Our RV Adventures

Some people retrace Route 66. Others see a baseball game at every Major League park in the country. Still others want to RV in every state in the US.

But Nick and I are different. But then you already knew that, didn’t you. No, Nick and I plan to eat our way through the 50 Fattest Foods in the US. I mean, we’ve certainly been in training for it, right?

Here are some of my favorites.

About 8000 calories.

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Yes, they’re using Krispy Kreme doughnuts for the bun.

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That’s a BLT with a pound of bacon.

I may have a head start on Nick, as I’ve eaten 15 of these dishes, though not necessarily in the state they’re listed with.

Hurry and catch up, Nick.

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About 5:15 Jan and I headed over to Nick and Terry’s, and then out for dinner at SmashBurger.

We’d eaten at one a couple of years ago in Houston and really liked it, especially the fries.

They have regular fries of course, but they also have Smashfries, seasoned with rosemary, olive oil, and garlic. Really, really good. Even Nick liked them, and he’s pretty much a meat and plain potatoes kind of guy.

They also have Sweet Potato Fries and even Sweet Potato Smashfries. But even better, they have Veggie Frites. These are green beans and carrot sticks, flash-fried and then seasoned. Also really good.

Jan and I got an order of the Veggie Frites and an order of the Sweet Potato Smashfries and then split them with each other.                       

The burgers are good, but not quite as good as Five Guys. And of course, not nearly as good as Stomp’s Burger Joint back in Kemah, TX.

That’s one that’s hard to beat.

After dinner we came back to Nick and Terry’s and listened to audition tapes from applicants to narrate Nick’s Kindle books.

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I finally got my Taillight Test Box set up like I want it.

I added a power light because it’s sometimes hard to know if you’ve got a good connection on the battery terminals, and then I added a switch to turn the taillights on and off separately.

The left switch is for master power, the middle switch controls the taillights, and the right switch moves left and right to control the turn signals.

Because I already had most of the parts, I only spent about $7 on it.

Anyone need their toad taillights tested?

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Thought for the Day:

“War is very simple but the simplest things are very difficult.” – Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz

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After getting the coffee started, Jan and I headed out about 9:30 for a mile walk. We’ve started using RunKeeper, a free Android/iPhone app that tracks our time walked, distance walked, and calories burned.

It even tracks your route using Google Maps and keeps a history of every walk/run.

Getting back to the rig, we had coffee and I spent some time catching up on email and blogs. About noon, a nice lady from the park office showed up with a package from Amazon.

Jan got some replacement earring backs and I got a new holster for the knife I carry on my belt. The old one has gotten kind of frayed and the Velcro is so worn that the flap doesn’t stay closed very well.

So I ordered this Nite Ize Tool Holster from Amazon.

It’s expandable and fits knives and tools of many different sizes. And it’s very easy to pull and replace the knife even when it’s on my belt.

I’ve carried this CRKT 6813 Combo Edge Knife a number of years now and it’s held up very well. It stays sharp and cuts or saws through just about anything.

About 1pm, after dropping off the garbage at the park dumpsters, I drove right next door to the convenience store to get some lottery tickets and a can of beer. Not for drinking though, but to make our own Borracho (drunken) Beans. When we were back in Texas, we would buy canned Borracho Beans from HEB, but haven’t been able to find them out here. So we’ll just make our own.

Nick Russell called about 2:15 so I could check access to his Gypsy Journal Blog website. He couldn’t access and wanted me to try. Since it was down for me too, I told him to wait a while and try again. And sure enough a while later it was working again.

Around 4:30 Jan heated up our leftover Grimaldi’s pizza from last Thursday. And we both said that it was hard to believe that this reheated 5 day old pizza was pretty much better than any other pizza hot out of the oven. Just saying.

Well, here we go again.

The Senate is suppose to start debating the ‘‘Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013’’ very soon now. This is the ‘Universal Background Check’ that many people are in favor of.

Here are a few ‘highlights’ of the Bill.

• Take an unloaded rifle to a friend’s house, for instance, because the friend is thinking of buying a gun and wants to learn more about guns. The friend handles the rifle for a few minutes before handing it back. You’ve both committed a Federal Felony.
• Lend your gun to your niece, who takes it on a camping trip for the weekend. You’ve committed a Federal Felony.
• You live on a farm and occasionally take friends or relatives out to a safe area to target shoot using your guns. You’ve committed a Federal Felony.
• You loan a rifle to your brother-in-law so he can go target shooting. You’ve committed a Federal Felony.

