Since we own an Alpenlite Fifth Wheel, I always try to talk to any other Alpenlite owners in the campground. This was how I met Gregg.
I introduced myself as the other Alpenlite in the campground. His New Hampshire rig has a map of North America - like many Rvers - with many states in the US and Canada already colored, but the West Coast states - California, Oregon, Washington, are still white. His Alpenlite fifth wheel is 5 years old and has a lot of small and major enhancements. His truck, a Ford Powerstroke Diesel, has a chip ( modified engine control computer software to boost diesel engine power beyond the parameters set by the factory). His wife prefers to stay inside her RV. They RV 6 months each year and have been doing this for 5 years.
We compared maintenance issues, and since he was a self avowed gadget man, I had to show him the GPS, WiFi wireless network, computers, TiVo, and other gadgets in our rig. When I invited him in the first thing he saw was Teri at her notebook computer, and he exclaimed, "" Oh man - you guys are real computer nuts!"" He confessed he knew nothing about computers and that while he worked computers were the ""enemy"", because he worked for over 30 years a s a truck driver and the computer would always indicate he should already be at such and such place - which would have him always under pressure.
As he left I asked if he and his wife would join us some evening for a fireside visit on our deck overlooking the cliffs and the Gulf of St-Lawrence. We had enjoyed the same with Klaus and Margaret, so - we keep doing what works!
We had a few stormy and foggy evenings after that, so we could not have our get-together the next night. It turned out that Gregg was always outside chatting to someone, and that his wife never came out.
Finally, we had a nice evening and made a good fire in our outdoor deck fireplace. It was a chilly evening so we reserved the deck spaces closest to the fire for our guests. We finally had a chance to meet Greggs wife. She told us that she had bad knees. It turned out that Gregg''s family were Rvers, and that she was not as enthusiastic about Rving as he - especially now that they had a grandchild. We had a nice evening chatting about our Rving experiences. They told us that they are Catholics, and talked about their faith on a few occasions.
One shocking story from Gregg: when they were kids their mother gave them a bag every time one of their female cats had a litter and asked them to put the kittens in the bag tied with stones inside and throw them in the pond.
We were interested to hear that contrary to our style of always planning our itinerary in detail and making reservations well in advance, they never make reservations. They do not use computers, so must depend on paper guides and maps, which can often be outdated. The Ford is their second truck. They had to trade because their first truck was a short-bed and this led to an accident when they were doing a sharp turn with their rig and a front corner of the fifth wheel hit their back window.
I had told them during our fireside chat that I had messed-up by getting a digital only cell phone instead of a trimode, and that we were spending a lot on public phone calls. The next day Gregg brought us one of their expired Sams Club Calling Cards; it turns out we could buy a refill and continue using their card without any issues. That was really thoughtful.
On the other hand, Greg surprised us on a number of occasions with his comments. For example, he called the Quebec unemployment compensation system here ''communistic''. It turns out that in the depth of the winter here in Gaspe the unemployment goes very high because the atrociously cold winters and relative remoteness of the area. Apparently, Quebec provides fairly generous unemployment compensation and it is difficult to hire people cheaply at those times. He also complained that they had no current newspapers in English here, and projected a somewhat condescending attitude towards the French-speaking population of Quebec.
On another occasion he brought us a Montreal newspaper he had finished reading. He told us that it was full of ''bad things about America''. It turns out that when I read it cover to cover there were two articles that could fit that category: one was a report about a republican congressman from either Arizona or North Dakota - not sure which - who had declared that ''knowing what I know now I would not have voted to support the invasion of Iraq''. It turns out the congressman was a senior republican member of the House Intelligence Committee. He dared say this only because he was retiring from politics and sent a letter to his constituents declaring that he now believed that there had been significant distortions of the available pre-war intelligence and that he as well as the American people had been misled. The other article was about the American biowarfare program between 1946 and the early 70s.
On Sunday morning I happened to run into Gregg by the service building and he told me that they were going to Church. He then told me that they were going to pray for us. I smiled and waved goodbye, and then he told me louder ''we are going to light candles for you''On the day before his departure we were chatting with another Rver from California and Gregg told us that he had found Quebecois were against the US invasion of Iraq. He told us that he declared to a Canadian ''America is being nice - we can take over the world if we want to and nobody can stop us - we can take-over Latin America with a couple of well-placed bombs''. He told us that the Canadian ''did not like it''. I later noticed that his truck had one of those yellow ribbons with the words printed ''Support Our Troops'' and that he had placed an American flag on the hitch.
This experience showed me well that we will gain insight on a variety of people''s attitudes and beliefs. Learning about people is one of our Rving adventures.
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