it. I purchased a new Minolta 550si Auto Focus camera. I took pictures with that camera as my telephone business took me around the world. I shot pictures of my kids, of the mountains, the sea. Not having a darkroom, I concentrated more on making a better picture inside the camera. I intensified my study of light, depth of field, the capability of different lenses, the best techniques for using a flash. I purchased a Minolta Dimage digital rangefinder camera when that technology was new. I was disappointed. I liked the instant picture, but I found the quality to be very lacking compared to film, so I stayed with that medium for quite a long time. I did scan many negatives and slides for posting on various picture hosting sites. I did post production work on some of those scanned images using different software programs including PhotoShop and others. In other words I was dabbling into the world of digital photography. I dabbled around the edges anyway, but I still could not see a real compelling reason to buy a DSLR.
    One day about seven years ago my daughter Jeri called me and said she was getting married. Jeri and her fiancé Tom would be hosting the event at the Little Switzerland Lodge and Resort on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Marion, North Carolina. The lodge had a staff photographer and as part of their wedding package, he would take pictures during the ceremony. She wanted me to take all the before and after and some during the wedding before I walked her “down the isle”. She wanted my shots, like the staff photographer’s, to be digital. She then informed me she would buy the camera for me. This presented me with a very interesting opportunity.
    I purchased the ten mega pixel Sony Alpha 100 DSLR. This camera had just hit the market a few weeks before Jeri’s call. The bundle included the camera body, 18-70 zoom lens, battery and charger. It cost one thousand dollars. I had a hard time with that price, but considering all my Minolta AF lenses would still work with the new camera, the cost was worth it. However, I could not allow Jeri to spend that kind of money so we split the purchase. I had a few days to learn the ins and outs of the camera. It wasn’t that hard. I took a couple of classes at the Ritz camera store where I bought the camera. I tried, but I found the classes to be a waste of time. I could have taught them, plus I got tired of hearing that the only camera you should own is a Nikon. That is a most silly untrue thing for someone who works in a camera store to say.
    Jeri and Tom were married on October 7, 2006. I took some shots before the ceremony started, then sat aside my camera (and my cell phone) to walk my daughter down the stone pathway to the side of her soon to be husband. I wished I could have been in two places at once. I really wanted to shoot her walking down the isle. Maybe I needed a small drone to hover in front of us and I could have used a remote control? Just kidding.
    My daughter Christine recently started taking a digital photography course at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. Christine enrolled to pick up some, what she thought, would be a few easy credit hours. She found out the class is not that easy and she also found out she likes it. She likes taking pictures with my Sony Alpha 100, a camera that meets the class requirements. The two of us have spent quite a bit of time on the phone discussing photography, including the various parts of a DSLR, lenses, and how they all work together. We have also talked about techniques, how to develop an “eye” for a good shot. Christine grew up around photography; it was a part of her life just like computers and telephones. Now photography is a part of her life again and I have enjoyed helping her.
    Working with Christine started me thinking.
    I thought I could provide a few lessons in digital photography, specifically Digital SLR photography here. If you want to get into taking really good pictures, something a lot more than a snap shot, then I can help. I will provide lots of information, both basic and advanced, about choosing and using a DSLR. To make it really interesting I may provide some tasks for you as well, that all depends on the responses I receive here of course.
    Shall we begin? Today’s lesson is a bit of an introduction.
    In order to become a better photographer you need to know two main things.
    1. How to use your equipment.
    2. How to use your eyes.
    What is a DSLR? It is a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. It combines the optics and mechanics of a Single Lens Camera with a digital sensor instead of film. The term SLR or Single Lens Reflex, refers to the fact that light, passes through the lens, hits a mirror which turns the image right side up and displays it on the viewfinder focusing screen. When the picture is taken the mirror flips up (reflex) as the shutter opens, the iris in the lens closes, and the sensor is exposed. The final image looks very close to what was seen in the viewfinder.
    The best DSLRs have interchangeable lenses. They can have an optical or electronic viewfinder. My newest Sony DSLR has an LCD viewfinder. It is technically an SLT not an SLR. The mirror is translucent (T) which allows light to the viewfinder and exposes the sensor at the same time without the mirror moving during the shot. There are many advantages to this that I will tell you about later. In all other aspects my camera is still a DSLR
    A DSLR with interchangeable lens provides you with almost total control over the image you want to capture. You can adjust the exposure of the shot. Exposure is a combination of the sensitivity of the sensor to light, the speed of the shutter, and the aperture or opening of the iris of the lens. These three things all work together.
    Exposure starts wit the ISO setting. ISO is also known as ASA or DIN. These acronyms are so old no one remembers what they stand for anymore. They are the acronyms of the original folks who set the standards for film. What does this have to do with digital photography? Digital photography still uses those standards. Those standards are used to determine how to set the camera to capture a correctly exposed image.
    The exposure process is a combination of three things…ISO number, which sets the sensitivity of the internal light meter, shutter speed, which determines how long the sensor is exposed to light, we are talking hundredths of seconds here, and the aperture setting or F-stop which determines how large or small the opening of the lens iris.
    A DSLR will set all the above for you automatically or you can decide for yourself. You do have control. You can set the camera for shutter priority meaning you choose the shutter speed; the camera sets the correct lens aperture or F-stop for you. You can reverse that and set the aperture yourself and the camera sets the shutter speed. The third choice, and it is the one that most photography instructors want their students to use, is full manual. You set it all using the camera’s meter.
    Let me give an example. The camera is set for an ISO of 200. The f-stop of the camera is set at 5.6; the shutter speed will be at 125 hundreds of a second. How do I know that? because the meter in my camera tells me. Now if I want to set it myself then there will be an indicator in the viewfinder to let me know when I have the correct exposure. Each manufacturer or camera has its own way of doing that. There might be a vertical or horizontal scale with an arrow or pointer that needs to be set on zero. Older film cameras used a ring and a needle… you adjusted the shutter and F-stop until the needle was in the ring and then take the shot.
    Typically film cameras had an ISO setting as low as 25 to as high as 6400 or more. These settings matched the speed of the film which was on the canister. For example: Kodak Kodachrome daylight film could have an ASA of 25. This was a great film for taking bright colored and very sharp slides in bright daylight. Kodak Ektachrome 400 was good for taking pictures in low light without a flash.
    The higher the ISO the less light you need to expose the picture. The lower the ISO setting the more light you need. So why not use a high ISO all the time? Well that sounds reasonable, but because of the way the other parts of the exposure process work the final picture may have results you don’t want.
    Film has an emulsion consisting of fine grains of silver halide salt particles suspended in a gelatin. These salts based on size determined the sensitivity of the film to light, the more sliver particles the less light, the less light the higher the ISO. The more particles the film contains the grainier the film. This translates to a grainer picture from the developed negative or slide. The bigger the picture the more noticeable this grain becomes. Digital photography experiences the same thing only the grain is called noise. The higher the ISO setting the less light you need but the noise, or digital grain, increases. Some cameras produce more noise at higher ISO than others. The older Sony A100 is noticeably noisier at ISO 400 than my newer A57 SLT.

    Now the question changes to: why use a higher ISO if it increases noise? The answer is because it increases the shutter speed as well.
    Why is that an advantage?
    Simple answer is that a faster shutter speed makes it easier to hold the camera steady and capture the shot. In other words, a faster shutter speed reduces or eliminates a thing called blur. With a fast shutter speed you can freeze your subject. You can catch a bird in flight; freeze a baseball pitcher's curve ball in the air. With a fast shutter speed you can take multiple pictures per second as you pan and follow a track star or a horse racing with its neck outstretched as it passes the winning post.

    A high ISO setting allows for hand held shooting in low light…to a point anyway. I love shooting in low light. I prefer the term available light. If the light is really low then your exposure setting could require a slow shutter speed and as I said that could make it hard to hold the camera steady during the exposure. One way to reduce camera movement is to hold it properly. Elbows tucked in against your body, left hand under the lens with palm up and cradling the lens. This type of hold also helps to keep your fingers from getting in the shot. Another way to reduce camera movement is to take advantage of DSLRs that have built in anti shake. Sony has named this function Steady Shot. Sony built this function into the camera body, some camera makers build it into the lens. I prefer Sony’s method because it reduces the size and weight of their lenses.

    The best way to avoid camera shake when shooting a long exposure is to use a monopod or even better a tripod. Both of these pieces of equipment are essential to the serious photographer.
    I think this is a good start to our online photography course. Next time I will discuss in further detail the relationship between lens settings and focus range also known as depth of field. Controlling DOF is a great advantage that DSLRs provide over the conventional point and shoot camera.
    Gramps.
    http://community.fmca.com/blog/62/entry-1382-depth-of-field/
    Lesson Two.
  7. -Gramps-

    Restless

    By -Gramps-,

    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 gamers, a FPS is a First Person Shooter. My restless nature may have been a large contributing factor that helped produce the mindset that led me to become a citizen of the RV community. I have always thought about places that I have not been to and places that I want to return to. I think about places that are anywhere except where I am at the moment. That has to be one of the reasons I bought a Motor Coach. What does a MOTOR coach do? It takes you to other places. My restless nature also contributed to the purchase of my motor coach lot. I love where it's located, near the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway is a road. What do roads do? They lead you to other places. I can take the coach down that road or some other road at a moments notice.
    Well sometimes I can do that. The reality is that I am still constrained by time, money and business responsibilities. But those things don't stop me from dreaming and planning and hoping.
    As I said, I have a restless nature. I am sure that I inherited it. My mother and father were the youngest of seven and six siblings respectively. My Mom was the only one of her family to move away. My Dad was one of two. Every other sibling stayed very close to the place where they were born. There is nothing wrong with that. I am still living just across the water from the city I was raised in. I am presently living in the city I was born in. There was a time I couldn't wait to get away from here and leave my parents behind. I did just that and then I moved back, close to my parent's home, but not too close. Then sometime later, my parents became somewhat restless living here so they moved away, back to where they came from and left me behind. They live in Lexington NC just north of Denton.
    Dad did manage to see a lot of the world long before they settled down here and then again in their cabin in the woods. My Mom saw some of it with him. The part she saw was inside the borders of this country; however she could not allow herself to travel with Dad overseas. The pull of family, and those country roads, was always too strong. The ties to Denton just would not stretch to Sicily or Manila or Barcelona.
    I wonder to this day what my life would be like if part of my childhood had been adventurously spent in Italy or somewhere. I wonder even more when I think about the places I have traveled to and the people I met there. Yes, I have had some opportunities to feed my restless adventure craving nature.
    I have been around the world in ten days. Diane and I have been on numerous cruises to many islands surrounded by a Caribbean blue sea. I have been to the west coast many times. Many years ago I met Danny Thomas, Ephram Zimablest Jr, Francis Ford Coppola. Many years ago I was friends with Kathy Lee Gifford before she became Kathy Lee Gifford. I used to work for Ted Turner before he became rich and famous. Diane and I worked for Jim and Tammy Bakker back when they first started and traveled with them over most of the Eastern half of the United States. I worked for Pat Robertson as a roaming news videographer. I have installed phone systems on merchant vessels in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. I have taken weapons classes just in case the ship I was on was attacked by pirates. Diane and I have been camping in our first coach during a terrible Cape Hatteras nor'easter. I have seen fall colors while driving the coach around Grandfather Mountain that are so gorgeous it made me want to shout. We have been to some great coach rallies. I have been to Disney World multiple times. I felt like a kid, and loved every minute of it. I have been awed by the Grand Canyon.
    All of these experiences, friendships and encounters now seem short and sweet.
    What it boils down to is that my restless nature, at times being transported by plane and now by coach, has driven me to collect a lifetime of experiences that constantly fly through my mind.
    When I am sitting in front of my computer and mulling all these memories I look out the window at my coach, and ask myself the same questions.
    The First question gets overridden by all the following ones.
    First One, how do I keep paying for that thing?
    The following ones: Where is that thing going to take me to next and who am I going to meet when I get there? When is the next time our coach is going to add to my collection of dreams, hopes and memories?
    I always hope it is soon.
    I think you might be starting to understand why I write so much about my past. My past, your past, each has so much to do with who we are, what we believe, what we hope for, and what we will become.
    I sometimes want to retire now, retire from the phone game and become a full timer, free to go pretty much where my coach can take me. Once I get there, if it doesn't work out the way I thought it would or if I just feel like it is time to leave, then I may just pack up the rig and go.
    That is what I would like to do, but I also inherited a sense of responsibility from my parents as well. I have to look after my family until all members can look after themselves. I have to be settled and stable. What I want to do, when I can do it, and what I have to be now seems so far apart. I don't want to give up, but there are times I think the distance between responsible reality and my dreams is so great that it might drive me crazy.
    Do you understand what I am trying to say? Do you understand how your past pushes you to dream for something better only to find that it may be slipping away? You may have to let go of it because it is the responsible thing to do.
    I am quite sure that my Parents know exactly what I mean.
    How is that for a lead in to the rest of my story?
  8. -Gramps-
    This lesson is a continuation of using your eyes and your imagination.
    One of the volumes in my Time Life library of photography is called The Great Themes. These photography themes include The Human Condition (life as the camera sees it) War, Nature, Portraits, The Nude, and finally Still Life.
    I have captured a lot of nature shots. I have taken pictures of many humans including ones in love, sad, happy and just arrived in the world.
    I have not dedicated much time or effort to becoming a better formal portrait photographer. It is on my list to improve that skill.
    The Nude or figure study as it is sometimes called, has been a subject for art for as long as the human form has existed I bet. However it creates such a mix of attitudes and taboos that I have confined my eye behind the lens to pictures of my children when they were very, very young. You know the kind of image I am talking about, the standard bathtub shot that mortifies your now adult son or daughter when the image pops up in the middle of a family slide show to a chorus of DAD!....I can't believe you are showing that! I come back with a response of Look how cute she was. I will not be posting any of those shots here, not if I want any of my kids to keep speaking to me.
    I think some of these themes will make for new and interesting lessons.
    Lets talk about shooting things when they are still.
    This is a very challenging form of photography. I find the thought process that goes into picturing things to be at times difficult but at times satisfying when the final product looks, well, good, to me anyway. A still life takes time to design before the shot is taken. There is the object or objects to consider, the lighting, the angle, and the story that you want to convey. You might create the design or be someplace and find it already there in front of you.
    There are no hard and fast rules when creating a still life, except for the obvious one, the subject must be still! The image can be of objects you arranged, such as the common bowl of fruit. The image can be a form, a shadow, a light. The pictures don't always have to be good, all of mine certainly are not, but that is not the most important thing. The important thing is to try.
    Shooting still life pictures is a great exercise that uses a lot of what I have tried to pass on to you.
    I do have a suggestion. A tripod is a very helpful piece of equipment to own when making a still life image. Long exposures are common when shooting still life images, especially when using available light. I used a tripod when taking one of the following pictures, can you guess which one that is?
    Let us look at a few images.

