Today is a very special day for Terry and myself. We are celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary. And what a wonderful time we have had together since that day when we stood in Judge Reinhold’s courtroom in Lakeside, Arizona, and the good judge pronounced us man and wife! 

Terry and I always say that in some ways it feels like we are still on our first date, and at the same time it feels like we have been together forever. Here’s our love story, if you care to hear it:

We had known each other for many years. Terry ran a commercial glass shop that advertised in the small town newspaper that I owned. At that time I was in a bad marriage, and since Terry always wore a big ring on her finger, I assumed she was married as well. We were just business acquaintances, though I always admired her because she is that combination of a beautiful and intelligent woman who is very real and never “puts on airs” as my Mama used to say. With Terry, what you see is what you get, and I found that very refreshing.

After my marriage ended, I instructed my friends that if I ever said I was going to get hitched again, please shoot me. I had been shot twice and married twice, and you can get over shot quicker and with less financial outlay. 

One week I wrote a silly little column in my newspaper about making the transformation to the single life. I wrote that I had learned that I could survive for a weekend on Pepsi and Toaster Strudel, and that in a pinch, I could wash my underwear in the dishwasher and dry them in the microwave. But I lamented the fact that the bakery in town had closed its doors, and a chubby little cherub like myself needed sweets, so somebody had better send me either a recipe or a woman. Terry responded by sending me a big plate of brownies with a note that read “Quit your sniveling!”

The brownies were delicious, and I got a chuckle out of the note. When I called Terry to thank her, she said “Anytime you want something like that, just let me know. I love to cook and bake and I don’t have anybody to do it for.” I asked her why she didn’t bake for her husband, and she told me she had been single for fourteen years. “I work with contractors and construction workers all the time,” she told me, “I wear the ring to keep guys from hitting on me.” (Now, you have to wonder, after fourteen years, if she settled on me, what kind of troglodytes did she pass on?)

Now, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so when my secretary told me “Terry is sending you a signal, but you’re too dumb to know it” I didn’t believe her. But over a period of several weeks I began stopping in at Terry’s shop more frequently, and we really hit it off. It was amazing how much we found that we had in common.

Eventually I screwed up my courage and asked her out to a movie and dinner. We snuggled down in our seats at the theater and whispered to each other all through the movie (don’t ask me what movie it was, neither of us can remember). Afterwards we went to dinner, then sat and talked until dawn. I was smitten.

Two weeks later we had our second date, to the Fall Festival in our little mountain town. I was on the board of directors of the battered women’s shelter, and we had arranged a fund raiser in which the town council and other local “dignitaries” were supposed to take turns in a dunking booth. You know the type, where you pay a buck to throw three balls at a target, and if you hit it, the person inside the booth drops down into a pool of water.  It was a chilly day, with temperatures about 50 degrees, and suddenly the local luminaries decided it would be “undignified” to climb up onto the dunking platform.

Well, if you’ve ever met me, you know that I’m about as undignified as they come, so I handed Terry my jacket, shoes and socks, and climbed aboard. It took all of about three seconds until some cowboy with a good eye nailed the target and I dropped down into the water. Damn, that was cold!

That’s when I discovered that I was too short and pudgy to hoist myself back up onto the metal platform. The dunking tank was a wire basket with a canvas reservoir full of water in it, so I had to hook my fingers and toes in and crawl back up the side of it and slide myself into my seat. I didn’t have time to get comfortable, because that cowboy had two balls left, and he used them well! Twice more I got dunked and crawled back up. No sooner had the cowboy stepped aside than the local postmaster, a good buddy of mine, took his place. Bill wasn’t quite as good a pitcher, but he managed to dunk me one throw out of three.   

The local radio station was doing a live remote broadcast, and the announcer was another good buddy of mine. JJ the DJ announced over the airwaves “Folks, if Nick Russell has ever written something that ticked you off, it’s payback time. Come on out and get him wet. It’s all for a good cause!”

