Friends New And Old

I can’t tell you when we first met Jay and Gwen McMichael. It may have been way back in 2010 when they were fairly new to the fulltime RV lifestyle. We were staying at Fisherman’s Landing RV park in Muskegon, Michigan and they were parked near us and introduced me to their pet turtle, Randy. I had met a lot of interesting animals sharing the RV life with their owners, but Randy was the first RVing turtle I had ever met. In fact, I did a blog post about him, titled Randy The Traveling Tortise. Unfortunately, Randy was the victim of a turtle kidnapping a few years ago and is no longer with them.

We stayed in touch with Jay and Gwen, and they went to at least one of our Gypsy Gathering RV rallies, where we conned Jay into being part of our Hoosier Honey beauty contest. If you want to have your morning laugh, click the link to watch that bit of insanity. Just be sure don’t have a mouthful of coffee or orange juice when you do.

So when Gwen reached out to me a week or so ago and said they were in the area and wanted to know if we could get together for lunch, we were thrilled to do so. She asked if her cousin Kim Long and Kim’s guy Ken Cartisano could come along, too, and I said sure, the more, the merrier.

So yesterday, we met at Red Robin in Port Orange and had a wonderful lunch and a good time visiting and getting to know Kim and Ken. As it turns out, they live not far from us here in Edgewater, and then Gwen dropped a bomb on us and told us that she and Jay had just purchased a home just a couple of miles up US Highway 1 from us, also in Edgwater! While they have enjoyed the fulltime RV lifestyle, they had reached the point that many fulltimers do when they decided they wanted a home base. We are looking forward to having the opportunity to get together with them again sometime once they get settled into their new abode.

Here is a picture of the six of us after we spent a couple of hours at the restaurant. That’s Ken on the left, then Jay, Gwen, Kim, Terry, and I don’t know who that fat guy is standing next to her, but he looks kind of sketchy.

Since it was such a nice day, I decided to take the Mustang, and I have to tell you, it’s a lot of fun getting out on the Interstate highway and letting that thing zip right along. It is amazing what a turbocharged four-cylinder engine can do these days. In a review back in 2018, Motor Trend magazine said these things would go from zero to 60 in 5.3 seconds, and it’s true. I really do need to drive it more. It has been almost exactly three years since I bought it new, and believe it or not, it still has just under 1,600 miles on the odometer. It’s my garage queen.

Congratulations Howard Krakower, winner of our drawing for an RV camping journal donated by Barbara House. We had 39 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – These days kids in elementary school have iPhones. When I was a kid I put glue on my hands just so I could peel it off when it dried.