Let’s Talk NOOK !

Let’s Talk NOOK ! Recently I wrote an article about the Amazon Kindle (one appropriately if unimaginatively titled Let’s Talk KINDLE !). The crux of my essay was that e-readers are the best thing to hit RV’s since flush toilets. There are many e-readers available for your purchasing pleasure. One of the most popular rhymes with “book.” Why did I choose to focus on Kindle? Conspiracy theories abound. Am I biased? Have I loaded up our investment portfolio on AMZN? Or am I merely an Amazon fanboy who wears Jeff Bezos pajamas? Nah. While I may be a bit of an Amazon fanboy, I wrote about Kindle because Amazon is currently KING KONG of the e-reader world. Yes, if recent sales figures are to be believed, Amazon is now perched on a skyscraper high above E-Reader Metropolis with Fay Wray sitting on its lap. Or is that Jeff Bezos in a dress? Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a dress? This is wrong on many levels. Anyway, with Kindles selling faster than mouse ears at Disney World, it’s good to be King Kong. But if there’s a pesky swarm of biplanes on the horizon, it’s the Barnes & Noble NOOK. The author's book on his wife's NOOK. The Nook is a series of e-reader devices sold by everyone’s favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore behemoth. These range from inexpensive e-ink readers (Nook Simple Touch) to more robust tablets (Nook Color & Nook Tablet). You can buy Nooks online, in 90,000-square-foot bookstores, in shady back alleys,... Read more

Meet the GO! by SylvanSport

At SylvanSport, a Brevard, North Carolina-based startup company, Tom Dempsey and his team of designers set out to put the cool back into pop-up campers. Tom Dempsey sits inside a GO camper with a customer's two dogs, Diggidy and Gertie. The GO pop up camper, built by Sylvan Sport, is a highly engineered 800-pound camper that can carry extra outdoor equipment such as canoes and bicycles and be towed by a small car. (Credit: citizen-times.com) As an entrepreneur, Dempsey saw an opportunity to make camping, already a relatively affordable vacation option, more comfortable for a new generation, reported the Asheville Citizen-Times. They came up with the Go, an 800-pound lightweight but solidly constructed platform that turns into a spacious living quarters that you can tow behind a Prius, instead of a huge pickup. The Go is billed as “Mobile Adventure Gear” rather than a trailer, which brings to mind the old-fashioned aluminum box on wheels. “Pop-up campers are part of the entry-level RV world, which hasn’t really changed in the last 40 years,” Demspey said. “We wanted to take the pop-up camper out of the RV world into the REI world.” The Go has proved a hit with enthusiasts eager to drive cross-country to Brevard to pick up their $8,000 campers, ordered online. Dempsey sees “a massive paradigm shift away from SUVs and big trucks to more compact cars, but people still want to play even if they own a Prius, so we hitched our wagon to a trend to more efficient vehicles.” Dempsey... Read more

Another Step Closer to a Flying Motorhome?

A flying motorhome may be part of our new reality sooner than you think—or at least we can all dream. It’s another day, and another flying car. Hopes of the Age of the Flying Car were recently renewed with news that the Terrafugia Transition® Roadable Aircraft was deemed roadworthy by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Artists's conception of myCopter Flying Car. (Crecit: mycopter.eu) Now, another flying car is in the limelight, bringing the possibility of Personal Aerial Vehicles (PAVs) even closer to reality. So are we really approaching an era of flying cars? A new vehicle with the creative name of myCopter is being touted as a solution to the ever present problem of road congestion. The European Union is investing €4.2 million (US$6.2 million) to investigate the possibility of introducing PAVs into the skies of Europe’s most congested cities. The idea is for myCopter to attempt to solve the numerous problems that could potentially arise from futuristic flying cars. This coming age of the “flying car” where vehicles leave the roads and launch into the skies promises to solve problems like dramatically rising urban traffic congestion, but it also throws up some formidable challenges that the myCopter project attempts to address. According to Prof Heinrich Bülthoff of the Max Plank Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen, Germany, the project aims “to develop technologies that could be used to form a new transportation system... Read more

