Off to pick up the coach!

"Honey, would you hold mine for a minute?"

Our shared retirement journey does not begin until June, but we left today to pick up the coach in Mobile, Alabama. The Alpine is waiting patiently with it's present owners, David and Margaret Hickson, to discover if it likes us and wants to be our new home when we arrive there this weekend.

This is just our first night on the road, and yes, it's New Year's Eve.  Our friends at Hope Church are partying the night away even as I type, but none of them would be surprised to learn that the two delicious cones shown above, which we found in a wonderful ice cream shop in Hagerstown, Maryland (The Big Dipper, just over the bridge on Route 11. Been there over 30 years) is about as wild as we'll get today.  In fact, and don't tell her I told you, it's not 8:00 pm yet and Mona is settled into a great book in her jammies! But hey, that's how we roll!

And for me, beyond the joy of getting my ice cream cone back from Mona after I took the pic, was a lovely late afternoon stop in Williamsport, Maryland, on the Potomac.  This is both the site of a Baltimore and Ohio Canal bridge and shop, but also the spot Robert E. Lee crossed the Potomac in June, 1863, in his attempt to split the union through Pennsylvania. And it is the same spot, about two weeks later, where he led his bedraggled army back south in the rain after the hard defeat of Gettysburg.

As I looked up the almost unchanged Potomac Street from the canal I felt the 150 year old eyes of the original inhabitants, almost all southern sympathizers, staring from their curtained windows despairing of the parade of drenched soldiers slouching past in the downpour.

-Ken

Going to church every night

What is missing in the pastoral scene above? The artist has a cool running mountain stream, and the lofty mountains as well.  The soft green pasture with the deer just arriving to lie down, or maybe partake of their evening meal. And the international symbol of peace, a small, neat, country church. What could possibly be missing from this scene?

There it is!  Trying to hide behind the chapel in the woods. A full time RV'er has parked his family for the evening at the back of the little church hoping for a quiet evening with the deer, and maybe a nice conversation with a church-goer, the pastor, or a trustee.  I place the emphasis on the word nice when I mention conversation, because the camper won't know for sure till the next morning whether or not he's welcome.  But that's our plan, if we can make it work.  We hope to go to church almost every evening we're on the road.

Here's the deal.  I'll be a retired United Methodist pastor with a full record of my service on the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference website for anyone to find.  I also have a pretty full personal Facebook page, as well as FB pages for our blogs and the www.Freedom-Now.net business we hope to make profitable once we are on the road. I think we might find mostly positive responses to our request for a place to park for the night if we make it of other pastors.  Especially of other United Methodist Church pastors.  After all, we have over 40,000 of them scattered over the US alone.

We hope to be able to drive each day without definite plans of where we will spend the night till the late afternoon or early evening.  Then, when the time is right to either stop for supper or bedtime we'll search Google Maps for small country churches in our neighborhood.  When we find one the Google link will connect us to at least a phone number and we can call that number to ask if we may spend the night.

We expect to get answering machines most of the time, and if we do we'll let the receiver of the message know who we are and that we'll be leaving a $10.00 check in an envelope in their mailbox or doorway to cover our use of their parking space for the night.  That's about what any primitive (no hookups) RV site would cost anywhere but the highest end tourist destinations. And if we get a call to move, or a county police person drives in and tells us to move, well, we will.  It's not that hard to punch two slide-out buttons closed and head to the next county. Even at 2:00 am. I guess I will have to put some clothes on though to answer the door. But Mona may stay fast asleep in bed till I pull over again.

Now all of this may sound fanciful to some, and we may discover that indeed it is. But I'm thinking that a retired pastor and his wife, taking up no more than a parking space for the night, will be very welcome by another pastor or church family, of any denomination.  And $10.00 can't hurt any small congregation for the space to put down 10 tires for the night.

Well, we'll see.  Our first destination the very day I retire is Shanksville, Pa.  Site of the Flight 93, 9/11/2001 memorial.  There's a cute little United Methodist Church just on the edge of town.  We looked down on it with Google Earth. An ideal pull through for 50' of RV and toad.  Now don't whisper a word of this to those folks!  This will be our first experiment to see whether this idea works at all.  And if you see online that a retired pastor and his wife were arrested in mid June in Central Pa for trespassing, well, would you say a little prayer for the both of us?

