June 30, 2000
AHA! Time to do some catchup on the Journal. At last. This retirement stuff will keep a guy hopping. Been having the group breakfast thing at 7 AM and then seminars, lunch, more seminars, dinner, ice cream social, then evening entertainment and home by 10 and one night as late as 10:30. That's really, really late for us.
If you're just catching this, we're in Gillette, WY, for a Newmar Rally. That's a gathering of the faithful who have bought RV's manufactured by Newmar. Don't have a clue how many they've sold, but almost 900 of them (RV's) managed to find this place. Most the seminars are put on by vendors, and some are more generic than others, but all are vendors to Newmar in one fashion or another. There have been several Company seminars where the speaker is from Newmar, and those have tended to be lively discussions about various improvements that could be made. Either in the product itself, or in one instance, their dealer network and parts. Stuff like that. I particularly enjoyed the one put on by A' Weigh We Go. This outfit is sponsored by companies like Michlin, and other tire and suspension companies. I've heard their seminar before, but this was the first time I learned that my tires have a "speed limit" all their own. One service offered by these folks is the opportunity for $20 to have your rig weighed wheel by wheel. The advantage of that is to find where the heavy parts of the rig are, and adjust both load and tire pressure accordingly. We get the truck weighed at 2 this afternoon, and the whole rig on Saturday. We're looking forward to that because on the commercial scales that we've used, it showed we were right at the limit on the trailer and about 5,000# under the limit on the truck. By the way. That guy was able in 20 minutes to do what Barby's been trying to do for 30 years. He got me to slow down! He had pictures of motorhomes that had burned up because of tires over-heating because of "excessive" speed. You know those truck tire parts you see strewn about the highways? Those are tires that are coming apart because of "excessive" speed. I put excessive in quotes, because tires have speed limits all their own! I never knew that. Like I said, I got the bejabbers scared out of me, and this truck/trailer combination won't see 75-80 MPH with me behind the wheel ever again. The manufacturer of the trailer tires rates them at a maximum speed of 72, and while the truck tire doesn't have a similar rating, the tire engineer in the seminar said that 75 for sustained periods would destroy the tire. YIKES! Oh well, what's the rush. I'm retired, right? No pun intended.
Before I forget. Remember a while back I mentioned the "free" parking we got at Wal-Mart? Well, it actually cost us over $30. Barby found a pair of jeans in a color she'd been looking for, and I found that little sewer connection I'd been forgetting to pick up. No wonder they're anxious to welcome us to their parking lot for overnight parking!