    The below picture of the Chrysler Museum (a wing no longer there) won third place in the open category of the first photo contest I entered many years ago. The contest was sponsored by the Portsmouth Parks and Recreation Dept in partnership with local camera retailers.


    This picture won third place in the still life category. I was told by one of the judges it would have won first place and been up for best in show if not for one thing the panel of judges did not like. That one thing is not in this picture because I edited it. I will show you the original image at some point.
    I shot the next picture at a large flea market. I walked around for hours fighting with a malfunctioning camera but managed to take one picture that I rather liked.


    This dining room was just as I found it. The light was from one window, as is the next picture shot in the kitchen just off the dining room. It was a very small area. The picture was shot with a 24mm lens mounted on my 35mm film camera. My question for you is: What focal length would I use if I shot this picture with my APS-C camera and kept the same angle of view?

    I gave a lot of thought to the next picture...I shot it on a light table with my camera positioned directly above the image, It never came out exactly the way I visioned it. I think it would have been better if the background was not textured. What do you think? Oh, the answer for the question I asked above is 16mm.


    Just a simple image that conveys a message about time. I shot it using available light and hand held it as well.
    The next shot is very simple, just apples, but for some reason people like it. I should mention that that I shot it in the horizontal format. The blog uploading program likes it the other way. I find that interesting.

    I said that there were no hard and fast rules for creating a still life image...so one can be whimsical don't you agree?