And come they did! I was in that dunking booth for over three hours, and we raised over $3,000 for the women’s shelter. By then my toes and finger were bloody from crawling back up that dumb canvas bag, and I was so blue that I looked like a smurf.

Terry was in tears much of the time, though I never have been sure whether it was sympathy for me or mortification from being out in public with the class clown. Whatever it was, she took me home, dried me off, and kept me. We’ve been together ever since.

Happy anniversary baby. I love you more and more every day.

Thought For The Day – Blessed are those who can give without remembering, and take without forgetting.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

There have been so many changes and so much turmoil at the Pinal County Fairgrounds in Casa Grande this year that we arrived in town earlier than usual to start taking care of details for our Gypsy Gathering rally, which starts Febrary 9th.

The fairgrounds manager we have dealt with in the past was dismissed under strained circumstances earlier this year, and the man who took over his job seems to have spent most of his time stepping on toes and alienating anybody and everybody he came into contact with.

I have related in past blogs that he tried to raise our rental fee for the facility 400%, in spite of the fact that we paid a deposit at the end of our 2008 rally for this year’s event, with the understanding that nothing would change. We finally got that worked out (I hope), though we still do not have a contract in hand. The Good Sam Club, who is here now for a rally, and the Wandering Individuals Network (WIN), who have a rally here after ours, have all been down the same route with this guy.

Now another fairgrounds manager has been hired, and will take over next week. Hopefully we can sit down with the new manager and work out some problems that still exist.

When we arrived yesterday we learned that the annual Gourd Festival is scheduled for February 6-8, and won’t end until 5 p.m. Our Early Birds are gong to start arriving on the morning of the 8th, so it’s going to be interesting to see how that works out. Right now nobody seems to be in charge, and we can’t get an answer to anything. But one way or another, we’ll get over these hurdles and have a great rally. We always do.

A lot of folks who are coming to the rally have expressed an interest in volunteering to help out. No rally can happen without volunteers, and we appreciate the folks who step up to the plate to help make our job easier. Unfortunately, my computer seems to have eaten the list of volunteers I had on file. So if you read this and are one of those who want to volunteer, would you please send me a quick e-mail again, listing what jobs you might be interested in helping with?

We need folks to work on the parking crew, including several who can be here by the 7th to help with the Early Birds.  We also need volunteers to oversee the morning coffee and donuts, to serve as room hosts, to help with registration, to pick up the donuts in the morning (this requires an early riser), as door prize runners, to help with the pizza party, to help organize our Cactus Queen beauty contest, and a few general “gofers.”

Terry and Connie Simpson, who have arrived a couple of weeks early in the past and called on the local business community to solicit door prizes, will not be able to make it to the rally this year. Is anybody going to be in the area who would be willing to take on that challenging job? If you’re interested in any of our volunteer positions, please send me an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net.

It’s going to be a great rally. If you have not registered yet, click the link below and come join in the fun.

Thought For The Day – Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I can’t find it right now, but somewhere in my contract, I’m sure there is a clause about icicles. Yesterday morning when I started unhooking our utilities at the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico, I found a four inch icicle hanging off the bottom of my bus! That is just not acceptable! 

I had filled our fresh water tank when we arrived, and the water had apparently dripped out of the overflow and formed the icicle in the 25 degree temperatures we had overnight. Yeah right, global warming my foot!

So why, you ask, did I fill our fresh water tank if we were hitting the road the next morning? Because I could. While many production model RVs are tipping the weight scale when they come off the production line, our old MCI bus conversion can comfortably carry anything we can stick in or tie on top of it. We have a 105 gallon fresh water tank, and even though we planned to be in a place with water and electric hookups the next day, it comes in handy to have plenty of water on board just in case we get delayed and find ourselves boondocking somewhere.

Now that we’re out here in the mountains of the West, I can really tell how much of an improvement the repairs that Christopher Best did on our engine have made. From Deming to Tucson, we were climbing most of the way. The road ranges from long gradual inclines to a couple of pretty steep climbs. The bus handled them all well.

