By Chuck Woodbury
Many odds and ends to report this week.
Changes in our news section
First, as you probably noticed, we changed our news section. Instead of running a couple dozen short news briefs on a separate page each Saturday, we are now running in the main newsletter headlines to longer versions of the news items. Too few of our readers were clicking through before to the separate news page, so we were doing a lot of work that wasn’t of interest to most of our readers.
Mike Sokol on TV this week
Our electricity expert Mike Sokol will appear this coming Wednesday on the evening news of WDVM-TV 25 in Hagerstown, Maryland, discussing potentially dangerous RV Hot Skin conditions. We will show you the segment in next Saturday’s RV Travel Newsletter. Speaking of Mike, his latest RV Electricity Newsletter will be published tomorrow, July 29. If you are not already singed up, do so here.
Speaking of electricity . . .
We now have about 60 volunteers for our Stray Voltage Patrol, a program we are funding through our members’ support, to identify at least 1,000 unsafe power pedestals in RV parks and campgrounds across America. Since we have announced the program, at least two dozen readers (plus me) have discovered unsafe pedestals on their recent travels. All you need to participate is to have an inexpensive Non-Contact Voltage Tester, which all RVers should have anyway.Â
Member news: Do we have your email address?
We are huffin’ and puffin’ to get up to speed on special programs for our members and hope to have a newsletter out to them next week. Many of these “voluntary subscribers” sent checks but did not include their email addresses. If that’s you, would you please email my daughter Emily at emily@rvtravel.com, and she will put you on the list.
Overnight parking project
We continue our efforts to promote the idea of a chain of inexpensive overnight parking areas across the USA. Since I began promoting this idea, I have heard from two other people who have similar plans. I have also heard from a reliable source that Walmart has considered putting in electric pedestals, but is so far reluctant to do so because of liability issues. As I have said before, I personally do not care who undertakes such a project, as long as it gets done. Several locations along the Ohio Turnpike have several such facilities in place. Watch this video to see what they look like.Â
Offensive banner removed
We had about a dozen reports last Saturday about an animated banner ad in the left column of the newsletter and on other pages. The readers found it distracting to the point where they had trouble reading. While we are big fans of the advertiser (HepvO), having just installed two of the devices in the RV Travel motorhome, we had to agree that the banner was, indeed, distracting. We have now removed it and notified the advertiser.Â
I also use the right click and open in another tab. Once there are 5 or 6 items open I read them and close as I go. Then back to the main newsletter and open some more. I do this with most emails that have lots of linked items. Did it with the old format also.
What is this order for $25 I received on my account ? That was supposed to be a one time thing, not an yearly automatic renewal. I don’t even RV anymore. Please remove me from renewals and refund this charge. Then to top it all off there is no place to contact the office on your website other than to leave comment here.
Orville, ignore it. We were updating our policies to conform to the new European Union privacy policies and in updating our site some old contributions from readers that never received confirmation notices before received them now, as long as a year or more after their contribution. Just ignore the message. Absolutely nothing happened (and you certainly were not charged anything again) except you received a very late (and confusing) email notice of your confirmation from the past. I apologize for the inconvenience. — Chuck
I agree with Tommy Molnar. The separate link for news articles was fine, if space was a problem. I mostly don’t read them now. Before I skimmed every story and slowed down for those of interest.
I love the comment section at the end of each article as much as the article.
I live in Bend Oregon where the local grocery store (a Fred Meyer) has installed several recharge kiosks for Tesla cars. I assume that Tesla has subsidized this but if Tesla can do this, why not Tiffen or Winnebago. It seems that this might be great way for motorhome manufacturers to gain publicity and push the lifestyle.
I don’t know about you but when we go out in our motorhome we travel farther than 56-268 miles they are getting with electric vehicles now. As for Tesla’s class 8 semi that’s still a pipe dream. Motorhomes are heavy enough as it is without putting thousands of pounds of batteries in them. Yes thousands of pounds, if it takes hundreds of pounds of batteries to move a 3000lb car 150 miles it’ll take thousands of pounds of batteries to move a 35000 lb motorhome several hundred miles. No thank you, I’ll stick with ICEngines until something BETTER comes along.
I have insider info that the big truck manufacturers are ramping up their engineering groups to begin manufacturing of electric powered trucks within the next several years. And the name I keep hearing from the engineers is Elon Musk. The only thing holding this back is battery technology, so once that hurdle has been jumped (probably by Elon) we can expect a really quick roll-out of electric vehicles. This could mesh with the smart power grid technology, allowing you to plug in your car to a garage outlet to charge when power is available. You can even add solar panels on the roof of your garage to push power into the grid during the day while you’re gone, then reclaim it at night once you get home. It’s all about the batteries…
On a positive note about the long service times ~~ while sitting in service lots they are not competing for the limited campsites…
I personally, have no opinion on liking or disliking the new format. I start at the top of your opening msg and then as soon as I come to a tab for a different subject, I will open it and read it through and add my comments (if I feel I should) and then go back to the original post and continue on. I do this on every tab you provide whether or not the subject headline is interesting or not. In this manner, I read your entire newsletter from top to bottom. This does require a lot of opening, reading, and closing several tabs, but that’s ok as I have nothing but time and I have made this my Saturday morning ritual.
Ditto for me…love the articles!
I also read the newsletter from cover to cover(?) on Saturday mornings , before ,even , the local newspaper . Roy…
Chuck, I actually like your new format, but then again I may have a unique way of reading your newsletters?
I read through and open any interesting article/section by right clicking and “opening a new tab” while scrolling through the interesting headlines.
Then, one by one, I spend time reading through each of those tabs.
I enjoy being able to focus on a subject, until I’ve learned what I can from it, then I move on to the next “surprise” and read its content.
Just wanted to thank you folks again for constantly trying to make your news feed better and better for us all!
I’m sorry Chuck, but I’m not a fan of your new news format. Now it takes longer to read all the stories because I have to [click] on each individual story, though I can pick and choose which ones I want to read. That in itself may result in my missing something that I would have enjoyed reading had I known what the story was REALLY about. And, here at home our internet connection is SO bad . . . We’ve had better internet while boondocking – Gasp!
So, put me in the ‘non-fan’ column if you’re keeping track. Still love the newsletter though. Nothing changed there.
I liked the video on the Ohio Turnpike RV stops. Does the guy John (couldn’t begin to figure out how to spell his last name) have a page, site or YouTube channel?
Here you go, GB. It’s a friend of ours, John DiPietro, and here is his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/agawam68 Thanks for asking. 😀 —Diane at RVtravel.com