-Ken

My last Christmas Eve sermons at Hope Church

Thank you, Jim, for this picture of me taken when you visited over Thanksgiving.

Am I praising God or asking to go to the bathroom?  :)

God is Good.

When His disciples called Jesus 'good' Jesus told them, "No, only the Father in Heaven is good." Good, meaning perfect.  His disciples, and we, allow His modesty, but since we learned from Him that He was and is God we kind of figured it out.  But when I say 'God is Good." I mean Mona and I have learned this over and over again from personal experience.

Take our decision to get married.  I was 18 and earning the minimum wage of .75 cents an hour at a wholesale warehouse in Harrisburg.  Mona was 20 and earning slightly more as a beautician but she also owned a car (Plymouth Valiant V8!). Yet God spoke to our parents and they said YES.  Mona more than I spoke to God and He said yes to her.  And here we are 44 years later more in love than the day we wed. God is Good!

Almost every time we had big decisions to make in our lives my fervency and Mona's calm brought us into sincere conversations with God that have really have blessed us so much each time we have allowed Him to be our guide in them.  God is Good!

Yes, jobs, positions offered, positions taken or declined. All involved God's guiding.  We went to A large discounter once in the late 80's because they sought me out to possibly lead their nationwide craft departments.  Prayer, despite the promises of the company, kept us at SKH.  A short time later I was offered a directorship on the SKH board, and a couple of years later, Ames stores went bankrupt. God is Good.

Going into full time ministry in 1997.  Who saw that coming??  Laverne Buckwalter did. So had my grandmother 30 years before.  So had my pastor when I was 18.  So had Mona.  So did God.  God is Good!

Now we move toward full time retirement.  The store has sold. We go to pick up our new home, a 2006 Alpine Limited Motor Coach next week. Our house goes on the market February 1 and an auctioneer comes to visit January 24 to value all of our remaining possessions for auction when we are ready to sell out, before my June 8th final sermon.  God is Good!

I could write of His blessings in our lives for pages, but I'll end here by simply saying that we have learned way beyond Scripture that God is good.  We have learned by daring to put His will above our own, and certainly above my impetuous own, most of the time.  And we have been well blessed when we have acted within His will.

It's Christmas 2013.  I am writing my last Christmas Eve sermons for Hope Church. And this is God's will. 

God has a marvelous plan for a new pastor at Hope, and for new ministries in retirement for Mona and I. And maybe even for some ways we may supplement our preacher's pension.  God is GOOD!!!

Merry Christmas to all!!!

-Ken

What will I do with the 'spare' time now??

We closed the sale of Gently USED BOOKS last Friday and today helped the Cinti Family, new owners of Mona's 'baby' move the last inventory and shelving for the eBay store from our home to theirs.

Mona is LOVING the expanded reading time. But now what do I do with my spare time??????

-More time for Hope Church!
-More reading time too.
-and......... SHAKLEE!!!

Walt and Kathy  VanderHeijden have become our sponsors in a low cost business venture that we believe will sync beautifully with our on-the-road existence.

Using and selling, through Shaklee's easy to use website, these powerful, clean, and healthy personal and home care products. AND discussing the potential for others to become members of the Shaklee family through a brand new online training process, YOUR FREEDOM PROJECT.

Check out our initial website to see what we and Shaklee can do for you!
http://healthycleanplus.myshaklee.com/

-Ken 

A Town we'll have to visit for Grandpa Snyder

Paul Snyder once said (well, he actually said it hundreds of times) , "I like two kinds of pie. Hot and cold." I'll bet you know someone who has said that with as much heartfelt feeling as Paul, my father-in-law. He and Grandma Snyder, Vera, were the love of hundreds of grand kid's lives. Hundreds? They fostered over 68 babies during several decades till Vera was too frail to pick them up, and before that had three children of their own. But what's up with the town in the title? Well, it's all about PIE.