In the past, on the climb up to Texas Canyon on Interstate 10 just east of Benson, we would drop down to about 35 miles per hour. Yesterday I kept it floored and we topped out at about 60. I had the radiator misters on as we made the climb, and the temperature gauge stayed well down in the comfort zone.

The one place where we did slow down a lot was coming out of the San Pedro Valley at Benson. This is a long, hard pull in a heavy rig, and in the past we’d drop down to about 18 miles per hour on the westbound grade. Yesterday we were down to 33 miles per hour, which was still uncomfortable with all of the high speed traffic flying past us, but a significant improvement from the past.  

Interstate 10 through Tucson is still under construction and down to two lanes with concrete barriers on both sides, but we rolled right on through with no problems. We stopped to fill our fuel tank at the Flying J in Eloy, and we averaged 5.2 miles per gallon since our last fill up. For our old bus, in the hills and mountains we’ve been driving in, that’s about what I expected.

We arrived at the fairgrounds in Casa Grande about 4 p.m. and discovered that the new manager, who has been giving us and other RV rallies scheduled to come into the fairgrounds such grief, has been replaced. The new, new manger is supposed to take over next week, and hopefully we can get some details hammered out.

When we unhooked the van from our Blue Ox tow bar, we discovered that our Remco drive shaft disconnect would not engage. I called Cliff’s Welding Shop in Mesa, Arizona, who had installed the unit, and asked for advice. Apparently somewhere in our trip the cable that operates the disconnect had gotten misaligned, which can apparently happen on rough roads with a lot of bumps.

Even though they were in the process of closing for the day, one of their guys stayed there and talked us through the process of crawling under the van to disconnect the cable, manually turning the drive shaft until it was properly aligned, and then manually engaging it. Now that’s the kind of customer service we appreciate!

Of course, Miss Terry was the one who took on this task, coming out pretty well covered in dirt and grease from head to toe. I really think I could have done it, but Terry insists it’s better for her to do such things than for me to try them, which will result in her having to take me to the nearest emergency room to have a finger or two sewed back on, and she’d still have to fix the thing anyway! I have to be honest folks, it’s kind of nice to be married to a good looking lady MacGyver who can fix anything.

Thought For The Day – He has acheived success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

We spent two nights at Mike and Pam Steffen’s place in Salt Flat, Texas, enjoying their hospitality, scratching their dogs’ ears, and telling lies. It was a nice visit.

We’ve known Mike and Pam ever since we started fulltiming almost ten years ago. In our first month on the road we attended Life on Wheels in Moscow, Idaho, and Mike was an instructor who we really clicked with. By the time the conference had ended, Mike was encouraging me to become an instructor. At the time, I told him there was no way I could ever get up in front of a classroom full of people and talk, and Mike assured me that I could do it. Who knew a few short years later I would be asked to join the Life on Wheels staff?

I actually was sort of drafted into presenting my first RV seminar at an Escapees Club rally in Lancaster, California just a few months later, and I was absolutely terrified. Mike was there, and told me “Just remember, Nick, these people don’t know you, and they don’t know anything about you. To them, you are the expert. They came to learn what you can teach them. Just get up there and be yourself. Hell, I like you, and they will too.” Well, that really helped. I got up on stage and did my thing, and by the time it was over I realized that I was having a great time. The rest, as they say, is history. Thanks for your friendship and support over the years, Mike.

We had a lot of fun with Mike and Pam, but poor Miss Terry didn’t fare as well as the rest of us. Their place is out in the middle of nowhere, about 70 miles east of El Paso, and they have a good sized chunk of land. Mike has a little shooting range on his property made of a dirt berm reinforced with tires as a bullet stop.

