Occupation of Independence

For somebody who has experienced both sides of it, the short answer to the title question is 'yes'. But it's in the interest of some RVers to trick it into a 'no'. That is my current project. By 'camping' I mean short-term sleeping/hauling/sitting in a sub-RV, as opposed to 365 days per year of living/walking in a big RV. I might want to camp for as long as one month, a few hours drive from where I live permanently in an RV park in my no-longer-roadworthy travel trailer.

What would my kelpie, Coffee Girl, do if she were free to bother a horseman? Would the horse rear up and kick off the rider? I used to worry about it. One day this fellow was walking this young horse on Gabbie's Ridge. It seemed like a good chance to test Coffee Girl. She ran up and sniffed at the horse a little, while the horse kicked slightly at the dog. No harm done. Both were rather calm about the whole thing. What a relief. I suppose horses grow up with ranch dogs around here. I'm glad to see a horse culture hanging on in the West, although just barely. For the most part, the economy seems based on retirement housing and healthcare.

It was a quiet and contented life here in the Little Pueblo of the New Mexican highlands. But several friends saw this former RV Boondocker and Explorer as living in a Fallen state, by degenerating into a sedentary lifestyle without the usual excuses of old age, bad health, or domestic servitude to a woman. One pair of RV-based interlopers brought some embarrassing news -- embarrassing because it shows how lazy I was about studying the rules of early IRA withdrawal. By invoking the SEPP option, an IRA owner can make penalty-free withdrawals before he's 59.5 years old, with a couple catches of course. But the catches aren't bad. Prior to this knowledge I was hunkering down to make it to age 59.5 without making any early withdrawals. Perhaps it was just a matter of pride. Early retirement is a serious game in beating the System, and eating a penalty for early withdrawal seemed like a defeat. There was something about it all that suggested a battle between Good and Evil,

It's a guy thing, I guess. Or maybe this Gambel quail is just trying to warm up instead of looking macho.

Whew! I just completed a 27-page questionnaire for serving on the jury of a Federal case in which a conviction could lead to the death penalty. Since I live 100 miles from the courtroom and have no way of getting there, I expect to be passed over. Still, I had to fill the questionnaire out completely and honestly. As a libertarian, more or less, it pains me to admit that the System did a fair and just job with the questions. In fact you could write a long essay in response to many of their rather philosophical questions. Typically they gave two lines for the response, but what else could they do? I have never served on a jury before; this trial is expected to take 6-8 weeks. Naturally I don't want to serve. Gee, would they let a juror carry a netbook into the jury box and write essays about the judicial system? Who knows what answers on the questionnaire the System is looking for. My guess is that they're looking for the lack of anything that either side objects to, rathe