We Meet Steve and Debbie; Sandy's Drinking Problem

At Rayford Crossing RV Resort, Spring, Texas (near Houston)...

We are always excited when we have the good fortune to meet in person some of the RV bloggers we follow. Such was the case this evening, when we arranged to meet Steve and Debbie of Down the Road.  They joined us at El Palenque, one of our favorite Mexican restaurants in Houston and, during a fine meal, we talked and laughed until the place closed. Meeting them for the first time was not like a first time at all, for we all knew a lot about each other from our blogs. We recognized them right away, and fell right into a conversation that would seem to an observer as that of old friends. As usual, they reinforced my belief that RVers are great people to be around and that RV bloggers are the cream of the crop.

Steve and Debbie

This is another couple who got the itch to go fulltime and had the gumption to go through all of the daunting changes necessary to make it happen. They are clearly happy with their new lifestyle, and they have the smiles to prove it. They are in the final legs of a daunting maiden journey around the perimeter of the U. S., covering about 20,000 miles in their first year on the road!

They have the added benefit of starting this exciting adventure when they are still quite young, by fulltimer standards. They will have many memories to record in their very readable blog.

We made tentative plans to try to meet up next January at Quartzsite, hoping the organizers of Blogger Fest (which we regrettably missed this year) will reprise that gathering. Hear that, Sandie?

As promised in the last post, I thought I would make good on my intention of including another "inquiring minds want to know" vignette, this time involving the lovely Sandy. We all have little obsessions, and these tend to make us more interesting, I think. (By the way, Sandy is aware of this little expose', so this blog could go dark at any time, along with my view through the lid of my casket.)

Those who know her are keenly aware of her beverage of choice, which is unsweetened iced tea. And I do mean ICED tea. She must have a glass first thing in the morning, and she is a fierce defender of the southern tradition of pouring it into a glass completely full of ice. At restaurants, in fact, the ratio of ice to tea must fully meet her standard, or the offending waitperson will be admonished for this faux pas and sent scurrying for another glass containing only ice, so that Sandy can remix the drinks and correct the atrocity herself. This usually causes her to give voice to her long-simmering scorn for restaurants outside the South, whose waiters typically pour a glass of tea with only two or three small pieces of ice floating on the top. She sees this as an indignation not too different from Sherman's march to the sea in the Civil War, and someone (usually me) must, by golly, make it right. I cannot tell you the number of times I have scrounged around in restaurant service areas looking for the ice machine when a waiter failed to correct the deficiency within a reasonable time. For Sandy, this reasonable time is defined as approximately 45 seconds.

Although Sandy is a purist when it comes to iced tea, I have mentioned to her before that her insistence on drinking only unsweetened iced tea is not exactly in keeping with the usual southern tradition of serving sweet tea in glasses full of ice. She insisted this devilish corruption of the beverage was not in wide use before Sherman's march. She opined that southerners were so traumatized by the devastation of this nefarious deed that they simply lost their minds.

I see no reason at all to dispute this claim (see the casket remark above).

With the Grands in Houston and a New Series: What Inquiring Minds Want to Know

At Rayford Crossing RV Resort, Spring, Texas (Near Houston)...

We have returned to Houston for a month, helping Mindy get restarted in nursing school. Knowing her potential for success, we are more than happy to facilitate this as much as possible. We get the added benefit of being close to grandsons Mason and Pryce, who are much more than a little special to us. Watching them as they grow and change every day is most entertaining and, the older we get, the more important it seems to be for us to feel needed and to contribute what we can along the way.

Phannie provides the perfect means for us to be self-sufficient and not underfoot, as we would be if we were guests in Mindy's and Tyler's home. Living in the motorhome allows us to come by when we're needed and then scoot away, allowing them their own family time to the greatest extent possible.

We're doing some babysitting when needed, usually with Pryce, as Mason is now in kindergarten during the day. When Mindy is occupied with classes, Sandy busies herself by helping with the housework, and I help by doing a little cooking.

