TexasCHLforum.com

AWB09 wrote:Welcome to the forum. I never met a full time RVer so I have a question for you. What do you do for a DL? Most states insist on having a current residence address, but if you live in your RV and don't own a house, what address do you give them? Are some states better than others for that? TIA

I'm not a full timer but I do know some of them. Yes, you need an address and there is more to that decision than just the DL question. SD seems to be a popular one for full timers. One of the biggest issues is things like motor vehicle inspections, registrations and taxes. There are a couple of services that full timers use for things like mail forwarding. It is (or can be) a very complex matter to full time since some businesses and government entities don't accept a P.O. Box as your address. Typically, the folks that have full timed for a while have it all figured out use a relative's address or have a campground some where that they have a long term relationship with.

You may not believe it but there are a lot of Canadian full timers. They spend summers in Canada and winters in Mexico. Obviously, there are no CHLs among them.

Apology accepted, Old Gringo. I was a bit taken aback at first and, if I over-reacted in my response to you, I'll offer my own apology back to you. It was my first post to this forum and I certainly didn't intend to start out in any sort of an antagonistic way. As a long standing member on RV.NET, where things get very raucous and posts and threads are regularly deleted, I'm perhaps overly sensitive. I have no desire to bring any part of that here.

Topics like RVing can be very much like the proverbial eight blind men touching an elephant. While each reports exactly his experience and all are partially correct, none of them is accurate with respect to the whole elephant. You certainly have used your RV more last year than we did and probably have a greater ranges of experiences. Two years ago, we did a 4,400 mile, 22 day trip but that is the longest that we've been able to muster. I'm still working and hope to continue to do so for another year or so. I'm limited to how much time that I can get off at once. All that I can tell you is that the part of the RVing experience that I'm touching is changing, in some ways significantly, over the past 6 years. When we first started camping, I didn't even lock the doors at night.

I look forward to your perspective and advice in the future.

Chas.

davidtx, many of the rest stops now are either overrun with OTR trucks (they have mandated rest periods and limited places to park while doing that) or are posted as "no overnights". The hot topic in RVing is sleeping overnight at a Wal-Mart, with the idea being that those parking lots are well light and patrolled by security. We generally try to plan to be in a campground at night but, on a couple of occasions, have gotten into an already late night situation while traveling and have used smaller motels that cater to truckers.

I have to honestly tell you that I've heard those same reports about BGs being scared off by cycling a shotgun. As a test, I had my wife stand outside our RV while I pumped our shotgun. In spite of the fairly thin walls, she said that the sound was muffled at best and that she couldn't hear it at all about 20 feet away. Those stories may be more urban legend than fact. Assuming that all you are doing is pumping a shell into the chamber, the sound is also very short and you need to be really tuned in to hear it.

I also don't want to misrepresent the RVing experience. There are thousands of people who are "full timers" in that they live in the RVs year around. Most of them report never having a bad experience any place. Texas is a very active place for RVers in general, especially the Rio-Grande Valley in the winter time. Again, with 10s of thousands of snowbirds added, there are few reports of problems.

I belong to a Texas camping group and we get together for rallies several times each year. You would be surprised at the very high percentage of CHLs in that group. I have no idea whether the BGs understand that or not.

If you're still concerned, you can stay home. If you're more worried about collateral damage than family protection, don't shoot and stay home. If you can't figure out how to stock your motor home, you're not ready to go on a trip and should stay home.

A little rough, don't you think? I must have misunderstood the purpose of this forum. I thought it was to ask questions and have reasonable discussions, sharing information.

I guess that I'm just a thoughtful kind of a guy. I'll admit, I'm the kind of a guy who took the time to read "In the Gravest extreme" and think about the information presented in it before taking a CHL class. In my way of thinking, the time to be concerned about something is before it happens so that when it does, I'm prepared to handle it.

What puzzles me is where in any of my writings today did you determine that I was more worried about collateral damage than family protection? If that were the case, I wouldn't have purchased a Sig in the first place, would I? I am and will always be concerned about hurting innocent people. I also understand that difficult decisions often have to be made in the blink of an eye. I figure the key for me is to understand the potential for collateral damage and to avoid parking in a place where it is more likely to occur.

You are absolutely correct. I don't yet know how to "stock my motor home." That is why I came here. I'm trying to learn from the experiences of others. I could try and do it completely on my own, through trial and error but that isn't me, either. Let me tell you kind of a parallel story.

I had worked on our own passenger cars for over 30 years when we got our motor home. I gotta tell you that 36 feet, 22,000 lbs of diesel powered fun can be a little intimidating to a new owner. It took me just over 6 months a couple of trips to several "professional" repair shops to figure out that I was better off doing my own maintenance. I worked on an intermittent speedometer problem for over a year before I fixed it - where one of those professional shops had worked on it 3 times and not succeeded. In the 5 years since, I have over 4,000 posts on one of the RV forums. I have to admit that I was more than a little rough around the edges when I first started posting and asking questions there, much the same as I've done here. By working with the bits and pieces of information provided by others, I discovered a manufacturing flaw in the Freightliner's belt assembly on several Cummins engines and have been lucky enough to share that with dozens of others, saving them each hundreds of dollars and lots of frustration as professional shops tried to deal with the situation. I'm glad to have found the solution for myself but I'm even happier that I was able to share it with others. Today, I'm confident that I understand my motor better than any of the shops that I could take it to and haven't been intimidated by it for a very long time. I continue to share my experiences with others and continue to learn as much from some of the questions that I try to answer as from what I personally do with a wrench in my hand.

I'm sorry but I'm not going to stay home. My wife and I have had a lot of great times and plan to continue to have them. I don't go RVing to look for problems but I'm not going to stop going because problems could develop. I'll continue to go and to mind my own business. I carry a set of 3/4" drive sockets but hope that I never have the occasion to use them. I will also carry a Sig 9mm and hope the same for it.

Another option is stay in the USA where there's a Second Amendment.

Actually, Vermont is stronger on the 2nd Amendment than Texas. The problem is to get there, you have to go through "enemy territory" (aka NY)

We have relatives in WVA. There is another State that doesn't honor the Texas CHL. While I used NY as an example, we are going to be faced with several more States in our travels where I'm going to have to use the Federal transport approach. I'd like to make sure that I have it correct.

I promise, I don't have too many.

Let's say that my trip takes me through NY. I'm going to have to rely on Federal firearms transport rules to get me through.

I'm thinking that one of these
http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templ ... ISO-8859-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; is the answer for my carry.

What should I use for a lockable ammo case? Keep in mind that RVs don't have a lot of space and that I'm trying to keep the weight down, too. Just "getting by" is OK by me.

I'm assuming that if lockable cases are stored someplace back in "house" area of the RV, I'm OK. Unfortunately, there is hardly a place in that house area were I couldn't get to in a few seconds, assuming that I'm stopped and have left the driver's area. This is one of those gray areas about RVs, particularly motor homes, were "not accessible to the driver" isn't even as clear cut as it is in an SUV where you either have to get completely out of the vehicle or crawl over seats to get to the back.

I'm sure that this is probably a HBL type topic (see CHL and RVs for explanation) but wanted some input anyway.