We’re getting down to the wire on our Western Gypsy Gathering rally, and I need to be twins, maybe even triplets, to get everything done! Most of yesterday was spent answering e-mails and phone calls from folks registering for the rally.

We have over 200 RVs registered now, and more coming in all the time. I just hope we can find a parking place with electricity for everybody! We have lots of room for dry camping, but we hope to have 20 amp electricity for everybody too.

There are no full hookups for RVs at the fairgrounds, but there are water bibs and a dump station. We have very few 30 and 50 amp electric hookups, but those have to be reserved for people with special needs. And no, wanting to use your microwave or curling iron is not a special need! Sorry.

Hey, Terry and I have been here all week, and we’re getting by just fine on 20 amp electric in our Winnebago diesel coach. Just because we have a 50 amp plug doesn’t mean we have to have 50 amps to live comfortably.

Bill Becker stopped by to say hello yesterday afternoon. Bill and his wife Mabel handle T-shirt sales at our western rallies, and they are hanging out around Yuma until it’s time to come in for the rally. Bill is a retired Marine, and he has arranged for a spokesman from the Marine Air Station here in Yuma to come to the opening of the rally and tell us all a little about their mission to train pilots and crews.

About 3 p.m., Tom and Barbara Westerfield arrived at the fairgrounds. They are part of our advance staff, and boy, do we have a lot of work for them to do! They handle a lot of our technical things, making sure the seminar speakers have the audio-visual equipment they need and that it is working properly, as well as 1001 other tasks. We sure do appreciate all of our volunteer helpers!

Once they were settled in, the four of us took a tour of the fairgrounds, and I showed them where the two main RV parking areas will be, as well as other spots where we can park a rig or two. Unlike the fairgrounds in Casa Grande, where we have held our past rallies, here we won’t have everybody parked in long back to back lines of RVs. Some folks will be parked that way, but others will be put in spots next to buildings where we can get them plugged into electric.

If you don’t have or want to use your rooftop TV dish during the rally, we have several 20 amp electric hookups with water that are under a large covered canopy.

With so little time left before the rally starts, there isn’t time to send rally confirmations by snail mail, but we can do so by e-mail if you register online. You can also register and pay when you arrive at the fairgrounds, either on Sunday, the 7^th from noon to 5 p.m., or Monday, the 8^th from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. If you are staying in the local area and don’t want to bring your RV to the fairgrounds, you can come in on day passes, for $5/person per day, which entitles you to all rally activities. Come join in all the fun!

Thought For The Day – I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

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We had forgotten from our previous visits to Yuma just how bad the local tap water is. Most folks here buy water at “water stations” like this one, which can be found all over town. You bring your plastic jugs, put a quarter or two into a vending machine, and fill them up with filtered water. I don’t think we have seen water stations anyplace else that we have traveled. If you are coming in for our Gypsy Gathering rally, please try to arrive with a full fresh water tank if you can, for your own good.

We spent most of yesterday running around getting the pizzas for our Wednesday night pizza party arranged, and trying to find somebody at the WalMart bakery who could understand that we need to order 25 to 35 dozen donuts every morning during the rally. We need to go back, because everybody we talked to was just a little bit dimmer than your average donut. I think some people work at WalMart only because they’re not smart enough to get jobs that require them to memorize lines like “Do you want fries with that?”

Back at the fairgrounds, we spent some time checking out the location of the electric outlets scattered around the property. We will only have a few 30 and 50 amp electric hookups, but we need to reserve those for people with special needs. But we should be able to hook everybody up with 20 amp service, which is enough to keep batteries charged. That’s all we’re using here next to the stables, and we’re getting along just fine. Think of it as upscale boondocking!

Several people have asked if there will be WiFi available at the rally. The fairgrounds does not have WiFi, but we have found at past rallies that there are usually a few people with internet connections who leave them open to allow others to get online. These days, with air cards so cheap and the service available almost everywhere, I don’t know why anybody would depend on hit or miss WiFi for internet access.

The fairgrounds is right across the street from the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, and most of the day Northrop F5 and AV-8B Harrier jets are flying overhead. It is amazing to see how closely those pilots fly in formation.

