Yeah, I know, you watch TV in your RV all the time. I do, too. In fact, I have for over twelve years now. But according to the dweebs at Dish Network, you can’t watch TV in an RV. Who knew?

In Monday’s blog, titled You Win Some, You Lose Some, I wrote that Dish Network had agreed to send somebody out to install a new DVR receiver in our motorhome. Since we already have an automatic Dish high definition receiver on our motorhome, “installing basically means plugging the receiver in and hooking up the input and output coax cables. The installation was supposed to happen yesterday afternoon. It didn’t.

About 8 a.m. the installer called, asked where we were, and I gave him the campground’s address and our site number. “Hey, you can’t put a TV dish on an RV,” the guy told me. “I have to mount a pole to the side of it to hold the dish. That won’t work.” I assured him that he didn’t have to “mount a pole” to the side of my motorhome, all he had to do was hand me the receiver and go on his way. He said he’d have to have his supervisor call me back.

That noteworthy individual called back a few minutes later to tell me that you can’t have a TV in a motorhome. Okay, here we go. We batted that one back and forth for a while, and he said that there was no way they were delivering my receiver to me. End of story.

I called Dish Network back and spent the next three hours on the telephone, mostly on hold, while a series of people who could barely speak English told me that it was illegal to install a TV in a motorhome, put me on hold, never came back, or eventually hung up.

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Finally I got to a Customer Retention Representative in the United States, who assured me that the only way it was legal for me to have a TV in my RV was to park it permanently on a lot and never move it again.

I asked her to stop reading off her cue card, and look at my account and note my RV waiver, and asked her what the RV waiver was for. She said it was to allow me to receive east and west coast networks while traveling in my RV. “Okay, if I can’t have a TV in my RV, why do I have an RV waiver on file so I can receive those distant networks while I’m traveling?” I asked her. She told me that the waiver was to allow me to receive east and west coast networks while traveling in my RV. (Yeah, I heard it before too.)

Finally the light seemed to go on, and she had a solution to my problem! She told me that I was a valued customer, and all I had to do was park my RV and not move it anymore, and I could get my free receiver. But if I did that, I couldn’t keep my distant networks, because then I wouldn’t be traveling anymore.  Okay, next nitwit please.

Then that nitwit’s boss came on the line, who was another nitwit,  and explained that only Standard Definition receivers would work in an RV. Not High Definition, and not DVR receivers.

Aha! So I can watch TV in my RV, just not HD TV?  He said yes you can have an SD receiver, but no, you can’t watch TV in an RV, because every time you move, somebody would have to come out and reinstall it. Huh? Are you getting a headache yet? I was getting chest pains by then!

I told him that I know many, many RVers who have HD DVRs. I even called Bill Adams from Internet Anywhere to be sure I wasn’t missing something. Bill is the recognized expert when it comes to mobile TV and satellite dish systems. He assured me that I could use the HD receiver in my RV, with my automatic Dish HD antenna.

But when I called Dish back, after talking to Bill, they assured me that Bill was wrong, you can’t have a TV in an RV.

If it weren’t for the fact that my Winegard Trav’ler automatic rooftop dish can’t be reprogrammed to DirecTV, I’d switch today. As it is, I’ll just sit here and remember the good old days, when gas was $2 a gallon, and I could watch TV in my RV.

Thought For The Day – Politics has taught us that it is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.

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Miss Terry has said that she wants to see if a Sea Eagle inflatable kayak might suit her needs as a replacement for her heavy Manta Ray, but she didn’t want something as big as my PaddleSki 435. Tim Ryerson from Inflatable Boats 4 Less has suggested one of their sporty Fast Track kayaks for her.

As we were driving through the Thousand Trails preserve, I spotted a Sea Eagle 370 kayak in the back of a pickup truck, and stopped to ask the owner what he thought of it. In one of those small world incidents that we keep experiencing, the owner was Bob Timko from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and he and his wife Linda are new subscribers to the Gypsy Journal.

As it turns out, Bob has two Sea Eagles and is an avid fisherman who has used his inflatable boats from Florida to Alaska. In a testament to the quality of the Sea Eagles, he told us that he once ran his other one up onto a stump while using an electric trolling motor and got hung up. Bob said that he had to bounce all over the place while the trolling motor was in reverse, to finally get loose, and that he was afraid that he had done some serious damage to the boat. But Bob said that when he got back to shore and turned the kayak over, he couldn’t see a mark in it! Now that’s quality!