    Last is the original image of my Third Place still life. It is really neat what one can do with a good photo editing software program. Check the comments at the bottom of this blog.
    By the way, I used a tripod when shooting the "bowl of fruit."
    Now I would like to make a personal observation. I have only received one response from viewers who are members of this site. That is a bit disappointing. I was hoping for a lot more than that! I was hoping for a number of reasons. One, a blog is a bit of work (Tom and Mike would agree I am sure!) and one likes to have one's work appreciated; that is just a vanity thing. Second, I would really like to know if I am encouraging people to take better pictures, just as I am my daughter (Christine does read this blog). Third, I was hoping to have a kind of simple photo contest. Maybe that is wishing for too much. Still, I have had fun creating these blog entries and there might be some more.
    Thanks!
    Gramps.
  9. -Gramps-
    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 better than before I started. I realize now, that at my age, if I don't have the energy to get something done, if I can't make myself get up and start moving just because I don't feel good, then I am in trouble. I can't work only when I feel like it.
    Motor coaching is like that as well.
    I might as well leave the coach in the driveway if the only time I am going to take it out is when conditions are perfect. Not every trip can be to Disney World. Sometimes you just have to start it up and go somewhere! You never know what you might find when you get there. That's one of the reasons we took the trip to Indiana. We wanted to go get our coach repaired but we also wanted to go where we would see something new. We wanted to have a bit of an adventure.
    Pilgrimage to Elkhart, Day 3 and Day 4: The Reason for Going.
    Sunday morning found us all up and about quite early. It was our last leg. We had about a six hour journey to the ESC campground. We planned our exit out of the Clearwater RV camp and back to I-77. Not far to the north we would be leaving the interstate and then heading due west on the Ohio Turnpike.
    We made a big loop in the campground headed up to exit, drove the up and down road back to the Interstate. Within minutes we were at a cruising speed of 62 miles per hour.
    We didn't stop until we reached the Erie Isle rest stop near the Indiana state line. I found the view out the windshield to be quite nice. It had been a long time since I visited Ohio and the same for Indiana. I had spent quite a bit of time in Cincinnati when I worked for AT&T but I saw very little of the state, from the ground anyway.
    Diane and I, back in the seventies, when we were working for PTL, made a long bus trip from Charlotte, through West Virginia to Canton Ohio for a telethon.
    Tammy Bakker and some of the PTL wives, including my own, were seated in the back of the bus. They were laughing and chatting quite loudly about something. I took a walk back there and sat down. Tammy had a stack of National Inquirers on the seat next to her and all the girls were looking over the headlines. The paper had typical stuff about three headed babies, UFO sightings, celebrity wives cheating on husbands and vice versa. Tammy laughed and said wouldn't it be a hoot to be on the cover?
    I don't know if I said it then, but one should always be careful what one wishes for.
    Now, many years later, we were traveling through Ohio in our own bus so to speak. It is a pretty state. Big corn fields, horse farms with rolling hills and white fences. I found it to be a most pleasant drive.
    Shortly after passing the Sandusky exit we came to the Eerie Isle rest stop. It was an interesting place with a neat visitor center, a Starbucks, a food court and a good size gift shop with lots of Cleveland Indians merchandise. We spent a bit of time there, and after we let Nickolas stretch his legs we hit the road again.
    The tolls on the Ohio Turnpike are a bit steep, twenty five bucks one way. The good thing is you take a ticket when you get on and pay once, when you get off. We paid at the Indiana state line. From the toll we had sixty more miles to our Elkhart exit.
    An hour later we were exiting off the Indiana Turnpike, paying another toll, ten bucks this time, and driving the main business route to our final stop. We passed some rv factories along the way, along with some transport holding lots. In other words we saw a lot of towables and quite a few coaches. We also drove by the RV Hall of Fame. We knew we were coming back there in a couple of days.
    Soon we pulled into the ESC compound. There were two large buildings with a lot of bays all of them closed on Sunday of course; we drove past them to a gravel campground located behind the second building. Gary and I picked a spot. We both leveled our coaches and then Gary discovered that there was no water or power. Not good. I suspected that the campground was still winterized. We did some walking around and discovered the main power breakers were turned off. We turned them on and we had power but still no water.
    We decided that what water we had in our tanks was best reserved for flushing; not washing dishes, so dinner at Cracker Barrel seemed like a good idea. We passed one on the way in, so it was easy to find our way back.
    I ordered some kind of Southern Boiled Dinner with shrimp, red skin potatoes, corn on the cob and sausage that was really good. I don't remember what everyone else had. After dinner we browsed the country store for awhile and then headed back.
    I think I was in a bit of a daze now that we were finally in Elkhart. What's the big deal about being there? Well, we had tried two times before to make the trip and things just didn't work out. It also didn't work out for us to go to the Monaco Service center at Wildwood Florida either. We were just a few days away from making the trip when Monaco called and cancelled on us. They were just a few days from declaring bankruptcy and laying everyone off. This meant that for two years, Diane and I had been trying, unsuccessfully, to repair our coach problems. The first week we owned it we took it to a dealer where is sat for four weeks and nothing was fixed. I could tell you how bad that experience was but I won't. We also took it numerous times to independent service facilities, where some good techs tired to fix the slide out problems but they, at the most, had some temporary success. I had also tried to fix it myself, but as much as I hate to admit it, I think that only made it worse.
    So, I was now going to get factory service. Although, based on telephone support from the techs I had every reason to think that the problems would be resolved I still was anxious. I hoped to not have any unpleasant surprises and/or disappointments.
    Gary and I both piddled around our coaches, looking through all the basements, checking the roofs, looking for anything and everything that we wanted the guys to fix, modify or repair. We each made a list and then compared and discussed what on the list we would actually get done and what we guessed it might cost. Our lists had a number of things in common:
    We both needed our main slide out cables replaced and adjusted. Gary needed work done on his bedroom slide out as well.
    We both needed repair of our fresh water tanks (mine leaked due to the overflow plumbing missing; Gary's sagged due to a support strut missing.)
    I wanted my coach roof inspected and resealed where necessary.
    Gary needed his shower door to be adjusted so it wouldn't bounce out of its track while traveling down the road.
    We both had front door locking arm problems. They locked when we didn't want them to and wouldn't when we needed them to. In other words they were a pain.
    I had holes in my bathroom vinyl floor that Diane wanted fixed. I told her I thought only one was all that bad, but more about that later.
    I needed some interior work done on the facade covering the main slide out motor and chains. Gary needed the same but he left the facades back home in his garage.
    Gary had a rear basement door that was coming loose from the coach.
    Gary also had a wiper park failure alarm that remained constantly on his dash instrument panel.
    We both wanted our coach chassis lubed and I wanted an oil change as well.
    I needed some touch up paint mixed up. A small item but nice to have when you need it.
    We both wanted our auto levelers recalibrated. When Gary auto leveled his coach, the front end would end up ten inches off the ground. My coach auto jacks would take the back end off the ground and that rendered the parking brake useless.
    While Gary and I were comparing notes and just wondering around our coaches a Forest River Wildcat fifth wheel pulled into the campground. It looked new and it had Quebec plates. A gentleman exited his pickup and started hooking up the fiver. We helped him find a hot pedestal. Not all of them were working. Gary and I could never figure out why that was, but I tried cause I love a good electronic mystery.
    I don't remember the gentleman from Canada's name. I am terrible with names. I am fortunate to remember the names of my own kids. But I remember faces and conversations and he had a very friendly face and we had a good conversation with him. He had been traveling with a group, a caravan as it were, to Mexico. He left the group to come back to Elkhart, where he bought the trailer, to have some paperwork cleared up so he could take the fiver across the border back into Canada. That part of his story was interesting if you like hearing about the pains of dealing with government bureaucracies, but the real story was why he purchased this slightly used Wildcat in the first place.
    It seems that the original brand new Wildcat that he left Canada with had a couple of unfortunate accidents. One, he blew a tire that ruined a wheel. The replacement wheel was not installed correctly so he lost it and that ruined the wheel well and tore up the side of the trailer at the same time. He had to leave the caravan to Mexico in order to take care of that problem. I think he said he got it fixed in Elkhart and then left for Mexico on his own where he planned to rejoin his group somewhere in Texas.
    He made it as far as West Indianapolis where due to a wrong turn and some bad directions, he found himself, at night, going down a very dark road where he passed under a barely viewable old bridge that was about a foot lower than the top of the fifth wheel. Well, I think you get the picture. The bridge grabbed the rubber and peeled it back, along with his fan vents and air conditioners. The roof just rolled itself up like a big "rubber burrito".
    After calls to the police to explain why this rv was blocking traffic, and some roadside assistance, he extracted the coach from the bridge's jaws and took it back to Elkhart. There, he discovered, it was a total loss. But there was a happy ending; he was able to purchase a used Wildcat that was an upgrade from his new one and still make it to Mexico where his thirty day temporary tag expired thus causing his Canadian Customs problems with his paperwork.
    Like most experienced rvers, our new friend from Canada made this story sound humorous while describing his troubles towing a big rig, he used the phrase, "Things can happen, you know and they are not always good." I have used that phrase myself a time or two, but his accent is much better than mine.
    After hearing this adventure, we realized it was starting to get really cold outside so we called it a night. I guess I may have gone inside and read for awhile or watched TV. I don't know. I remember hearing a lot of trailers being towed past us to the transport company holding lot next door. I think that noise went on until about eleven that night.
    Day 4
    I was up around seven buttoning up the coach. Around seven thirty, I was standing just inside of Gary's door when I saw a person with a clipboard heading our way. I learned that his name was Walt and he was the tech in charge of taking care of Gary's UFO. I left Walt to talk with Gary and as I was heading back to my coach, Roger, the tech in charge of my coach was waiting for me.
    Roger, a really nice guy, was wearing a Monaco jacket. I found out that he, like most of the techs at Elkhart Service and Collision, had worked for Monaco/Holiday Rambler before it went under. They were quite familiar with our coaches. They would be taking care of our list while offering any needed assistance to the techs from BAL who would be working on our slide outs. The BAL techs had arrived at the shop at seven that morning very anxious to get started.
    That was one of the best things about this whole experience. Working with techs who wanted to work and get things fixed as fast as possible and more importantly get it fixed right. I know that sounds simple, "get it fixed right". I sure knew what it was like to have things fixed wrong.
    Just at seven forty five our coaches were parked side by side inside two big service bays. We all watched them pull in and the doors went down. Now we had to figure out how to keep ourselves entertained for the next eight hours.
    We decided to visit the local Amish farm market for a big breakfast and then head over to the outlets in Michigan City. This was going to be a shopping day. I was not in a big spending mood but hey you never know what you might find. My mood could change.
    It didn't. At eight twenty we were sitting in the farm market parking lot. The place was not open until the weekend so we were trying to decide where to go for breakfast. Before we could make a decision my phone started to ring and I spent the next sixty five minutes trying to solve multiple emergencies back home. It was crazy. I told Diane she would have to drive.
    We went to a convenience store for gas. Diane had to pump it herself. She went in for coffee. I walked in and told her I was driving back to the coach to get my cell phone charger. She didn't look too pleased. We informed Gary and Janis where we were going. They said they would wait there until we got back. We drove to the coach and I made a mad dash inside the service center to get my charger. There were techs all over our two coaches, like ants at a picnic. I could see a tech in the overhead of Gary's slide out (or was it mine?) and they were in the bays as well. It was very obvious these people don't mess around.
    I had just a second to meet JD the manager and then it was back to my car. As soon as I sat down and plugged in my cell, two calls hit me at the same time.
    I hardly noticed the scenery as Diane followed Gary to Michigan City. We finally made it and found a breakfast place that served really good skillets. I ate mine without interruption and we walked over to the outlets. Just as we walked into the first store my second round of calls began. I was on the phone for another two hours and then I had to listen to the low battery beep again until we had enough of shopping and went back to the car.
    I wish I could have a real vacation. I have forgotten what one of them is like, one with no business phone calls or other interruptions. I can only hope to have a few of them again one day.
    At three thirty we were turning down the road to the shop. As we approached the campground we saw both our coaches parked in their spots, with power hooked up, jacks down and all slides out. That was a sight. I entered the coach and immediately tried the main slide out. It moved in and out like a dream. It was enough to make a grown man cry. No, I didn't really cry, but I sure was happy to see that slide out flush against the living room wall for the first time.
    I checked the bathroom floor and I could not tell where the repair was, it looked perfect. Diane took a look and said "What about that tear? I think we should get them to fix that too."
    I had told Roger to fix the worst spot in the floor, but now the remaining hole looked really bad so I had no problem with Diane's request.
    I hopped out of the coach to see how Gary had made out. He looked pretty pleased, so I suspected his slide outs were working rather well. He told me that the techs had not quite finished yet with the bedroom and he also pointed out that both of us needed new sweeps and gaskets and that had not been done yet either. All that meant was they needed at least another day, and that was quite okay with both of us.
    "Let's take a look at your water tank" Gary said. So we did. There was now an overflow tube right were it was supposed to be. No more water flowing into my basement while going down the road. We checked out Gary's tank and could see a new welded stainless steel support where one was missing before. It looked really good.
    Gary informed me that his auto levelers now worked like a charm. I informed him that I forget to tell Roger to adjust mine. That would go on tomorrow's list.
    Both Gary and I were feeling as much like kids at Christmas that two guys in their fifties can. I hope that most of my coach friends can relate to how two years of coach issues can affect one's relationship with one's coach. If you can relate then you must know how good it felt to see these long going problems resolved. Not just fixed but fixed by people who really know and care about what they are doing. That is so rare these days to have that happen.
    Diane called me in for some leftovers that we brought from home. I wasn't all that hungry, but I figured I had to eat something and why not have a Woodchuck cider to celebrate our first day's good results? First though we took the coach to fill up the water tank. It was a pleasure to work the slides again, unplug the coach, get some water and then set back up. It took about thirty minutes to do and while the tank was filling I talked to Walt and Roger and told them what a great job they had done so far.
    Then it was quick dinner of something, I can't remember what, oh it was meatloaf and sweet potatoes. We watched the first half of Dances with Wolves and pretty soon it was time to call it a night.
    Even with all the phone calls it had been a very good day.
  10. -Gramps-
    Last Saturday I roasted two 17-pound Honeysuckle White All Natural Turkeys to provide the main course for 30 people. The event was an open house at Deer Creek Motorcoach and Golf Resort that my wife and I are now the latest residents of here in Galax, Va. We had six coaches visiting and I wanted to make a fine impression. So after a quick morning round of golf with some of our guests, I started on the evening meal.
    I cooked one bird in an aluminum roasting pan on a large hooded gas grill over indirect heat (flame on one side of the grill) with a packet of Jack Daniel's white oak wood chips over the flame. The second bird went into a Rival electric smoker/roaster with the same chips and white wine in a water tray. I started the second bird an hour before the first because I intended to slow smoke it for almost eight hours. Both birds were stuffed with onion quarters and lots of celery and covered with olive oil and Montreal Chicken Seasoning.
    I started around 10 o'clock in the morning with the first bird. The second around 11 o'clock. I made a mistake with the bird on the grill. I should have put it in the middle of the grill, not on one end like I would do with my Char Griller. I caught my mistake in time to rotate the bird and even out the cooking.
    The second bird came off the grill when the breast meat reached 175 degrees and still very moist. I let it sit for about 30 minutes. The dark meat inside the pan was not quite done yet. Diane and I then carved the bird up and put the legs and thighs back on the grill for about 10 minutes over high heat until they were just right. Then the wife and I finished slicing it up and keeping all the meat warm in a Crock-Pot.
    Next, it was time to take the first bird off the grill. This one was really good, almost steamed in the white wine and smoked at the same time. The skin didn't get crispy as much as the one on the grill, but that didn't matter considering the taste. The breast meat was so tender you could cut it with a spoon. And what a good taste it had -- a hint of smoke and a hint of wine flavor.
    Both turkeys went fast along with all the other goodies provided by the residents and guests: baked white beans with sausage, two kinds of scalloped potatoes, sweet potato salad, cranberry chutney, broccoli salad, baked zuchinni casserole, stuffing, sourdough bread, peach cobbler, pumpkin pie with whipped cream and all kinds of cookies. Oh, and we had live bluegrass music, to boot. The evening was a hit.
    Its now a few days later, Tuesday as a matter of fact.
    Now comes the sad part of this story. We took the carcasses of those happy birds, along with the wings and giblets, and cooked them in a very large stew pot on the side burner of the gas grill for hours. Into the pot went celery, onions, lots of fresh garlic and more Montreal Chicken spices.
    It was a windy day and after about six hours you could smell this concoction all over the resort and the golf course. It was maddening. Everyone wanted to know when it would be ready. About 90 minutes before dinnertime, I took the pot off the grill, and took it into the stoveless kitchenette in our clubhouse. Diane picked the meat off the bones and put it back in the pot. Then we moved it to the gas stove inside our coach. The wind was getting a bit strong and I didn't want to fight with a burner going out just before this stuff needed to be done. We planned to add carrots, a bit more onion, green beans, tomato and celery along with rice to this rich broth.
    We took the Corian cover off of our stove and propped it up on the back of the stove like normal. Almost. Diane turned it around backward, so it didn't fit exactly where it belonged. Then she needed to leave the coach for a minute. She shut the door hard, and the Corian cover slipped and caught the pot just under the bottom. Off the stove the pot went.
    The noise the cover made forced me to turn around in time to see this great big pot of soup fly across my coach. I tried to catch it but all I could do was grab a handle just after it hit the floor on its side. Turkey soup everywhere!
    My dog was lapping liquid as fast as he could get his tongue to move. Diane heard the pot crash, so she rushed back in to see the disaster -- the carpet getting soaked, turkey broth rushing toward the front of the coach, and my mom desperately pulling up the area rug.
    Well, we cleaned it up while my parents, who were visiting us, drove to the store to purchase some good old-fashioned burger fixin's as a quick substitute for what would have been some mighty fine turkey soup.
    The incident at the time seemed pretty bad, but it did make for some funny dinner conversation.
    Didn't I post a rule about having to be patient because things can go wrong?
    To add to my rule number 4:
    Sham Wows do work.
    Awning Cleaner also cleans carpet really well.
    If you find that new coach smell to be a bit overpowering, you can cure it with 2 gallons of turkey soup!
  11. -Gramps-
    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 warm, so that the batteries and the tanks and the water heater won't freeze. I have been successful so far, although I think I may have a damaged ice maker solenoid. I forgot to disconnect the water supply line and let everything drain. It's not a big deal; we don't use the ice anyway.
    I suppose I could write another chapter about my past Christmases. Seeing all this snow makes me think of that time of the year, even though it's the last day of January. Why not go ahead and tell you about one of them? It might do us both some good. It's a Christmas that I love to remember, the events leading up to it ... well, not so much.
    Christmas 1968 was the end of a very rough time for my family. That rough time started some 18 months earlier.
    In February 1967 my father, George Clayton Parker, at the rank of AMHI (for you non-military folks, that translates to Aviation Metal Smith first class), retired from the Navy. He had a distinguished career that spanned twenty one and a half years starting in July 1946. A few days after his 18th birthday, he enlisted.
    Just months after the official end of World War II, my father, then a member of the Military Police, soon found himself in the Philippines as part of a combined service task force whose assignment was finding and apprehending Japanese soldiers hiding in the mountains around Manila. He also had to do the same in Guam. These desperate men had either refused, or in many cases didn't know how, to surrender. This was a dirty and potentially a very dangerous job with no glory attached to it at all. Like many vets of the War, he has never talked at any great length about that time.
    My dad's last position in the Navy was as a career counselor, and his job, ironically enough, was to try to keep people in the Navy. The Navy couldn't keep him. Our family was growing faster than his military paycheck could keep up with, and Dad came to the painful conclusion that he could support his family only if he became a civilian.
    That wasn't all of it, though. My mom wanted to move back to Denton, North Carolina, to be closer to her father. To that end, Mom and Dad purchased four acres of land from my grandfather for a very low price. The plan was to move in with Papa, and live there while Dad and my Uncle Hubert, who was in the home construction business, built our family dream home.
    It was not a bad plan, I suppose. Dad could find a job in the area. There were many booming textile factories in Salisbury and other towns around Denton. All of us would pitch in to clear our new property and start building. At the same time, my mom would be near her dad and the rest of her clan. My brother and I would attend school in Denton. My sisters, too young to attend school, would have all kinds of female cousins and aunts to fawn over them. When summer came my brother and I would be living on a farm with mountains and lakes and cousins close by. It would be one big vacation! Or so we thought.
    I remember the day my dad retired. The ceremony started at 7 a.m. and took place inside the enlisted men's gym. I sat nervously on a hard chair, with my hands under my backside because they were shaking so hard. I watched my dad, wearing his starched Dixie cup hat and in his crisp Navy Blue dress uniform, with lots of gold hash marks on the sleeves, walk between the ranks of Navy Men also in their dress blues. He was making a final inspection, a privilege usually granted to retiring officers. My dad, however, had an exceptional career and was given a retirement ceremony that recognized his service. Before the inspection a Navy band played the National Anthem and the Navy Hymn. The Commanding Officer of the Norfolk Naval Air Station made some complimentary remarks; my dad, at times choking back tears, said some farewell words.
    He finished his inspection, was piped out of the building and his days as a sailor were over.
    I was no longer a Navy brat with trips to the base theater, the bowling alley, the exchange and all the other perks that I took for granted. It was now time to go to our no-longer home, pack up our lives into various-size boxes, rent the house to strangers, then say a lot of goodbyes, and head to a small town where everybody knows everybody else.
    My grandfather's house was a two-bedroom place with a large glassed-in front porch, a dining room, formal living room, den and an enclosed back porch. It was built long before indoor plumbing was in style and so the bathroom was an ad-on that you got to by way of the back porch. The house was heated by an oil circulator in the den and there was also a potbellied wood stove sitting on a stone slab on the front porch. I would get to know that stove very well.
    We moved in during a bitter cold spell sometime around Valentine's Day 1967. My sisters shared a bedroom with my parents. Rod, my younger brother, and I, we moved into the enclosed front porch.
    The porch was divided by a curtain to give Rod and me some privacy. We had a couple of twin beds with electric blankets, a desk, and some shelves. Underneath the shelves we fastened some iron pipes to hang our clothes. We also had a chest of drawers and on top of that our own television set. It was black and white, of course. The antenna was attached to a 10-foot pole just outside one of the porch windows. One of us would go out there and stand on an overturned wash tub so we could see the television. Then we would turn the pole until we got a picture that was viewable. We did this every time we changed the channel. It's a good thing that there was only two or three of them.
    I remember twisting that pole on Friday nights, so that Emma Peele of the Avengers could be viewed without being in a blizzard of electronic snow. We twisted it on Saturday mornings in order to watch the Three Stooges. There were times when my fingers froze to that pole. There would be other times when it was too hot to touch.
    It was quite an adjustment to learn how to live in the dead of winter in a porch room heated by a wood-burning stove that went out in the middle of the night. Having no heat was not good. Some of our first nights, the temperature dropped down into the low teens.
    I liked to shower before bedtime (my grandfather didn't have a tub) and many a night I would wake up with my hair frozen to my pillow. Rod wrapped himself up in his electric blanket. In the moonlight shining through the windows, it looked like a white body bag in the bed next to mine.
    Not long after we moved in, Mom took us in to town to register us for school. Denton had one elementary school, one junior high, middle school as it is called now, and one high school. So we knew where we would be going, it was the same school my mother attended, her brother and sisters, and most of my cousins. We would be riding on the bus with one of our first cousins and a distant cousin was the driver. The bus picked us up in front of my grandfather's gas station and country store at seven am on the dot. Rod and I were the first ones on the bus and the last ones to get off. It took one hour to get to our destination.
    The day Mom registered us we took the car into town. That took only twenty five minutes. The principal was in charge of all three schools and he had been there forever. My mom told me that Principal Harper (not his real name) was known, without affection, as The Frog.
    Everyone in the school office knew us, and knew we were going to register that morning. I think they knew it before I did. That is just the way it was in that town. As a matter of fact, later that summer my parents planned a trip to Expo 67 in Canada. They wanted to surprise my brother and me, but the surprise was spoiled by the local barber, who told me about the trip while cutting my hair. How he learned about it is still a mystery.
    Let me get back to my story. Mom registered us without a hitch and just before we were to go to our new classes Mr. Harper commented on how we would like our school here more than the big city schools we had moved away from.
    "Why is that?" I asked.
    Mr. Harper's response was totally unexpected.
    "Because young man," he said with a smile, "we have no coloreds here in our school."
    I didn't know what to think about that. I was a Navy brat. My former school was mostly Navy kids, so it was integrated. My family had lived in Navy housing, it was integrated. Our church was integrated. My dad's second floor Navy office was integrated, so was the enlisted men's club that was on the first floor. The Navy exchange and the Marine exchange, the theater, the commissary, all of these were integrated. I knew about people being separated by rank. The house in Norfolk we just left was in a neighborhood of homes owned by mostly Navy officers. I went to school with their kids, but I had never been in the officer's mess or in the officer's club. I was used to that but this statement by the principal didn't seem right to me. Not right at all.
    I looked up at my Mom.
    Something seemed to come over her. She lifted her chin up, stood up straight and looked the principal right in the eye. In her best "you better listen to your Momma" voice, she responded.
    "Mr. Harper, I have no choice, I have to enroll my boys in your school, so I am going to ignore that remark and I will hope that in spite of the fact that there are, as you so proudly put it, no coloreds here, that my boys will still manage to get a decent education."
    She grabbed both our hands and jerked us toward the door.
    "Now would you be so kind as to let me take my boys to class."
    Mr. Harper's mouth flopped open and his eyes bugged out. I knew then why they called him The Frog.
    Once outside Mom started walking so fast toward the Junior High School across the street, that she pulled Rod off his feet. As she was helping him back upright I said to her:
    "Way to go Mom, you sure let The Frog have it!"
    She turned and glared at me. I had seen that look before. That look could kill flies in mid air. "Mr Harper is still your principal and don't you ever forget that, do you hear me?"
    "Yes, maam," I answered meekly. "I hear you."
    "Okay, now let's go to class."
    It seemed like the best thing to do. I had a lot to learn. As it turned out, we all did.
  12. -Gramps-

