Holding an RV rally is a lot of hard work, and as I have said before, there is no way we could do it without all of our dedicated volunteers. There are a hundred and one details that have to be handled as they come up, everything from a seminar presenter who needs a quick lesson in how to operate a digital projector, to reuniting somebody with their lost car keys, to listening to a rally attendee vent because they wanted a full hookup site and none are available, to finding the maintenance folks to tell them that the ladies room is out of toilet paper. I know, because I dealt with all four yesterday.

But with all of the hard work, there is still plenty of time for fun. I really enjoy getting up on stage, acting like a goofball, and passing out door prizes. Somebody said maybe I want to be the next Saint Nick. Now that’s a job I could handle – everybody loves you, you only have to work one night a year, and people give you milk and cookies!

One of my favorite parts of an RV rally is having the opportunity to socialize with so many of our friends, as well as making new friends of the people we meet here. That’s what it’s really all about.

When I wasn’t putting out fires and giving my Highway History And Back Road Mystery seminar yesterday, I had a lot of time to just visit with folks. We cross paths with most of the vendors that are here at different rallies across the country, and it is always fun to get together with them. We met Ben and Gay Miller, from Coyote Sales, at our very first RV rally, back in 1999, and we have run into them everywhere from a small bus rally in Arizona to mega-rallies all over the country.

Daryl Lawrence, from Lawrence RV Accessories, has a warped and twisted sense of humor, and I always enjoy bantering with him. Another vendor with a good sense of humor is Butch Williams, who is here with his lovely wife Fonda, selling their convection cooking hot plates and pots and pans. Yesterday I stopped at the outside food vendor and bought myself a brat for lunch, and as I walked past Butch’s booth, he just reached out and snatched it away, and had his own lunch! I’d have tried to grab it back before he sunk his greedy teeth into it, but I know better than to get my fingers in front of his face when he’s in a feeding frenzy. It was safer to just go back and buy another sandwich, which I took into a corner to eat, away from any other predators.

One special friend here at the rally is my buddy Carey McGleish, who we first met when he was a student at Life on Wheels. Back then Carey was a total greenhorn and very unsure of himself in his new fifth wheel, but he’s come a long way in the last few years. He was helping distribute door prizes last night, and I told the audience that I had raised him from a pup. Everybody got a big laugh out of that, including Carey himself. 

That’s how it goes at an RV rally. A little learning, a little nonsense, and a whole lot of fun.        

Somebody said yesterday that we should change the names of our rallies from Gypsy Gatherings to Gypsy Journal Family Reunions, because he feels that way when he comes to one of our events. Yeah, we kind of feel that way too.

Thought For The Day – Can vegetarians eat animal crackers?

Sunday evening the wind began to blow here in Celina, Ohio, and it got stronger by the hour all night long. I don’t think many people here at our Gypsy Gathering rally got much sleep, with our rigs rocking in the gusts.

Daylight brought no reprieve; the cold wind blew hard all day long, with gusts reported as high as 60 miles per hour in some areas. A couple headed in for the rally called to say that there were high profile vehicle warnings on Interstate 75 and the highway patrol was telling people to get off the road. They wisely decided to pull into a truck stop and wait it out, hoping to get in today.

Even with the wind, we still had 20 more RVs arrive yesterday for the rally, and our dauntless parking crew braved the gale to get them parked safely. I’m glad these guys are volunteers, because we sure could not afford to pay them what any sane man would want for doing their jobs!  

On the first day at all of our rallies, after we welcome everybody and introduce the vendors and seminar presenters, I moderate an RV Quick Tips discussion, where the audience can ask questions of a panel of RV experts. For this rally, the panel included Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School, RV authors and speakers Joe and Vicki Kieva, Mac McCoy from Fire and Life Safety, RV seminar speaker Ron Speidel, fifth wheel hitch expert Pete Peterson, and Kevin Mallory from Cruising America RV Service Company.

One question was whether Life on Wheels would ever be revived, and I explained that the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) had hoped to hold a similar program this year, but due to lack of industry support and student registration, they had to cancel the event. I was very flattered when Mac McCoy then said that as far as he and a lot of other people are concerned, our Gypsy Gathering rallies are the new Life on Wheels. When Joe Kieva concurred and the audience applauded, I really felt honored.

I could never hope to be compared with the late, great Gaylord Maxwell and his excellent RV education program, but we have worked very hard to make our rallies something more than the run of the mill RV get togethers. While we have vendors, entertainment, and a lot of fun at our rallies, we also strive to put together a lineup of real meat and potatoes seminars, not just fluff “buy me” presentations to sell products. Judging by the feedback we have been getting, it’s a winning combination.