In addition to the two Sea Eagles, Bob has owned everything from canoes to pontoon boats. Linda told us that she is very uncomfortable in any kind of boat, but that she was so impressed with the stability of the Sea Eagles that she now goes out in the inflatable with Bob. In another vote for Tim and Crystal Ryerson’s excellent service after the sale, Bob said that any time he has had a question or concern, Tim has been quick to do whatever it takes to get it handled.  

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Quite a few readers have taken advantage of our Holiday Special offer, and if you haven’t already done so, click the link and check it out. We only have a couple of weeks left on this special offer, so don’t delay. Unfortunately, due to higher mailing costs, we cannot extend this offer to Canadian addresses, except for digital subscriptions.

Yesterday, Terry and I had to drive back down to Winter Haven to pick up the title to the Explorer from the dealership where we bought it, and then I dropped off a big load of orders at the post office. Last week I wrote that I try to avoid big stores between Thanksgiving and Christmas to avoid the crowds, but I had forgotten how busy that place is during the holiday season! There was a long line of people waiting to mail Christmas packages. I’ll be using my Stamps.com postage for everything I can in the next few weeks.

We spent two weeks at this Thousand Trails and were gone a week, but the place really filled up in our absence. There are very few empty RV sites in our section, where just a week ago there were quite a few open sites. The snowbirds are definitely flocking south! We have bumped into quite a few people we know already, and we’re looking forward to seeing even more.

Thought For The Day – The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. - Amelia Earhart

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Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That’s life, and I guess if, in the end, your personal scoreboard shows more wins than losses, it was worth the effort, wasn’t it? Yesterday we did some winning and some losing, but I think we still came out ahead.

After stopping to have our propane tank filled, and paying our bill at the Escapees Sumter Oaks Campground in Bushnell, we left and headed back to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve, which is actually about eleven miles south of Clermont, Florida. We took the route that George Sharrer suggested, through Webster, and shaved ten miles off the trip, compared to the way we came in a week earlier.

The trip went fine except for one airhead woman who was parked on the shoulder of the road at a fruit stand on State Route 50. As I was coming by, she pulled out onto the highway directly in front of me and made a U-turn and headed westbound. I slammed on my brakes, hit the horn, and managed not to run over her. Terry was following me in the Explorer, and said the lady had a totally perplexed look on her face as she went by, like “What did I do?”

There’s a reason we take the time to secure everything inside our motorhome before we hit the road. In a stop like that, a laptop computer, toaster, or even a hardback could become a deadly missile, inside an RV. Okay, nobody got hurt and I kept the Winnebago on the road, so I guess I won that one. 

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We had hoped to get the same site we had before at the Thousand Trails, but it was already taken, so we got one nearby that wasn’t nearly as level. It took two or three tries, and some 12×12 oak squares under the front wheels to get us parked. We’re still a little low in the front, but not so much as to affect anything. So I guess we lost that one.

A couple of times now our door latch has jammed and not wanted to release so we could open the door.  By shaking the door while we worked the latch, we’ve been able to get it open each time. It happened again yesterday while we were trying to get set up in our RV site. I stepped outside and closed the door, and couldn’t get it to open up again. Fortunately, the driver’s window was open, so I got out my Beanstalk ladder and Terry climbed inside, only to find out that she couldn’t open the door from the inside either! She eventually took the screws out of the lock plate and was able to manipulate the lock mechanism to get it to open.

We tried to figure out what the problem was, a neighbor came over and looked at it, I went online to Winnebago’s website and looked at some diagrams for our coach, and I called my Winnebago guru, Ron Speidel for his input. We were still scratching our heads when a mobile RV tech named Henry Bender came by and offered to help. It took Henry about a half hour to fix the problem, which was a flange inside the lock mechanism that had gotten worn, which allowed the handle to slide past it instead of engaging to move the bolt. Henry bent it into the proper position so it would engage properly, put everything back together, and $40 later our door worked again. So I spent $40, but got a working door. Can we call that a draw?    

We have been Dish Network customers for at least nine years, and our Standard Definition receiver was ancient technology, and worn out even before the burglars threw it on the floor and stomped on it last year. Since then it has given us problems every time we’ve moved. It seems like every time I turn on the TV, both Dish and DirecTV are offering as many as four new receivers, and free installation, to entice new customers to sign on. I called Dish and told them I wanted one of those fancy new HD receivers that will allow me to record shows if I’m busy or watching something else. 

The customer service rep hemmed and hawed, and then said that they would give me a receiver, but that I would have to pay a $95 service fee to have it installed. Huh? Installed? I have an automatic HD antenna on the roof, all I need to do is plug it in and go, right? Apparently not, he said. Only a “technician” can do that.

