It's a tough gig, but someone has to do it

We are taking a little bit of a break and fishin' in the general vacinity of Flagler Beach, FL at an RV park that is, as you can see, right on the water.

I know. Tough gig.

I'm a bit sunburnt already and this place isn't nearly as full as we would have expected. I suspect that the fuel crisis and general economic malaise has dropped attendance down a bit. We have been looking into some other ocean-front RV parks and planning to hang out a bit this summer but this place (Beverly Beach RV Resort) is one of our favorites. If they would give us a break on weekly rates we might conduct our Jacksonville-based business from here for the next few months.

We did have an opportunity to drop by and see Mark, a/k/a the Tiki Tender ( http://www.tikitender.com/ ) last night at Flagler's Golden Lion, which is one of the better beachfront bar and restaurants around.

Later tonight we hope to see Jim Morris, one of the absolutely best of the tropic rock musicians, play nearby. You can check out Jim at http://www.jim-morris.com/home.htm

The last few weeks have been very exciting, even if I haven't had much of an opportunity to update the blog or otherwise write much online. While we were traveling we incorporated a new business and have been putting a ton of effort into that. In addition, the never-ending upgrades to the venerable Bluebird Wanderlodge continue, with a bizness telephone system and satellite television with multiple LCD monitors being recently installed, and some dents pounded out following a little "clash" that we had in Mississippi. But that last point is classified so let's not talk about that one. The co-pilot claims that the little "oops!" was caused by driver error but the pilot wants to argue that point.

My novel, a tale of lewdness, UFOs, 100-year old Nazis, bars and bar maids, mentally-unstable geriatric Internet stalkers, natural disasters, corporate corruption, , clown-phobic Texans, ex-cons, truckers, life, death, hookers, and the other things that make living worthwhile, continues. I recently noted that a well known author took an advance from his publisher on a novel that he promises to finish within the next 6-7 years. I can relate. For those of you who aspire to write, all that I can say is that you have to start somewhere but it's a frickin' slow project.

There are a number of things from our New Orleans trip that I hope to show y'all in the next few weeks, but, alas, I haven't had an opportunity to organize my photos yet. We took a drive down into Plaquemines Parish, roughly 100 miles south of New Orleans and basically Ground Zero for Hurricane Katrina. As much as I feel that we as a nation have let New Orleans and parts of Mississippi down when we should be helping them to rebuild, the residents of Plaquemines Parish appear to have been totally forgotten while the oil company interests down there are looking awfully healthy. The contrast between the haves and the have nots is stark indeed. In comparison, New Orleans has at least gotten some relief funding.

And then there's the subject of casinos. Ah yes ... casinos. The retirement home for many of us baby boomers. As much fun as I found the casinos in Mississippi to be I still find it strange that I have reached that age when a casino with a good buffet and a nice RV park is looking mighty appealing.

Speaking of buffet(t)s ... for you Parrotheads have you heard that Jimmy Buffett is involved in not one, not two, but now three Margaritaville Casino projects? Count 'em - Biloxi, the Mohegan Casino in Connecticut, and now some group has just announced that they are buying one of Donald Trump's Atlantic City properties and will be redeveloping it in conjunction with Margaritaville, Inc.

What is this world coming to?

Oh, and to totally skip around this planet and to see how quickly things are changing, check out CCTV-9, or English Language Chinese Central Television. We can pick CCTV-9 up on Dish System satellite TV on Channel 265, although I think that you have to request it at no add'l charge. DirectTV surely has it somewhere. Rural China reminds me of rural Mexico or, for that matter, rural Kentucky from the time of my birth - pretty backward. But the major cities - WOW! Very pretty. Very modern. And very much the economic powerhouses of the next generation. I hate to say it, but it kinda makes me think that we here in the USA have been asleep at the wheel (or perhaps our government has been concentrating on the wrong things) when China looks so modern, most of Europe can supply their citizens with retirement and health care and still have a currency that is increasing in value as compared to ours, and Mexico can be building new universities left and right and still have diesel at $2.27/gallon (diesel is about $4.29/gallon here in Floriduh as I write this).

As many of us olde phartes like to point out the Little Johnny of today often cannot read, and here in Florida neither he nor Little Jill seemingly can drive worth a damn, but they do have their rap songs memorized. I am not optimistic with their abilities to compete with the Euro and Chinese kids that I meet who have excellent math skills.

