Domain is Working & Ramblings

It looks like my blogging vacation lasted a couple of weeks. I wasn't off the internet and spent more time than I would have preferred online but I'll discuss that later in this post. I can't shut my mind off so I am always thinking about different decisions and solutions.

First of all, I am going to renew the domain name of this blog. I just checked it and it did work. So all should be operable at www.houndsandrvs.com as well as www.bhounds.blogspot.com Yesterday I took down the domain name and was just using my blogger address, so for those that tried to visit the blog and got the blank page saying your browser could not find the blog ... that was the reason for it.

This blog is almost three years old, I have close to or a little over 100,000 page views and regular readers that come back looking for either new information, see if I'm breathing, what the hounds are doing and what kind of travel plans I have, if any.

So, I decided to stay "open for business", renew my domain name and continue to blog. I have a lot of online friends here and that's always a good thing being a self proclaimed loner. I know being on the side of a "blog reader" it's always disappointing after following a blog to either have the author stop blogging and tells you or the blogger that quietly disappears and never comes back to their blog.

I didn't feel it was right to stop blogging, even about every day routine living as long as I had followers and I still had the urge to write. Which I have both.

While I didn't write about anything I did do some rearranging. As you could see I moved some things from the right sidebar to the left sidebar. I removed some blogs from my list only to make it shorter. I still follow the removed blogs on my Feedly account. I deleted photos of the hounds and my Toyota. I might put the photos of the hounds back on the sidebar. I'll probably continue to move things around and may add those blog links back to my sidebar even though the list was long.

During my absence I continued to read my list of RV blogs as well as other retirement blogs and found that I was not the only one questioning whether to continue blogging or what subjects to write about. Lloyd posted yesterday that he was finding little to write about since he has come off the road, doing the same hike everyday and now living in one spot. He had also gone through all of the social media options and is reverting back to just blogger as his writing platform.

Bob Lowry and his wife over at A Satisfying Retirement just returned home from a trip to the upper Midwest in a Class C and found that 43% of his expenses were going into the fuel tank. While Curtis over at Poor Mans RV Life has found out that after using a Class C, a Jeep Cherokee towing a trailer and a Van over the years, that his older diesel pusher, a Pace Arrow is the best rig he has traveled in, getting 10mpg and spending roughly $500 per month in fuel as he starts his fulltime RV lifestyle.

Both of those percentages and dollars are more than I had budgeted in my estimates. I also knew or expected I would spend more than I have budgeted for fuel, food, etc.

As I mentioned above, I've been spending more time than I have wanted on the internet. It's just the rut I've been in longer than I want to admit. I do a lot of online reading during the day from the blogs I follow, to sports news and forums, forums for the FJ Cruiser and Mini Cooper as well as computers. I trying to stay away from reading the news, still it is very easy to spend hours and hours reading before you realize just how much time you have spent ... which feels like wasted time to me.

That is not the way I want to spend everyday ... so today I am making changes.

It's beautiful outside AGAIN today, so I am definitely going to be spending some time outside with the hounds. The Mini Cooper needs washed and it's finally cool enough to do that. With the recent storms and high winds I will be getting on the roof since the temps have decreased and clear off some broken tree branches.

I admit I like this time of year in the "tropics" of southern Indiana. With the clear skies you can see a million stars at night and the low humidity you can do things outside and still breath. For some reason this summer, bugs and mosquitoes have not been a problem. At night I am smelling more and more camp fires in the air.

Al talked about his three hobbies he has had over the years and how they have came together in the way he travels and his daily photography. That got me thinking and asking myself what were my hobbies past and present. Some of them I have always had for as long as I remember while I found a few that I no longer did but had possible interest in starting again.

Back in the 80's I was into photography. I had all the different sized lenses, the different filters and the bags to carry the equipment in. I have photographs I took while traveling throughout the world and 99% of those photographs are on 35mm slides. At that time 35mm slides was the preferred option for taking photographs. I have some older photos from a small 110 camera that I took with me on my cross country bicycle trip and those can be scanned, I just need to take the time to do it.

So photography is something I might start doing again. I realized I have a lot of neat things to take photos of around here but like most everyone else ... we take those shots for granted since they are a part of our daily life and end up not taking pictures. Many of the photos I am seeing from bloggers this summer from Whidbey Island and surrounding areas, I don't have a lot of photos of but have ten years worth of them in my mind. I think I'd rather have the photos.

Sports have been a hobby of mine since my first breath. My dad was a high school basketball and baseball coach so our life was geared around sports 12 months a year. In the summers he would have two to three weeks off and unlike many of the current RV bloggers, we did NOT take camping trips .. we would travel but would stay in motels that had a pool. We also tried to tie those vacations to major league baseball games if possible. So, no matter what happens I doubt my love of watching sports will ever change.

Another hobby I like doing is riding either a road bicycle or my mountain bike, even if its only for a few miles. When I do travel I will take the mountain bike with me and leave the road bikes at home.

Like Al, I have always enjoyed driving ... yes driving.  I cannot count the number of times I have made trips from California to Indiana and back or Washington to Indiana and back but every time I loved driving cross country. Yet on all of those trips I either didn't have time or didn't take time to stop and look at the beautiful country I was traveling through. At times I did take the older highways but only stopped for food, gas and an occasional nap.

From the list of hobbies I wrote down just out of curiosity, I found that I could do most if not all of them traveling.

That leads me to the subject of traveling.

At this time I cannot make that commitment. Basically after more thinking the past two weeks and even coming close to purchasing a trailer I have decided not at this time. I also enjoy this time of the year in Indiana. Also the hounds ... every time I think about them traveling, I think of their comfortable life here. Winston is getting older, hind legs are getting weaker, and when I look into his old eyes as I pet him ... I hear the words "stay here". Heidi is getting treatments for her skin issues which have not changed even with cooler temps and even keeping her off grass for two weeks ... they got worse. Sadie is just Sadie ... big and needs room when inside.

After a few recent tests traveling with the hounds there are still issues that I wrote about here last September. They do better in the FJ than in the H3 Hummer I had. It's a little bit smaller inside so less room for stuff and us. I just feel the best time for me to do any traveling is when I am down to one hound, not three. It doesn't matter how much I want to travel in a small trailer towed by my FJ 4x4, I know that is not enough room for me and the hounds.

Of course you never know what lays ahead in life, what could change to take away that chance to travel but I am willing to live with my decision and I'll have no regrets if something happens to prevent me from traveling. I have traveled a lot and seen a lot of places recorded in photos in the past just not in an RV, so if something happens before I can travel it's ok.

I will still take short trips with the hounds but I cannot say that I'll make the commitment to travel for the reasons explained above.

Today I am making some subtle changes to my daily routine to enjoy what's outside around me and also to get out of my recent rut. I know I am early into my retirement phase but I think I need some sort of structure instead of floating aimlessly through my days. I'm not talking major changes, just things that will put me back into some sort of routine, without spending all my time in front of a computer monitor.

My traveling plans may change when the temperature get to the point that I hate being here and that might be enough to shove me out the door, hounds and all.

Even with little to no travel at this time, I will continue to blog about retirement living and if anything changes in the travel plans.

I'm Taking a Vacation From Blogging

A couple of things.

I'm not sure that I am going to renew my current domain name: houndsandrvs.com when it expires sometime in September. Currently it redirects to my original blogspot domain. If you decide you want to continue to follow this blog in case there are changes down the road you will need to change your bookmark address to this domain name:  bhounds.blogspot.com. That will be the blog address if I decide not to renew my current domain name.

There isn't much going on in my life since I have basically finished my research of RVs and currently have no plans to travel. I find it hard to write about everyday living when the intent of the blog was to write about researching RVs and then writing about my travels. I can't honestly say if those travels will take place or not, even after almost three years this October.

I am also finding my retirement life is nothing exciting and definitely not anything to write about to send out for the public to read. It is basically what I expected it would be if I chose to live here after retiring. Things are good but slow. There is really nothing to read here when the highlight of the week is mowing the yard or washing a car.

Because of that I have decided I am going to take a blog vacation.

I Saw The Bad Side of the Economy Today

This post fits more into the "Retirement" side of my blog. It would just graze the edge of the "RV" side of the blog.

By helping a friend today, someone I worked with just a few months ago, I saw for the first time the bad side of the economy in the USA. It's the economy that some say has recovered and everything is great and then there is the side where those people cannot see the light at the end of a dark dark tunnel.

In some news media over the past few years you might have read how the majority of working couples are really just a payday away from disaster. This is based on no savings, living payday to payday, a family to support plus a mortgage. Well, this is kinda like one of those stories.

In this case there was no mortgage lost, but a single mother supporting two boys below the age of 7. Due to some recent contract awards while working for the government as a government contractor, her parent company lost the contract after five years of support, when it came due for new bidding. The new contractor chose not to make an offer to her to keep her job. It is common the new company will make an offer when there is a change in government contracts.

In this case a couple of things have played against her. Those are somewhat private and something I will not discuss here, since I do have some ex coworkers that read this blog on occasion.

Without a job offer to her, to keep her job, what it did was move her and her two boys from a very nice large house that was rented, eliminated a very substantial salary to nothing and a situation where the job market is tight enough in the local area that after a month of job searching she has found herself unemployed. She is also out of money and her unemployment does not start until the week of September 21, 2014. That unemployment payment will be less than half of her salary of a month ago. How many of us could afford to take a 60% pay cut or more?

When I heard the news from a mutual friend the other day, I contacted her to see if she was ok and if there was anything I could do to help. Since I have been out of circulation by being retired, I was not aware of job opportunities as I normally would be. So there was nothing I could do there to help her in finding a job except let her know she could use me as a reference.

What she asked for and told me was the most stressful for her right now was a very surprising answer. It was an answer that showed me just how bad this friend was hurting, withdrawing and not asking for help from any of her friends. She had just moved from that large nice rental house to a small 3 room, not 3 bedroom but a 3 room apartment, where the cost of rent was the deciding factor. This was one of those older large houses that was turned into multiple apartments mostly to attract the rental market of college students years ago, but not now. The house was in good shape, a neighborhood that had remodeled older houses for blocks and blocks ... a nice area to live.

Luckily she had a ground floor apartment, with a nice front porch and yard overlooking a part of the college town and a small backyard and patio but not the type of yard where the two boys could play and burn off some energy. The rooms were good size but with the two young boys the rooms had to be reconfigured to fit them. The bedroom and the living room were reversed to give them the bigger room as a bedroom.

Back to her surprising answer and a look at a Catch-22 when things are not going your way in life.

When I asked if there was anything I could do to help her, she paused and then in almost a whisper ... "I need someone to haul my trash away".

I was somewhat confused by that answer. I was expecting to be asked for a loan, maybe buy some groceries, or fill her car up with gas but no. She said her most stressful thing right now was getting the trash hauled away.

The trash in this case were boxes of stuff she had moved but had no room for. It was things she had not sold on Craig's List or eBay. It was really just stuff you throw away. I thought I knew the answer, but asked her why couldn't she just leave it where it was in back for the weekly trash pickup. Of course one was money, she could not afford that kind of expense but the other reason was .... even though she had bagged a lot of it in large heavy duty black trash bags, the city had their own trash system where their containers had to be used. Also those containers were color coded where the trash was separated as if you were recycling. Those containers also cost extra on top of the pickup fee. I had expected the cost being a reason but not the container requirement.

The stack of empty boxes plus some filled with things not worth giving away were covering the small patio right up to the back door of the apartment. Out by the alley was a stack of large moving boxes and the large black heavy duty bags filled with more stuff not worth giving away. Only the stack by the alley had been sitting there for a month and had been in a couple of heavy thunderstorms. It was not a good situation. The boxes were soggy, the bags had puddles of water on them.

