We had a great time yesterday, but I sure am sore this morning!

Yesterday Terry and I, along with Ron and Brenda Speidel, floated the St. Joseph River from Mottville, Michigan to Bristol, Indiana, a distance of about 7 or 8 miles on the water. I said float, but the water was so calm that we paddled for much of the trip.

You may recall that I sold my first kayak and replaced it with a different model, from Fluid Fun in Bristol, and that after one paddling excursion that lasted about an hour, I quickly realized that I had chosen the wrong boat. The good folks at Fluid Fun are very dedicated to their customers and to the sport, so they allowed me to trade it in on a different model that fit me much better. This was the inaugural trip in the new boat.

The launch in Mottville is very nice, and the river was flowing along nicely, allowing us to just dip our paddle blades into the water now and then to keep the front of our boats pointed straight. In no time at all we were paddling under the historic Mottville Bridge. Built in 1922, the bridge is the longest concrete camelback bridge in the United States.

I think the St. Joseph River must have one of the largest populations of turtles in the world. We saw then everywhere. Sunning on logs, swimming along, and slipping off the bank into the water as we passed by. This log held eleven, and we saw even more on other logs during our trip! There were also plenty of birds; Canadian geese, swans, blue heron, and ducks.

In some places the river was very wide, and in others it narrowed down, as shown in this view from Miss Terry’s perspective. The river is pretty shallow, not more than a couple of feet deep most of the way, and so shallow in some places that I got grounded on the gravel bottom and Terry had to grab the front of my kayak and give it a couple of strung tugs to get me moving again. (On dry land, she sometimes accomplishes this with a couple of strong kicks to my hind end.)

We put in at 2:30 p.m. and the trip took us just over three hours. The current that had carried us along early in our float died out, and we spent most of the trip paddling. I sure felt it in my back and shoulders by the time we arrived at our take out point in Bristol! I bet if I did that two or three times a week, I’d probably fit in my kayak better, and maybe not get stuck in shallow water so often!

On another topic, several blog readers have asked me to repeat the information on the veteran’s discount offered by Verizon Wireless. Take your DD 214 (discharge) to any Verizon company store (not a franchise store), and ask for discount code #117818. You will get a 15% discount off your Verizon bill, before taxes. I submitted my paperwork in June, and the discount started showing up in my next month’s bill.

Another company that treats veteran’s right is Lowes. Somebody had told me a while back that they offer a 10% veteran’s discount, and last week when we purchased the handles for our new desk/workstations, I remembered it as we were checking out. The young lady at the counter took a quick peek at my V.A. medical card and I got my discount! How very nice! You can bet I’ll do my shopping at Lowes anytime I can in the future!

Thought For The Day – Mankind must remember that peace is not God’s gift to us; peace is our gift to each other.

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I spent most of yesterday working on a website for Carlyle Lehman at Focal Wood Products. Many people are surprised to learn that while the Amish people live a much simpler lifestyle than most of us, with their horses and buggies, they do in fact make use of many modern conveniences, including telephones, electricity, and even the internet.

Every Amish community has its own rules as to how much of the “English world” (as they call life among the non-Amish), they can incorporate into their homes and businesses. While the Amish don’t own or drive cars, they will hire someone to take them where they need to go if it is too far for their buggies, and crews of Amish workers at local factories car pool in vans driven by non-Amish co-workers.

If you drive past the Amish farms on some of the back roads here in northern Indiana, you will see small wooden structures at the end of the driveway at every third or fourth home. These are shared telephone booths, where they can make and receive calls relating to business. But these booths are not heated and do not have a seat, to prevent them from spending much time chatting. We often see newspaper advertisements for items for sale, with a telephone number and the notation “Call between 7:30 and 8 a.m.” Those are the hours when they will be monitoring the telephone to receive calls. For businesses such as Focal Wood Products, they have a voice mail system, so if we call when Carlyle is busy, we leave a message and he calls us back. It’s not quite as convenient as calling a traditional business, but it works for them.

In the case of his website, Carlyle received permission from his community to have one to advertise his products, but he cannot build or maintain it himself. That’s where I got involved, and it’s been an interesting experience working with someone whose culture is different in so many ways from our own.

I mentioned a while back that I have co-authored a new book on self-publishing, titled The Step-By-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit. Last week I received my first copy of the book, hot off the press, and I’m very pleased with it. All of the credit goes to my co-author, Christy Pinheiro, who conceived the project and handled all of the production details. For more information, here is a link to the book’s website. Check it out; you too could be a published author!  