Then again, who from our generation would have ever thought that Jerry Rubin would have gone from being a Yippie to being a yuppie and would have become a big promoter of multi-level marketing, right?

But we do have great bar-b-que, I'll give you that. The USA leads the world in good pork bar-b-que.

And football.

But not Formula 1.

Did anyone watch the race in Monaco last weekend? No traction control on the new cars and it rained - yikes! It was looking like Ferrari was going to run out of body parts for their cars before they stopped the race a few laps short. Now that was exciting, even if the new F1 cars have so many wings and tabs and aerodynamic surfaces that you halfway expect the cars to start flapping and fly away on the start/finish line. NASCAR it ain't.

As I said, times change. Ya gotta roll with the punches, and keep on smiling.

A great billboard slogan that I saw a few months ago: "If you don't have dreams, then all you have in your life are your worries." So true.

Pursue your dreams. Whether they involve travel or doing something positive for you, your family, or the planet, pursue your dreams. If there is one thing that isn't in short supply in this universe it's negative people, and that's such a pity since there are indeed "so many nice things happenin' out there," to quote a lyric from a Buffett song.

Man, time flies when you are having fun!

When I started this blog I promised myself that I would try to post something every week. Last weekend I started to write that at least two weeks had past since my last post. Now ... shoot ... at least three weeks have gone by.

Isn't life just like that? One week it seems like you are in high school. And the next week you are looking at walking canes and thinking ... y'know ... those don't look bad at all.

OK, so that's a slight exaggeration but you know why I mean.

I am not a super fan of the new country and western music, but I am often reminded of the sage lyrics of a Van Zant (brothers Johnny and Donnie Van Zant, with family ties right here in Jacksonville) tune that goes:

"And if you wanna hear God laugh, tell Him your plans."

Very sage words.

Surely their older brother Ronnie and his friends Cassie and Steve Gaines never expected their careers to come to a halt that fateful day when Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane came crashing to the ground in the woods of Mississippi.

So one needs to roll with the punches. Because as long as we are above ground, today is destined to be a good day, even if today doesn't quite live up to the expectations of previous or future days.

Or something like that.

~~~

I haven't written for several weeks for a variety of reasons.

For one, Deb and I both came down with The Crud. The Crud is some sort of bronchitis has been going around and it lingered with us for about 3 weeks. It hit my office pretty hard and is starting to make the second round. I jokingly call it Lovingood disease after a pal of mine who had it at our company Christmas party and, sure enough, I had it a few days later. Coughing, phlem, loss of voice, lack of energy, and a generally crappy attitude are all part of the symptoms.

When you have The Crud you don't feel like writing. And everything that you write comes out sounding like "poor me ... I ain't got no energy" and no one wants to hear that.

Secondly, I got a promotion at The Day Job. Now, I realize that for many of you who know me either through my writings or in The Real World it's hard to imagine that I would get promoted, much less hold down A Real Job (tm). But it's true. Moving upward and onward to better things.

We hope.

Or at least I am busier right at the moment and haven't had the opportunities to write lately, let's put things that-a-way.

But fear not. I'm optimistic that I'm going to allocate time to write a bit. It's all a matter of will power, right?

~~~

The promotion came at a funny time because Deb and I had been openly telling our friends that we were going to fire up the RV and move on down the road, most likely right after January 1st. Deb is a realtor and the Florida real estate market, for those of you who haven't heard, has ground to a complete halt by all accounts. And we had a strong sense that after 6 years with my employer that it was time to move on to more exciting pastures anyway.

So we had told most of our friends that we were moving to Tampa.

But I wanted to take some classes and they weren't offered in Tampa, and that put a crimp on things.

Then we decided that, realistically, we had at least 1, if not 2, years worth of work and upgrades to do on our motorhome, motorcycles, and other vehicles before we could do what we REALLY want to do, which is to move further westward and explore a bit.

So consequently when my employer started ramping up to develop a separate mechanical contracting company, and I was offered a promotion here in Jacksonville, it was like ... well ... deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra was so classically quoted as saying once.