Here’s an article from National Review Online by David Kopel, Constitutional Law Professor at Denver University

Turning Gun Owners into Felons

A new bill would make it a crime to “transfer” your gun to a spouse for more than seven days.  By Dave Kopel

Public-opinion polls about “universal background checks” for gun sales show widespread support. While President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg talk about “gun sales,” the actual legislation moving through Congress aims to regulate far more than sales. It would turn almost every gun owner into a felon. The trick is that the language under consideration applies not only to sales but also to “transfers,” which are defined to include innocent activities such as letting your spouse borrow your gun for a few hours.

Consider, for example, Senate bill S.649, which the Senate will soon take up for debate. The background-check portion of the bill, Charles Schumer’s “Fix Gun Checks Act,” is based on model language that the Bloomberg gun-control lobby is pushing all over the country.

To see how the Bloomberg bill makes felons of people who do not sell guns, consider a woman who buys a rifle when she is 25 years old. She keeps the rifle her entire life. Yet over her lifetime, she — like most gun owners — engages in dozens of firearms “transfers.” She brings the unloaded rifle to a friend’s house, for instance, because the friend is thinking of buying a gun and wants to learn more about guns. The friend handles the rifle for a few minutes before handing it back. Another time, the woman lends the gun to her niece, who takes it on a camping trip for the weekend.

While the woman is out of town on a business trip for two weeks, she gives the gun to her husband or her sister. If the woman lives on a farm, she allows all her relatives to take the rifle into the fields for pest and predator control — and sometimes, when friends are visiting, she takes them to a safe place on the farm where they spend an hour or two target shooting, passing her gun back and forth. At other times, she and her friends go target shooting in open spaces of land owned by the National Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.

Or perhaps the woman is in a same-sex civil union, and she allows her partner to take her gun to a target range one afternoon. Another time, she allows her cousin to borrow the gun for an afternoon of target shooting. If the woman is in the Army Reserve and she is called up for an overseas deployment, she gives the gun to her sister for temporary safekeeping.

One time, she learns that her neighbor is being threatened by an abusive ex-boyfriend, and she lets this woman borrow a gun for several days until she can buy her own gun. And if the woman becomes a firearms-safety instructor, she regularly teaches classes at office parks, in school buildings at nights and on weekends, at gun stores, and so on. Following the standard curriculum of gun-safety classes (such as NRA safety courses), the woman will bring some unloaded guns to the classroom, and under her supervision, students will learn the first steps in how to handle the guns, including how to load and unload them (using dummy ammunition). During the class, the firearms will be “transferred” dozens of times, since students must practice how to hand a gun to someone else safely. As a Boy Scout den mother or 4-H leader, the woman may also transfer her gun to young people dozens of times while instructing them in gun safety.

Under S. 649, every one of the above activities would be a federal felony, subject to precisely the same punishment a person would receive if he had knowingly sold a firearm to a convicted violent felon. S. 649, like other Bloomberg-model bills, has a few exceptions to the ban on transfers, but none of them apply to the situations described above.

You can make a “bona fide gift” (but not a three-hour loan) to certain close family members, not including aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, in-laws, or civil-union partners.

You can let someone else borrow your gun for up to seven days, but only within your home or its curtilage (e.g., the porch or deck).

You cannot lend your gun to someone on any open space you own. And even your husband can’t borrow your gun for more than seven days.

You can share a gun at a shooting range, but only if the shooting range is owned by a corporation — not if it’s on public lands or on your own property.

You can share a gun while out hunting in the field. But back at the hunting camp, you can’t clean someone else’s gun.

This is not “gun control” in the constitutionally legitimate sense: reasonable laws that protect public safety without interfering with the responsible ownership and use of firearms.

— Dave Kopel is an adjunct professor of advanced constitutional law at Denver University, Sturm College of Law, and also research director at the Independence Institute, in Denver.

And here’s the bill itself from the GPO website. -Senate Bill S.649 

Of course, the major part of this bill is the fact that EVERY firearm transaction (selling a pistol to your neighbor, for example) will have to be done through a Federal Firearm License holder for which you will have to pay a fee.

One kink in this idea is a report that some FFL’s are being told by their insurance companies that their company liability insurance will not cover these transactions. And their lawyers are also recommending that they not process these transactions due to the possible liability in case something happens using a gun they transferred.

Don’t you feel safer now.

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Thought for the Day:

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."

Noah Webster – (Philadelphia 1787)

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