With so much going on, and even as busy as she has been overseeing all of the rally details, Miss Terry still finds time to see the beauty in life that so many of us overlook. Monday she found these beautiful mushrooms growing at the base of one of the old oak trees here at the fairgrounds. Terry always amazes me; we can be cruising down the highway keeping up with traffic, or meandering along some two lane road, and she is always spotting hawks sitting on fence posts, or deer and antelope grazing in meadows. What an eye!

Thought For The Day – Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens.

Today is the first day of our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, but by the end of the day yesterday, we already had 104 RVs on the fairgrounds! This included our advance staff, the parking crew, quite a few vendors, the Escapes class reunion group, the attendees at the Geeks on Tour Computer Boot Camp, and the folks who paid for early bird arrival. And today we have even more rigs scheduled to arrive!

Mike Loscher is a veteran member of our hardworking parking crew, and the first person people talk to when they arrive. Mike determines if they need to take on fresh water or dump their holding tanks, if they need handicapped parking, and then sends them on to the designated parkers.

Mike is retired military, then retired from a second career in nursing. I think he does this to prepare for a third gig as a Wal-Mart greeter!

Once everybody was parked, they headed over to the Registration Building, where Terry and the dedicated ladies who help her got them signed in, gave them goodie bags, sold them tickets for our pizza party and rally T-shirts, and answered lots of questions.

This is our first year to have our vendors inside, and they are in the same building where we hold registration and serve morning coffee and donuts.

We have a nice variety of vendors, selling everything from RV cleaning supplies to automatic rooftop satellite television dishes, and anything else you could want. Russ and Debbie Davis are back for a second year, selling magnetic jewelry and Eniva health supplements. Since we saw them last, they have purchased a truck conversion, and I can’t wait to get over and check it out!

Red and Beth, from Too Crazy Ladies, are outside vendors, and by mid-day they were already doing a brisk business, as people lined up to order name badges and other custom engraved items. They have vended at our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rallies, but this will be their first Eastern rally with us.

Meanwhile, back in the driveway, we had a long line of RVs pulling in, and the parking crew worked long hours getting everybody in and parked in record time. Everybody I talked to was very happy with how smoothly they got in and parked in their designated sites. Well known RV authors and speakers Joe and Vicki Kieva have decided to retire from presenting seminars at RV rallies and shows, but they honored us by making our rally their last event. They arrived with their beautiful and lovable young Golden Retriever, Molly, whom I instantly fell in love with. What a magnificent animal!

We were first introduced to Joe and Vicki through their columns and books, and then we got to know what a nice couple they are in person when we all taught at Life on Wheels. Be sure to check out their RV Notebook blog.

Chris and Jim Guld from Geeks on Tour were busy presenting their Computer Boot Camp, and from the look on the faces of Henry and Kathy Gartner, they were both learning and having fun at the same time. That’s what the Geeks are all about!

On the other side of the fairgrounds, Rick Lang from Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) was weighing motorhomes and fifth wheel trailers, and from the happy smiles on this couple’s faces, Rick must have given them a good report on their motorhome.

While all this was happening, Dick Snider was spiffing up the veggie powered Country Coach he is displaying for sale. That’s right, veggie powered! The coach runs on biodiesel and waste cooking oil! If you want to travel for just pennies day, stop by and see Dick’s motorhome here at the rally, or check it out online here.

Terry and I could not make these rallies happen without all of the hard work from so many volunteers, from the folks who collect door prizes, to those who help with parking and registration, door prize runners at our evening drawings, those who help serve at the pizza party and clean up afterwards, our seminar room hosts, and all of the many other chores that need doing. We appreciate every one of them more than we can ever say!

Thought For The Day – The advantage of exercising every day is that you die healthier.

Okay, we both know that headline is a lie. I’m very overweight. But the good news is that our Winnebago motorhome is not overweight!

My buddy Rick Lang from the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) arrived at the fairgrounds here in Celina yesterday, and will be weighing RVs for folks coming in for our rally. Once Rick was in and set up, I had him weigh our new coach to see how we were doing now that we have moved in.

The motorhome has a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating of 32,000 pounds. With a full tank of diesel fuel, about 75 gallons of water onboard, and empty waste tanks, with me in the driver’s seat, we came in exactly 500 pounds under our weight limit. So the good news is we’re okay for weight, and the bad news is, we have to be very careful about bringing anything else onboard. That was never an issue with our bus conversion. If we could find a place to stick it, we could carry it.

Actually, we still have quite a few things to get rid of, including some books, tools, and other heavy items that will probably give us another couple hundred pounds of safety margin once they’re gone. Thanks for weighing us Rick, you gave us some extra piece of mind.

Okay, as for my weight, I have decided that I can spend an hour or two a day walking and exercising to lose weight, or I can just spend an hour or two once a year going to Wal-Mart to buy new clothes in a larger size. As busy as I am, I think that’s the way it will probably go.

