I thought I saw Rudy in Arizona

[dburt]

Been down in S Arizona for a few days with the wife visiting her dad who lives in Green Valley, south of Tucson. Went to a folk art/farmer's market/street fair type event the other day, and there was a guy who looked alot like Rudy playing a guitar, harmonica, and other instruments as the need arose and singing quite well too! He had his CDs available for sale. I thought how nice it would be to have something like that to offer for sale so one could winter in Arizona, support yourself by going around to folk markets to sell your product, and then going back north in the spring to summer in the cooler places. I also see alot of high dollar motorhomes and RVs, lots of high dollar snow bird type homes, but not many budget motorhomes ie: old buses or truckhomes. Maby they are all over in Quartzite or Yuma. Everywhere you see border patrol agents, helicopters going over all the time, just like the LAPD does in SoCal. Road checks, they are everywhere. It seems to be the real growth industry down here. The drug smugglers are so bad between Gila Bend and Casa Grande crossing over I-8 that the BLM has signs posted that to travel in that area is very dangerous, and you do so at your own risk. The drug lords have brought thier internal fighting over to our side of the border, and are engaging in gun battles, assassinations, and general mayhem with each other for control of the smuggling routes. And as they fight each other and smuggle thier drugs in on the back of "mules", white haired snow birds weave in and out and around them as they head for thier favorite winter nesting site in thier huge motorhomes towing thier little run abouts.

[Jerry Campbell]

Alright, the old west has returned.
You have to wait a little while yet for all the gray hairs to arrive. And let me tell you there are a LOT of them. Oh no, I forgot I'm now one too. I'll be down thata way in a few weeks. It's hard to get a real good desert fix up here in the Oregon country.
I try not to hang around them RV people too much. Too many generators. Nothing like the hum of 10s of thousands of them at the same time every day.
BUT, If you want to make some money on products or services then thats the place to be. I fix computers and usually find a little work along the road. I have a little folding stool I'm going to make and try to sell this year. This is not a good year for money so we shall see.
Jerry

[dburt]

I'll be interested to see how you do this year Jerry. At one time, several years ago a buddy and I toyed with the idea of having a mobil RV repair service and going to Yuma to see if it could finance 4-6 months of desert living, but figured someone probably has that covered already. I get really tired of winter in the PNW along about January, each year it comes sooner. If I live long enough, I'll be getting the desert blues towards the end of July Well, maby not quite, but I sure could use a dose of desert living and a change of scenery along about the middle of winter when the weather and the income are both cold. But if and when this economy might improve, it's hard to know if a person could make it down there financially with some kind of income generating scheme. And since I am not musical like Rudy, I can't sing or play for tips

[Patrick46]

DBurt...don't worry about the competition in following this dream.
I would NEVER have lasted 25+ years in my business if I was worried about what the 'other' guys was doing. Just go down there, and do you best. That's all you can do anyway, so don't expect more from yourself then your very best! And I'd think a mobile RV repair business would go over HUGE in a land dominated by full time RV'ers!!! Yea, you'll have a few competitors, but do your own thing. Offer a quality service at a fair price...and stand behind your work. Word of mouth goes a LONG way in building a reputation.

We WILL become snowbirds in the next few years. The kids have all grown, and these dark rainy winters tend bring your spirits down after a month or so. The warmth of the sun is what we'll be following.( My wife can never be warm enough) I'm gonna set up shop right qlong the road...doing custom pinstriping, lettering, murals, and small illustrations.

I'd adwise you to head down there for a few weeks if you can, to actually scope out the situation and the locations of where might work best for you.
We're going down South in Feb for a week, to get some much needed sunshine, and start checking out areas that might work out for us.

Hey...maybe we can become neighbors!!!

[graydawg]

patrick do you do any type of airbrush work, there is a very big demand for it now days, motorhomes busses 18 wheelers and cars seems to be a big demand but I am not good enough at it yet, and probably will never be
james graydawgs driver

[Patrick46]

patrick do you do any type of airbrush work? james graydawgs driver

Sure! Tons! Most of my work is on MySpace...but you can see some on my website...altho it hasn't been updated in like 6 years!!! (it's down below in blue)

I've been doing custom paintwork for 30 years now, and actually...people are NOT airbrushing murals on coaches quite like they did 10-15 years ago. I did a bunch of them back then, and was actually offered a job at Marathon working on million dollar coaches...but we did'nt want to move our family from the coast up to Eugene. We like the smaller town and slower lifestyle over metroland.

B'sides...I get to do my own thing this-a-ways!!

People are now getting smaller & simpler things (mostly)...and that's better for working on location like I'll be doing anyways. It's harder to do big graphics and murals without a good paintbooth available. I'll probably end up doing a fair amount of pinstriping on the cars & SUV's that get towed behind RV's, a bit of truck lettering, and painting personal names & nicknames on coaches. I will do small 'silly' yard signs that people can put in front of their rigs when parked, and will also be selling 'vintage' looking signs too.
I'm getting more into doing actual 'paintings' now too, so I'll dabble with that, and will probably sell a few of those as well.

Ahhhhh...sitting in the sun, with a paintbrush in my hand..........heavenly!!!

[Jerry Campbell]

We had a friend once upon a time who did air brushing out of a school bus. He made almost all his money using an airbrush as a sand blaster, with some kind of magnesium I think to do designs on and around windows or on mirrors, like vines and flowers, or on chrome , like the backs of mirrors and on motorcycle chrome. He had a book full of templets people could pick from. He made a lot of money. We traded him for vines and roses around the windshield on our old volvo wagon. Looked very cool.

It's cheap living and it's warm. Our beach in Mexico has been stolen by the rich people so we may have no place to go this winter. We may end up somewhere down in the desert or on the lower colorado river. It's supposed to be a bad winter in Oregon and a good winter in the desert. If so you can come and visit us. Nobody will even know your gone.

I play music the first thing every morning but have never played in front of anyone. The computer is my band. After 25 years of practice I'm beginning to feel like I might be getting ready. I play a pressure treated 2 X 12 in a banjo ring with a guitar bridge with a 5 string banjo neck with only 4 strings Electric.
Jerry

[Rudy]

Jerry, perhaps you could post a pic of that unique instrument on the Music Central thread. You could also email me the pic and I'll post it.

[Rudy]

I posted a couple of pics of Jerry's very cool home made instrument on the Music Central thread.