Presented here in a humorous way are some of the little known "benefits" that are included as part of the fulltime lifestyle. I'm sure that some of you fellow travelers will relate to some of these. For you wanna-be fulltimers, don't let these scare you off!

You sent 'em in, so I posted them! Click HERE to see the Your Fulltiming PPPs (Personal Pet Peeves) . Or, you can just scroll down to the bottom of the page...

• Bugs

Let me tell you.... You are going to discover insects in a totally new and personal way! I have seen bugs that not even the most adventuresome bug-ologist has ever attempted to identify. And they're not just on the windshield! You find them in the most amazing places... in pockets of your clothing (surprise!!), swimming in your drink (doing the backstroke, usually) and in every conceivable nook and cranny in your RV. There are bugs out there that can shrink themselves down small enough to pass through any screening you can devise and then return to their normal size once they're inside. Most of these bugs consider insect repellants to be a big joke..... I can hear them all laughing every time I get out my can of "Off". I have found that, when in heavily insect-populated areas, it's best to just ignore them as much as possible and try to breathe through your nose a lot! And try to ignore the fact that your scrambled eggs are "crunchy". (ICK!)
 
• Ants

I can hear you all saying that ants should have been covered under "bugs" but you're wrong! Ants are way too smart to be considered mere bugs.... try to deal with them as insects and they'll walk all over you! Ants are busy organizing a raiding party minutes after you back into your campsite and I am convinced that they can simply jump onto your rig directly from the ground. Or maybe they can levitate... I'm not sure. I am still providing free transportation and room-and-board for ants that I picked up in Florida last winter! My attempts to get them with bug spray have been more life threatening for me than for them, and they sneer at ant baits and poisons. They are those little "sweet-eating" ants, and as I type this, I see one running up the screen of my computer display... AAAHHAAA! (squish) GOTCHA, you little #@%&%$!. I can't seem to beat them, and the war has occupied a lot of my "off-hours". Probably the only way to win this war is to detonate a small nuclear device inside the trailer and then buy a new trailer.
 
• Pay Phones

The fulltimer has to deal with pay phones a lot, and for the most part they do what they are supposed to... but there are a couple things that bother me. First, there's the phone that must have been installed by midgets... the keypad is 17 inches off the ground and you will be forced to kneel in supplication before it in order to dial. Then, there's the phone that has been installed in the middle of a 20 foot puddle whenever it has rained in the last week or so. These are great fun (squish, squish). And what sadistic person designed pay phones to have a fluorescent light in them? What does a fluorescent light attract? BUGS! Especially mosquitoes.... There's nothing I enjoy more than an evening chat with friends while surrounded by a cloud of hungry mosquitoes.... tends to keep the long distance charges really low!
 
• Coin Laundromats

OK, I admit that I'm not real fond of doing the wash, but what choice do you have? If you don't wash your clothes, the neighbors tend to avoid you. Even when everything goes well it's no fun, but nothing compares to the joy of a washer that won't drain or a dryer that won't dry. It's just my luck to pick the washer that someone else just used to wash their horse's saddle blanket or their collection of oily rags. Time spent in a laundromat seems to go by slower than just about any other kind of time... and no matter how good a job you do, you're just gonna have to do it again in a week or so.
 
• Grocery Stores

Every time I go to the grocery store, it's a different store. I spend a lot of time wandering around lost, looking for something that should be easy to find, but isn't. There's no rhyme or reason to the layouts of most stores, and sometimes they put stuff in the strangest contexts... (Hey, excuse me, where can I find the Cheeze Whiz? It's in the Pet Food aisle??? Well, OK....)
 
• First Names

I don't know how I do it, but I have the amazing ability to instantly forget the name of someone I've just been introduced to. This is a real liability when you meet a lot of new friends all the time. I'll walk over to someone and introduce myself: "Hi, I'm Mark", they'll say "Hi Mark, I'm John" and an instant later, their name will make a whooshing sound as it departs my brain... usually permanently. I don't know what to do.... If it were up to me, everyone would be required to wear name badges at all times! It's even worse when you get introduced to a whole group... they only have to remember ONE new name, while I am required to forget a whole bunch of names all at once! ...Just doesn't seem fair....
 