I had never seen a Harrier land or take off before, and it is pretty interesting. When they come in to land, they hover and then set down slowly, instead of making a high speed landing like other aircraft. It gets a little loud sometimes as they roar past, but that’s the sound of freedom, baby!

I need to clear up some confusion on the RVSEF RV Lifestyle, Education & Safety Conference to be held in Bowling Green, Kentucky June 3-6. They have me listed as an instructor on their website because we have agreed to be at future conferences, but we will not be at the June event. We have been promising ourselves for years that we are going to slow down, and this is the summer for that to finally happen. We just want to piddle around and just let the wind and whimsy blow us where they may. But, not to worry, RVSEF honcho Walter Cannon has put together an excellent program, and you’ll find plenty of top notch instructors at the conference. Whether you’re a new RVer, a veteran road warrior, or a wannabe, you’ll learn a lot at the conference.

Thought For The Day – I want to move to theory; everything works in theory.

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We woke up to wind and pouring rain yesterday morning, and it didn’t look like it was going to let up anytime soon. But we had an appointment at the Camping World in Mesa at 11:30 a.m., so I went outside and slogged through puddles of water to empty and flush our black tank, top off our fresh water tank, and disconnect our utility hookups. By the time I was finished, I was soaked.

With everything ready to go, I fired up our Cummins diesel engine, retracted our slide rooms and HWH leveling jacks, and we were ready to go. Well, almost ready to go. The indicator light and warning beeper said the right rear jack had not fully retracted. Sure enough, it was down about two inches. I hit the automatic leveling button to deploy the jacks again, and this time when I retracted them, they all came up fine.

It was only twelve miles to Camping World from Patio Gardens, so Terry drove the van behind me. After six weeks of sitting still, it was good to be back behind the wheel of our motorhome. 

I don’t think I have ever seen any Camping World as busy as the one in Mesa was yesterday. The entire parking lot was jammed, and Terry could not even find a place to park the van, let alone me the motorhome. I finally left it double parked and went inside to check in with the service department, and they pulled it right into one of the work bays.

I have been shopping for tires and batteries for our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, and had narrowed the tire choices down to the Michelin X7A3 and the Goodyear G670 RV. In my opinion, there really isn’t any real difference in quality between the two, and I have had a lot of RVers recommend both tires.

In the end, I chose the Goodyear tires, even though the price for all six, mounted, balanced, and out the door, was $200 more. My reasons may not make sense to a lot of people, but I have hated the Michelin Company ever since Vietnam, and Goodyear is an American company, as opposed to Michelin, a French outfit.

The only French things I like are fries, toast, and kisses. My not buying their tires will not affect Michelin’s bottom line one iota, but it was worth the extra money to me not to give them my business.

We also needed new house batteries, because the previous owner of our motorhome had installed regular starting batteries instead of deep cycle RV batteries. We went with Interstate batteries, which many RVers use and seem to be happy with. Since we don’t plan to do as much dry camping as we once did, we could not justify the price of absorbed glass matt (AGM) batteries like we had in our bus conversion. 

It had rained hard off and on all day long, but it finally started to clear up about 2 p.m., and there was quite a bit of blue sky showing. Of course, by the time they were finished working on the motorhome about 3:30, it had started pouring again. That lasted until we got the van hooked up to our Blue Ox tow bar, did our light check, and were ready to take off. Then the rain stopped. Go figure.

We had planned to boondock in the Camping World parking lot if it was getting close to rush hour when they were finished with our work, but the lot was still packed, and there wasn’t anyplace to park. So we drove 86 miles to Gila Bend, where we spent the night dry camping in the huge gravel parking lot at the Elks lodge. It was a windy trip, but we made good time, and at last the rain had stopped.

There were half a dozen other RVs at the Elks lodge, and when I went inside to register, we ran into longtime readers Bob Parker and Donna Huffer, who are also on their way to Yuma for our rally.

We will continue on to the fairgrounds in Yuma today, and get settled in so we can start working on the final details for the rally. It won’t be long now, folks!

Thought For The Day – I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. – Douglas Adams  

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This is our last day in Apache Junction, or AJ, as the community is known locally. The last six weeks have gone by in a blur, and while we are more than ready to scratch our bad case of hitch itch, we wish we had more time to spend with Terry’s parents and sisters, who live here. There are still some folks whom we have not been able to get together with, and we’re sorry that we just ran out of time.

We had a few beautiful days last week, but yesterday dawned gray and wet, with temperatures fifteen or twenty degrees below what we had been enjoying. Here I was, thinking that winter was over, but apparently we just had a temporary reprieve.

Yesterday, our friends John and Karen Knoll stopped by to visit for a while, and to pick up a couple of bundles of newspapers to take to a Newmar fulltimers rally they will be going to, as well as to a couple of RV parks they will be visiting. We always appreciate it when folks help us spread the word about our work.

About 4 p.m. we went over to visit Terry’s parents, and took them out to dinner. By the time we left the restaurant it was pitch black and raining hard. Terry’s mom, Bess, was driving, and she was having a hard time seeing and dodging deep puddles in the road. We were all glad to get back to their place safely.

We only stayed a few minutes, because it was getting late, but by the time we left, it had stopped raining and the moon and a few stars were breaking through the clouds.  

If the weather cooperates today, we have several chores to do. I want to flush our black tank, rearrange some things in the back of our van, and we have to get things inside of the Winnebago packed and stored. Whenever we sit in one place for a while, we tend to leave things like books and small appliances out to make them more accessible, instead of putting them back each time we use them. So now we have to remember where everything goes, and put them there. We also have several orders to fill and get ready to send out tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow we have an 11:30 a.m. appointment to get new tires on the motorhome, and depending on what time that gets finished, we’ll head out toward Yuma. I doubt that we’ll make it all the way, so we’ll probably spend the night somewhere between here and there.  

We’ve had a nice visit to Apache Junction, but all good things must come to an end, and it’s time to get on down the road.

Thought For The Day – You’re getting old when your wife gives up sex for Lent, and you don’t know until the 4th of July.

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Miss Terry set a new record getting all of the envelopes stuffed with the new issue of the paper, and by yesterday afternoon the majority of them were in the mail. We’ll drop the remainder off at the post office and UPS this morning.

The Gypsy Journal goes out to our subscribers several different ways, depending on their preference. The greatest majority are sent as Standard Rate mail, which used to be called Bulk Mail.

We use different commercial mail houses around the country, depending where we happen to be when we publish a new issue. We send the mail service our address list and they print the names onto envelopes. Then we pick the envelopes up, stuff them with papers, and return them to the mail service, which uses its mail permit to send them out. Because a mailing permit is specific to one post office, and we travel all over the country, we don’t have our own permit, which would require us to return to the same post office for mailing every time. Standard Rate is the least expensive way to subscribe, but it is also the slowest delivery method. If subscribers are traveling, the post office will not forward Standard Rate mail.

The second option is First Class mail, which costs more, but moves faster through the postal system. First Class is also supposed to be forwarded, but it has been our experience that no matter what the rules say, the good folks at the post office do (or don’t do) whatever they feel like. We use Stamps.com to print our own First Class postage, and we can mail items anywhere.

We also have a lot of subscribers who use mail forwarding services such as Escapees, FMCA, and Alternative Resources. We have so many subscribers who use these three mailing services that they all allow us to put the envelopes with the papers for their clients into boxes, and ship them to them by UPS. This saves us a few dollars in postage, and gets the papers into subscribers’ mail boxes a little quicker than Standard Rate.     

Last year we also made digital subscriptions available, and we have had a lot of subscribers switch to that option. When a new issue is uploaded, we send them a link to its location on the internet, where they can either read it online, or download it to their computers. The digital subscription is the quickest way to get each new issue of the paper, because subscribers can be reading it minutes after I upload it.

Now that the new issue is making its way to subscribers in every corner of the country, we can relax a little bit, and we can even try to squeeze in a little bit of fun. Today we plan to drive down to Tucson and visit my cousin Beverly, who is one of my favorite people in the whole world. For the last three or four  years, we have spent a couple of weeks in Tucson visiting Beverly, but this year our schedule is so crowded that we’re not sure if we can get down for a stay or not. But we at least want to make a day trip to the Old Pueblo and spend some time with her before we head to Yuma for our Gypsy Gathering rally.

While Terry and I were busy dealing with mailing chores, Bad Nick was busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled 10 Things That Piss Me Off. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – New survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world’s population.

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