Didn't know I could cook? Well, I can--to a degree--and I find cooking's creativity enjoyable. But I don't bother to compete with Sandy in baking cakes, pies, cookies and the like. She is a baker extraordinaire.

Having revealed that little tidbit of personal information, it occurs to me that readers who don't know us very well may like to peek  further under the tent to see what other quirks may be inside. (Don't tell me people don't like to do this; have you seen the tabloids lining the checkout lanes at Wally World?)

I'm thinking the next few posts may form a short series of personal vignettes that explore some of our flaws, foibles and fetishes. You may be disappointed, however; we do not exactly walk on the wild side. Let's start with fetishes or, more properly, obsessions:

My life as a grammar policeman. I admit to a degree of neurosis here. I'm going to lay the blame on my high school and college English teachers, who were fanatical in insisting that their students should not corrupt the mother tongue any more than necessary. I clearly recall Mrs. Reid who, in sophomore English, would rap with a ruler the knuckles of those who did not properly recite her rules of grammar. (Had Mrs. Reid done this today, of course, she would be in jail, but her students would certainly use proper grammar when they came to visit her.) Thanks to these wonderful teachers, I learned to write correctly, and that single ability turned out to be more important than any other in ensuring the career successes I enjoyed in various management positions over the years. The downside, if it could be seen as such, is that I tend to over-analyze each post I write in order to avoid the embarrassment of clumsy syntax and errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar. It takes extra time to stylize each post in this way, so I am, in a sense, bedeviled by my own self-imposed expectations.

Is it painful for me to read the tortured prose of those who were not subjected to Mrs. Reid's ruler? Well, sometimes, but I'm trying to let it go. Our language is getting more coarse all the time, and fewer people care about turning an elegant phrase. That makes me the dinosaur, I guess, stuck in an era when, as a society, we had more time to pay attention to such things. Friendships cannot be based on whether one can recognize a dangling participle, of course, and rapping someone's knuckles is not likely to win me any friends either. So, I write, and I rewrite what I wrote. But I don't care; I'm determined to get it right.

Next, we'll talk about Sandy; she is not without a few lovable quirks herself.

Goodbye, 2014, Hello 2015!

At Shady Lane RV Park, Plainview, Texas...

What are we doing on the high plains of Texas, sitting in Phannie with snow on the ground outside? Attending Jeff's and Leah's wedding, that's what. Jeff is the son of longtime friends and fellow RVers Bubba and LouAnn, and we think Jeff has snagged himself a real jewel in Leah Ford, a lovely west Texas girl who will undoubtedly make him very happy.

Jeff and Leah

I provided some piano music during some of the festivities, something I was honored to do.

Below are a couple of photos to authenticate the cold weather in which we find ourselves, a situation so averse to us that it would only occur at the behest of friends and family.

Brrrr!

Since we don't find ourselves in frozen tundra like this very often, I had sort of forgotten that, in cold weather, we have a bit of a water supply problem due to the exposed water hose connecting to Phannie. Frozen hoses can usually be overcome by dripping water during the night, something the park management here warned us not to do due to the limitations of their septic system.  Soooo, that meant we had to disconnect the water while the temperature is below freezing outside. Finding that a bit annoying, I decided to order a heated hose in the event we find ourselves again in some Siberia-like land which, I promise you, won't be very often.

We had a very enjoyable Christmas vacation with our kids in Houston, which we had to abbreviate somewhat in order to make it out to west Texas for the wedding. Below is a photo of yours truly in Houston, sitting in Phannie with younger grandson Pryce. Note the inscription on my t-shirt, which I think is entirely appropriate:

Below: Older grandson Mason is dying to drive Phannie, but he's content for the moment with blowing the air horn. Neighbors are not all that amused.

For times like these, being retired is such a blessing in allowing us to roam wherever and whenever we like. I guess I'll get used to my new freedom someday, but that day hasn't come yet. Since we were en route to Plainview on Christmas day, we took advantage of FaceTime to watch the grandkids open their gifts from Santa. Isn't today's technology amazing?

As 2014 draws to a close, I feel a need to reflect on the year and consider how this time may have contributed to any new insights and learning experiences from which I can benefit in the future. With this in mind, here are a few things that immediately come to mind:

1. Faith and family have become increasingly important. This is probably to be expected in a person's latter years, but it is indeed affirming to know that the evidence for the Creator is actually being strengthened instead of diminished as scientific knowledge expands. You may recall, for example, the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) project begun in the 1950s, consisting of powerful radio telescopes located worldwide that have never produced a single crackle, pop or any other kind of signal deemed possibly to have emanated from anything with a brain. With untold millions spent on the project, it was declared unproductive and was defunded by Congress 20 years ago. With continued private funding, the project continues to live but remains as silent as ever. E. T. seems not to be calling home or anywhere else. 

There may be a reason for the failing interest in SETI: 
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, it is also becoming more evident among the scientific community that the profound uniqueness of the complex circumstances that allow life on Earth is likely not duplicated elsewhere after all, even among billions of planets in the universe. And there has been zero progress in explaining how the writer of this blog, for example, evolved from swamp slime. (Frankly, knowing him as I do, I could personally believe that he came from swamp slime, but science, unfortunately, is at a loss to prove it.) 

So what's the takeaway from this? Well, having a greater assurance of a God in heaven gives great comfort and peace, something I wish for everyone.

Our family is not a large one, but we treasure every year's memories. We think about the birth of our children and of Mindy's growth through the years. (Our son Jordan passed away from cancer at age two). Mindy is now a beautiful and loving wife and mother of our grandsons, whom we plan to do our best to spoil, something with which we think we've had some success. Mindy and Tyler and their kids always seem solicitous of our visits and are remarkably tolerant of my hijinks, luckily for me.

2. With each passing year, I see an increasing importance in maintaining a positive outlook and disassociating with negative things and negative people. I immediately think of RV blogger friend Ed, who closes each daily blog post with an affirmation that "life is good." I will strive in 2015 to be more like Ed in that regard.

3. Retirement is turning out to be a far better gig than I even imagined. I think of my hometown good friend John, who was smart enough to retire when he was a relatively young man. Having always resented him for that--mostly, but not fully, in jest--I take a little consolation in my belief that he didn't actually work long enough to really enjoy being retired. I think that's why I'm still speaking to him.

4. What have I learned in the last year about our retirement budget? Well, I had heard that people tend to maintain their lifestyles after retirement if they can, and that has turned out to be true for us. Frankly, we haven't wanted to give up much of what we were doing while we were working and, fortunately, it doesn't appear we'll need to do that. Had Sandy and I not worked all those years and made provisions for retirement, we would certainly not have a choice but to diminish our lifestyle now. I hope to be able to influence young people--especially in our family--about the importance of preparing early for retirement; it will be here before they know it!

5. Like everyone as they get older, we sense time passing more and more quickly each year. We feel compelled, therefore, to strive to actualize our dreams sooner rather than later. We notice that physical limitations are beginning to creep into our lives, and we have so much left to do and so many places to go. We need to keep moving forward with those dreams; it's not gonna happen when we're in the rest home.

By the time you read this, we will be on our way back to Houston with a few days' layover at home on our way there. After that, we're tentatively planning to make our way back to the Rio Grande Valley in February. We had a really good time there last winter, and we're eager to get as far away from the cold as possible.










   

Holiday Downtime

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

Since this is mainly a travel blog, I don't post very often during downtime at home, mainly because we don't do all that much that we think would be of interest to anyone. 

Part of our current hiatus has been spent with both of us snorting and sniffling with colds, so that took up a good bit of time when I didn't feel like doing anything, much less blogging. I think it was from Sandy's side of the family I heard the old bromide that says a cold is "three days coming, three days here and three days going." That has proven to be about right, I think.

The other distraction--and one much more pleasant--was a visit by daughter Mindy and her husband, Tyler and grandsons Mason and Pryce and Sandy's sister, Brenda, over Thanksgiving. Sorry, but you will be forced to view these family photos; we are, after all, grandparents, and that is our right and privilege. So there.

Sandy, Pryce, Brenda, Mason and Mindy

Tyler finally got in the photo. A good guy; you'd like him.

Mason and Pryce; easily the smartest and best looking grandkids on the planet. Dissent will not be tolerated.

We treated the kids and their parents to three nights at the Great Wolf Lodge and its indoor water park in Grapevine, and did they ever have a great time! Mason declared his experience there as the "best time of my entire (five-year) life." I must say, this place was a wonder to behold. Brenda characterized it best, calling it Las Vegas for kids, an entirely apt description.

Since the Great Wolf experience occupied much of Mindy's family's time, she suggested that we do something radical this year and eat Thanksgiving dinner out! In our family--especially in earlier years when so many more of our extended family members were still living--this would have been the equivalent of blasphemy! But the more we thought about it, we decided it was really a good idea to suspend the many days and hours of preparation and cleanup, leaving those chores to someone else while we just enjoyed each other's company. And so we did. We had a nice dinner with all the trimmings at a local restaurant, where they did all the work and we did all the laughing and carrying on. Afterward, while the restaurant help did the dishes, we were taking a nap! While we love traditions, we must admit that this was a nice diversion that we will keep in mind for possible future use.

Pryce discovered sweet potato casserole. Not much question about whether he likes it or not!

We are usually not idle during downtime between travels. In fact, we had always heard retired people wonder aloud how they ever had time to work, and the same is true for us! There are always chores that involve the upkeep of the house and vehicles, as well as church-related activities when we're in town. We just finished three performances of "Believe Again," a Christmas special featuring Stephen Curtis Chapman, a popular Christian recording artist, at the First Baptist Church of Dallas. As members of the 250-voice choir, supported by a 40-piece orchestra, we got an extra helping of real Christmas spirit, along with the nearly sold-out crowds.

First Baptist Dallas Worship Center

Downtime is also an opportunity to take care of any motorhome issues that may have cropped up. For some time, I have wanted to upgrade Phannie's dashboard radio, an old Pioneer model that is now dinosaur-like in technology years, plus it recently developed an annoying loose connection somewhere that would cause it to operate only intermittently. Now I have the good fortune of having at my beckon call Russ Clark of Clark's Mobile Installation Service, who is a friendly genius in all things related to tv, radio, satellites and the like. He's the kind of smart guy who doesn't make the technology-challenged among us feel bad about being dumb. I had him install a fancy new Kenwood system, and I am very pleased with it. He also cured the loose connection, so he is my new hero. If you are ever in the DFW area and need help with this kind of issue, Russ is your guy. You can call him at 817-336-8329.

This is Russ Clark, local entertainment system genius.

We will be loading Phannie over the next couple of days for a trip to Houston and Christmas with Tyler and Mindy and their kids. More later; merry Christmas, everyone!

Done: The Annual Pilgrimage to Canton

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

I'm not sure when it happened. We were taught that in ancient times, the menfolk were hunter-gatherers, leaving the home--or cave, as it were--every morning while the womenfolk stayed behind to cook food and sew animal skins together to stay warm.

At some point, women decided they needed a break from all that cooking and sewing. They decided that they, too, would become hunter-gatherers, at least for a few days now and then.  

The question then was, what would they hunt? The answer: Stuff they didn't know they needed! Hence was the birth of First Monday Trade Days in Canton, Texas. Fortunately, around this time, someone invented money and, to get ready access to their husbands' wallets, the ladies began to make their clothes out of skimpier and skimpier animal skins. Not much has changed since then.

In keeping with this tradition, we began our annual pilgrimage to Canton where, on the first weekend of every month preceding the first Monday, more than a hundred thousand shoppers converge. It is in this melee of electric four-wheel scooters and shopping carts that my lady and the others in her entourage dive in and engage in a frenzy of hunting and gathering--bargains. Their hunting ground is the massive 400-acre labyrinth of buildings, sheds, pavilions and lean-tos that occupy much of the land along highway 19 between I-20 and downtown Canton. The complex is so vast that it would take several days to see it in its entirety. Here is an aerial view:

We always take Phannie to Canton and park at Mill Creek Ranch Resort, which is near the market area and provides a free shuttle. And it is in Phannie that I subsequently take my refuge, along with any other cavemen who may have been roped into this adventure with me. I try to stay as far away from the market as possible while the shopping orgy is in progress, my role mercifully reduced to that of a cash repository from which Sandy does not hesitate to draw as the need arises. I also provide chauffeur services if there is a need. Mill Creek Ranch is easily the nicest RV park in the area, but any First Monday reservations need to be scheduled a year in advance.

On this trip, Sandy's shopping team consisted of Sandy's sister, Brenda, and our daughter, Mindy. Since we arrived a day early, I decided to go out and walk around the market grounds when it wasn't very crowded. I didn't have much interest in the kitschy things that appeal to the ladies, but I did enjoy some of the characters and unusual things I saw, some of which I will catalog in the photos below:

Here are the girls in their "blue team" shopping shirts:

Sandy, Mindy and Brenda, ready for bargains

There are literally hundreds of these electric rental scooters all over the place; this one has a trailer, and I'm not sure the gross combined vehicle weight limitations are being observed here:

This woman is pulling a shopping cart behind her scooter, but I was mesmerized by the elephant hat she was wearing; I wonder if she was getting ready for the upcoming election?

We saw quite a few pets accompanying the shoppers. Here are a couple of dogs shopping from their red wagon:

Here's another cute dog dressed up in his papal vestments. His name?  Wait for it...Pope John Pup. (I'm not making this up.):

Does anyone need any neon signs for a game room? You can get them here!

How about a nice pair of brass knuckles? Yep...they're here!

Now who doesn't need a jackass in the living room? Oh wait...you already have one?

You can find every imaginable food in this place; I have a weakness for corn dogs and roasted corn; here I am buying an ear of fresh roasted corn; it was really good!:

Hundreds of RVs belonging to vendors are set up in various RV parking areas. Here is a small group of vendors' motorhomes:

All in all, the girls had a great time at First Monday in Canton, and I got all caught up on my napping. Almost all of Sandy's purchases were for the grandsons, but I'm pretty sure that's the way it's supposed to be.

Tire Pressure Monitoring System - Third Time the Charm?

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

During our trip outbound to Tennessee a few weeks ago, our Tire Tracker pressure monitor had a spasm and began to show tire pressure warnings that were clearly bogus, setting off the alarm when there was no problem. Changing the sensor batteries didn't help, and I refused to call the company for assistance since I had been treated poorly by them in the past. The owner's manual was very poorly written back then, so I gave them a call. I got the impression that the outfit was being run from a cranky old couple's kitchen table, as they answered the phone with "hello" instead of the name of the company, and they had been quite condescending when I started explaining the difficulties I was having--acting almost as though some dimwit had interrupted their dinner.

Now I won't deny that I may be slow at some things, but I can point to a few achievements that might indicate at least modest brain activity. However, I was obviously not able to summon enough intellectual acumen to figure out, for example, how to add more sensors and program them correctly. The instructions they gave over the phone only confused me more. So, with this background, I had a decision to make there in Tennessee: Call Ma and Pa Kettle and wake them up or toss the system. I chose the latter.

I had been quite complimentary of the Tire Tracker in a previous post, thinking that I had found a good system at a price lower than most of its competitors. And, to its credit, it gave good service for about three years. But there was still the problem with a faulty owner's manual and poor support (I never was able to add more sensors successfully). Now, with this unexplained failure, I just decided to give up.

I also might mention that this was the second tire pressure monitoring system that I have had to throw away. The first was a Pressure Pro that didn't work properly from the beginning. I didn't like the monitor, either, so it got the heave-ho without having made a single trip.

The latest system is from Truck System Technologies and, so far, I'm very pleased.

You may notice that I use this to monitor only the toad's tires. This is because Phannie's powerful engine could drag poor little Mae halfway across the country before I would know of a low or flat tire. (The toad's tires, of course, are not visible in the rearview TV monitor.)

I know quite a few RVers who don't use a monitor of any kind and, if that works for them, it's fine with me. However, this arrangement gives me an adequate comfort level for now, and I suppose I will stick with it unless something happens to change my mind in the future. Perhaps because I'm very careful about tire upkeep and replacement, I haven't had a single tire problem in almost ten years of RVing, and I hope it stays that way.

Home Again

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

Our stay in Red Bay was amazingly brief, by Tiffin standards. After having arrived on Friday, we got the call early Monday morning to drive over to bay 32. This was an express bay, and we were allowed three techs for three hours, deemed by Tiffin's ubiquitous service writer Norris to be adequate for our short squawk list. The main necessity, of course, was the replacement of the living room window that the thieves had broken when we were in Pigeon Forge. The techs made short work of that, then moved on to the driver's side cockpit window, which was not draining rain water properly through the weep holes at the low point in the track of the sliding window. The tech who was cleaning out the weep holes accidentally cracked the glass, which resulted in Tiffin's replacing the entire window at no cost to us. Thanks, Bob Tiffin, for doing the right thing. The whole window assembly in this photo was the one Tiffin replaced on their dime:



After a few other issues were addressed by the techs and the bill had been paid, we backed Phannie out of the bay and returned to our campground spot for one more night before starting out for home. The next morning, we launched for Little Rock by way of Memphis, some 340 miles. That's a bit more than we like to travel in one day, but we were ready to get back home and take care of some personal business before going in for some routine medical and dental appointments. The older we get, the more of those we seem to have, don't we?

We decided to overnight at the COE park in Maumelle, just outside Little Rock; we had heard some good things about this park but had not stayed there, and we wanted to check it out. Arriving late in the afternoon, we found a nice spot right on the bank of the Arkansas River. Here is our view from Phannie's door:

Wow, what's not to like about this? Like most COE parks, this one is very nice with wide spaces, large concrete pads and paved roads throughout. No sewer, wi-fi or cable, of course, and the park is heavily treed, so we didn't even try to deploy the Direct TV dish on Phannie's roof. Here's another view from our location, looking out on the interior of the park:

We hated to leave this bucolic setting, but Texas was beckoning. We didn't exactly hurry in leaving, however; it was about noon when we finally pulled away from our picturesque parking spot. Another 340-mile leg lay in front of us, and Phannie finally pulled into her familiar home berth in Fort Worth well after dark. 

She seemed to sigh in relief after a very busy summer and fall and many thousands of miles from Utah in the west to North Carolina in the east. And what a reliable old girl she has been, especially considering the challenging driving out west in the Rocky Mountains.

I still get excited at every day's departure when all of Phannie's utilities are disconnected, the slides are in and the big diesel comes to life at the rear of the coach. The engine sound at its 700 RPM idle is almost inaudible in the cockpit some 40 feet away--it is more of a slight rumble that is more sensed than heard. As the coach accelerates through the six gears, the engine speaks louder, of course, until cruise speed is reached. Once in sixth gear, the engine noise once again is suppressed at a normal cruise RPM of around 1700. All you really hear then is a bit of road and wind noise. I also like the billowy ride of the air suspension and the comfortable captain's chairs that allow you to recline, if you like, (not the driver, of course; I've tried it, and it doesn't work too well) as if you are in a theater, watching the scenery go by through the huge Imax-like windshield. Add to that some treats served by the stewardess (Sandy is a good one), and the lavatory on the go, and it's a lot like being in one of the airliners I used to fly. I'm offering this little aside for the benefit of readers who may be trying to decide between a motorhome and a towable RV. We loved our fifth wheel, but we've found the motor home even more to our liking. Much more, in fact.

Home again!

I couldn't be more pleased that Phannie seems more like a member of the family all the time. Rest well, old friend, until the next adventure.