A Busy Day

I’ve always believed that we should live for today, because tomorrow is just a promise. Even in the RV lifestyle that we love so much, things can literally fall out of the sky and ruin your day. Such was the case yesterday in Ocala, Florida, when a small airplane crashed into two fifth wheels at the Wild Frontier RV Park. Here is the story of the crash from the Orlando Sentinel website.

A lot of you have asked where and when our 2010 Western Gypsy Gathering rally will be held. We made a verbal confirmation by telephone yesterday, and we have set the dates for March 8 – 12 at the fairgrounds in Yuma, Arizona, with Early Bird arrivals coming in from noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday, the 7^th.

We’re excited about this new venue. Unlike the Pinal County Fairgrounds, with its run down buildings, dirt (or mud) RV parking and filthy restrooms, the Yuma facility is grass, the bathrooms are clean, and the buildings are in fine condition. Fairgrounds manager Kelly Watkins has gone the extra mile to make us feel welcome and to let us know that not only the fairgrounds, but the city of Yuma, wants our business. We’re looking forward to it, and we hope you’ll be joining us.

At the rally last month, Lynn Beard took a couple of our rally T-shirts and made beautiful lined drawstring bags out of them for us. How cool! Lynn says the bags can be used to store books, shoes, cameras, or anything else. Thanks Lynn!

I’ve always loved the diverse geography of Arizona. In a two hour drive you can go from the desert to snow covered mountains. There was still a lot of snow on the ground in Flagstaff yesterday when we picked up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal from the printer, and it looked like more was on the way. So as soon as we had the van loaded and had dropped off the check for the printer job, we were headed south on Interstate 17. Our drive to Flagstaff and back was over 500 miles, so we were really worn out when we got back to the bus here at Tra-Tel RV park in Tucson.

My computer was in the process of dying while I was working on the paper, and unfortunately the front page photograph came out terrible. Which is really sad, because it was a beautiful shot Miss Terry took of the Guadalupe Mountains in west Texas.

Someone posted a comment to yesterday’s blog asking why I didn’t just replace the video card in my computer, which would be much less expensive than buying a complete new unit. The video card was integrated into the hard drive, and though we probably still could have put in a new card, there were a lot of other problems with the old computer.

It was prone to overheating and ever since the day I got it, a message that the system fan had failed would routinely pop up. Also, both the CD drive and fans were beginning to make a lot of ugly noises. It had seen a lot of very heavy use, been bumped around the country for a lot of miles, and it was time to put it to rest. To me a computer is a tool, and for my needs, it is better to replace and upgrade than to try to keep something going with spit and bailing wire.

If I knew more about the technical ends of things like my buddy Jim Guld from Geeks on Tour, I could probably build my own system, but I prefer spending my time and efforts doing what I do best, which is serving as eye candy.

Thought For The Day – There is no education like adversity.