Boondocking 101: How to find those boondocking campsites you keep hearing about

By Bob Difley Camping comfortably without hookups was the subject of last week’s post, so today let’s look at ways to find the boondocking campsites you keep hearing about but whose actual locations remain vague and illusive. It’s not that boondockers are obsessively secretive about their favorite places and dueling with broadswords to secure possession, they mostly just don’t want to publicize them to the whole world. The point to keep in mind is that where there is a boondocking campsite  there will be others nearby–and there is always room for one more rig. That said, there are logical steps to follow to find boondocking areas (called “dispersed camping” areas by federal agencies) and campsites. Stop at visitor centers and chambers of commerce for area or state maps that show recreational lands, such as maps with colored shading to designate where the various public lands are located or check online at the forest service’s website (more on that below). Then visit the BLM, Forest Service, or other federal office or ranger station for more specific maps of dispersed camping areas. Ask for a list of the campgrounds in the area also, most of which will be dry-camping and can be quite nice, though not as private as boondocking on open land, and they will likely charge a fee, though modest compared to RV resorts. The office personnel or rangers (better) can give you more detail on the access road, terrain, size and number of sites,... Read more

Boondocking 101: How do you camp without hookups?

By Bob Difley In last week’s post I suggested some reasons why you might want to try boondocking. This week we look at how to survive–and enjoy–camping without the appendages we call hookups–what seems to be the biggest concern for new boondockers. The length of time you can boondock is mostly developing habits of conservation. When you run out of water, you run out of boondocking days. Conserve your fresh water supply by taking Navy showers—rinsing down, turning off water, soaping up, rinsing off. Wash your hands the same way. And while you are warming up the water, run it into a plastic tub or bucket and use it to flush the toilet or rinse dishes. Rinse dishes in the tub of water, rather than under a running faucet. When washing dishes, use a small bowl of soapy water to wash with. Carry extra Jerry jugs or gallon containers of water to dump in your tank in case your pump starts sucking air. Wipe food off your dishes before washing–it will keep you dishwashing water cleaner and take less to do the job–then dump your wash and rinse water (but only if you use biodegradable soap) on a thirsty plant several yards outside your campsite. You can also dig a hole and pour the waste water in, then fill in the hole. Filling your gray water tank is one of the more limiting factors in how long you can boondock, so prevent as much waste water from entering the tank as you can. With a little practice you will be surprised at how little water it takes... Read more

The Future Is Here: Escape the Earth

The future is officially with us. Well it is almost upon us. Another flying car attempts liftoff—alert the staff at Popular Mechanics. (Credit: extremetech.com) When pigs fly! That’s the conclusion you’d draw from 75 years of magazine covers promising that the flying car was just around the corner. But hope springs eternal. Welcome to the future our forefathers were dreaming about: the world’s first flying car is finally here! Well, you still need a runway, or at least, sort of. Flying Car Cleared for Highway Use The first flying car has come closer to lift-off after being granted road safety exemptions that will allow it to be used both on the road and in the air—and that brings delivery to the first customer closer to reality. That’s right—the only flying car you can buy today has just been approved for highway driving by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The organization granted a special exemption for the Terrafugia Transition, under the provision of “roadable aircraft.” Terrafugia (ter-ra-FOO-gee-ah), Inc., of Woburn, Massachusetts was founded in 2006 by award-winning MIT-trained aeronautical engineers and MBAs who also happen to be private pilots. Terrafugia is derived from the Latin for “Escape the Earth”. The company’s mission is to provide innovative solutions to the challenges facing personal aviation. The result is the Transition® Roadable Aircraft. Terrafugia flying car gets road-safety exemptions. (Credit:... Read more

If you liked the Ecco futuristic green RV, wait till you see the Donk dinghy

By Bob Difley If you liked the NAO Designed Ecco that I posted about a few days ago, a green out-there “RV” of sorts, then this is the dinghy for you, the Badonkadonk–designed by the same design firm. The same design firm, NAO, has also designed . Following is a shortened description from their website. “Feeling like your SUV blends into the crowd? In need of something to transport your groceries by day and serve as a mobile party or arsenal by night? Meet the Badonkadonk, a one-of-a-kind “armored land cruiser/recreational tank”. To look at it, one might think it to be a hovercraft, but in fact it runs on four off-road wheels, concealed by a unique industrial-strength rubberized flexible skirt that shields and protects the wheels to within an inch of the ground, while still allowing for enough flex to give clearance over bumpy and uneven terrain. The roof of the Donk features a guard rail and durable rubber matting, making it the ideal place to carry up to 3 friends or several hundred pounds of cargo. Slide open the roof hatch and you’ll find the interior fully carped and cozy, with accent lighting, glove box, controls and room to seat up to 4 people, or 2 comfortably. Donk Driving The Donk was designed to be as versatile as possible, and that includes the ability of the craft to be piloted from either a seated position within the armored shell, or from an exposed, standing position out the hatch, thanks to a pivoting control stick and... Read more