I am a big believer in education, especially education that can save your life. There are many excellent safety classes offered at RV rallies that every RVer should take part in. These include the RVSEF classes on RV weight safety and tire safety, Mac McCoy’s excellent fire safety classes, and the RV Driving School’s classroom seminars and their behind the wheel driver safety program.

Modern RVs, with power steering and brakes, and air bag suspensions, are easy to handle. But they are still big, heavy vehicles, and they don’t drive like the family minivan. They take longer to get up to speed, longer to stop, and longer to clear an intersection.

One careless minute and you could find yourself in a situation like this, which took place in Amador, California when an RVer pulled out into the path of a big truck. Get some education before you get behind the wheel.

When you read blogs, do you also read the comments? If so, do you ever go back the next day and read the comments that were left after you originally read the blog? Do it sometime. The comments from Friday’s blog, Who Gets Their Dream, have been very interesting. Longtime reader George Stoltz sent me an e-mail saying that they could be a discussion guide for a graduate-level course on marital relationships. I have to agree. In fact, for the first time ever, Miss Terry even left a comment!

Thought For The Day – Before you give someone a piece of your mind, be sure you have enough to spare.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

If you ever watched the popular Headlines bit on the Tonight Show, where Jay Leno shows what should be blatant typos and misprints in newspapers, you might wonder how anybody could be so dumb as to let something like that slip through. 

Trust me, it happens all too easily. After a lifetime in the small town newspaper business, I know that no matter how carefully you proofread and how sure you are that there are no errors, as soon as something hits the pressroom, the gremlins go to work and everything goes to hell.

I’m proud to say that one of my own newspaper front page headlines once made Jay Leno’s show, when I referred to the Arizona Department of Public Safety (their name for the Highway Patrol), as the Department of Pubic Safety. I missed it when I typed the headline, the spell checker didn’t catch it, the proofreader missed it, the two girls laying out the newspaper missed it, and the guys in the pressroom missed it. But the moment the paper hit the newsstands, everybody spotted it and the phone started ringing off the hook!

Even knowing that things like this happen all of the time, I was still kicking my own butt yesterday when Brenda Speidel noticed a conflict in room assignments on the rally schedule. I never saw it, Miss Terry never noticed it when she proofed the schedule, nor did Brenda when she also proofed it. That would be too easy. We had to wait until after I had paid for hundreds of copies of the schedule to be printed before we caught the error. What can I say? My buddies back home in Arizona would have just shaken their heads and said “Nick happens.”

Speaking of schedules, I had another of those frustrating things happen yesterday that give Bad Nick justification for coming out, but then it turned comic, and eventually worked out okay.

Several weeks ago I called the V.A. hospital in Lexington, Kentucky to make an appointment for my annual medical exams. Because my Primary Care provider recently retired, I had to be assigned to a new medic, and the appointment was set for October 5, right after our rally. Yesterday I received a notice in the mail telling me to call and schedule my appointment, so I called back to tell them I already had.

The lady on the phone said she did not see me on the schedule, and after checking, she said there had been an error and my appointment had been entered for a different patient, who doesn’t even have the same Primary Care provider. Then she said she the next opening available to me was October 29.

That would have really messed up our travel plans, and I asked her why they couldn’t take out the wrong patient’s name and insert mine into that timeslot instead, and she said because it was already taken by the other patient. “But he doesn’t see that Primary,” I told her, “So he won’t show up, because he doesn’t know he has that appointment scheduled. All you have to do is change names, I show up as originally scheduled, and all is good.” She started to tell me again that the time slot was already filled, but about that time I dropped the telephone, and when I went to pick it up, I managed to push the disconnect button.    

I immediately called back, reached another clerk, and told her what I had done and that I didn’t want the first lady to think I was being rude and had hung up on her. She said no problem, she’d pass that on, and they’d see me October 29.

The call ended, and just as I was telling Miss Terry that our travel schedule was going to have to change, the phone rang again, and it was the original clerk, who said after she lost my call, she started to tell another clerk about this stubborn patient who “just didn’t get it,” when suddenly it hit her that yes, she could just delete the phantom patient’s name and put mine back in the original time slot, since he didn’t see that Primary anyway! What can you do but laugh? All’s well that ends well.

Dropping my phone and then disconnecting my call wasn’t my only telephone adventure yesterday. I think I’m phone challenged.

Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour were here, and Chris was checking out my Blackberry Storm. After they left, I returned a phone call that had been interrupted earlier. As I was talking, I started moving some pillows around on the couch and rummaging around on my desk. Terry asked what I was looking for, so I asked the person on the other end to hold on a second, and then told her “My phone. I don’t know where Chris put it when she was done looking at it.”

She gave me one of those looks you usually reserve for the village idiot, or my weird cousin Terry up in Michigan, and then said “Dear, you’re talking on your phone. It’s up against your ear.”

What can I say? Nick happens.

Thought For The Day – If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally