Working: On the Road
24 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
We are Workampers and take jobs as they come, doing jobs that owners of Resorts need done and we work reasonably cheap, considering what employers would have to pay for full-time help with benefits. Since most of the workampers are also drawing Social Insecurity and have a retirement income, we don’t have to have top dollar for our labors. Some of us are on Medicare with a Medical Supplement Plan. We are able-bodied or we couldn’t drive our “Big Box”, as our kids call it, around the country.
Some of the jobs are checking campers in using a computer system, ringing up sales, cleaning up around the office and park, and escorting campers to their sites.
Sadly some of the Resorts or Camp Grounds lose site of the fact that we are Senior Citizens and expect us to work like teenagers, however when we interview with Managers we ask a lot of questions and ask that they put in writing what our specific duties will be, how many hours we will be working for the site and what perks we can expect. By perks I mean, 1. can we use the facilities on our off time? 2. Will you provide a Full Hook UP? 3. What is included? Laundry, Propane, and discounts at store? 4. Do you give an electric allowance or is it included? When you figure the value of all these things together and divide the number or hours we will work a month combined the wages are a little better than the minimum wage or should be.
Of course, if you get to the Resort, and the terms have changed significantly, guess what? You are on wheels, and can say Thanks, but No Thanks. Your expense can be considerable so be fairly certain what you are getting into. We figure our Motorhome costs about $.50 a mile depending on the price of gas.
And we don’t try to get from point A to point B in record time. We drive no more than 1 1/2 hours at a stretch, then we stop, get out and stretch our legs, and change drivers. This was we are both fresh and alert. I know there are many couple, where the man does all the driving and it makes me nervous knowing he is going to be tired by the end of the day. I see them come in to register and they are just beat.
We also have several websites that we use to find jobs. They post the positions with contact information, the rest is between the Managers and the Workampers to sort out. Happy traveling!!!
Gratitude, Gratis, Grateful, Thankful, Thank you
24 Mar 2011 1 Comment
This has been bugging me for a long time!
Has gratitude died the same ignoble death as customer service?
How long has it been since you felt good about the time and energy that you expended selecting the “just right” gift for someone, paying the expense of mailing it so that it gets to the person “right on time” for their “special day” and NEVER getting a thank you? Never mind a formal Thank You card, not even an email, text message or a phone call?
I was not brought up in a high class society, however, the mere jesture of verbally saying thank you was not lost on me. Maybe it was because I never had much that any little thing, so that when I was given “something” it was to be treasured and taken care of and thank you was natural.
It seems today, that everyone has so much of everything that no one is grateful for anything and everyone expects to have everything that they desire, and never having the need to say thankyou and some people, never appear to earn it.
I was talking to someone the other day and she told me that she gave a friend’s Daughter $100.00 cash for graduation gift in a card and NEVER got a thank you card!!! She was setting beside the girl in question and she never even said that she got the money, never mind thank you!
How hard is it to just set down at the computer to write a short note??? Pick up the phone and make a short call?
And by the way, lets try to get the gifts in the same year that they were intended for!
Guys! Chirstmas is in DECEMBER! Not July or when to hell ever you feel like it! It doesn’t mean much, if the gift is so late no one remembers what it was for!
I realize that everyone is BUSY with their life, but just remember, this little phrase of wisdom, “It’s better to give than receive” however, I have added a second line, “If you can’t take time to say thank you, don’t expect me to give again”.
Just an observation from the “time traveler of life”.
This doesn’t end with gifts not acknowleged!
When was the last time that you said “thank you” to:
1. the person that waited on you at a restaurant?
2. The person that washed your car?
3. The person that repaired your car?
4. The person that rung up your groceries and packed your cart?
5. The person that prepared your taxes?
6. The person that gave you directions to get to your destination.
7. The spouse that loves you and tries to make you happy.
Take time to smell the roses and to be grateful for the blessings that you get along the road of life.
Thanks you for reading and hope you enjoy your “Time traveling through this life”.
Traveling Etiquette
02 Dec 2010 2 Comments
Just a quick note to let you know that when you drive an 18,000 lb vehicle you cannot stop on a dime, nor can we see you when you are in our blind spot. We also cannot accelerate from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds.
Both my husband and I share the driving experience so that neither of us drive more than 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a time. When we are in the passenger seat we act as co-pilot to help navigate and to watch out for you. Running over you or getting side-swiped by a mis-calculation by either of us will cost us both money and injury!
When we are merging on to a major highway we have to look back to make sure we have time to get up to speed so as to not make someone in the right lane have to brake to let us merge. You could consider doing this too!
When we are driving 60 miles an hour in the right lane and you want to merge, you might want to consider not speeding up and cutting in front of us. You can always pass us as soon as you successfully merge.
When you are traveling behind us and we have our right blinker on, and you are going to move to the left lane anyway, why not stay in back of us instead of speeding up and passing us on the right side only to whip around in front of us to get there faster?
By the way, we have large blinkers on the back of our Motorhome, why can’t you see them? When we have the right blinker on it means that we intend to turn right. We have to move over well before the turn off because we are 32 ft long, so speeding up and passing us on the right side makes you “not the sharpest tool in the shed”. For us to “miss a turn” is a bigger problem than for a small car, as finding a place to turn around and get back to the proper turn off is no small undertaking.
Another thing that we do as a courtesy to truckers, other motorhomes, or campers when they pass us, we will blink our headlights to let them know it is safe to move to the right lane. Why do none of you do this for us? So far we have only had two truckers (one of them was a Wal-mart)blink the lights for us and none of the motorhomes or campers.
We will continue to give you the benefit of the doubt, but please just think about being just a little bit more courteous. Everyone on the road will appreciate it very much.
On The Road Again
26 Nov 2010 1 Comment
After several days of very cold (freezing) weather, we decided to look very close at the weather from Washington State to Central California to determine the best time to make the trip through Grants Pass and the Siskiyou mountains. On iGoogle we added cities from Washington to Central California to look at the 5 day weather forecast and consulted the Siskiyou County Road Cams. They change the pictures every 10 minutes and show from the Summit, which is 4310 feet to Yreka. We watched the weather forecast of several key cities to determine the best time to start and how much driving we would have to do to make it through the pass on bare roads.
Well we figured it right! Here we are in Durango RV Resort in Red Bluff, CA. Can’t say it is Sweater weather, however, there is no snow. If you are going through Red Bluff or just want a nice place to stay, look up Durango RV Resort up and take advantage of great service and wonderful amenities. Every night they light the Gas fire pit and you can set around, sip a brew and talk to other travelers about your experiences. They have a Club Room, laundry, pool (closed for the winter) and Hot Tub that is kept at 104 degrees.
We didn’t go out to the Fire Pit last night because we were so tired from two days of traveling 350 hard miles a day to get here. When we are in no hurry we only drive about 3 or 4 hours a day, don’t get up early and usually arrive before the office closes so we don’t have to do night check in. We always look for interesting things to see and do along the way and take time to smell the Roses.
There are several new things that we learned about traveling in cold weather.
1. Make sure you empty both holding tanks before it freezes.
2. Un-hook the water from your rig and drain all water from your hose. When the water freezes in the hose it take a long time for it the thaw.
3. If it is going to snow or if you even think it will snow, put all your slides in. This should have been obvious but removing the ice and snow from the slide roof is no fun in the freezing weather.
The fourth thing we learned is don’t ever go North in the Winter time again!
It’s Snowing!
22 Nov 2010 2 Comments
Well we made the decision to leave the Workamper job and head south to find another job in the warmer climate. Actually the decision was mutual. Evidently the last person that arrives at the Resort gets the housekeeper job until they move up the ranks to the office or other job, at least that is what it appears. We are not opposed to housekeeping, it just was not the job we applied for and discussed with the Manager.
Probably a lot of drive who all the way up here cannot afford to turn around and go back. Driving a motor home is not cheap! We have figured out that it costs us about $.40 a mile not including staying overnight in RV resorts.
Fortunately, we have friends and relatives in the area that will allow us to stay in their yard with the use of water and electricity. We have to go out every couple of days to empty our tanks and purchase LP, and purchase groceries. We also do a little bartering for the electricity and water.
Grocery shopping in an RV is fun. You park out in the “back 40 acres”, so you get exercise walking to and from the store. The best part is your frozen food doesn’t thaw from the store to the RV. And you can put it away immediately.
We have weather icons on our iGoogle page from Lacey WA to Yreka CA and as soon as the weather breaks we probably will head south and keep watch for a Workamper job in the Southwest. In the meantime we will enjoy having our “little visitors” (children of the nice people who have rented us their driveway) come down every day to play on our computers and “drive” the motor home to the Zoo, Circus, or somewhere else fun.
To Lie or Tell the Truth!
10 Nov 2010 1 Comment
The older generation was taught to tell the truth. Remember the admonishment in court “the Truth and nothing but the Truth”?
Well, recently we have begun a new career as “Workampers”. We travel around in our Motorhome and take jobs that pay for our site and sometimes a little more, which supplements our Social Insecurity.
So far we have only taken 2 jobs. The first one was as Housekeepers. We knew what we were getting into up front and took the job because we wanted to be near our Granddaughter for her 19th Birthday Party. It was hard work cleaning cabins in the humid heat of Oklahoma. We did our job well and was at work on time every day and left on good terms with the employers.
Recently we accepted another job in the Pacific North West to be near our Daughter and an aged Brother for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The job description and the information that the Manager gave us was glowing! Hot Tub, Heated Pool, Club house exclusively for Workampers, not a lot of work until summer. We were begged to come for the Winter because one of the Managers was going to CA to be with her Daughter when she gave birth to her first Grandchild. We were told that we were needed to help take care of the office and various duties. The lake was stocked with trout and we could fish without a license because it was private.
Now this is what we found when we drove 1500 miles at more than $700. First the Pool and Hot Tub are always closed for the Winter! The lake is a “catch and release” with only one fish per day to be taken. We will be taking over the “housekeeping” duties exclusively (not what we were offered or wanted). Our cart is not totally covered so we get wet going from one restroom to another to clean them, and our training was one day for about 2 hours. The people that we are taking over for told us that the Manager said “we LOVE to clean”. Before Workamping we never had a job in this capacity, EVER!
We called the manager to our Motorhome to discuss the discrepancy in the duties and was told that “maybe in a month or two” we might get to do a day of the work that we were promised. We will be doing the Housekeeping duties exclusively.
Now here is what we are deliberating! Do we bite the bullet or Bug Out?
We might have taken the job even if they had told us the truth. Doing office work or a little maintenance would have been to our liking. We had chances to take jobs in warmer climates doing work that we are qualified for and would like to do. Nowhere on our resumes does it show “housekeeping” as a position that we have held.
So what do you think? Tell us your opinion.
Adventure of Sleeping in a Motorhome
01 Nov 2010 1 Comment
Adventure of Sleeping in a Motorhome
The bed was the biggest adventure!! We were sleeping in a California King with a 2 inch Memory Foam topper and were going to have to get used to the expanded Queen size bed in the Motorhome. Since Shirl couldn’t or wouldn’t shrink to fit, and refused to let me cut off his feet, he had to be content with his feet sticking out over the bottom of the bed.
We had 2 -2inch Memory Foam toppers and that was really not a problem, we just un-jipped the covers and removed the pads. We measured the size we needed and used a large pair of scissors to cut them to size, then we jipped them back in the covers and folded the excess under.
We found a 4 inch Memory foam mattress at our handy dandy Wal-mart and with the toppers, we were now all set. We found that it was more comfortable with one topper on the bottom, and one on top.
Being Scotch, with the excess topper material, we now had Memory Foam Seat pads for Pilot and Co-Pilot and enough to put a pad on our couch.
We set out looking for a mattress cover for our mattresses to keep them from shifting when we got in and out of bed and just turning over. The fun thing is the covers that we found were about 8 inches longer than our trimmed mattresses. We thought of several solutions for this and finally decided that we would just adjust them each morning rather than make any more modifications on the bed.
If you think of a way, other than re-building one let me know.
A brilliant idea
01 Nov 2010 2 Comments
If you have ever slept on a mattress that comes with a Motorhome, you will know how much I wanted to get rid of the “Boards R Us” Brand mattress. We came up with the brilliant idea to build an extension on top of the bed. We first measured the tables and the keyboard to make sure they would fit.
There was an existing bed frame with a plywood top, which also hid the fresh water storage tank. All we had to do was build a frame on top.
We took out the mattress, and built a 3 ½ inch high storage frame large enough to hold the two tables Shirl’ keyboard and a couple other things. We used two large pieces of 3/8″ plywood, cut to fit on top. We put a hinge on each side so that the top would lift up to put the tables under and slide one all the way to the top of the bed. We added a small piece of wood to the under side of the top so that we could prop the top up to put stuff in the compartment.
All this sounds so easy and clever!
It only took three days for the both us to accomplish this task, but we now had a place to store more stuff. Some time down the road we need to put some braces under the plywood as without the tables in place we kind of roll into each other, sort of like Ethel and Fred Mertz on I love Lucy.
Getting Ready for the Road
24 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Stay tuned for the Adventure of the Bed!
One of the first things that we did was to scan the drawing of the floor plan from a Coachmen brochure and enlarge and split it for two pages front and back. Then we measured all of the compartment for storage in the under locking storage bins, and all the cupboards, drawers, under the couch, under the dining benches and all of the overhead compartments. We made and re-made plans for what would go in each compartment several times.
We sold everything that we could on Free sites and either shipping or having people come pick-up. Our collections of Comic Books and Paperback books went to auctions. What we couldn’t sell we either gave away or donated.
Since we were full time RVing, we decided to take only casual clothes, either knit or permanent press and nearly all had to be folded neatly so it would not look like we slept in our clothes.
We ran into a small obstacle when we looked at closet space of which there wasn’t much.
So we called the 800 # for Coachmen and asked if they had any of those nice plastic shelf standards that were installed in the pantry, and we were lucky, they did! When they arrived Shirl put them in the larger of the two closets (mine) and then made shelves, with our handy-dandy measurements, we purchased plastic bins at our ever-ready Wal-Mart, and two of then would fit perfectly on each shelf. Now all I had to do is fit everything I wanted to take in 7 bins.
Not going to happen!! After folding and re-folding and throwing out more things, I was able to get everything packed. Whew!!
Then we had to tackle Shirl’s closet! His was a huge 7 inches wide, and even with the shelve standards and shelves we could not find any plastic bins to fit, so back to square one again and re-think. He decided to hang some of his slacks and good shirts and use plastic bins in the overhead compartment over the bed.
23 Oct 2010 2 Comments
Another Great Adventure
We have had many Great Adventures in our lives. Some turned out better than others, and some were Great Disasters! But we lived them all and are still living this Greatest Adventure to the fullest.
Perhaps some introductions are in order, we are a slightly Over the hill couple in our second childhood. The reason we know we are in our second childhood is because our kids have become our Parents!! They want us check in every day to make sure that “we are still kickin”. I suppose it is fair, since we required that they check in when they were young. Our daughter works in the Optometry field and as soon as we got in town she made an appointment with her Ophthalmologist for Dad because after all, we are driving that box all across the country”.
We are living and traveling in our 32-foot Coachmen Mirada, doing the “full-time RVing”!! We opted for two Schwinn Cruisers instead toading a vehicle. If you have ever tried to decide what to take on a two week vacation you have a very small idea of what we went through to dwindle our belongings from a 1450-square foot, three bedroom house down to fit comfortably in a 240-square foot Motorhome, you are in for a fun time.