    A Quick Weekend

    By -Gramps-,

    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 that night, we moved back to the sitting area in the bedroom. The boys curled up on the bed, and I took a chair and read to them.
    We have been reading "The Magician's Nephew." It is book one or book six, depending on which release of the set of books, of the Chronicles of Narnia. After a few pages of Uncle Andrew's Troubles we decided to watch a movie. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. My wife loves the movie and the boys seemed to like it as well. While the movie was playing, I snuck back to the bedroom, sat down in one of the rockers and put up my feet and opened a Clive Cussler novel. I needed some time to myself.
    It had been a rough morning. It seems that I can have a slow week, but the day we plan on leaving in the rig for anywhere, some phone system decides to go down for some reason. On this particular morning a major medical practice had trouble due to an expiring Internet IP address. This is not an easy problem to fix, so I figured it would take all day and our trip was going to evaporate. However, Diane decided that I would resolve the problem with time to spare, so she packed up the coach by herself while I drove nine miles away to the site. She was right. I was home by 1 p.m. We finished loading the coach with enough food and clothes for a weekend, pulled the coach out and hooked up the tow. The only thing left was for the boys to be dropped off by their Mom.
    The boys were on the pull-out bed while the movie played and so by the time it was over, they were out for the night. Tomorrow would be a Saturday with no emergency phone calls. I hoped so, anyway.
    Saturday morning began with plenty of sunshine. We ate a quick breakfast of cereal for the kids, cottage cheese and pineapple for Diane and me. Our dog, Nickolas, figured that he would be left alone for the morning to guard the coach, so he decided to sulk and not eat his breakfast. Hey, you can't please everyone!
    After breakfast we took a brisk walk around the campground, dog and all. After that we secured the pup in the coach, locked up and took the car to the Virginia Aquarium to catch the 11:15 showing of Disney's A Christmas Carol 3d Imax film. We planned to get there early enough to buy good seats.
    The aquarium was only 10 minutes away. We got there and found out that the first show was not full and we also had time to visit part of the aquarium, see the film and then see the rest of the facility. Sounded like a plan to me.
    So we watched the fishies swimming around, observed a SCUBA diving demonstration and then headed for the movie.
    I love wearing those goofy 3D glasses over my glasses. A Christmas Carol was, or should I say is, a really good film. Jim Carrey wonderfully plays Scrooge and all three Christmas Spirits. The 3D effects are mesmerizing. In other words, I highly recommend this movie. It should really put you into the holiday spirit unless you are a pre-converted Scrooge.
    After the movie we picked up where we left off in the museum/aquarium. We visited the aviary, just in time for the feeding of the birds with lots of dead mice, crickets, squid and all kinds of other appetizing things. We watched the otters for awhile, then walked back to the parking lot and drove back to the campground.
    At this point I needed to get ready for the event of the day. The official chili cookoff was set for 6:30 that very evening. It was four o'clock by the time we got back from the aquarium, so I need to get to work. I knew that there were about 11 entries and I planned to win this thing. Diane won the last time we were at this campground. As a matter of fact we were using the two free nights that were her prize for being the only one who entered the contest! Hey, a win is a win in my book. This time though, it was going to be a bit harder.
    I think I make a really good chili. It has a bit of a kick to it. My special ingredient is a bottle of lime and salt beer. There are a number of different kinds and I use what I can find at the time. I also use red, orange and yellow peppers along with lots of chili powder, black pepper and some other spices that, well, are my secret. Also, I add frozen corn for color and a bit of texture to go along with the kidney and black beans.
    Around 6 p.m. we headed over to the dining room where the contest was taking place. There were supposed to be 12 entries, but two were no-shows. I was number 11. The judges started taking small samples of each starting with number one. After they finished, the rest of us lined up and hit the Crock-Pots. I went for a white bean and chicken chili that tasted more like chicken soup with white beans. Two entries were made with cubed beef instead of ground. Both tasted like beef stew. No kick. As a matter of fact, the only one out of the five I tasted that had any spice to it was mine.
    So I was a somewhat surprised when the two blandest entries, that didn't even taste like chili, won first and second place. I have entered four or five cooking contests now and I cannot figure out what these judges are thinking or tasting. It must not have been the same thing I ate! Well, my grandkids, Diane, and the people running the event said mine was the best, so that's good enough for me. Plus, the boys really enjoyed themselves filling up on chili and bread, cheese and sour cream.
    We headed back to the coach and since we were kind of in a food mood, we stuck Ratatouille in the DVD player. That movie was also a lot of fun. You really can't beat a good Pixar film.
    Once again we timed it good. The movie ended and so did the boys. The next morning we had a quick breakfast and went and played a game of miniature golf. That was fun for all involved even though some of the holes were almost impossible to play. Afterward we packed up after meeting our camping neighbors, who toured our coach. By 2 it was time to leave.
    Our trip home was short and uneventful. We pulled into the driveway and unpacked the coach. It was a quick weekend, but sometimes those can be really good. By the way, the boys are named Carson and Austen. Two good kids. I think you would like them.
  13. -Gramps-
    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 above. (Yes, I can be a bit self-absorbed, at times.)
    So with those directions in mind I have written the first chapter of a novella or novelette. A novella is defined as a written, fictional prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The novella has a word count of between 17,500 words and 40,000 words. A novelette has between 7,500 words and 17,499 words.
    So it remains to be seen what this will be. I don’t know where this work will take me, or us, because you the reader will be on this journey with me. I will try to make it enjoyable for us both, but I will need something from you. Your input is necessary. So please comment. If you don’t I will not know if my work is going to make you want to travel further on.
    Thanks.
    Gramps
    MORTALITY: Chapter One
    "It's a funny old world, a man's lucky if he gets out of it alive."
    -- W.C. Fields
    If the sun is shining through my motor coach bedroom skylight, wherever the location or whatever the time zone that happens to be at the time, I have the ability to always wake at exactly 7 a.m. If there is no sunlight shining into my bedroom, then I wake at exactly 7:30. I know because I always verify the time on my glowing blue-green cheap Timex watch. My wife used to tell me the time by pressing a button on her alarm clock and it would shine a red light with the time on the ceiling. But that doesn't happen now because that side of the bed is empty and cold.
    It is now morning and, like most mornings, I can hear my son Jonah moving around in the living area of our motor coach. He has already folded up the air mattress bed back into the couch. I can hear him pouring fresh water into the dog's bowl as he talks to Alexander, my elderly Cockapoo. That is a terrible name for a breed of dog. I prefer Spoodle as a better moniker.
    Alexander sleeps on the fold-out bed with Jonah. The dog doesn't seem to like the foot of my bed anymore, now that he realizes he has his choice of humans to curl up next to. Of course, my recent bout of restless leg syndrome, which causes him to fly off the bed in the middle of the night, may have influenced his decision to change his sleeping arrangements.
    "Dad, are you moving around in there? I taste waffles already"
    "Yes, I am getting up,". I answer as I crawl out of bed and slip on a pair of Tommy Jeans that has been neatly hanging on the back of one of the bedroom chairs all night. I pull on a long-sleeve green T-shirt that says "Outer Banks" on the front, slip my feet into some worn-out Topsiders and then hit the head.
    As I said, this morning is like so many mornings. We keep to certain rituals, with some variations. If there is coffee available in the office of the campground we are staying at, we grab our own mugs -- I can't stand Styrofoam cups -- and we walk over to procure some. If there isn't any coffee we make our own. If there is breakfast available, we make every effort to be there. This morning, like the last five mornings since we arrived here in the Smithfield North Carolina KOA, we are going to make our own waffles. The office has easy-to-use waffle makers, waffle ingredients of course, and real Mrs. Butter-Worth's syrup to go with them. None of that fake Mrs. Butter-Worth's will do.
    Jonah, who just finished feeding Alex his morning breakfast of the same little brown nuggets of nutrition he gets every morning, hands me my jacket.
    "Dad," he says as he glances down at my feet. "There is still snow on the ground; you need to put some socks on."
    "I won't loose any toes to frostbite, let's go."
    I almost fall on my skinny butt as my tread-less Topsiders hit the ice at the bottom of the two outside steps. It is cold so I zip my jacket up to my chin.
    Jonah closes the door, makes sure it is locked, and we slip and slide our way over to the office.
    We don't talk much as we carefully walk toward the waiting waffles. We mostly watch each other breathe the crisp air in and out, human steam curling around our heads.
    "Did you sleep well?" one of us may ask the other one.
    "Fine. How about you?"
    "I had one of those nasty leg cramps last night again."
    "You need to drink more water. That should help."
    Like most mornings that is about as exciting as it gets.
    We walk through the office door, me first, and the bell attached to the top announces our arrival.
    The KOA office is typical of most campground offices. A camp store in the front with vinyl sewer hoses and connectors, water hoses, soap, light bulbs, fuses, overpriced useful things that you buy in a hurry, well, when you need them in a hurry. Also for sale are not-so-useful things like wind chimes, ceramic thimbles, spinners, light thingies you hang around your neck, stupid things like wooden grandma back ends that you stick in the ground. Off to one side there is a rack of brochures of tourist traps and attractions. Some groceries on the self, a glass top freezer with Nutty Buddies and Eskimo Pies, maybe some pints of Ben and Jerry's. Every campground that Jonah and I have traveled to, it's the same stuff. The quantities and the quality may differ a bit, but the fact that it is always there is comforting in a way.
    "Good morning, Mr. Christopher," said the young lady in the yellow golf shirt, behind the counter, looking at me. I didn't respond fast enough for my son.
    "Good morning to you too, Sarah," answered Jonah.
    Jonah learned her name in the first five minutes of the first day. After five days I still didn't know what it was. Maybe I should have looked at her name tag.
    "Now I told you to call me Jonah," he continued, smiling that big smile of his.
    Sarah glanced over at me. She tried again.
    "Good morning to you, too, Mr. Christopher."
    "His name is George."
    I smiled at her and told her good morning. I guess I didn't smile big enough.
    "Mr.Christopher, there is a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen and the waffle makers are nice and hot, too. Go help yourself and if you need anything just holler."
    Jonah just laughed, grabbed me by the arm and led me to the kitchen.
    "Come on George; let me make you some waffles."
    If I let it, it could really make me mad when people think I'm not friendly.
    After dispensing myself a cup of hazelnut coffee, my wife's favorite, I sat down to nurse it and my slightly bruised ego.
    Jonah operated the waffle irons to his satisfaction and placed a paper plate with a one large plain waffle in front of me. He sat down with a plate of four waffles, with lots of butter and Mrs. Butter-Worth's dripping down the sides. He could still eat with the careless abandon of an athletic 18-year-old without it affecting his much older waistline. I also ate without much thought. Actually half the time I just didn't think about eating. I live on very few calories. I miss my wife's cooking. I miss sitting across from her when eating someone else's cooking. For over 50 years just having her there with me made everything taste better. Without her, there was not much taste at all.
    While Jonah was eating and I was nibbling, Sarah came into the kitchen with another camper. She was showing him how to operate the waffle irons and pointed to the chilled carafes of juice, and milk next to the coffee dispensers. As the obviously new guest started to pour some waffle batter into the iron, she turned and sat at the table with Jonah and myself.
    "So, are you two still planning on leaving today or can we help you to stay around a bit longer?" she asked.
    I looked up at her.
    "I think we will be pulling out today, kind of late tough. Is it okay for us to leave a bit after check out?"
    "Sure, as you can tell we aren't that busy. What with the snow and all. Stay as late as you like. If you decide to stay any more days, just come by the office tomorrow."
    "Thanks, Sarahâ", said Jonah. "We have enjoyed it here, especially the waffles." He gave her another one of his big smiles.
    I saw her face light up and I knew he had done it. He had opened the door.
    "Where are you two off to next?" She asked casually.
    Jonah answered just as casually.
    "We are not sure, maybe Florida, somewhere along the coast. Maybe I can talk George here into going back to Fort Wilderness, but I think he wants to go farther south, so he can warm up his ancient old bones a bit."
    I understood Jonah's choice of words, and he knew it too.
    "Mr. Christopher, are you going to let your brother call you ancient?"
    "How old do you think he is? Make a good guess now,'' prompted my still smiling son.
    "You don't look over what, forty-something...I guess forty five?"
    This comment really tickled Jonah, which is what he wanted. This was a game he liked to play with me, and that guess just egged him on even more.
    "Forty-five?" He grinned at me. "You are so close. How old do you think I am?" he asked.
    Sarah looked him over for before answering "mmmm..I'd say about the same. No, maybe a few years older...so fifty-five?"
    Jonah smiled at her. "Why, thank you, darling, but nope, I will be sixty-six on my next birthday."
    Sarah looked very surprised. "Really?"
    He looked over at me. "Isn't that right, little brother?"
    I just gave him the same patient smile I always gave him. I was thankful that Jonah didn't tell Sarah that at the exact moment Robert E. Lee was surrendering his sword to General Grant, that I was coming, kicking and screaming as they say, into this world.
  14. -Gramps-

