I had hoped to get some work done on my book yesterday but it seemed like the rest of the world didn’t want that to happen.
To be honest, it started off slow because I didn’t sleep well the night before and got up even later than usual for me. I had a huge backlog of e-mail to wade through, and for a change the majority of them were legitimate e-mails, not the forwards and spam I seem to constantly fight. I was especially gratified by an e-mail from a woman who attended my Reluctant RVer seminar at the Escapade a few weeks ago, who wrote to tell me that she came away from the seminar much more comfortable about becoming fulltimers and that now she is looking forward to it instead of being filled with dread.
During the afternoon we drove to Greensburg, about 20 miles east of the campground, to stock up at WalMart. How does such a small cart full of stuff cost so much at the checkout?
Back at the campground I said hello to our neighbors, Larry and Linda Merritt, and we chatted for a few minutes. They mentioned that they had just had a new water heater installed in their Winnebago motorhome at the Camping World in Greenwood, near Indianapolis, a couple of days ago and had to go back because it wasn’t working. They said the same tech worked on it again and pronounced it all fixed, but back here at the Indian Lakes Thousand Trails it still wasn’t working, so they had to go back today for a third time.
Well, why have a Greg White on the payroll if you can’t pimp him out from time to time? I called Greg he came over and checked out the water heater. The pressure relief valve was hot to the touch, which indicated that heat was getting to the water heater, but all that came out of the faucets was cold water. I found the drain valve and ran some water out and it was hot. Hmmmm.
We discussed the possibility that when the tech installed the new water heater he had plumbed something wrong and were trying to figure out just what he had done. While Greg and Larry were scratching their heads and wondering what to do next, I turned the Bypass Valve from Normal to Bypass and told Linda to run some water in the sink and voilà, she had hot water! The clod at Camping World had simply put the knob on backwards and closed it off when he installed the new water heater.
Larry and Linda were very grateful that they would have hot water for their showers and didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn and drive back to Camping World again today, while Greg was searching the sky for a new star to mark the occasion when I fixed something before he could figure it out. I was pretty shocked, too! Sometimes the simplest solutions work.
While I was surprised that I could solve Larry and Linda’s problem, I wasn’t surprised they had the problem in the first place. I’ve never had any work done at any Camping World that they didn’t screw up one way or another.
A couple of months ago I reported that Miss Terry had reached a milestone and applied for Social Security. Yesterday it was my turn and I logged onto the government website and entered my application. It’s only a pittance since most of my life I have been self-employed, and both of us opted to start drawing at age 62 instead of waiting for our full retirement age of 66. We crunched the numbers and decided the little extra we’d get wasn’t worth delaying for.
Don’t forget to enter this week’s Free Drawing for an autographed copy of Highway History And Back Road Mystery, the original book in my Highway History series. All you have to do is click on the Free Drawing link and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.
Good news for science fiction fans, my friend Stephen Arseneault just released AMP Siege, the sixth book in his exciting AMP series! Stephen is also offering AMP Messenger, the first book in the series, free on Amazon.
And if you enjoyed Steven Thomas’ I Was A Drummer She Was A Dancer, be sure to check out his latest offering, Scars Don’t Lie, which serves up 21 all new titles in this eclectic collection of poems. It’s currently free on Smashwords.
Thought For The Day – It was a whole lot easier to get older than it was to get wiser.
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Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Congratulations on fixing that hot water problem!! Heh, my hubby always says to me, when something like that happens: “I hate it when you are right!” You no doubt saved those folks a bundle of money!! Well, good business today must mean you do something wrong over and over so the poor blokes have to KEEP coming back eh??
I think you and Greg need to write a restaurant blog too…I felt a bit jealous reading of that super meal you all had recently at that chicken place!! You seem to hit some of the yummiest places!!
Wow! Nick the fix-it guy!
I’m with Nick on any work I’ve had done at Camping World. Ever since this new CEO, Marcus Leonis, took over Good Sam and Camping World, the company has gone down hill. He’s not interested in “Customer Service” anymore, only expanding into everything non-camping related so he can pad his year end bonus. That’s why I dropped my Good Sam membership and don’t go to Camping World any more.
Wow, YOU a fixit it person. Too bad Greg was there, he may make you fix things yourself now. Hope now that your are officially “OLD” you also got the Senior Access pass that get you into National Parks and 1/2 price camping.
We too started our Social Security at age 62. There are all sorts of opinions and ideas out there about when to start. The real problem is that you don’t know how long you are going to live. We also were in the position especially when hubby turned 62 of having lower income in our early retirement years. So for us this was money we didn’t have to remove from our investments. It helped to leave the invested money invested as there were greater returns (dividends and capital gains) on that money than we could have ever gotten by waiting to take Social Security later. More fun for you when you get to Medicare age and have to do all that. Welcome to the “Golden Years.”
Hi I got Social Security and 62 and no regrets. You know what they say “you know how much money you have just not how long you got to spend it” and it seem true. well any how good for you guys.
Yep, here we sit in Camping World’s lot waiting to have a simple antenna repaired. They installed this Jack antenna in May and have yet to have it pick up all TV stations that it should.
Last fall, came i for a Norcold recall fix….waitied from Sept to Dec. until a snow storm threatened to trap us here (the part never was installed.). We ran right to Red Bay, Alabama and the Tiffin Motorhome company and had that repair taken care of immediately.