I told him I wasn’t going to pay $95, and he suggested that I go to Best Buy and purchase the same receiver, which I could plug in myself. Apparently the Best Buy receivers don’t require a “technician” to install them.

I learned a long time ago that if you get to the right person and raise enough hell, you can usually get results. So I asked to speak to a supervisor, who blew me off. I told her no problem, I would happily cancel my service and switch to DirecTV, which would give me free receivers and free installation.

That’s when things changed. She transferred me to a “Customer Loyalty Supervisor” named Tanya, who had no problem giving me an HD receiver with which we can watch two different programs on our two TVs at once, and waived the $95 installation fee. The “technician” is supposed to be here Thursday afternoon to install it. So I won another one. If I remember my grade school math, that’s one loss, two wins, and a draw. Not bad for a Sunday, I guess.

Actually, I lost another one, but you’ll have to read Bad Nick’s new Bad Nick Blog post, titled Voting With My Wallet to find out about that one. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Living well is the best revenge, but you have to let go of the old to embrace the new.

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Hey, give me a break! You try coming up with clever blog post headlines every day! It’s hard work!

After reading yesterday’s blog, some readers wanted to know if the new high back seat from Sea Eagle was any improvement for my bad back. Yes, after paddling 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon, I had no back pain at all, and felt great!

Somebody else wrote to ask why we keep deflating the kayak after paddling it, and then re-inflating it the next time we go out, and was it because the Sea Eagle PaddleSki was too heavy to carry inflated in our van. No, the boat only weighs about 40 pounds, and as this photo shows, I can easily drag it out of the water and stand it upright.

The problem is that our van is too tall for Terry and I to get it up there without using a ladder, and the inflated boat is over 14 feet long, so it won’t fit inside our van. Not counting the fact that our two hard kayaks are inside the van, as well as all of the newspapers we carry, and two Trek bicycles. It’s not all that much hassle to inflate and deflate the Sea Eagle, and it will be even less when I order the electric pump from Inflatable Boats 4 Less.

Yesterday morning, Dave Damon, who sells 303 products at RV rallies, came by to visit for a while, and we had a good time swapping lies. Then Terry and I had some running around to do, and drove down to Winter Haven, about 30 miles south of the Thousand Trails campground. 

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I have to be honest, I have never been enamored with Florida, but lately I have been thinking that with all of the water around here, and how much we love paddling and fishing, maybe we should switch our legal domicile to Florida. I could save some money on the cost of a resident fishing license over the much higher fees for a non-resident license. And getting back to Florida to renew our licenses would be easier than South Dakota, given our usual travel routes. 

There are three RV friendly states that seem to be home to most fulltime RVers – Texas, South Dakota, and Florida. There is an excellent mail forwarding service in Green Cove Springs, and the Good Sam Club has a mail forwarding service in Pensacola.

However, while talking to my car insurance company yesterday about another matter, I happened to mention changing domiciles, and was told that the higher cost of car and motorhome insurance in Florida would more than offset any savings on fishing licenses. We saved about a $1,000 a year on insurance when we switched from Texas to South Dakota, and I guess maybe we’ll stay right where we are.

Back at the motorhome, I had a long list of e-mails to answer, and an even longer list of forwarded junk, myths, and garbage that I just deleted without opening. I don’t mind a good joke now and then, and I’m guilty of forwarding one from time to time to a select group of twisted, sick people on my e-mail list.

But I really get tired of all of the stupid dire warnings of doom, the warm fuzzy stuff that is supposed to bring tears to my eyes, and the nonsense that anybody with half a brain cell could glance at and know is pure BS. I’m about to ban four or five folks from my inbox because they send me the same old junk over and over. I don’t need it, I don’t want it, and I don’t have time for it.

I also had an e-mail from a couple who have a fifteen year old gas powered Class C motorhome that they want to try fulltiming in this winter, before they spend big bucks on their dream rig. But they had heard from a couple of “experts” that “most” RV parks won’t let you in if your RV is more than 10 years old. These same experts had warned them that if they showed up anywhere in a rig that old, nobody would want to associate with them. They were worried that it was going to be a long, lonely winter.

I would be willing to bet that these “experts” are either RV salespeople trying to hustle them into a purchase, or else elitist jerks whom we could all do well without. For years we traveled in a 1976 homebuilt bus conversion, and we were never turned away anywhere we went, and we have never had a shortage of friendly neighbors in any campground from border to border and coast to coast.