That, and lately Ms. Deborah's real estate business has come roaring back pretty dramatically. She has found a niche in negotiating mortgages down with the mortgage companies and getting otherwise unsellable properties sold in this really lousy market. The past year was tough on us financially (the biggest casualty was that we couldn't take a planned motorhome trip into Mexico this December) but lately things have been pretty good, as evidenced by the gently used 7-series BMW sedan that she's been driving lately. It's been sitting here for the last week and now has permanent license plates on it, so I guess that she intends to keep it.

"And if you wanna hear God laugh, tell Him your plans."

~~~

Along those lines, we moved the motorhome to our workshop. We have been leasing a nice garage-type building in an industrial part of town for the last year or so. Our landlord was kind enough to have cement poured and to make some improvements for us, including a dedicated 50 amp power circuit for the RV. When his primary tenant, a mortgage broker, moved out (and those naysayers think that the real estate market can't be THAT bad down here) we offered to move in temporarily, at least until he gets a new tenant that needs the space.

We have really been enjoying this living because it puts us on top of what must be the only little hill in Jacksonville, in a fenced-in compound, and right next to our tools, vehicles, supplies, and so forth that are in storage. From the street you really can't see that we are there although the RV looms above the fence. There are actually some nice restaurants and shopping nearby along with one of my favorite neighborhood biker bars (you know that you have reached a certain point in life when your local biker bar lets you drink for free and feeds you because you spend so much time with their website, computers, and so forth).

The other "interesting" thing about this part of town is that, well ... how can I say this nicely. "Industrial" is a euphamism for "rough." Oh, there are certainly some little enclaves of fancy living near here (after all, we are near water and you know how waterfront property is) but many of our neighbors aren't exactly part of the country club set. We have met some friendly folks over here but every so often we get entertained by the cops rousting the crackheads and the street walkers.

This is also an area with a large immigrant population and while it's great learning Spanish at the local Mexican and Honduran restaurants seeing this side of Jacksonville must be eye opening for many of those folks.

Welcome to America.

Our workshop:

~~~

One downside to living at the workshop is that we are discovering that our holding tanks are completely full within 6 days, and then we have to run to a nearby RV park and dump them. This is turning out to be something for us to take a hard look at as we contemplate future disaster relief work.

On the other hand at least one of our cats has finally gotten to be brave enough that she doesn't run and hide when we start driving the RV. Coyote has decided that the view is better when she is sitting on the dashboard rather than hiding underneath the couch, like her compatriot usually does.

~~~

We were having lunch at the local Bennigan's last weekend when one of these came by:



It's an Earthroamer. All wheel drive and build on a Ford F550 chassis, this is an RV for some serious off road adventuring.

But better bring your large wallet. Or evidence of your trust fund. 'cause prices start at $200,000 and while that's not too bad as RV's go it's a bit steep considering the somewhat limited space inside one of those things.

Still, they show all the signs of being very well thought out and well constructed. And being the perfect truck for those Alaskan or Baja fishing adventures. As long as the Significant Other doesn't take up as much space as most guy's fishin' gear.

http://www.earthroamer.com/

if you want more info on the Earthroamer.


~~~

Several folks have asked me about the down and out neighbors that lived near our workshop, and who had no heat just as the weather here got cold. I am saddened to report that they seem to have moved out. I made several trips over there looking for them when we were living in an RV park and now that we have been at the workshop for almost 2 weeks their house is vacant and we haven't seen them.

Things are certainly tough when you are poor.

Another house near here caught fire last week and as I was riding to work several members of the family that were living there were standing on the curb, in the cold, as the fire department rolled up their hoses and prepared to pull away. Now that house is boarded up. The local news reported that the family was in the process of buying that house and were two days away from closing on the sale when the fire occurred.

Very sad.

"And if you wanna hear God laugh, tell Him your plans."

Momma Has A Brand New Throne

subtitled: The Heartwarming Tale of a Woman, Her New Toilet, and The Man Who Loves Her


sub-subtitled: The Week From Hell, Part 1






Some weeks try a man's patience.

Some weeks drive a man to drink.

This week is just about ready to drive me to drink, except that I am too worn out to get into any trouble. So I think that I will just go to bed early tonight.