Pie Town, new Mexico, that is. Found by a famous depression era photographer, Russel Lee, the town became an iconic image of Southwest America in the hardest of times.  The dust bowl is what most of us remember of the west of that time,but this isn't the Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas prairie. This place was on the way west for many of the 'bowlers'. Some of them stopped here on their way west to start over again, and OK, OK.  It's a small town called Pie. But why is it called Pie Town? Because it's all about PIE.

So the story goes a certain Mr. Norman opened a general store in this tiny town in the 1920's and one of the things he did best was bake pies.  Fresh fruit wasn't hard to grow or buy so assorted fruit pies became the specialty. The crossroads town attracted lots of through travelers and everyone just began to call it Pie Town. When the government wanted to create a more attractive name the homesteaders would have none of it.  Pie Town stuck.  And today, while Mr. Norman's general store is gone, pies of all kinds reign supreme!

There's the Daily Pie Cafe, the Pie-O-Neer Restaurant, and Good Pie Cafe. And every one of them has 5 stars on TRIPADVISOR.com.

Today hikers and bikers on the Continental Divide Trail make this PIE HEAVEN their temporary home as they make their way through.  RV'ers and truckers and drivers of cars and cycles do to.

So in honor of Grandpa Snyder, Mr. Norman, and in the memory of all those dust bowlers long gone we shall have to make a stop, maybe more than one, in Pie Town, New Mexico. Just another place to dream of till we hit the road runnin'.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/pietown.html

-Ken

Go GENTLY into that good night

Dylan Thomas might have argued this point, but we do not.  Going gently into our good night (the last quarter of our allotted time in this universe) is definitely the plan. And this afternoon one more part of that plan has been accomplished,  At about 3:30pm this afternoon Gently Used Books officially changed from the hands of Mona and Ken DeWalt to the very capable hands of Becky and Ruben Cinti  God is GOOD.

We pray them the very best in all they do as they take this wonderful store into it's second decade!

-Ken & Mona

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
(etc)
-Dylan Thomas

Our TOAD tires are now smarter than we are

Another towing feature just shipped in from Oregon.

The TOAD (Our Honda CRV) will have tire pressure sensors strapped to the inside of each tire, around the wheel.

Some of you will know that many vehicles come with radio signal transmitting tire pressure sensors built into their tire valve stems.  Our CRV does now, but they only transmit to the car dashboard. But these powerful little sensors send their code to a receiver mounted under the rear of the motor coach. That antenna picks up current tire pressures and displays it, along with the pressure of each tire on the coach, in a video screen in the driver's cab. Even the spares are monitored.

'On man!", someone just said, "Talk about one lazy old pastor!  He can't even take the time to check his own tires once in a while!"

Well, I am lazy, but beyond that, I am extra safety conscious, especially since all of these tires will be carrying Mona and I and our home around sometimes at 60 or more miles per hour.

Yeah!  Even higher than 60, maybe! (Well, not alot higher. Diesel fuel's expensive at 10 miles to the gallon!)

Towing assessories arrive for the TOAD

Our base plate and auxiliary brake mechanisms have arrived and will be installed by Kim and John McGrath of McGrath's Automotive in Monocacy Junction, Pa on the TOAD next Monday. They are doing all the setup and installation of extras on the TOAD and the coach that happens in Pennsylvania.

The baseplate mounts under the front of the TOAD almost invisibly and attaches quickly to the tow bar already mounted on the rear of the Coach.  The right base plate for your TOAD must be chosen carefully or it just won't fit.

The auxiliary brake sits on the floor in front of the driver's seat and automatically applies it's mechanical foot to the brake pedal when the coach air brakes are applied via a radio signal from the coach transmitter mounted in the driver's cab. This insures a smooth brake every time with almost no way for the TOAD to sway or fishtail.  The brake simply lifts out and goes in the back of the TOAD when it's time to take a TOAD TRIP.

Our Alpine Limited has a tow capacity of over 10,000 lbs, and the owner tells us he's never felt anything he's towed go anywhere in the past.  But we'll be full timing and feel, based on industry-wide specs, that we must ensure NO fishtailing will ever occur.  So the expense is simple driving safety insurance. And the brake can be used with any TOAD, not just our CRV.

One more step along the journey!

-Ken and Mona

Thinking Christmas 2014 already

It's Christmas season all around us and the outdoor lights are going up fast.  So I was thinking... how will we decorate next Christmas when we are in some warm sunny blue water location???

No.  Mona says NO!!!  No beer bottle, can or other type of party lights allowed around our awning.  

I agree.  It does send a message I don't want my grandson's to get.

But it also makes me smile.  :)

-Ken

The TOAD gets it warranty WELL USED!

We really love our TOAD.  The 2010 burgundy CRV is just as sporty as our vans are boxy.  And while we loved and needed the space in each van for the business, this little guy is plenty big enough now and the 28 MPG on highway (that we have actually gotten in our first 600 miles) is OK by us.  But it's a used car, and every car, used or not, needs some tweaking when you buy it.  But this much???

We bought the car on Friday, two weeks ago.

-The battery went dead the night it came home.  Replaced next day.
-A rumble over 60 miles an hour made us think balancing was needed but when they checked the mechanic found the front axle was rubbing somewhere and needs replaced 2 weeks later.
-In some rain we discovered a spot on the windshield that would not wipe clear.  New blades actually made it worse.  Turns out the windshield was replaced sometime in it's 3 year life and has a slight dip in the surface.  REPLACE.
-One remote key panic button doesn't work. REPLACE.
-And the former owner finally switched over his SIRIUS radio package to his new car so it went dead on ours today.  Just a boo-hoo. We liked it.  But we use VERIZON CELL internet on the road anyway.

Now all of this is enough to make some say, "I'll never buy a Honda again!"  But there are reasons well spoken of machines are well spoken of, and sometimes it's not just their machinery.

The men and women of Piazza Reading Honda have been SUPER about getting our car in each time fast and efficiently through the shop.  And I have work or books to read (sorry Mona- online) while I wait.  And yes, it's all warranty work- this close to the purchase date.  But more than all of that it's the people we've worked with.  From top management, to sales, to the shop crew, to the retired mechanic who is paid to walk around looking for people with questions on their faces just so he can walk over and answer them.

So the TOAD is being replaced part by part and is getting newer by the day.  And we are still loving it's pep and efficiency and sporty look. Oh, and it's burgundy- our favorite color AND it should look nice behind the Silver-grey and burgundy coach when we hook it up behind in January.

The journey's beginning... continues.

-Ken & Mona

Living on wheels over the years

We thought you'd like to see a couple of pics from the past.

We've never lived more than a couple of weeks at a time on wheels, but it does seem to have gotten into our blood!

Our first RV was a new 1971 bus we got with a folding 'Z' bed.  Other than that Mona's curtains were the extent of our built in comforts. We initiated it with a two week trip while Mona was pregnant with Jenn to Colorado.

In 1974 we purchased a new VW Camper with all the trimmings.  It even had a water pump we could magically pump water with into our tiny sink! But the canvas roof and strong folding cot up there made a bed Jenn used till she was a teen. When we sold her (Pumpkin was her name) she brought as much cash as we had paid new for her.  A timely burst of long term inflation helped, but those VW's always held their value if well kept.

About 1980 we sold the VW and gained some space.  The canvas cot that fit across the two VW front seats for him was just too short! Two big beds, a gas stove top and you could actually walk around our used Starcraft Popup, not just stand up. She lasted us well till camping became something we just didn't do much anymore.

In 1987 we rented a 25' C class and spent almost 3 weeks in the southwest US. Jenn still says she'll never live in a motor home with us again!  But we watched when she wasn't noticing and we know she had fun much of the time.  But older teens and family vacations sometimes just don't go together!  As for Jim? He had his first taste of Colorado, and as time has told, it stuck.

In 2002 we purchased a new Bantam light weight hybrid pop-out & self contained trailer.  We took it a few places but found we just needed a bit more comfort when we travel so sold it on eBay a couple of years later.

And now???  What's next?  We'll find out in January of 2014 when we head south to give a final REAL look-see at the 2006 Alpine Limited Motor Coach we believe God has connected us to.  All signs are pointing to YES.  But in a worst case scenario, we've already made some nice friends in the couple who are selling her. honestly, we'd both be very surprised if this home on wheels isn't exactly what we expect, and more.  Nonetheless, we keep this big decision in prayer going forward.

-Ken & Mona