Yes, there are a few RV “resorts” that have, and exercise, the ten year rule, but those are usually not the kind of places where I’d want to hang out anyway.  And as for being shunned due to the age of their RV, it just doesn’t happen most places. Sure, there is the occasional snob, just like anywhere in life. But overall, fulltime and extended travel RVers are some of the friendliest, most open and accepting people you’ll find anywhere. They don’t care what you drive, or what you do or did for a living. All they care about is if you’re friendly, if you have a couple of good campfire stories to tell, and if you want to ride along with them to the nearest buffet, or do you want them to ride with you!

Thought For The Day -  A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when memory fails.

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Yesterday was a short travel day for us. In fact, one of the shortest we’ve had in a very long time.

We enjoyed our time at The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida, and I took a photo of our Winnebago in Peter and Connie Bradish”s lot before I started unhooking our campground utilities in preparation for leaving.

This is a very upscale RV resort, where you can buy your own very nicely groomed lot, and enjoy every amenity you could imagine.

The resort has several small lakes, and I’m told the fishing in them is good, but I never got the opportunity to check that out.

The resort even has its own church! As you can see, most of the homeowners drive their golf carts everywhere, even to church!

We left The Great Outdoors just after 10 a.m., traveled south to the next exit on Interstate 95, and took State Route 407 a short distance until it merged with State Toll Route 528, which took us west around the south side of the Orlando metropolitan area to Interstate 4. We traveled just a mile or two south on Interstate 4, exited onto U.S. Highway 192, then took it west a few miles to U.S. Highway 27, where we turned north a couple of miles to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve. Peter Bradish had given us the directions, and they were perfect. 

Well, the directions Peter gave us were perfect. The directions we got from our GPS were not so perfect. We had entered the address of the Thousand Trails into our GPS, so we wouldn’t miss the turn into it, because somebody had told me that a condominium complex next door hid the sign until you were right on top of it. According to the GPS, we had over a mile to go, when I noticed the Thousand Trails sign, which was indeed hard to see. By then it was too late to make the turn.

U.S. 27 through here is a wide six lane divided highway, with designated left turn lanes. We drove a couple of miles, looking for a place to turn around, but I wasn’t sure that we could make a U-turn with the van in tow. I finally pulled into a left turn lane, and decided it would be too tight to make the U-turn, and the last thing I wanted to do was be jackknifed across three lanes of busy U.S. highway, even on a Sunday morning. There was a divided driveway leading into a housing subdivision on the far side of the road, and I told Terry I was going to pull into the subdivision instead, and we’d unhook the van from the tow bar and get pointed back in the right direction.

It wasn’t until we had pulled into the driveway that we discovered that it was a gated community. So there we were, with a locked gate in front of us, two cars that had pulled in behind us, and no place to turn around. Can you say “oh crap?”

Fortunately, the fellow in the first car gave us the gate code, we punched it in, and the gates swung open. I pulled in, parked along the curb, we unhooked the van, and got the heck out of there. A GPS is a handy tool, but never trust one completely.

We had never stayed at this Thousand Trails before, but I have to say that we’re impressed. The 255 acre campground has 850 full hookup RV sites, a swimming pool, activity center, and a 60 acre spring fed lake. The property also backs up to Lake Hancock, a large lake that is supposed to be home to some massive trophy bass.

We choose a site on a corner at the end of a road, with some trees on one side of us, a pasture behind us, and the sites next to us and across the street are empty. Gee, no neighbors. Maybe I’ll just run around in my BVDs. No, Miss Terry says maybe I won’t.

A sky writer was posting this message for us when we got into our RV site. Isn’t that nice? I love you too.

Even with the unexpected detour caused by the GPS, we drove exactly 70 miles, and I was in the office at the Thousand Trails registering by noon. That’s a short travel day!

Once we were parked and hooked up, we drove down to the campground’s boat launch at Lake Hancock, to check things out. It was windy and chilly, but the weather is supposed to improve by mid-week, and getting out on the water is a priority for us. Our kayaks haven’t been wet in over a year, and we need to correct that.

I bet some whopper bass live in these lily pads!

The lake isn’t home to just big bass. I don’t think I’ll be dangling my toes in the water!

Terry and I walked out on the floating dock, and we heard a loud thumping sound and a big splash of water in this little lagoon. Then several fish jumped. We didn’t see the gator, but we knew he was there.

We’re looking forward to doing some relaxing here, getting some paddling in, and I may just buy me a fishing rod and a license, and see if I can tempt one of those big bass to bite!

Thought For The Day – A bargain is something you can’t use, at a price you can’t resist.

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