One of the things I suggest on my self-publishing website, Publishing4Profit, is producing small niche guides aimed at very targeted markets. Examples would be our Guide to Free Campgrounds and Overnight Parking Places, and our Guide to Casino Camping.

I don’t know if Dale Sumner from Mobile RV Medic, Inc. spent any time reading the website or coming to any of my seminars, but he recently published a very good guide, titled Basic RV Electricity and Protection, which is an excellent primer for anyone who owns an RV. Dale packs a lot of excellent information into the book, without getting buried in technical details that the average RVer could not understand. If you want to know what happens when you plug your RV’s electrical cord into a campground’s pedestal, and how to avoid overloading the circuit, and how to protect your rig from problems, this is an easy to understand guide that is well worth the money. You can order your copy at www.lulu.com/basicRVelectricity or e-mail Dale at sales@mobileRVmedic.com.

Of course, if you’re staying at an upscale RV resort such as Retama Village in Mission, Texas, you won’t have to worry about things like electrical problems. My friend Jack Mayer owns a couple of RV lots at Retama Village, and Jack and some of the other lot owners have set up a website, Retama Rentals, to market their lots when they are not staying on them. We paid a visit to friends at Retama last winter, and I can tell you it’s the nicest RV resort we have ever seen! So if you’re thinking about spending some time in the Valley this winter, check out Jack’s website.

While I was busy building a website this weekend, Bad Nick wrote a new post for the Bad Nick Blog titled We’re Going To Lose The War On Terror. Check it out, it will give you something to think about.

Thought For The Day – Anything in the future will always look better because there’s always something wrong in the present.

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We have had a population explosion of mosquitoes here in Elkhart this summer. We’ve been coming here to Elkhart Campground for years, and I don’t ever remember them being so numerous or so hungry.

I have heard about a million and one ways to keep the bloodthirsty little parasites at bay, and trust me, none of them work. We have tried so many commercial sprays that my blood type is now A+DDT. We bought little battery operated electronic gizmos we can clip to our shirts that emit a high pitched noise that is supposed to keep bugs at bay. It hasn’t worked, but the good news is that nobody’s yappy little dog pees in our RV site anymore!

One time a bunch of us were sitting around telling lies and swatting skeeters, and a friend of mine who flew med-evac helicopters in Vietnam and worked as a prison guard, mentioned that if you put Avon Skin So Soft on, it will keep them at bay. Another gent, with a dry sense of humor, asked “Jim, how does a guy like you discover that?”

I long for the good old days, when we didn’t worry about the environment or our lungs, and the spray trucks would come through the neighborhood sending out clouds of gas guaranteed to kill mosquitoes, gnats, and flies. We kids used to chase the trucks, dodging into and out of the mist. Sure, my weird cousin Terry ended up with that third eye, and his son Patrick was born with nipples on his knees, but we didn’t have to swat mosquitoes!

But alas, we don’t have spray trucks anymore, so we have to make do. We’ve tried several types of citronella candles, with no success. However, I have found that if I fire up the old Detroit diesel engine on our bus conversion, I can lay down a fog that will wipe out an acre or two of mosquitoes in record time.

One person who never seems to be bothered is my pal Ed Allard, who stopped in last night with his lovely wife Alice. Ed is an honest seven feet tall, give an inch or so, and while the rest of us were brushing the bothersome critters away from our faces, Ed was perfectly comfortable. I guess mosquitoes don’t fly that high. Either that, or they get a nosebleed at that elevation, get lightheaded and crash before they reach his neckline. 

The latest thing we are trying is a concoction that our friend Billie Barker came up with, a solution of Downy fabric softener and water in a spray bottle, which the ladies sprits over everybody. It smells much better than Deep Woods Off, though the other day I turned my head just as Brenda Speidel was squirting some at me and took a shot of it into the eye. The cops ought to throw away their pepper spray and use this stuff! It’s a lot cheaper, and belligerent prisoners would smell wonderful once they wrestled them into handcuffs.

Oh, how does it work as a mosquito deterrent? Not worth a darn. There are just as many as before swarming around us when we sit out every evening. But I will say this; I haven’t spotted one yet with any wrinkles!