    A Premonition?

    By -Gramps-,

    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 bottom of the door had one of those metal kick plates. It seemed to be dented and had black marks on it. The door that opened into the hall was slightly ajar. The hall was long and Nickolas seemed impatient; he kept tugging at his leash. As the door got closer he suddenly jerked the leash out of my hand and went running for the door, with me right behind him, calling to him. Just as I was about to grab his leash he made it through the door, leash and all, and it slammed shut. I tried to open it but it was locked. The window, which had until now been dark, began to glow with a white light. I put my face up to it and could see a huge wall-less white space. There were many, many dogs in there, all kinds, most of them white, running back and forth, jumping around, some chasing each other. I desperately looked for my dog and caught a glimpse of him just as he was headed deeper into this space. I called to him but there was no reaction. I started kicking the bottom of the door and banging on the glass but it didn't do any good. The window went dark and I woke up.
    Diane was standing by the bed with Nickolas' leash in her hand. It was time for him to go to the vet to get his teeth cleaned and while under the anesthesia to also have this large fatty lump removed from his left side. Both these procedures were routine. He had been through it all before some four years earlier. Diane wasn't worried about it; she had been pushing me to get it done. My only objection was the cost, but then I object to the cost of most things in life. As I set there in the bed, the money wasn't what was worrying me.
    I reached over to Nickolas and said a quick prayer.
    "Do you want me to go with you?" I asked.
    "No, we will be fine... won't we, pup?" Diane responded as she snapped on the leash.
    "We are late, better get moving."
    An obviously reluctant Nickolas jumped off the bed. A few seconds later I heard the front door squeak and click shut.
    "I have a bad feeling about this," I told myself. However, it could just be an overactive imagination.
    At about 8:15 a.m., I was sitting where I am now, at my computer when Diane arrived back at the house. She told me that Nick would be at the vets until about 5 p.m. They were not sure when his procedure would start, but it might be early afternoon.
    At around 10 a.m. the phone rang. Diane answered it after seeing Churchland Animal pop up on the caller ID, which displays on our TV. I heard her talking and gathered something was wrong, so I went into the living room and sat down in front of her.
    It seems that they almost lost our dog while on the table. Usually the procedure is to give an injection to make him still and kill any pain, and then they administer a gas once the injection takes effect. They did that this time, but just after the injection his heart rate doubled. It went from 128 beats per minute to over 260 beats per minute. A momentary heart rate spike is not unusual, but this time his heart rate would not come down. After two minutes of this, even after the gas was started, they could not bring it down. They had to bring him out before his heart arrested. The vet, to use his words, was starting to feel a bit panicky himself. Nickolas gave him a scare, but by the time they called us his heart rate has started to come down and they expected it be back to normal shortly. He was alert, but panting a lot, and they wanted to keep him a few more hours to observe him. Diane asked a few questions, but they had no real answers to what happened. They could only surmise that maybe his heart had an electrical malfunction, or he had a reaction to the pain meds, although he had not had one four years earlier. The cause was just not known.
    Diane said thank you, hung up the phone, and broke down in tears.
    I was shocked, but then I realized I must have known something was going to happen.
    As usual, when I don't understand something, I jumped on the Internet and started searching. Could this have been caused by some medication that Nickolas has been taking? Or could he have an enlarged heart, a condition called DCM that cockers can get when they get older? What caused us to almost lose our best little friend?
    I don't know. I suspect it will not be easy to find out. I do know that God answered my prayer: He looked after Nickolas.
    Neither Diane nor I are prepared to live without him.
    The vet called back around 3 p.m., and this time I took the call. Nickolas' heart rate was back to normal, but the doctor said he would still like to observe him for a couple more hours and then we could come for him.
    After and anxious two-hour wait and a short drive to the vet's office, we picked up our pup at five o'clock. We first had a talk with the Doctor, who pretty much reviewed what he had told us on the phone.
    Nickolas came out of the back, very happy to see us, and we were overjoyed to see him.
    He hopped in the car, and we went to a local Red Box to rent a comedy, because we needed a laugh after the day's events. We also picked up a cooked chicken and some side salads at the local Kroger. The smell of the chicken drove Nickolas, who had been on a fast from the night before, crazy. I think that was a good sign.
    As of this morning our dog isn't quite is old self yet. He seems a bit groggy and tired. It's no wonder, after what he has been through. He is probably wondering what he did to deserve a day like yesterday, but like most dogs he will forgive us pretty quickly.
    When we leave on our next RV trip, I am sure he will be where he always is, on his mom's lap, looking out the big window at the passing world.
    Thank God for that.
  15. -Gramps-
    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 heart pendant on a gold chain with matching earrings. Judging by the look on Diane's face as she unwrapped her present the next morning, my last-minute quest was successful. I am not sure what she was the most surprised at, the quality of the gift or the fact that I had the ability to find it and buy it; the second most likely.
    We hosted Christmas brunch for our families. We then broke with Christmas tradition, skipped a big meal, and took our kids, Joel and Christine, and Christine's boyfriend Rob to a neat movie theater/restaurant called the Commodore Theater. There, we ate dinner and watched Sherlock Holmes.
    The next week was a quiet one, and on Thursday night we had clam chowder and chips with our friends Gary and Janis. We played Sequence until 2009 turned into 2010.
    Now we are into a new year and some say a new decade. New Year's Day, when the ball drops, the balloons go up and the cork pops out, has past. The Holidays are over. Christmas, a time for overeating, overspending and overindulging in many other activities, is now a memory, one more, to be added to all the other Christmas memories past.
    Christmas day has always been the day that my internal personal calendar pivots on. I tend to look back on my life and ask what was going on around Christmas when I was 6, or 16. Hanging an ornament on the tree may trigger a trip down memory lane. Just like in the motor coach, the trip may not always be a great one.
    When I hang one of the handmade clothespin people on the tree, whether it is the fireman or the nurse or one of the Three Kings, I remember Charlotte, North Carolina, and the third Christmas that Diane and I celebrated as husband and wife. She was three months pregnant with our first daughter, sick every morning and even though both of us were working we were always broke. That Christmas we sat in our little living room in front of our little color TV with snack trays watching the Waltons while painting clothespin people to hang on our very dry Christmas tree. We could hear the needles falling off that tree that we bought on sale at some gas station. It lasted about six days. I dragged that stark naked tree out the back door on New Year's Eve, leaving behind a thick trail of needles leading to the living room.
    The white round glass ornament that has Silent Night etched on it is as old as me. My parents mailed it along with a couple of other antique glass ornaments and a string of bubble lights to Diane and me in time for our very first Christmas. We, along with our two kittens, were living in an old house in downtown North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. We had been married two months and, well, we were as poor as the field mice that shared our home with us. The house was two floors and we lived on half of the bottom floor and all of the second. Our main source of heat was an old oil burning circulator in front of the bricked up living room fireplace. It was cold our first Christmas and we barely had enough extra money for kerosene for the burner; there was nothing for a tree.
    My uncle Jonah, who lived up in the Blue Ridge on his apple farm, heard that we were in need of tree assistance. He telephoned us and said he had one we could cut down and take home. So we made the nine-mile trip up the mountain in our old Chevy II to get our first Christmas tree. We arrived somewhat early evening; the sun was starting to set over a line of 25-foot-tall cedar trees that grew beside my Grandmother's old farmhouse. No one lived in the house and Jonah was using it for storage. Jonah was standing there armed with a large handsaw. I figured a walk in the woods was needed to find a tree, some kind of pine, most likely.
    "Well, there it is," Jonah said while pointing to the first cedar on the left, closest to the house.
    "What?" I said. "You are going to cut down that tree, it's hugh!"
    "Just the top," he said with a laugh. "Up the ladder you go, and you will need this."
    He handed me the saw and pointed to a somewhat hidden 20-foot wooden ladder leaning against the tree. I looked up at the perfectly shaped top of the cedar. I could see that it would make a great Christmas tree, but I couldn't let Jonah disfigure this beautiful cedar that had been growing there for so long and I told him so.
    "I have to top them every couple of years, because they put out rust that's bad for my apples," he said. He went on to explain that it was a spore that was harmful to his apple crop and that the tree would not produce any if he cut it back.
    Gratefully, I climbed the ladder with the saw and took off the top 10 feet of the tree.
    Jonah and I tied it to the top of our car. It was almost as long as the car itself. It wasn't the easiest trip down the mountain, but we made it. Once home, I carried into our old formal dining room, removed the bottom foot of the tree so it would not hit the roof, placed it in an old Christmas tree stand that I found in the attic, added some water, moved it in front of the floor-to-ceiling window. We decorated it, and then stepped back for a look. It had a few strings of lights -- the old-fashioned big bulb kind -- and one string of bubble lights, a few glass ornaments, some ribbon ornaments that Diane had been making for awhile (with the hope of getting a nice tree), along with some tinsel. At the top was one of our cats.
    Diane and I standing there, hand in hand, agreed that it was the prettiest tree we had ever seen.
  16. -Gramps-