Boondocking 101: Why would anyone want to boondock?

By Bob Difley Though you’ve heard about boondocking from other RVers and on blogs but never tried it you might wonder why anyone would want to camp where there were no water, sewage, or electrical hookups. After all, camping in an RV in an RV resort or upscale campground is pretty comfortable, and living without those hookups would seem to make it less enjoyable. But in reality, all modern RVs have been manufactured to be not only mobile, but also to be independent of appendages that hook them up to land-based resources. All RVs have a holding tank for fresh water, and most of the time two holding tanks for waste, one from the toilet and one from the shower and sinks. They also have a house battery or batteries to supply 12-volt electricity to the RV in lieu of plug-in 120-volt power, and a generator to produce 120-volt electricity directly to both the 12-volt and the 120-volt systems, and to recharge the battery/ies. So when using your RV’s systems rather than a campground’s, it opens up many more camping possibilities. There are vast natural areas on public lands for enjoying your RV lifestyle, such as in our national forests (photo Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest) and on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The National Forest Service (FS) manages the nation’s 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands–193 million acres. The BLM manages approximately 253 million acres–one-eighth of the landmass of the country—most of it... Read more

National treasures: Scenic byways

By Bob Difley If you haven’t made it a priority to check out the Scenic Byways in the areas you travel or are headed to, you are missing some of the most exciting parts of what makes up America, and you have the best way to see them–your RV. The National Scenic Byways Program is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, in collaboration with other public and private agencies, and since 1992 the National Scenic Byways Program has funded 2,926 projects for state and nationally designated byway routes in all 50 states. Many of America’s most scenic drives wind across and through remote public lands managed by the National Forest Service (NF) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Though not receiving the same publicity as our National Parks and Monuments, the National Scenic Byways (NSB) and the especially notable All-American Roads are mostly low-traveled, two-lane roads that showcase the historic, scenic, and cultural treasures that define America. But since they are often remote, it can sometimes be difficult finding private campgrounds with typical amenities and hook-ups. Along the way you may have to cover the whole route in one shot–from an RV resort at one end to one at the other. Unless, of course, you have honed your boondocking skills and are comfortable dry-camping either in primitive (no hook-up) government campgrounds or boondocking in the open forest or desert. Your boondocking skills enable you to take... Read more

Should EVs Pay to Play?

Don’t you just love it when a prediction comes true? Getting juiced up! (Photo credit: inhabitat.com) Over three months ago a writer for Politics and Cars mused that if special electric meters are installed specifically for the purpose of charging an electric vehicle (EV), someone in government would figure out how to tax that electricity in the same way gasoline is taxed. Gasoline taxes are supposed to go for repairs and improvement of roads. The gas tax is simply a user tax. You use the roads. You pay for them. That’s only fair. Right? However, if EVs use the roads without paying for their use, that is unfair. The issue is contentious because gasoline taxes generate $45 billion annually to pay for highway repairs. Let’s say you live in California, and purchased a Nissan Leaf. The car’s $32,000 bottom line would have taken a huge bite out of your budget, but the feds rewarded you with a $7,500 tax credit and the state kicked in a $5,000 cash payout. At $20,000, the Leaf is now affordable, and the three cents a mile operating costs are good news, too. But now they want to hit you with a new tax? The rest of us say it’s not fair that we pay a premium of 18.4 cents per gallon (24.4 cents for diesel) to maintain the nation’s roads, help to eradicate potholes, and keep overpasses from falling down while EV drivers pay nothing. That’s harsh, you think, being a crusader for clean air. After all, you’re saving the planet by decreasing your carbon footprint. Nissan... Read more

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