Our RV Adventures

First off, although this blog is dated the 27th and our Wedding Anniversary is the 28th, (and I’ve never forgotten it, either) most people, and my Sweetie, won’t see it until Monday anyway. So

Happy 48th Anniversary, Sweetie. Seems like only yesterday.

As I said before, today was our afternoon off, so after Virginia and Bill Hickox, our relief guards showed up right on time, we were off to Shreveport for our outing.

But on the way out we stopped to drop some garbage off at the pad, and to show Jan what it looked like now, since the last time she saw it, it looked like this.

But now it’s just jam-packed with equipment. This what it looks like coming in to the pad,

and this is what it looks like around the back.

Like I said, jam-packed.

Then we were off on our trip, and an hour later we were sitting in one of our favorite places, Grimaldi’s Pizzeria. We first ate at the original one (and at that time, the only one) in Brooklyn, NY, i.e. New York City in 2009. It was located in an area called DUMBO. No, not the one with big ears. This DUMBO stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, but the neighborhood is actually located between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges,

And Grimaldi’s was located right under the Brooklyn Bridge itself, about 100 feet overhead. We had flown our daughter Brandi and our granddaughter Piper (aunt and niece) up to spend a week with us in NYC, and we all agreed this was the best pizza we had ever eaten. So we were really happy to find a few years later that they had started spreading across the US.

They now have over 40 restaurants around the country and they’re all as good as the original, and the one in Shreveport was no exception. In fact all eight locations we visited over the last few years have been equally delicious.

We started off with our usual ‘small’ salad, which doesn’t match its name. The big bowl of ‘small’ salad is enough for both of us to have two servings. I’d be afraid to order the ‘large’ one.

Next up was the large pizza (16”) with Pepperoni, Meatballs, Italian Sausage, and Mushrooms.

Yeah, I know this one has Jalapenos on it, but that’s because it’s not the one we had today. A couple of times in the past we tried it with Jalapeno’s, but they seemed to overwhelm the taste of the pizza, so we stopped that. But for some reason my photo of today’s pizza didn’t come out very well, so you got an old photo.

As usual, we plenty of  pizza to take home for later, which is why we always get the large.

After our meal, we decided to walk off some of it by taking a stroll around Mall St. Vincent where Grimaldi’s is located. Jan was happy to find a Bath and Body Works so she stocked on some things.

Then checking the time, and what shopping we wanted to do, we decided to forgo the movie, and just take care of some errands. So after Cavender’s for some better boot laces, the last Radio Shack in Shreveport for a mini toggle switch for my AC fan speed control, a car wash to get the inch of dust and mud off the truck, we finally ended up at Wal-Mart.

Of course.

We always end up at Wal-Mart.

Jan wanted some new sneakers, and some other things on her list, and when I noticed there was no one in line, I decided to get a haircut.

The last one I got was around the middle of July in Albuquerque, so it was about time. But when I was checking out, I had my first inkling that I was not going to like the new ‘chipped’ credit cards.

I got my new one back in August when we were in Houston for a few days. But today was the first time I had to use it that way. Rather than slide it through the reader, you plug it in, like an ATM machine.

It’s supposed to make credit cards safer and less likely for fraud, but I’m beginning to think it does that by making it so hard to buy any thing, you just give up and don’t use it at all.

I plugged it in to the reader and it said, “Processing. Do Not Remove Card.” And it kept flashing this for about 30 seconds. Then it said “Card Read Error. Remove Card and Reinsert.” So I did. And then we did the whole “Processing. . .” thing over  again, and again, getting the Card Read Error again. I’m now thinking I could have swiped my card, entered my PIN, and been long gone.

Finally after doing the whole ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ thing a couple of more times, it worked. The young lady checking me out said they had this problem a lot. So I chalked it up to just their flakey reader.

I was wrong.

About 45 minutes later I was checking out at a Wal-Mart reader, and things got worse. I inserted my card, got the “Processing. Do Not Remove.” thing again, and then after about 20 seconds, it ask if I wanted Cash Back.

Oh, good. It’s working.

NOT!

As soon as I hit “No Cash Back”, the screen said, “RETRY TRANS. CODE 01. PLEASE INFORM ASSOCIATE.” But my ‘Associate’ had no idea what CODE 01 meant.

So we went through this 3 or 4 times with no better luck.

Finally she manually enter the card number, the expiration date, and the 3 digit code, then I selected Credit on the terminal and it went through.

This all took over 10 minutes. As opposed to 10 seconds to swipe my card and enter my PIN.

Oh, and if you’ve got a ‘chipped’ card, and are using it on a ‘chipped’ reader, it will NOT let you swipe your card and use Credit or Debit. You must use the slot.

If this is the future, I don’t like it. Not one bit.

We got back to the gate a little before 7pm, and found that Virginia and Bill had actually been pretty busy with almost 6 pages done. That’s more than we’ve had in a good while. So much for telling them that Sunday would be an easy day.

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Thought for the Day:

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” – Winston Churchill

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