    Better than Chocolate

    By -Gramps-,

    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 call from family or friends.
    Diane was really moved when Miss Vickie, owner of Salty Dog grooming, sent a card and a dish garden.
    I mostly mope around, feeling sorry for myself.
    It obviously isn't going to be easy to recover from this loss.
    I find myself googling puppy sites, wondering if we should consider another dog.
    Wisdom says it is too soon.
    Exercising wisdom, in and of itself, does not remove the pain of loss.
    I have heard that chocolate makes one feel better when one is hurting.
    If we stocked much chocolate around here, I would eat it all.
    I am hitting the Chips Ahoy pretty hard.
    Prayer is better for me than chocolate or cookies. It is easier on the waistline.
    I look out my office window at our motorhome and I can't help but think how much we will miss our pup the next trip out. Nickolas was such a large part of our life in the coach.
    He spent his last good week with us at a motor coach rally.
    Diane and I hosted the event. It was for the Workhorse Chassis Motorhome Club. WCMC is a FMCA International chapter. The rally took place at Camp Hatteras, in Rodanthe, North Carolina, the first week of October. Fifty nine coaches were in attendance. We called it The Sound and the Sea Rally.
    The rally was a lot of work for me and Diane. Fortunately we had a lot of help.
    We planned all the events for the week, decorated the tables with shells, hung large kites and windsocks from the ceiling and on the wall, provided printed name tags, ran the fifty/fifty lottery and we were a two-person complaint and problem department.
    We catered most of the meals, had lots of seminars, (including a Wi-Fi and computer security Q&A session provided by me) and, on the last night, my son's band "Long Division" played.Their set started out a bit rough, but once they adjusted the volume for a bunch of non-college folks, it ended up sounding really good.
    I booked an absolutely hilarious comedy lecturer who had the audience eating out of his hand!
    I happened to be the lecturer and my subject was my Rules for Owing a Motorcoach.
    Actually, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the whole week went. The formal surveys turned in by the attendees were mostly positive. The last day, I helped some people with coach problems get their jacks retracted, their steps in, and watched them pull away. I then went kite flying, four at once, with Nickolas sitting by my chair.
    Unfortunately, about half way through the week, we noticed that Nickolas was not feeling very well. We were not alarmed, but by the day after the rally, he was not doing well at all. After we returned home he just got worse until the end.
    Sometimes the two of us find ourselves just sitting and staring at each other. We both know what the other is thinking. Diane is holding Nickolas' favorite blanket, I am looking at his favorite spot on the floor wishing that my four-footed special someone could still fetch my slippers for me.
    I don't bother to go fetch them for myself.
    Diane and I continue to move forward. Each day gets a little easier, but our hearts are still raw to the touch.
    Today my daughter Christine is over with our grandsons and Bella the sweet Bulldog. Tonight we will watch Toy Story 3 and have a few laughs. Tomorrow, well, it will just have to take care of itself.
    This weekend we are hoping to return to Camp Hatteras. We will be attending our Good Sams Chapter Christmas/Thanksgiving party campout. Diane and I are looking forward to being with a lot of friends. It always helps to be with friends, especially RVing ones, when trying to get over the loss of a friend.
    I should know. This makes two for me.
    Gramps
  17. -Gramps-

    Depreciation

    By -Gramps-,

    This subject pops up every now and then in the Internet forums where I hang about on a regular basis. It may be a post titled "Is your Class A a Money pit?" or "A motor home costs a whole lot more than you think it does!" The people who post these kinds of entries may or may not really have a problem with what a coach or any other large RV may cost. They might just be bored. It's Sunday night and the DW is watching "Desperate Housewives", so there is nothing better for them to do than post some sad story about how broke owning a coach is making them.
    The last time I saw one of these threads, I responded to it. I said that owning a motor coach is like having kids. You make a huge financial investment, with no return, but they make lots of good memories, are good for the soul, and will greatly improve one's life if you let them.
    I believe the RV lifestyle is underappreciated by most people who are not part of it and also by some who are. Becoming a Motor Coacher has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me and my wife. Has owning one depleted my bank account? I suppose it has, but then, maybe not.
    I might have put away the money that I spend each month paying for my coach. I might have put away the money I spend on trips, including gas and food and camping fees, but I doubt it. I would have spent all of my trip and fuel money on airplane tickets, hotel rooms and cruise ships, or something else. The chances are that even if I did save it, a lot of the money could still have disappeared without me spending a dime of it.
    The present economic situation has poked a whole lot of holes in a lot of financial balloons. I just try to take advantage of what our coach can do for us. I may have to spend money on gas, a new water pump to replace a squirting frozen one, new wiper blades to replace frozen ones, a new water filter to replace a cracked and frozen one, but considering what our coach does for us it is worth it.
    I can tell you this that minus the monthly payment, the two weeks and two days I just spent in Florida, which included eight nights at Disney World, didn't cost us much at all. Not when compared to what two weeks would have cost staying in fancy hotels and eating out. I wish I could have stayed there a lot longer. Responsibilities called me home.
    Home is a very subjective word when you own a motor coach. Home is where my coach is. I felt quite at home in Fort Wilderness. As a matter of fact, the guard who checked us in said, "Welcome home, Mr. Parker."
    It was home. We spent New Year's Eve in Saint Augustine and the next day climbed a lighthouse. My daughter was there and my son-in-law and my grandson. My wife was there and so was Teddy Bear. I had my favorite DVDs, my favorite beer, my favorite books, some of them anyway, and the things I like to eat the most. I also had great cable TV.
    At night we listened to music coming from the Disney Parks. We also heard the fireworks and, if we walked a little ways from our site, could see them, just over the tops of the trees. If we wanted to ride the monorail, we did. If we wanted to take a boat ride, we did that, too. We went to one park, and saw Cirque Du Soleil, followed by sushi at Wolfgang Pucks. We pin traded, we took Teddy to the Waggin Tails Dog Park. We basked in the 70-degree sunshine. We even had the pleasure of spending time with our friends Gary and Janis. What could be better than that?
    It was wonderful. It was wonderful until we had to say good-bye. We had to say good-bye to the warmth of our surroundings, our friends and our family. We said good-bye and then made our way back north. We came back to the cold, to work and to our son, daughter and grandsons, whom we missed a lot.
    It won't be long before we take our motorhome back out on the road and enjoy another great trip. We will make new friends and see new places.
    So, I don't worry about "depreciation" I try to appreciate the emotional and spiritual return I get from my poor financial investment. I hope that all my fellow Coachers and RVers do the same.
    Gramps
    1/23/2011
  18. -Gramps-
    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 we finally made it back home to Deer Creek Motorcoach Resort (the One in Galax Virginia!).
    The moment the automatic gate started to open and I had an unimpaired view of the hills, my heart started to melt. We unpacked the over packed car and hauled all our stuff into the coach. The first thing on our list (after putting out the slide outs and water connections and such) was to move all the stuff in the cooler to the refrigerator. I opened it and all the bottles of water and Arizona iced tea that had been in there since July 15th were frozen solid. I didn't want to deal with this right now so I loaded it up and placed some containers of hot water under the coils in order remove some of the ice that had built up around them. Once that was done, and all our other items were put away we headed out the door to explore our home away from home and more importantly to see our friends.
    The place has changed, a lot. There are coaches parked on newly poured pads and new cabins going up almost every day. The golf course has new green markers and the numbers have been changed. It is no longer my private golf course by default. There are plenty of players who use it now. That is a good thing. Golf courses, just like motorcoaches, need people using them. If both had souls they would long for people to use them.
    I sometimes think my coach does have a soul.
    I could have sworn I heard a sign of relief when we came through the door.
    "Finally, they are back, I hope that they have come to take me out on the road !"
    We will be taking the coach back to our stick house when we leave next week. The summer is over for us. It was short and not so sweet. Frankly I am relieved it is over. We look forward to a quiet Thanksgiving including a camping weekend in Williamsburg, celebrating Teddy Bear Day, followed by a good Christmas. We will spend some time with our FMCA chapter over the Holidays.
    New Year's Day plus one or two should find us heading to Florida and Fort Wilderness.
    A long peaceful road trip. It is just what we need. It will unwind the knots in my soul. Just thinking about traveling down the road makes me feel like a motorcoacher again. Once I start feeling like a motorcoacher again, I start thinking like one too.
    When I think like a Motorcoacher my head fills up with ideas.
    Here are a few.
    A clear plastic sewer connection is a good thing to use. That way you will see the juice box that your grand kids dumped in the toilet as it makes its final destination.
    Your tool kit should always include a small volt ohm meter. You can check your battery voltages, check for loose grounds (the bane of most 12 volt systems) and do an accurate check of fuses to see if they are still viable.
    Dental floss will work really well to make a quick repair of broken day-night shade strings.
    I carry a curved upholstery needle, outdoor UV resistant thread and fabric glue. Those three things will help you greatly extend the life of your awnings and slide out toppers. Run a bead of UV resistant Fabric glue along all your topper seams. It will keep the thread from rotting so fast.
    My supply kit also includes a couple of cans of spray-on silicon protectant. I spray that good stuff on my patio umbrellas, slide out toppers and various other cloth things that get exposed to the outdoor sunshine and rain.
    Don't buy cheap self leveling caulk. It doesn't self level but it will crack. I found out that the hard way and now I have to do a couple of roof repairs over again.
    I carry of lot of baking soda. It does wonders to clean out gray tanks and P traps. It gets rid of odors and cleans up the tank sensors.
    If you want to do something really nice for your spouse, buy them a Kindle. You will become a hero.
    A Kindle makes a great gift for the road. I gave my wife one inside a leather case with a built in light. She loves it.
    Satellite receivers produce a lot of heat when in use. Unfortunately most coach cabinets that house them are poorly vented. Add a vent and better yet, add a muffin fan. You just may save yourself a lot of aggravation and not miss the big game because your receiver baked itself to death.
    Note to Self : Cell Repeaters really do work in bad cell coverage areas, except when you don't own one.
    (I need to make an online call to Amazon.com)
    Amour-all Extreme Shine Spray on Detailing works really well on painted fiberglass.
    Hang a small wind chime on your tv antenna handle. That way when you forget to lower it before you pull out of the campsite you will get an audible reminder. You just might save your antenna and your roof.
    You can learn a lot by being a member of a Motorcoaching Forum!
    A cold day in the Motorcoach sure beats a hot sweaty day working in some stuffy, dirty, overhead pulling wires.
    I am back in the Saddle again.
    Man, I sure have missed it.
  19. -Gramps-

