Small Town, USA

In 1980, I lived in Morro Bay, CA. With 9,000 people, I thought that was small. According to the 2000 census as reported by Wikipedia, Gravity's population is 218. So, our presence here increases the number of people by almost a percentage point!

We hear that, not so long ago, it was quite a bustling little town, with a school, several churches, theatre, shops and gas station. But, apparently more people have left the town than have arrived. Here's the main street now: The two old buildings are the Bank and the Post office and, of those two - only the Post Office is still in operation. It sure makes you feel warm and fuzzy when, after only one visit, the Postmaster recognizes us and knows our names! Nice to meet you Cindy!

And it's easy to understand why the mayor stopped by to welcome Lynne and John when they first arrived. They want more people like them who will see the opportunity in taking over something like this hundred year old church and restoring it.

Being RVers, we are accustomed to being self sufficient ... a good trait for around here since it's 6 miles to the closest gas station or convenience store, and 15 miles to the closest laundromat! The nearest major cities are all about 2 hours away - DesMoines, Omaha, or Kansas City. But, we might be seeing a rennaissance in Gravity. A new business just opened! A bar and grill! Nitro's. And, we could party as much as we wanted because it is only a 1/2 block walk home!

Actually doing the restoration is a lot of work, and will probably take a few years. But, they're going to have some fun with it too! This room will be Lynne's sewing room - here's her Mom, Frankie, making it bright and cheery.

We have one room that has been dubbed the 'Geek room' for whenever we're here. Right now we've made it the Wii room. Using this little projector to display the Wii games onto our 6 foot screen. It works great. You'll be hearing more about this projector as we try it for a variety of things. It's by BenQ, and they sent us this unit to evaluate. Isn't it cute?

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How many blogs?

It’s a cold day here in Gravity, Iowa. I was hoping it would be nice enough to take our kayaks to the nearby Lake of Three Fires State park – but it looks doubtful. At 49 degrees outside, I think I’ll stay in where the furnace is keeping me warm. Actually I may just crawl back under the covers and read my book today.

I’m feeling good because it’s just 8:30 and I already wrote my weekly post for the RV.net blog - which is due on Sundays. I wrote ‘What is Twitter’ – go read it, ok?

Now I’m writing here, in our personal blog. I also try to write at least once a week in our Geeks on Tour Articles blog. I might just copy the Twitter article there if I don’t think of anything else to write about. I’ve also been writing a weekly Picasa Tip on our GOT Articles blog. The Picasa tips have been taking over the whole GOT Articles blog, so I decided to make a new one. I was able to get the domain http://www.picasatutorials.com/ and got it set up yesterday with WordPress. I’ll separate the Picasa tips from the other articles, and now … have you been counting? I will be writing in 4 blogs.

I wonder if there’s a 12 step program somewhere for Bloggers?

But, no, I don’t want to stop … I want to keep working on blogs until I get it right! By ‘getting it right’ I mean making money. Everything is free on all our blogs, and I only have advertising on one – GOT Articles. But, all the free information is supposed to give us credibility, and give our readers the desire to learn more with our tutorial videos requiring a paid membership at http://www.geeksontour.com/. With the new blog at http://www.picasatutorials.com/, I will be setting up a separate membership system so people can pay just for Picasa tutorial videos. I’m looking at two membership systems now – http://www.memberwing.com/ and http://www.wpwishlist.com/. If anyone reading this has experience with either of these, or another WordPress membership plugin – I’d love to hear from you. The Geeks on Tour membership system I wrote from scratch with Coldfusion … I don’t want to do that again.

Wish me luck, this is how we support ourselves on the road.

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Spring has sprung

It's still chilly overnight, but we've had at least partly sunny days here in southern Iowa. The grass is green and the trees are in blossom! These look like cherries, just small.

And here's Lynne and John's church. They're renovating it as their home ... what a job! Being someone who only creates stuff on a computer screen, I am so in awe of people who can build / create stuff that's bigger than them. And, this is a *lot* bigger.

This is really an experience, being in a town of 200 people. I love the images of old and new: Where else can you live on Main Street and keep a horse in your back yard?

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Shopping at an Auction

It was a gorgeous day yesterday, and 5 of us women went to an auction. Lynne wanted to get a washer/dryer for the church and, well, you just never know what else you might find.

What fun! And, what a great way for people to buy and sell stuff. The guys had to come get us with a couple of trucks before we were done!

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Ring the Bell!

Kind of like breaking a champagne bottle across the hull of a new ship, Lynne and John rang the bell in their church.

We were also hoping that this would ring in the Spring as it’s been surprisingly cold and drizzly. And, sure enough, today is May 1 and the sun is shining!