-Gramps-

40 years may not feel like a long time....but my kids keep telling me that it is. Diane and I took our vows 38 years ago, but we have been a couple for 40. We started being one in High School.

Frank, your entry got bit by the old forums 2010 bug.....not as bad as the y2k bug but still a nuisance. I hope things are going well for you.

The thought of hotels and driving long distances in the car does not appeal to me at all. Neither does trips in airplanes or walks through airport security. I will make an exception for a trip to Greece but nothing else. We miss your blogging....do you have a new one for us? Hope so cause I look forward to it.

Residential dual pane thermal windows can be fixed without replacing the window or either pane. I am not sure if this method can be used for rv windows but I don't see why not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFKUhc1j1SY&feature=related

Mine went out as well...fan will run but no heat. Snap fuse works fine. I put a 120 volt heater in the bay. I may convert the 12 volts to 120 and still use the snap fuse eleminate the need for an extension cord. The coach is supposed to be be connected to shore power whern using the bay heater because it drains the battery so quickly.

In order to christen the new blog format, I feel it is necessary to post a few more of my truisms. These truisms fall under my Rules for Owning a Motor Coach: Part 4. Owning a Motor Coach is a Never-ending Learning Experience. I have learned that a clear sewer connection is a good thing to have … that way, you will see the juice box the grand kids dumped in the toilet as it makes its final journey. My wife still will not let me stop at South of the Border and buy anything. My wife will not let me stop at JRs, either. I have learned that I hate repairing plumbing problems … in the house or in the coach -- it makes no difference to me. I always end up wet and angry. The folks at Cracker Barrel are just as friendly as they claim to be. A motor coach parked in the driveway makes a great place for family to stay when visiting, especially when the occasion is a wedding. A motor coach roof makes a great place to collect snow. A snow-covered motor coach roof heat pump produces a gosh-awful smell while operating. Did you know that snow can burn when it melts due to high heat? A snow-covered motorhome can produce a manmade mini blizzard while traveling down the road. Driving a motor coach on snow and ice can be a nerve-damaging experience. During a panic stop, an agile cocker spaniel can surf the bathroom rug from the back end of the coach all the way to the dash and look good doing it. Slideouts produce a gosh-awful sound while being retracted if the toppers have ice on them. Slideouts do not retract all the way if they have ice on them. So a trip to the roof may become necessary. It is a lot easier to climb onto a snow-covered motorhome roof than it is to climb off of one. So I suggest you just forget it! Things in a motor coach tend to break when you need them the most. Like a bay heater failing during a blizzard. My favorite place to be in January is camping at Fort Wilderness. Carry a couple of ceramic heaters in your coach. You might just save a water pump and/or water filter from freezing to death. A trip to Camping World can cost me at least a hundred bucks, even when I have no plans to buy anything. If I have plans to purchase something, I will end up spending ... well, you don't want to know. Why do I need to have three different dominoes games stored in my coach? A trip to Wal-Mart can cost me at least fifty bucks even when I am planning only to purchase a six-pack of beer. At some point a motor coacher can own too many DVDs. It is a lot harder to get something wrong with your coach repaired than it is to break it. My wife says I sound like the dad from A Christmas Story working on his furnace when I am in the wet bay trying to replace a frozen water pump. Looking out a motorhome window at snow-covered trees and frozen rivers flying by is quite a wonderful sight. Just take a deep breath and enjoy the view. I have learned that a motor coach will improve your life, even in the wintertime, if you let it.

Sorry I missed your post....been busy the last few days. My daughter got married this last Sunday and I had family staying in the UFO. I invited Charlie to visit Deer Creek (again) and the same invite goes out to you! Just say when this summer.

Diane and I have discovered that living in a motor coach simplifies our life. We don't find the small space to be confining. Quite the opposite, it is liberating. Our motor coach frees us from thinking about so many things. She and I normally operate in two different worlds. Diane's world concerns the house, the two men, the cat and the dog that live in it with her. My world revolves around my business, my computers, and my online friends. Most of the time we are in two different parts of the house or we are in my office sitting at two different computers. We share the same room when watching TV, but there is not much conversation and it isn't unusual for us both to fall asleep while NCIS or Castle or some other program rumbles on in the background. When we travel in the coach we rediscover each other. We are not on the same couch but we are just feet away from each other looking out the same big window. Teddy is sometimes on Diane's lap watching the world fly by with us. We have hours to just "sit and talk." We do plenty of that. We may review the things that have happened in our lives, we talk about our past, our memories and there are lots of those, or we talk about our future and how uncertain it is. We talk about God, our kids, our extended families. When you boil it all down, the coach helps us to remember just how much we love each other and how long we have been together, and we have been together for a long, long time...

I have been wanting for sometime to get my UFO friends that I have met and those yet to meet to get together first online and then in person. This is the start of turning the want into a reality. So if you own a UFO please post here!

Well, you all know how I feel about this subject. The hardest thing for me about owning a motorhome is looking at it parked outside my Home/office window. I want to be in it and on the road to somewhere not just working to pay for it! I am looking for the day that I become an extended timer. That will be a time when Diane, Teddy and myself go out there somewhere for months, not just days or weeks, at a time. I have to hit the road ... I need to see and do more things that I can blog about