    It's A Stupid Game

    By -Gramps-,

    It’s a stupid game. A famous person described it as a good walk spoiled. Someone else said it is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic. I am talking about the game of golf. It may be a stupid game, an opinion shared by David Feherty, who played on the European Ryder Cup team a few decades ago, but it is also my new passion. I guess that means that golf is my new stupid passion.
    In my opinion I am terrible at it. My best game so far is a round in the high 80s. Now, in fairness to myself, that score was the result of a round of golf on a regular-size course. When I play 18 holes on my “home course” at Deer Creek Motorcoach resort (the one in Virginia), my score can be as low as 54.
    FIFTY FOUR! Wow, you say. Well, it isn’t all that remarkable considering it is a nine-hole pitch and putt with the longest hole sitting a mere 125 yards from the tee. Then again, maybe it is remarkable. The greens are the size of pot holders, the fairways narrow as a 1960s era men’s dress tie, and there are numerous hidden water traps along with some that are obvious to the eye. In other words, my short game is not bad.
    Put me on a large course with big greens, and the story changes.
    I cannot drive worth the time it takes me to hunt for a lost cheap ball. Someone once said that if I hit it right, it’s a slice; if I hit it left, it’s a hook ; if I hit it straight it’s a miracle.
    That pretty much sums it up for me.
    I am an active member of the Lambert’s Point Golf Course Ball Exchange Program.
    Lambert’s Point is a nine-hole golf course in Norfolk, Virginia, that is built on top of what used to be a huge landfill and garbage dump. It sits in the elbow of the Elizabeth River and so it is surrounded by water on two sides and a driving range on one side. I tend to lose balls off the first tee into the river on the right side. I just can’t leave my 1 wood in the bag! I have a very fast back swing and an even faster down swing, but somewhere in the process of going up and down, my arms just seem to get confused. As a result, my hands are pointing in the wrong direction, which opens the club face and I hit this very long and ugly slice.
    I joke that my slice is so bad that a soft drink is named after it.
    On the rare occasion that I don’t slice, it is usually because I skull the ball and stick it in the mix of marsh grass, blackberry bushes, and cattails that surround the course. So the hunt begins. I lose one ball and find three. Not a bad exchange rate, if you ask me.
    I keep working at it. I shine my clubs thinking that will add some polish to my game. I blow through buckets of balls at the Portsmouth City Park Links driving range. I watch training videos and take advice from all the guys I play with. So far, not much has helped.
    David Feherty said that Jim Furyk’s driver swing looks like an octopus falling out of a tree. An octopus has some coordination, some fluidity, and some intelligence. So in comparison, my swing must look like my driver is falling off the back of a moving truck.
    My second shot shows some promise. I can take a fairway wood or a hybrid and knock the crap out of the ball. It just too bad that the crapless ball tends to go left. On occasion, however, I have hit the green on a par-five hole in two if I aim right. Once on the green, I can putt decently. My playing companions seem to have a higher opinion of my game than I do.
    I am improving. I know which club to use based on distance from the pin. I have learned the terms of golf and I can now drive well at the range when loading up the tee from bucket number two. The key is shooting straight from the first tee and hitting the green in regulation.
    Although I have been golfing for only two years, I am not totally new to the game. I spent the last 10 of my first 12 years living next door to the Ocean View Municipal Golf Course in Norfolk, Virginia. Our two-bedroom bungalow house was located at 609 Greenview Lane, right across from hole number 3. I used to wade in the ditch that ran parallel with the fairway and look for golf balls. We could be sitting at the dinner table and hear “Fore!!” and a couple of seconds later a ball would hit the roof of our house. My brother Rodney and I would charge out the back door and hunt for the ball to add to our sizable collection kept in buckets in our car port. We would clean them up and sell them, possibly back to the golfers who lost them, for a tidy profit. We would cut the covers off damaged balls, slice the rubber band inside and watch the ball hop like some crazed animal all over the carport pad.
    I used to stand for hours, peering thru the 30-foot tall chain link fence, that semi-protected our street, and the kids who played on it from the errant balls that hooked left. I watched the carts pull up at the tee. I was fascinated by the clothes the golfers wore, and the clubs they used. I watched the balls fly down the fairway. I heard the congratulations and sometimes the swear words coming from the golfers. I so wanted to play on that course.
    I wanted to be a golfer and play on the course for real.
    I had a couple of clubs. One was a shortened persimmon wood driver, the head held on with masking tape and glue. I salvaged that club from a water hazard. The other club was a nine iron that the pastor of our church gave me. I would sneak out onto hole 3 just before dark, wait until I knew no one was going to find me, and I would tee up a ball for myself. I could hit it hard and straight. I could par hole 3, a 369-yard par four, the only hole I played, with that old driver, that also was my putter and my nine iron.
    Why can’t I do that now?! Just a few weeks ago I got my 50-year-old wish. I played Ocean View with my friend John, a retired school principal and a good golfer. We formed a foursome with a couple of ladies, who like us, had no reserved tee time. It was fun but at the same time a bit surreal. John drove a cart with our clubs while I walked with the ladies who were playing nine holes on foot. When we hit the tee at 3, I looked to my left and saw my old home, the 609 easy to spot on the front of the house. I could almost see my Mom coming out the front door to check if I had sneaked out onto the course.
    I thought about those days. Now here I was 50 years later playing for real.
    I teed up my ball, coiled up for the hit and sliced the ball into the fairway of hole 5.
    CRAP!
    Why do I keep playing this stupid game? I will tell you why. I play for the memories, for the time I spend with friends, including my motor coaching ones, and for that great shot that I make every now and then. I play for the green grass, the blue sky and the cheap clubhouse hot dogs.
    I play it in spite of that shot off tee 3 that went so far right that Teddy Bear, my Cocker Spaniel, couldn’t find the ball if it was wrapped in bacon.
    I sort of fudged that last line from Feherty. He won’t care. Fudging is allowed in golf.
    It may be a stupid game. My wife sure thinks so, but golfing is now as much a part of my life as motor coaching is. They are intertwined. I have two sets of clubs, one for the coach and one at home.
    In the months and years ahead, I hope to drive my coach to somewhere new and find a beautiful golf course that has a good ball exchange program and is looking for new members. Then, again, maybe I will make that miracle shot and hit the greens in regulation.
    Derrick
  20. -Gramps-

    The Death of XP

    By -Gramps-,

    Windows XP is now 12 years old. It has been one of the best, if not the best, operating systems to ever be installed on a hard drive. I personally think it is better than Windows 7. However, it is now officially at it's EOL stage.

    EOL stands for End Of Life.

    Let us not morn for it quite yet. As Mark Twain was once reported to have said: "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

    The above is a misquotation. Mr. Twain actually said: "The report of my death was an exaggeration."

    In other words, he wasn't dead yet, even if he, or as the case may be, his cousin, wasn't feeling all that well.

    XP is not feeling all that well in the eyes of its creator. However, that does not change the fact that it is still running on a third of the world's computers, including half of the world's business machines and 90 percent of the ATMs. Some of these machines run embedded proprietary application software that will not migrate to Windows 7 or Windows 8. I have yet to see any Windows 8 computers sitting on a desk belonging to any of my customers.

    If so many computers still run on XP or embedded XP, why the big push to move away from it? I can sum that up in a couple of words: Phones and Tablets, or to use a different two words: Touch Screen. Touch screen devices have a much greater ability to deliver great new experiences. These new experiences, or to call them by what they really are -- apps -- cost money. You either pay to get them or pay to play them, or both.

    What does this mean for all of us XP users? Does this mean our XP pc is going to just one day quit? Does it mean we have to run out a buy a new computer if we want to read our email, stream our favorite movie, shop on Amazon, Skype our grand kids, or do any of the things we love to do? Some people selling computers (and a certain home shopping network will go unnamed here) want you to think so.

    You don't have to do a thing if you don't want to. Well, there is one thing you might have to do: Update your antivirus program to one that has very good real-time protection.

    If you are using Microsoft Security Essentials, the antivirus malware protection that Microsoft offered for free, then you need to replace it ASAP. Microsoft sent out an update for MSE users about a week ago warning of the immediate end to the support of this program and then two days later started supporting it again.

    Now I have learned that virus definition updates will still be available until July 2015. This does not mean you have total protection from hackers. Then again, you never did! I know that for a fact. The thing is, updates for your other programs, such as Microsoft Office, including Outlook, will still come your way. If any of those programs have a security flaw and Microsoft makes a fix, you will be able to get the update.

    So here is what you should consider doing if you want to keep rolling happily along with XP residing on your desktop or laptop. Purchase a copy of a good antivirus Internet security anti Spam program from Norton, or Kaspersky or MacAfee. All of those software makers have promised to continue supporting the system. I am used to using a very good free program but it didn't kill me to move from MSE to a three device license of Kaspersky.

    I installed it on my very old self-built XP workstation and on my wife's new Windows 8.1 touchscreen laptop.

    Yes, I did run out and replace her old Compaq. I did not do this because it had Windows XP installed on it. I did it because it ran or walked or crawled on Vista Home Premium. Now, there is an operating system with a built-in reason to replace it with something better.

    If you really are looking to upgrade from XP -- some use the word "upgrade" with a bit of reluctance -- to Windows 8.1, then I have a few suggestions on how to go about doing just that. Before I do, let me tell you that I think Windows 7 is not a bad operating system; however, you will not find many or depending where you shop, any new consumer devices with that operating system any longer. It is still the system of choice for business workstations. With a bit of shopping online you can possibly get a personal device with Windows 7, but I suggest that you just move on to Windows 8.1.

    Here is my first and most important suggestion. When you buy a laptop with Windows 8.1 installed, make sure the laptop has a touchscreen. There are some features of Windows 8.1 that a mouse just cant use, not without a lot of trouble anyway. One of those features is closing an application. There is at the present no X at the top of the window, so you close an app or Internet site by dragging the window down from the top with your finger until it shrinks and then spins around backwards. I kid you not. I have not figured out how to do this with a mouse.

    Windows 8 also has a feature named the charm bar. This little ditty of a program appears on the right side of the screen after a swipe of the finger that begins off screen and to the left. The charm bar, or charms menu, has a search button, a settings button which includes the power button, Wi-Fi connections, control panel and a bunch of other icons. The candy bar/charms menu also has a shortcut to the start screen, which displays all those big pretty tiles.

    The charm bar is the intersection of all that Windows 8.1 does and you need your finger to get there, so a touch screen is necessary. Also many of the free games and not free games you can download from the Windows store are touch games. Diane is addicted to one called Tap Tiles and I am finding myself playing a quiz game called Logo and killing a lot of time in the process.

    Second suggestion: The laptop you buy should have at least four gigs of Ram. Windows 8.1 is not the easiest program to manage the memory it takes to make it work. It is too hard to shut down a program and it continues to run in the background eating up resources. This can happen with a smart phone as well but there is a feature in settings called force stop. Windows 8.1 does not make it easy to force stop a program, not without thinking about it. My wife's laptop has eight gigs of RAM and Window 8.1 can use almost half that memory doing nothing but looking pretty.

    Actually I find Windows 8.1 to be quite intriguing. There are some aspects of it I like a lot and some I don't. It has retained enough of Windows 7 to make it possible for me to find my way around deep inside of it and at the same time its metro aps page and start page look good and make it easy to find and start programs.

    One other thing to do: when you buy a new pc, remove all the bloat ware from it. This takes a bit of time but it will make the machine run better, which will make you feel better.

    Remember, if you do decide to migrate to Windows 8.1 then get a touchscreen laptop with at least 4 gigs of ram, but more is better. By the way, if the pc you buy has Windows 8 on it, you should update it to 8.1 before you do anything else. Did I not mention that before? The update is free and some retail places like Best Buy will do it for you.

    In conclusion, if you have an XP laptop right now, don't panic. It isn't going to blow up or refuse to boot up. If you don't have one installed already, then you should purchase a good antivirus program if you intend to keep it for awhile longer. You can take your time looking for a new computer if that is what you want to do. XP isn't really dead, not yet anyway. It is still lingering around.