As many of you folks know, Yours Truly has become a full-time RV'er and lives in what is essentially a large bus. That right there has its own set of pros and cons and tall tales.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I have been reconditioning this thing for about 2 years. It's a wonderful piece of machinery, but it's almost 25 years old so it's got its quirks. And that's putting it mildly.

We decided to replace the carpet with a combination of what they call pre-engineered wood flooring, with is pretty neat stuff incidentally, and a cork flooring product that is intended for industrial applications such as restaurants. The cork floor went into the bathroom and bedroom and that was our big project during Thanksgiving.

I am happy to report that the floor looks nice and that I still have all of my fingers.

As part of that project I removed the original RV toilet. Let me tell you brother, that taking out a 25 year old toilet is definitely taking one's life into one's own hands. Armed with rubber gloves and a mask, that wasn't fun. I felt like Ed Norton, Jackie Gleason's sewer-working pal from the Honeymooners. Egads!

The original toilet had a couple of leaks (thankfully all of the clean water variety) and I repaired those leaks. But when I was reinstalling the toilet a third leak occurred and that was the death sentence for that sucker.

So we bought a new, fancier toilet. Or "terlet" as we say here in the Righteous South.

Late on Sunday night we were still struggling with the terlet. It was installed, but we still didn't have the proper water hose. So rather than move the motorhome away from our workshop, schlep across town, and drive back another 30-40 miles I decided to take part of Monday off and get the job done once and for all.

And let's put things this-a-way. Screwing around with that toilet has been about the highlight and most satisfying part of my week so far. Things have been that tough around here!

I had promised myself that I would update the blog at least twice a week. You will notice that this is Thursday and well ... here we are. No tales of travel, motorcycles, UFO's, computers, outrageous living, silly guy stuff, and any of those good things. Nutin'.

A few weeks ago the server at The Day Job crashed. I will give you, Gentle Reader, three guesses as to whose responsibility that is. Three guesses, and as they say in the bars, the first two guesses don't count.

At some point the outside service that provides our POP3 mail decided to quit for seemingly no reason. Then, after about 24 hours, it magically started up again. The admins there claim to be completely puzzled and saying that it didn't impact any of their other customers.

And on our end everyone is looking at ol' John and asking "Where is my email?" You would almost think that if it was old style postal mail they would wonder if I had stolen the company mail bag.

And then, for the last two days we have been struggling with an Internet outage. Never mind that 1) we were in the middle of changing from one service provider to another, 2) the company that we went with is in the middle of a merger and it turns out that their records aren't in synch and they keep confuzing us with another company in the Heathen Northeast, 3) Said Large Phone Company has tech support scattered throughout the planet and the ones in the Phillipines that I got shuffled to literally couldn't understand what I was very plainly saying (and in some cases shouting), and 4) we were told that a fiber optic cable got cut but now I wonder if that wasn't just an excuse for the phone tech to avoid saying that they didn't have a clue.

Oh, and the registrar of our DNS records, for you geeks, is yet another entity and they didn't seem to be awake either.

All in all it's been a hellacious week.

So I am going to take tomorrow off in order to plan and plot something Bigger and Better.

All kidding aside, it's been a tough week, but a productive week. I stayed out way too late one night at a bar but came away with a 23 chapter outline for a fictional book that I am working on, almost as a dare. And yeah, after I got some sleep the frickin' thing still read pretty well.

I have been writing in biker bars using a laptop for years. Lately I've been using an EVDO card to get my Internet access so I, and about a dozen of my closest friends and fellow drinkers, can surf the 'net from the comfort of our bar stools. Lately, I'm not the only one there with a similar setup. This world is getting weird, I'll tell ya.

So you have to laugh at this nonsense. When life gets you down, you just have to keep plugging away and remember your goals. And work towards them. Even if your only goal in life is to make it to the end of the next NASCAR broadcast. Or to find the last piece of Three Stooges memorabilia on eBay. Whatever turns your crank, you have to keep at it.

That, and having a few beers at the end of the day doesn't hurt a bit either.

If nothing else, if you are a writer, you can always reflect and realize that you meet the most interesting characters in pubs and if that doesn't inspire your fictional characters then nothing will.

When life gives you lemons, the wise man makes lemonade. And he has a big smile on his face as he's stirring up those lemons.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--PirateJohn--
http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)
http://www.piratejohn.com/ (my website)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)

Enjoy!