Mea Culpa

John recalls he had made something of a sarcastic comment regarding Debbie's desire to pack the printer with us. (#4)  

This is our rolling house after all and John soon realized the error of his ways. Mostly, although not entirely, it's due to the Thousand Trails organization, which is one of the deals for which Debbie signed us up. For an upfront fee, we get to camp “for free” at one of the many Thousand Trails locations. If the locations happen to line up with our itinerary, the Cost Per Night could work out to something exceedingly cheap. Tracking that is Debbie's spreadsheet which will tell us at the end of the road if this is a Real Deal or not.

We've stayed in a few of them and it appears the CPN has dropped nicely. Still not zero and never will be, of course, as Aristotle proved with his Rabbit-v-Turtle thought experiment.*** Also, the Thousand Trails locations do not exactly match where we want to go and we sometimes pay other parties or even camp for “free” on government land. But the good news is, in Debbie's words, “We're retired! Who cares?”

Many in the Thousand Trails family require that we “show our papers”: Vehicle Registration and Proof of Insurance for the RV. We're still trying to come up with a rationale for this in a country that is not spelled “Amerika”, even in California. Very likely the reasons would involve a lawyer –or possibly a half dozen or more.

One Thousand Trails front gate 'guard' was zealous enough to demand to see Debbie's Driver's License as well. And then came to the coach's door to demand John's. And then the “papers” for the Honda CR-V that is stuck to the RV's back bumper. We don't believe he was armed, but he was wearing a crisply starched uniform with Official Looking patches all over it and, if memory serves, a heavy duty, shiny, wide, black leather belt. So –what the heck; we have no evil intention to blow up a campsite; we can play their games just as long as that graph's curve being developed by the numbers on Debbie's spreadsheet continues to fall close to while never touching, the x-axis –or whichever orientation she's using.

OK, so––
We started this chapter by anticipating John's sort of apology for questioning the need for the printer.

“This song's about Alice.
Remember Alice?” –Arlo Guthrie

We found it was very convenient to put all those papers onto the scanner's glass plate and photocopy the front side of each one since even Zealous Guard didn't bother to look at the back of any of them. We now roll into each Thousand Trails office with a sheaf of paper even a former USSR border bureaucrat would be proud to see. We printed two copies of each, just in case. (Boy, was Debbie disappointed when TT/Groveland, CA didn't ask for anything!)

We also have printed a couple on-line receipts and a signed credit card authorization for some vehicle repair and...

Golly-whiz! It appears the house on wheels needs the home's all-in-one home-office printer, too.

***

If the Turtle were to get a head start of, say, “x” miles, then in the first hour the Rabbit, which runs twice as fast, closes the gap by x2 miles. Aristotle's thought experiment assumed the Rabbit and the Turtle both maintain constant speeds all the time, so each hour the lead becomes exactly half what it was.   The Rabbit never catches up! The value of x drops lower and even lower and exceedingly lower, but half of anything never ever equals zero. You and we all know that's not a real life win for the Turtle, so we'll see how this math performs for us in coming months.