Sunday afternoon we were target shooting, and Terry was trying out one of Mike’s .40 semi-automatic pistols. On one of her shots, the bullet nicked the target, richocheted off one of the tires, and came back and hit her in the upper thigh. It had lost most of its velocity by then, and didn’t go through her blue jeans or penetrate the skin, but it did leave an ugly welt that split and a big bruise.

She’s fine, it just left her with a sore leg. It was just one of those freak accidents that happen, and we’re very thankful it was not worse. Mke picked up the bullet,which landed at Terry’s feet, and gave it to her as a souvenier.  

I told Terry that in the last couple of months, she was bitten by a tarpon in the Florida Keys, got dunked in the water in Aransas Pass, Texas, and now shot in the leg. And I’m supposed to be the clumsy one! Her Mom may not let her play with me any more.  

Yesterday we left Salt Flat and drove to El Paso on U.S. Highway 180/62, which is a nice two lane road that had several climbs that left me watching the temperature gauge carefully, but we made it fine. Coming into the El Paso area, we passed several miles of junk yards and run down industrial buildings, then cut across the edge of Fort Bliss (which is undergoing a massive building project) on State Route 375, picked up U.S, Highway 54 and eventually ended up on Interstate 10.

I have never liked El Paso, even when I lived there for a while as a kid, and every time we drive through it I am nervous until we get out of the heavy traffic and cross into New Mexico. There are some cities where the drivers just seem extra aggressive, and El Paso is one of them.

There is a State Welcome Center and rest area just across the state line, and we pulled in to have a sandwich and a short break. A sign at the rest area reminded us that we’re back in the Wild West.

Back on the road, in less than two hours we pulled into the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming. It was only about 1:30 p.m., and we had driven less than four hours. We could have pushed on further, but our next stop will be the Pinal County Fairgrounds in Casa Grande, where we will start getting things together for our Gypsy Gathering rally February 9-13. We will have water and electric hookups, and a dump station, but no sewer. Terry had some laundry she wanted to get caught up on before we get there, so Dreamcatcher makes a good stop. Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll be in Casa Grande tomorrow.

Thought For The Day – How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

There are several discount camping clubs available to RVers, including Passport America, Recreation USA, Happy Camper Club, Camp Club USA, and probably a couple of others that I have forgotten to mention. A discount camping club can save you a lot of money, if you use it, and if you understand how it operates.

All of these organizations operate basically the same way – participating campgrounds offer a discount, usually 50%, off their regular price. This discount is usually limited to a specific number of days, sometimes as little as one night, and other times as much as two weeks.

Most participating campgrounds have “blackout dates” when they do not honor the discount. These blackout dates are usually during their peak periods. Many RVers grumble about the blackout dates, but you have to look at this from a business standpoint on the part of the campground.

If I own a campground in Florida with 500 RV sites, during the spring and summer I may only have 100 of those sites rented. So I join one of the discount camping clubs and offer a 50% discount off my regular rate, and maybe I can fill another 50 sites. Half of something is better than all of nothing. But during the winter, when I have snowbirds lining up to fill my RV sites, why would I want to rent them for less? Thus the blackout dates. As long as RVers understand these restrictions and plan accordingly, they can still get a lot of value for the cost of their membership.

If I had to choose just one discount camping club, my vote would be for Passport America. It is the oldest and largest, with over 1,500 participating campgrounds from coast to coast. Most of the campgrounds are smaller mom and pop operations, and they are not always on the main highways, but that’s fine with us. We prefer two lane roads and small, friendly campgrounds. But if you only travel on the Interstate highways and like big campgrounds with lots of amenities, you will still find quite a few member campgrounds that will meet your needs.

Current Passport America dues for one year are $44, and some RV clubs offer further discounts on annual membership. We have used it for 10 years now and been very happy. We recently spent a week at Mission West Resort in Mission, Texas, a huge campground with plenty of amenities and planned activities. Their regular rate is $28 a night, but we paid $14/night under Passport America. That is a savings of $98, which pays for a couple of years of Passport America membership. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that this is a heck of a bargain!

Thought For The Day – Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally