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Beds

We need a new bed. We have the air bed. I like the adjustable firmness, but I can’t get past the naugahyde couch effect. I always had the same problem with the water bed. I have the same problem with foam beds too. The air bed has a rigid platform supporting it, engineered to mimic the look of a box spring.

We just bought a new innerspring mattress for the motorhome. It lays on top of a solid platform, just like the air bed in the house. We like it. It is comfortable. And it breathes. In fact, most nights we sleep in the motorhome instead of the house. It has the best, newest bed, and it cools down quicker in the evenings than the house does. And it’s air conditioned.

So my question is this: Since we already have a bed platform, is there any reason why we should go buy the box spring and mattress combination for the house? Are all the people full timing in motorhomes consigned to inferior beds because they can’t have box springs? Are box spring and mattress combinations better?

I could just buy a full size queen innerspring mattress for a motorhome and drop it on top of the rigid air bed platform in the house.

Comments? Experiences to share? All I need is a firm bed that breathes.

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Trip10

Sunday, Monday, TuesdayGot a nice early start, with a twelve-foot Mistral Maui laid on edge and bunjied to the couch and dinette. The mast is a lot longer, about fifteen feet. It goes in through the driver’s side window and feeds back to lay in the bedroom, sticking out into the hall. The boom lays on the bed. The mast and boom come out and go under the motorhome every night. The board stays where it is. Drove north to Kingman to turn right to Flagstaff, so we could head diagonally up through Monument Valley into Utah and home. Didn’t do it. Changed our minds on Interstate 40. Continued on east until just before the New Mexico border, then turned north to Canyon De Chelly. Spent the night there. Watched a woman demonstrate the no-hose-dump technique at the dump station. That was disgusting. Looked around at the park the next morning. Headed north into Utah and joined up with our planned route there. We continued north to have lunch in Arches National Park (have to go back there), cruised on and ended up just outside Glenwood Springs for our last night out. Got a camp spot in an RV park at No Name exit with our rear-end hanging out over a nice noisy part of the river. Picture attached. The river was wonderfully noisy, but not as noisy as the trains rounding the bend in the river on the other side. Honking, thundering, screaming steel-on-steel trains. No telling where you mind will wander while you’re wandering about. This trip I decided what my next book will be about. Hey. My brother David can write books, why can’t I? I even have a title for it: “RV for Free”. Beyond WalMart. Here is the plan. We drive all over the country for an entire year, finding all the different places you can stay for free. Legally. Then we write a book about it. How hard could that be? This morning we were admiring the river and cliffs and watching the swallows swirl. Made it home by eleven and I was off to work by twelve. It was a good day at work, and I’m all ready for tomorrow. Back to reality. Oh. But before I get back to reality, there is one more thing about racquetball. Before I left on this trip, I finally got the long awaited opportunity to share my racquetball stroke mechanics breakthrough with Woody(coach). I gave him my four paragraph analysis of power strokes, which concludes in the fourth paragraph with my breakthrough. He was great. He read it, thought about it, analyzed it. He said it got me to a good place. It works for me. He also told me I need to reorder a few of my observations in order of priority. He told me to throw out some of my observations as irrelevant, or misguided. Then he told me that the reason I needed to do what I described in the fourth paragraph, was because there was a point I had missed in the first paragraph. OH YEAH!?!? I liked getting his analysis of my analysis. Now I have to think about it some more to see if I can agree with him. That could take awhile. I really like where I ended up. But then again, if I can get to the same place in one paragraph instead of four ….. OK. Now. Back to reality.
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Trip09

Thursday Friday SaturdayWe’re here. Life on the river. It all kind of runs together. We sleep a lot. Our motorhome fit nicely across the lot in front of Sue and John’s, and we discovered a 30-amp outlet in John’s garage. We sleep in our own bed in the air conditioning (not that Sue and John don’t have air conditioning). We get up and have coffee on the deck overlooking the river. Watch the water. Go for a run. The water is low in the mornings. Not much boating. They divert water just upstream for irrigation. By lunchtime, though, it is starting to come up, and it’s getting very hot, so we have to figure out what we want to do in the boat that day. John has a boat. Picture attached. It’s a very nice boat. It’s a jet boat. No propeller. Steering is a little goofy. You have to be under power to get any steering. Power is supplied by the unmuffled V-8, right behind your head. Sometimes we blast up the river and drift back down. You can go across the river to the cove, park against the bank and get out into the water for a while. Once we motored/drifted way down the river to a sandbar, beached it, got out and played in the water and watched the sand bar disappear as the water continued to rise. Then we stood around in water up to our knees while we had the afternoon snack. There was a boat show to visit. V Boats. Giant blown V-8s in the shiniest, gaudiest, fastest boats you can imagine. For the show they were all trailered. We saw a few blasting up and down the river later. Some of these are 100mph boats. Picture attached. Did I tell you there is no speed limit on the river? That’s what John tells me. You can do whatever you want as long as it involves beer. There are the aforementioned drag boats blasting back and forth. There are just plain fast boats like John’s. There are big slow pontoon boats, big jet skis, little jet skis, and children floating down on tubes. There is another rule too. You have to be at least twelve years old to fly a jet ski. It’s pretty noisy too. On the weekends. Even so, I was surprised by how many birds we saw as we drifted down river. They didn’t seem all that disturbed. So after we’ve boated the afternoon away, it’s time for dinner and standing under the misters on the lower deck. It’s still a hundred. It feels good to stand in the late afternoon sun with the chill of the spray all over you. Then it’s time for coffee and watching the river hawks, swallows, sunset, and bats. Or you can go sit on the edge of the floating dock, hang your feet into the cool water, lie back, and let the wake from the boats rock the dock. Next thing you know it’s time to head for bed, get a lot of sleep, and do it all again.
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Trip08

WednesdayLast day. Today I learned more about paperless offices. I’ve always thought this sounded like more trouble than it was worth. Paper storage doesn’t really cost much in Denver. Staff time does. But now with everything residing on the server anyway, I’m thinking it’s probably time to go ahead and eliminate the paper files, starting with the current year. We originate almost all the paper on our own computers anyway. We can carry a scanner for the occasional client paper we want to include and reference in to our work. I’d start with the current year, and let the older ones in storage just fall off by attrition. Yeah. I think it’s time. Out of here by twelve-thirty. Went straight to see our new friends Steve and Linda. Scored the windsurfer. OK. The windsurfer case was slightly overstated. There were not two masts. Only one. Steve gave us a like new, intermediate board, one mast, three sails, three dagger boards, and all the miscellaneous goodies and gear to hook it all up. It doesn’t hang anywhere on the outside of the motorhome. We just dropped it all in the front room of the motorhome and took it to Susie and Johns on the river. Then we dropped it all in their garage. We’ll figure out Plan B later. Now, I just want to sleep. Oh wait. I have to tell you about Judy’s red pickup driver. We picked up this red pickup truck on Interstate 10 in Phoenix. We drove north on Highway 51, a freeway, for miles and miles. He stayed right with us. He was driving erratically. I expected him to pass, but he never did. He would get right next to us on our shoulder, then just ride right there in my blind spot. That’s not easy to do from the adjacent lane. Every time one lane slowed down, it would throw the whole thing off. But for all his lane changing, diving in and out of traffic, he never got by. Finally just as he started to peel off at the exit, he started honking like crazy. Judy looked down and he was right next to her waving. He wasn’t wearing any pants, and his hand was in his lap waving furiously.

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Trip07

Tuesday It was pretty hot, way over a hundred when we got here. We parked the motorhome under a couple eucalyptus trees, closed the curtains, opened the louvered windows, opened some ceiling vents, and turned on the exhaust fan. We decided to just let the exhaust fan run the whole time to keep the motorhome from getting too hot and stuffy inside. It worked. Every day, the solar collector on the roof recharges the batteries enough to keep the fan running again all the next day. Overall there is a net loss of battery. We couldn’t do this forever, but it’ll work for four days. We only have one collector on the roof. The system will allow for two more collectors, but they’re kind of expensive. I think we should get one more collector this year. We should be practically electrically independent with that. Today, at the conference, we focused on leading indicators, rather than trailing indicators. I think there is some merit in that. Everything we do now is historical. Well, except for the graphs. But the audited financial statements are about what has already happened. The 990 tax return is about what has already happened. The graphs are about what has already happened, but as I talk about them, we get to talking about what works and what doesn’t work, and sometimes where they’re headed if they keep doing what they’re doing. I think that is the real opportunity to help: Talking about their choices, and the effects of the different options. My racquetball guy was a no-show tonight. I did find another guy to play, though. Had a good time with him. I got to pretend I was really playing lefty, and try out all the serves and strategies I would have used against him.The water park is keeping Judy well occupied during the day.Room service dinner is pretty good.