Thought For The Day – It’s not hard to meet expenses, they’re everywhere.

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I have to tell you that I am very impressed with Dell Computers’ customer service for small businesses. As I reported in yesterday’s blog, when I called Dell on Thursday afternoon to report that my desktop unit had died, they promised to have a service tech come to us within 24 hours.

Sure enough, yesterday a very nice young man named Matt Nemeth arrived and replaced the computer’s power supply and motherboard, and I was back up and running. Matt also checked out the rest of my system, gave me some pointers on future upgrades I might consider. All at no cost to me!

I’m afraid I may have come across in yesterday’s blog sounding like we don’t appreciate our readers when they stop over to visit, and I apologize for that. We appreciate our readers, and we do indeed enjoying getting to know the faces that go with the names on or mailing lists; it’s just that sometimes the timing can be wrong.

Several blog readers suggested that we get a sign that says do not disturb, and hang it on our door. But we love fresh air, and we have the door open whenever the weather will allow it, which is kind of an invitation to come by. And again, we really do enjoy having visitors 95% of the time. Thursday was just a bad day.  

Now our friends Butch and Fonda Williams know how to be the perfect guests! They came by yesterday, and brought housewarming gifts; a big batch of Butch’s delicious homemade toffee candy for Miss Terry, and two magazines full of ammunition for one of my “personal protection devices” for me. I don’t know what’s with Miss Terry though; I offered to let her play with my toys, but she slapped my knuckles with a ruler when I reached for her candy! I don’t live on a two way street.

Every day more and more registrations are coming in for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, which is fast approaching. Terry and I, along with Ron and Brenda Speidel, will be leaving Elkhart Campground on the 20^th to go over to Celina and start working on the final details for the rally. But we won’t be there alone. A bunch of folks from the Escapees Classes of 2005 and 2007 will be arriving early for a pre-rally class reunion, and Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour will be coming in to get set up for their Computer Boot Camp.

We were hoping to have our bus sold before we left for the rally, but while we have a couple of people who are talking to us about it, so far no money has changed hands, and we are getting concerned about where and how we will store it if it doesn’t sell. If you know anybody looking for a great deal on a bus conversion, send them our way. We are motivated sellers.

Thought For The Day – Sometimes two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.

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Before we were even dressed yesterday morning, somebody was knocking on our door, and it seemed like the line of people stopping by never ended until well after dark. It was not a good day to get much accomplished.

I spent over an hour on the telephone with Jim Guld from Geeks on Tour as we tried to figure out why my laptop computer will not communicate with my Cradlepoint wireless router. I can pick up the WiFi signal for the campground, as well as from another RVer parked near us, but not my own. Try as he might, even the resourceful Jim could not resolve the problem, and he finally had to admit defeat and suggested that I call the techs at the 3G Store and see if they could help. I never got to them, because more people were coming by to say hello, to see our new desks, and to see the Winnebago.

After I got off the phone with Jim, I called Dell to tell them that my desktop computer had died, and while I was talking to their tech folks, a half dozen or more people came knocking on the door. Miss Terry was out running some errands, so I tried to juggle two conversations at once with each new visitor.

Most quickly realized that I was busy and excused themselves, but one couple just parked themselves on the couch and started talking, even though I had to ask them to wait several times as I tried to follow tech support’s instructions to revive the computer. At one point, the husband said “It looks like we caught you at a bad time,” and I agreed and said that there probably could not have been a worse time. But they never took the hint, and continued to ask me questions about the new motorhome even as I continued talking to Dell’s tech support. Arrgh!

We really do enjoy visiting with our readers, but sometimes I wish we were just a little more anonymous. Or that folks were a little more courteous when they drop in and see that we’re in over our heads.

The good news is that Dell was very responsive to my call, and because I signed up for their small business extended warranty when I bought the desktop computer, they are sending out a repairman today or tomorrow, whenever the needed parts arrive. If he can’t get me up and running, they will either repair or replace the computer within five business days. That’s pretty good service.

Today is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our country. I hope each of you will take a moment or two to remember those who were lost, and to remember how we all felt on that day. We may have buried the victims of the attacks, but let’s not bury the memories, or our determination to punish those responsible.

Bad Nick has some thoughts about 9/11 that may not be politically correct, but then again, when is he ever politically correct? Read his thoughts at They Were Not Heroes. 

Thought For The Day – My train of thought jumped the tracks.

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