More Q&A

Last month I shared ten questions from Gypsy Journal subscribers and blog readers that I have received

Q. Do you and Terry plan to do any traveling this year, and if so, where will you go?

A. Yes, we will definitely be traveling, though we don’t have any set schedule at this point. We will leave Florida when it starts to get too warm, visit my son Travis and his wife Geli in Alabama, and then go to Arizona to see Terry’s folks, my daughter and her kids, and my cousin Beverly in Tucson. From there, we would like to go back up to the Pacific Northwest coast. We love Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula as much as we do our area here around New Smyrna Beach, and if it wasn’t for the long, cold, damp winters (and occasional summers) that aggravate our arthritis, we very well may have settled there instead of in Florida. Then, depending on when we head back east, we may do some exploring along the way.

Q. Will you be doing any seminars at RV rallies in the next few months?

A. I love presenting seminars at RV rallies, and if our travel schedule coincides with a rally that would like me to be there, we will try hard to make it work. But at this point I don’t have anything on the schedule.

Q. You were running a series in your blog called Overlooked America in which you talked about places to see in different states. It seems to have stopped at Tennessee, according to the links on your blog page. Will you be finishing it at some point?

A. Looking at our visitor stats on the days we published those posts, they seem to have been the least read blogs I published. But yes, I do need to get back to that and do the rest of the states anyway so they will be available for reference for our traveling readers.

Q. I know that you and Terry publish the Gypsy Journal and you do the blog, and your books, of course. But have you ever done any workamping or anything else to make money on the road?

A. When we started fulltiming we had several ideas to make enough money to cover our expenses. Terry ran a commercial glass shop back in our hometown and thought she would do some windshield chip repair. We also worked half a dozen gun shows selling firearms related accessories and expected to do more of them. And I also sold things on eBay for a while. But very quickly the publishing end of things became our main focus, as well as paid speaking gigs and teaching at Life on Wheels, so all of that went by the wayside.

Q. We really miss your Gypsy Journal rallies. I know they were a tremendous amount of work, but everybody I know who attended loved them. Do you have any plans to ever hold any more rallies?

A. The rallies were a lot of fun, but they were also a lot of work, and they took more and more of our time while bringing in less and less money as things like insurance and fairgrounds rental became more expensive. It was a hard decision to make when we stopped holding them, but it made good business sense to concentrate our efforts on the activities that were most profitable. But Terry, who wound up doing most of the hard work of organizing and running the rallies, has assured me that if I ever want to start holding them again, she’ll be very happy to spend as much time as it takes to teach my new wife everything that needs to be done to make the events successful.

Q. What happened to the boat? The last I read you had solved the fuel delivery problem. Have you been back out on it since then?

A. No, I fear my friend Greg White was right (he always is) and the boat is going to be more a hangar queen than anything else. I really want to get it back in the water and do some fishing, but there never seems to be enough hours in a day to do all the things we want to get done.

Q. Are you worried about security at your home when you travel during the summer?

A. In this day and age there is always a risk that somebody will break into an unoccupied house or RV. We are aware of that, but a burglary could just as easily happen while we leave the house to go shopping. We’ve never been the type to spend our life worrying about everything that can happen that we have no control over.

Q. Do you still have to pay for fulltimers insurance on your motorhome now that you are not traveling anymore? And if you have changed your policy, does it cost as much as when you were living in it fulltime?

A. Our insurance agent is Chris Yust from C&C Marketing and Insurance, and she goes out of her way to find the best deals and coverage for customers. She changed our coverage so that we pay a minimal amount for the RV when it’s in storage, and then when we start traveling we will leave the pickup truck here in the garage and the policy will change so that it has storage coverage only and the motorhome has full coverage again. That has saved us quite a bit of money every month.

Over 150 blog readers have already entered our latest Free Drawing, and I’m not surprised. This week’s prize is an autographed copy of John and Kathy Huggins newly updated and expanded So, You Want to be an RVer?: Celebrating the RV Lifestyle. This is the guide to RVing that every wannabe, newbie, and veteran RVer should have on their bookshelf. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page 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.

Thought For The Day – Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

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