    Derrick
  21. -Gramps-

    My Random Views

    By -Gramps-,

    Well folks, I have decided that the time has come for me to have my own photography and personal observation site. I will post randomly what I see and think about numerous subjects including motorhoming, faith, kids, who knows. I hope you will take a look. http://www.myrandomviews.com/
    I have enjoyed my time blogging here at FMCA.com.
    It has been a good learning experience. If and when Diane and I retire and go full time, then you can expect to see more random entries here as well.
    Gramps
  23. -Gramps-
    It's been so long since I blogged anything that I find this blank page a bit intimidating. But I will get over that rather quickly.
    "What's it like owning a 38 foot coach?"
    I was asked that question just a few days ago. I had to stop and think for a minute or two.
    I have always thought that having that big thing sitting in my driveway is nuts. It really is crazy. It cost too much to buy, to own, to keep on the road, and to pay the taxes that come along with it. It is insane to own it, but at the same time owing it keeps me sane. How can that be? Owning a coach, or any rv requires a certain mentality, a different perspective, or philosophy as it were. Maybe it requires more than a philosophy it requires some rules. I have set a few for myself anyway. I will cover rule one. If you remember it, all the others will not be as hard to keep.;
    1. Remember owning a coach improves one's life, if you let it.
    Well, a coach allows you to get away, to visit God's handiwork. It will take you to all kinds of places, some of which you might not go to otherwise. Rving provides friends, life long friends. Some of them will stick closer to you than your own family. Rving not only makes friends, but rvers become friends with each other really fast. It's almost magical how easy it is to make friends when you own a coach. I can talk with people on the road, at a rally, campground, rv show, or at a rest stop and after just a few minutes its like I have know them my whole life. How can I put a price on that? I can't. It is part of the priceless experience of being part of a unique community that loves the road and the people who travel it. I know from first hand experience.
    This last Tuesday, I received an interesting e-mail. It was from a gentleman named Gary who lives just a few miles down on US-17 in Suffolk, just west of us. In other words, he is practically a neighbor. He and his wife Janis have been shopping for a new coach for almost a year. He wanted a diesel pusher, she didn't. She didn't want the front coach entry but he wanted the quiet ride and handling of a diesel. On the internet they found a coach like my Vacationer. With only pictures to look at, she loved the floor plan so much that the front entry door was no longer a problem; he found a chassis with a quiet engine and good handling. At least they hoped so. They needed to know more about this coach, so after searching "UFO" and "Vacationer" on MSN they found our FMCA profile and emailed me wanting to know if I would contact them and answer a few questions. I did just that. After talking on the phone with Gary for about an hour, I hung up, and my wife said to me "Silly man, why didn't you invite them to come over and see the coach?"
    It never occurred to me. But not being totally stupid, I listened to her, called back and suggested to Gary that he and Janis come over to walk through our coach before going to New York to see the one they are interested in. He didn't hesitate to accept, just wanted to know what time.
    So at three pm that same day, I started giving two people who have never owned any kind of rv the complete skinny on owning a really nice 38 foot motor home with a gas engine in the rear, made by a company that is presently in Bankruptcy. Three hours later they left with plans to travel to Buffalo and purchase a new coach that the dealer realy wants to sell.
    Gary and Janis consider us a Godsend. They were so nervous about this crazy thing they are about to do and having friends close by, especially ones with the SAME coach, who can answer questions, share experiences, and help them, why that is just too wonderful for words.
    God works in mysterious ways. He provides new friends to you in most unusual ways. And these new friends give you the opportunity to improve their lives and at the same time, they do the same thing for you.
    You must have gathered by now it was Gary and Janis who asked the simple but at the same time complex question.
    "What's it like owning a 38 foot coach?"
    My answer is its great. It has helped make new friends, taken us to places we have dreamed of going to and allowed Diane and I to be closer together. It has improved our lives because we let it.
    Derrick
  24. -Gramps-
    2. Keep your temper on a very short leash. Or, when owning a motor coach, patience is not only a virtue but a necessity.
    If you are the type of person who always wants to be in control of your circumstances and are uncomfortable when things are not perfect or not even close to it, you will have trouble adjusting to the motor coaching lifestyle. Things are going to go wrong whether you are an old-timer or a newbie. There are preventive measures you can take, but only God can stop anything and everything bad from happening.
    Let me break it down for you.
    A. All may not go well at time of the motorhome purchase.
    B. All may not go well when driving down the road from point A to point B.
    C. All may not go well when setting up and breaking down camp.
    All may not go well when your coach is at the repair shop because of A. B. or C. or any combination of the three. So this means you have to be patient with all kinds of people and circumstances. You have to be patient with drivers (and that includes yourself), passengers (and that includes your spouse), dealers, repair techs, manufacturers. You get the picture. Just be patient, because it can turn out better than you think.
    An Example of A:
    The day my wife and I bought our first, slightly used coach it was a rainy, cold Valentine's Day in 2005. We had signed the papers a few days earlier and now it was time to do our walkthrough, or PDI, or something like that. We started with the roof, and the tech told us about the satellite dish that came with the coach. I looked hard for it but I didn't see anything that looked like a dish to me. I had no plans to order satellite service for the coach, but if it is supposed to have a dish it should be there! I started to say something, but I didn't want to appear stupid. Plus, the tech was in a great rush due to the rain.
    We were told about the sewer system, the fresh water system, the electrical connections, the generator, the storage, and the hitch. It went on and on. I was cold, wet, hungry and needed to find a bathroom. We went inside the coach and learned about the dash controls, the radio, the video system, the leveling system, the voltage monitors, the battery disconnects, the batteries, the power switches for all the appliances we could not use at the same time because it was 30-amp service.
    Next, he shows us how to crank up the TV antennae and follows that with the manual satellite dish controls. The whole time we are inside, I am thinking about the satellite dish that is standard, that isn't on the roof, and I still need to go to the bathroom.
    I am getting impatient and am just about to complain when he shows us the washer and dryer combo -- the one that we had no idea was in the coach. On the day we signed the papers, we were told we could get a washer-dryer for 900 bucks and we said no thanks, maybe later. I looked at it and at the happy expression on my wife's face and stupidly said "Where did that come from?" The tech told us that it originally came with the coach, but the first owner didn't want it. Right after he traded it they put the combo back in the coach. The salesman didn't know it was there, so it was too late to charge us for it now, so consider it a bonus. At that moment I forgot about the dish that didn't exist ... well, I didn't forget, it just didn't matter anymore.
    An Example of B: (The Same Day!)
    So, with my wife leading in the car, I started up our new-to-us 36-foot Bounder, with no SAT dish, but a stump where it was supposed to be, and eased it along with the included washer-dryer combo out of the dealer parking lot (point A). I had no idea what I was doing. I should tell you that I had never driven the coach, or any coach or even been a passenger in one before. I was scared to death.
    I took it down U.S. 17 and missed my first turn. Great, I have not had it five minutes and now I have to do a U-turn. I managed to turn around in an abandoned gas station lot, made the right turn toward home. About 20 minutes later I am in front of our house and am looking at our tree-lined driveway (point B.) trying to figure out how to get this really long and wide box on wheels to go where I want it to go.
    I make a right turn and realize that that it is pretty tight between the trees. Diane is standing out in the rain and yells at me that I am not going to make it without clocking the tree on the left. I stop, grit my teeth and sit there for a minute or two. Okay, it will not go in the driveway, so what do I do.
    Diane comes into the coach. She knows me very well. She quietly suggests that we can park it in front of the house, off the road and hire someone to take down the tree the right away. That sounded like a good plan to me. So I backed out of the driveway, back up the street and then pulled it off the road right in front of our house and sank into the mud. At least I didn't hit the tree.
    An Example of C: (two months later)
    The tree is now gone. A tree service removed it. The rig is stocked and we are on our first weeklong trip. We are off to the mountains of Virginia, a wonderful place called Otter Creek on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
    It was not a bad trip up to the campground. We drove up U.S. 460 and stopped at a gas station to fill up the rig. This took a bit of planning. The gas tank opening was behind the license plate at the end of the rig. I had to be quite careful about where I filled up. It was very easy to block the flow of traffic in and out of the gas station, not to mention I ended up parked in front of two pumps for a long time.
    I have found out you have to be patient at gas pumps. Most will not allow more than a $100 purchase. With a 100-gallon tank, that means using my credit card three times to get my tank filled. It doesn't bother me now, but when we first became RVers, it ticked me off. But that is not the worst thing. Sometimes you just can't get the gas to go into the tank. The nozzle just shuts off. I found that if you hold it at the three or nine o'clock positions gas will flow, but you cannot leave it unattended and that makes your hand tired.
    After we filled up (and this was the first time, a bit of a shock even at 2 bucks a gallon) we continued on up the road. I drove carefully the whole way and it was a rather uneventful, pleasant but longer than I expected trip to the campground.
    Otter Creek is a national park campground. No connections. No water, no electricity, no sewer. It does have a dump station. Oh, one other thing it does not have: more than one site that a two-slideout 36-foot-long coach will fit into. I pulled into the first one, a pull-through that looked long enough. It was slightly curved but I wiggled the coach into it.
    I got out to check everything and realized I could not open the main slideout because of the trees. I looked at a site in front of the coach but slightly off to the right. The trees were not as tight around that site. It looked like it would work out quite well. I was quite anxious to get parked because I was running out of daylight.
    I got behind the wheel and started the engine. Diane asked me if I wanted her to guide me out of the site. "Why? The other site is just over there, I should be fine." So I took off, drove about 34 feet and made a slight turn to the right. It is too bad that I was in enough of a hurry that I couldn't take Diane's advice. It's also too bad that I didn't see the camper sitting outside his Airstream who was frantically waving at me as I made my turn. I didn't see him, just like I didn't see the tree stump I ran over with foot 35 of my 36-foot coach. The rear end of the coach went up in the air and dropped hard.
    "What was that?" I asked of no one in particular.
    "I think we hit something." Diane said.
    I pulled into the new spot, got out and looked at the coach. Everything seemed okay, except I noticed the gutter spout was missing off the rear of the coach. Not a big deal. I also noticed there was a wood-colored streak down the middle of the last basement door. And then I saw it! A fist-sized hole in the bottom of my end cap. I was sick. I had wrecked my new coach.
    "Diane, look at what I have done!"
    "Its not so bad" she said.
    "Not so bad? Not so bad!" I was starting to lose it.
    The man who was sitting in front of the Airstream walked over.
    "I was trying to warn you that your tail was swinging over that stump," he said.
    The man looked at the coach's boo-boo and said something that, well, I didn't know how to respond to: "You might as well bang up the other seven corners and get it over with!"
    Then he laughed and slapped me on the back and said, "Welcome to the club. It happens to everybody. Don't let it spoil your trip. Good looking coach you have here."
    All I could see was the hole in my end cap. I did find the gutter spout, so it wasn't a total loss.
    Just so you know. We met some really great people on that trip and had a good time.
    Actually, this could have been another example of B, but I think you get my point.
    Remember rule number 1!
  25. -Gramps-
    You know the old saying; it's the Journey not the Destination.
    There is a church two doors down from us. The church allows us to hook up our tow in their parking lot and we leave from there. It is quite convenient. When Diane and I have a trip it starts for us the moment we leave the church parking lot. Actually it starts the moment we start packing up the coach, no, it starts the moment we start thinking about THE TRIP.
    The trip, made up of two important parts, the route, and the destination also know as the goal.
    So this is my lead in to:
    Rule number 3:
    Enjoy the View!
    Where are we going?
    What route do we take to get there?
    What do we need to take with us?
    How much time do we have?
    What will it cost?
    These are the questions I am sure we all ask ourselves. Some of us may worry over the answer to one or more questions more than others. Can we spend the money? Can we spend the time?
    Did you notice I used the word worry? Worrying and rving should be mutually exclusive, but it isn't. We worry over the price of gas, the temp in the fridge, the amount of air in the tires, along with lots of other things, including the time it takes to get where we think we want to be. It can be hard to just sit back and enjoy the view.
    The view. The one outside my great big windshield can be wonderful at times. I remember being on the Blue Ridge Parkway coming around Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina one crisp, cool, fall morning. The sky was a fantastic blue and the colors of the trees sucked the breath right out of me! The only thing I could say was Oh God! I meant it. I knew who painted that picture, the same person who painted the sunset over the Albemarle Sound and the light bouncing off the waves at Hatteras Island, the green rolling pastures of the Shenandoah Valley, and the majesty of the Smoky Mountains while heading down I-40. All of these had two things in common. They were made by God and they made me want to slow down and take a longer look.
    At night in the campground I play back the day's windshield views in my head. My mental slideshow. I look at them later after our trip is over and I am back to my daily routine of answering business calls and driving around fixing problems.
    Where am I going with this?
    Owning a motor home is a metaphor for life itself. We all have a destination, but we also only have one journey to get there. I encourage you to sit back, try to relax, and Enjoy the View!
    Remember rule number 1.









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