Long story short, in two different trips I was able to fill my Toyota FJ and haul everything away. The empty boxes were broken down and taken to recycling. The bagged trash will go out with my weekly pickup and the large boxes full of junk were burned ... the burning process just finished before the thunderstorm that passed through early this evening.

So the economics side of this story is, she is doesn't have a job, doesn't have enough money to last until September 21, with two young sons to feed. She also needs to buy gas to get to job interviews if she she is called. She has interviewed a few times but I'm sure here past salary keeps her from an offer. She has many resume's out for jobs in a market that will be hard to get a job, especially without a college degree.

I know from personal experience twenty years ago, college graduates some with master degrees are willing to work for less money just to stay in the area. Some have a spouse still finishing a degree, some are graduate degrees. It's a tough market to crack when looking for a job and it's even harder without a college degree ... if you expect to make the amount of salary she was making.

The two unspoken factors will prevent her from being hired in her old department, even though it has been requested she be hired numerous times by different managers, according to her.

Yes, she could have saved more or even some of her salary. The majority of baby boomers nationwide have not saved since life itself does become expensive raising a family, especially as a single parent. She was one of those that never suspected she would ever lose her job, although I mentioned to her last summer about being financially prepared in case the large contract was not renewed. These companies are Fortune 500 companies that work that bid on contracts to support government activities. That environment has naturally changed for everyone with the changes in the last year of worldwide military support and available funding released from D.C.

She was kind of caught in the 'perfect storm' of government work, and now finds herself in a bad situation.

Today was an experience I didn't ever want to witness, especially to a friend with young children.

As far as the RV side of the blog I mentioned, this situation reminded me of some of the blogs I had read over the years where families or even single people had moved into an RV and started the lifestyle due to a loss of job, loss of house due to job loss or storm damages. It also reminded me of just how fragile retirement living is for some based on living on a shoestring budget. Who knows how high the cost of energy, the cost of groceries and medical coverage will be within the next 5 and 10 year periods, let alone gas/diesel prices. Will their retirement incomes keep up with inflation?

I wonder what percent of the millions of RV travelers only do it for economic reasons?

Comments & Rambling

I realize it's part of blogging, where the notorious 10% show up and either tell you how what you should do in your life either by commenting or by email ... those 10% seem to be pretty upset after they read my post yesterday. I've never met them, have no idea who they are but it has always mystified me why strangers get so upset because I am not doing what they want me to do.

Ed seems to be pretty consistent with his comments over the past few months ... he is mad that I have not come to a firm decision. He wants me to "fish or cut bait". I've deleted most of his comments when I catch them so he doesn't embarrass himself. I have also emailed him a couple of times suggesting for him to stop reading my blog since it seems to increase his blood pressure based on the tone of his comments. What does it matter to him what I do or don't do?

Amazing and humorous.

Don't people have anything else to do in their life besides troll the internet and leave dumb comments on blogs telling people what to do with THEIR lives?

I don't know Edward, don't care to know Edward and am not concerned what he does out in Denver. He needs to take up a hobby since he has pulled off the road and stopped blogging.

As for the anonymous commenters, I shut that option off a long time ago because it was nothing more than 99% spam.

I had an interesting email in my inbox this morning from a long time friend with a lot of years experience in traveling. They had been doing some research on fiberglass and styrene. After a lot of fiberglass trailers in their past, they were not sure they would be buying anymore fiberglass trailers.

After reading that email I thought about a trailer I had looked at in the past and is used fulltime by one of the bloggers I follow. He has told me that after 19 months of traveling fulltime he has never had a problem with his Starcraft AR-ONE 17RD. They are available locally and will be reconsidered.

I've noticed in my recent searches of fiberglass trailers, there seems to be always an abundance for sale and most of them are priced more than they are worth. Still they don't last long and sell pretty quickly. The market seems to be pretty fluid for fiberglass trailers. So I guess the prices are not too high after all.

My addiction starts in 6 days and 8 days for my local team. That is college football. That is one sport I will watch from the first kickoff in the east to the last game on the west coast. That usually keeps me up until 1:30 or so in the morning on Saturday nights. Pro football does not start their regular season for a couple of weeks later in September. I am a fan of pro football but not one that likes to watch the pre-season games that are going on now. It will be interesting to see how much my diet changes once the games start. I've been pretty good eating wise since April when I retired.

Like I said yesterday, summer has finally arrived here in the 'tropics' of southern Indiana. It was a nice summer while it lasted but we are now in day 2 of 95°+ and 90% humidity. That knocks the hounds out into a deeper sleep than normal during the day. It keeps me inside and still time to clean, read and take siestas. The forecast shows this heat wave (normal for August) should last until next Tuesday. I think I can handle that.

The topic of old dogs came up today via emails. We all seemed to agree that older dogs have different requirements such as a daily routine that is familiar with them plus the ability for fast vet care if an emergency were to arrive. Some feel that traveling is not an option with an older dog. Other bloggers say the same about their dogs but then some continue to travel without any problems. I believe due to the high quality of dog food I have fed my hounds over the years, they rarely get sick until the very end of their life. By the time the problem is caught it's usually too late to do anything.

For those readers that have asked about the results of the dog food supplement I was using in July called Dinovite, after 50+ days Heidi's condition did not improve. In fact as she sits here today her skin condition, due to some sort of lifelong allergies, has gotten worse than it was July 1. I'll be taking her in for a shot later today. I have come to the conclusion that her allergies are environmental instead of a dog food ingredient allergy.

As Al and Kelly over at the Bayfield Bunch get ready for departure to their winter home in Arizona, they are wondering what kind of damage the current Arizona monsoons might have done to their house. I would think that would be what all part-timers wonder about when they are away from their homes. I use to wonder the same thing as I traveled outside the country from 6-10 months at a time. You find yourself too far away to do anything but close enough electronically to know what is happening.

That's about all the rambling I can do today.

Since it's Friday and hotter than ever, it might be time to pull out a new bottle of Costco's Kirkland Pre-Mixed Margaritas, throw that plus some ice into the blender and see if I can't reduce some of this high temperature. Of course I'll have to do that when I get back from the vet this afternoon.

"Just Do It"

Those three words are from a famous Nike commercial but they are also three words that are probably shouted by hundreds of readers throughout North America ... under their breath over and over after reading this blog for years ... a few like to make sure I know what I should do by by commenting.

If the roles were reversed I would be saying the same thing to the blogger I was reading ... or I would have given up and left a long time ago.

When I hear that advice ... it doesn't bother me because I agree with it and really wish I could ... Really ... seriously.

I didn't plan on posting tonight but the hottest day of the summer hit today and as of right now at 7:26pm, Wunderground is telling me it's 90° and "feels" like 131°. So needless to say, the daily hound walk has been cancelled probably until next Tuesday if the forecast is accurate. So I'll blog about something that came up.

What did get me thinking about 3 hounds and a small trailer ... I know, we've been through all of this before ... anyway I was in my small bathroom, built in 1975, never expanded ... so it's small. Because Sadie likes to protect her water bowl and not share "her" water, which is in the room where my computer is, a few years ago I put a bowl of water for just the basset hounds (Winston & Heidi), in my bathroom. When you have a small house and no basement, there are few rooms to choose from. So the bathroom was the choice.

As I was standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I look down and see both basset hounds inhaling water as fast as they could, almost a race. It wasn't the water I noticed ....

It was the lack of room that I noticed.

My always active mind sprints right to the thought of adding the large bloodhound Sadie to the mix and wondering just how much room would be available. I didn't do that but it gave me a great visual of what it would be like with a large bloodhound and two long basset hounds taking up floor space in a small trailer.

With a trailer under the towing limits of my Toyota FJ, 5000lbs max, that leaves the only options being small trailers around 17' from bumper to the tip of the tow bar ... or roughly 13'-14' living area. Comparing that to what I saw in available floor space in the small bathroom in my house ... it didn't leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling of me, one large dog and two long dogs in a small trailer.

Yes ... this has been analyzed before many times.

Maybe this post is more for the "rookie" readers to give them an idea why I have not made a purchase, why I have not "Just Done It", without them having to go back a zillion pages of posts since 2011.

So, to my followers and regular readers ... this is a good example of why I have not done anything as far as traveling with my hounds. Do I want to travel ... most certainly. Do I remember our trip in September 2013 and only 586 miles ... most certainly. Yes, I would love to get to the SW before winter hits the MW. That is the plan at least.

Now back to running the hounds off the floor vents where they are blocking my air flow of air conditioned air.

Accomplishments the Past Two Days

Yesterday morning I turned off the computer, got up out my desk chair, moved to the first thing on my list ... and got started. I've spent the past couple of days being active. Less computer time, less internet surfing ... and feeling better because of it.

The heat and humidity have finally shown up but I was able to get the yard mowed between light rains. Did some heavy duty weed eating with my weed eater that has the steel blade and will cut small trees up to 2" in diameter. With all the sun, the above normal rain level this summer, the weeds and wild bushes have been hard to control. 

I did one of my favorite things of getting up on the roof of my single story house. I love it up there as long as I miss the hot weather. So this time of year I make it up before 10am. My plan was to take my smaller leaf blower with me and I blow out the gutters with that. That leaves me with the mess to pick up down below in the yard, but makes the gutter cleaning job much easier. While up there I noticed my old mahogany tree had limbs that were creeping of the roof, so I trimmed them back.

Once finished, I sat up on the highest point of the roof and just observed. It's a great view and I like sitting up there, even though its not that high. I've never seen everything so green this time of year. It's pretty nice.

I thought this morning would be the real test. Would I continue with things I wanted to do around the house or would I fall into my old routine of coffee, computer time? At 7:15am when Winston decided he couldn't hold his bladder any longer and started whining to go out, all the hounds and I headed outside. It was my normal time to wake up but about an hour late for Winston. He will whine every morning to wake me up, that's the alarm clock.

With heavy dew on the grass and thick fog, Sadie put her nose to the ground and sniffed every area where something had been in her yard the night before. She had a few spots where she held her nose there for a longer time to analyze who had been there. 

The computer was turned off from the night before. We came back in and instead of coffee and turning on the computer, I jumped into the Mini Cooper for a quick run to the town's Dairy Queen to pick up a couple of bacon, egg and cheese biscuits. I love those but don't eat them a lot. I figure a few every once in a while isn't a bad thing. I glanced at my receipt and noticed they are now charging extra for the cheese ... then don't have a photo of all 3 items with 1 price.

So I'm back to the house and before I could even think about it, I've started on the next thing on my list of collecting everything that needs to go to recycling. To cut cost of recycling, the local company has merged their business with one in Indianapolis where there is no sorting done locally. Makes it easier for customers like me, where everything is put into one large bin to be transported to Indy and they they sort from the bin. 

I've continued to be in motion all day today, up until the time I sat down to look at the blog and decided to write a post. It will be getting into the high 90's the rest of the week, so whatever I am going to do outside will have to be finished by 10am but it looks like a lot of days of rain is in the forecast. 

I've thought more about traveling, more about the hounds, looked at some trailers but not a lot and I read all comments from the past few posts I've done. I'm back to that feeling of content. I've visualized what days on the road would be like with 3 hounds. I read blogs of those people on the road and see what their days are like. I have a few ideas floating in my head right now, so we will see what happens.

Fromm dog food is one of only three dog food companies in the 48 states where all their ingredients are made in the USA. It's not readily available everywhere so it might be a challenge to keep stocked when traveling but I've switched to that food this week for the hounds. I decided to overlook the cost and the 25 mile trip to Bloomington to pick it up. I just felt with them getting older, they needed a higher quality of food although what I have been buying is rated 4/5 stars. I just liked the idea of none of their ingredients were imported.

That's the excitement for this week so far. I still have more I want to get done around here and I like spending the time away from the computer. I guess having a list might be a good thing to have after all.