• Getting Mail

We take so many things for granted when we live in a house that doesn't roll. Getting your mail usually means a short walk to the mailbox. For a fulltimer, getting the mail can be a source of much amusement... or angst! Most fulltimers use either a forwarding service of some sort, or a friend or relative to deal with their mail. This means that you will either have a professional or a friend/relative sending your mail to the wrong place. There's nothing like calling the forwarding service and telling them to send your mail to general delivery in Gargantua, IL and then discovering that the post office there is only staffed from 11 to 11:15 on alternate Thursdays. Or that the old post office burned down last month and your mail "should be" at the main post office 175 miles away. Another fun thing to do is to get your package successfully, only to discover that you just paid express postage on a phone book and three Sears catalogs that you neither want or need. Actually, mail forwarding works just fine 99% of the time.... it's that remaining 1% that gets you. I once had a package make the rounds of three different post offices in Little Rock, AR and I contrived to miss it all three times. The package wound up being sent back to the mail service in South Dakota and then sent out again to Tennessee, where I finally caught up with it.
 
• Some Campgrounds

Hey, I like campgrounds! I spend a lot of my time at them.... It's just that sometimes I wonder about the folks that lay them out... Most of the time, it's no problem but once in a while..... Like the campground that has a vicious "S" turn that you have to negotiate to get in or out. What.., are they trying to test our driving ability? Or the place with no signs and no obvious way to choose between the dirt road I'm supposed to drive down and the one that dead-ends at the ravine. Or my personal favorite: the place that has gravel roads with tight turns and 50% grades conveniently hidden way in the back. I stayed at a place once in a site at the bottom of one of those steep gravel turns and it was exciting (terrifying?) to watch big class-A motorhomes slide down that hill directly towards me. I'm also fairly fond of the places with really low-hanging trees, or with trees strategically placed to make my pull-through a pull-in-back-out. I guess it's all part of the adventure....
 
• Vehicle Maintenance

This is a tough one for me. I would rather walk up to a stranger on the street, hand them a scalpel and say "Go ahead, take out my appendix!" than allow someone else to work on my vehicles. It's not that I don't trust other mechanics.... well, actually I guess it IS that I don't trust other mechanics. I do most of my own maintenance while on the road. This can sometimes lead to angry confrontations with campground managers, so I try to be as discrete as possible when working on things. The problem is that without a garage of my own, I wind up working in less than ideal conditions. Laying in the mud, on sharp rocks, or on top of an anthill tends to remove some of the joys of doing it yourself! And nothing hurts me more than to have to go out and buy a special tool to do a particular job when I know that I already own one.... only it's in California and I'm in Tennessee.
 
• Road Construction

Surely the bane of any traveler's existance, road work can offer you some impressive challenges! Such as: the uneven pavement zone that empties the contents of the fridge onto the floor , or the freshly gravelled road where oncoming 75 mph semi's are throwing up rooster tails of gravel, or the detour that takes you and 75 semi's onto some farmers tractor path for 15 miles, or my personal favorite.. the squeeze play. That's where they set up big concrete barrier walls on both sides of a single lane and you are expected to drive in this narrow corridor for several miles. Then, as you are driving down this narrow path, the barriers slowly get closer together. AAAAAA!!! I tell you, it's not a passtime for the faint at heart! Most of the roads that they are working on surely need the repair... I just wish they'd wait until after I pass through to do the work.
 
• Roaming Charges

A lot of us fulltimers have Cell Phones. They can be lifesavers, and very handy for more mundane uses, but Roaming charges really piss me off! How can a one minute call from someone else cost me $5 ? Isn't the government supposed to be regulating these guys or something? All I see on the tube are ads from competing phone companies offering .0001 cents a minute to your grandmother in Bulgaria and it costs me $5 to pick up my cell phone and tell a telemarketer to take a flying leap! Something's wrong with this picture!!!

• Those parks that have huge signs saying "we welcome the big rigs" then after several miles of roads you wouldn't take a scooter on - there it is !  With no where to turn the "big rig" around ,especially one in Texas , when all spots are full and road ends at a river ! You get the joy of unhooking in the rain - driving the toad back to main road , backing the coach about 2 miles to a farmers lane, turning around , re hooking and trying it again at the next place that welcomes the "big rigs" OR even better - there is the state placed sign showing campground at this exit - drive several miles through a housing development only to discover the campground was "developed" 4 years ago and state never took sign down ! O the joys of full timing

--Rex/Sharon
 
• My PPP is when you are sitting outside of your unit enjoying the great outdoors and the next thing you hear is WHAM! You are looking to see where the bomb landed and then you realize it was your neighbor coming out of his unit and slamming the door.

--Wanda
 
• Why is it Picnic Areas always seem to be on the LEFT side of the road? And, when you finally find one on the RIGHT side, there's an 18-wheeler parked in it?

--Barbara
 
• Radio stations that don't let the listener know where they are. You hear something like "There's a bad storm heading East" but do they tell you East of what - NOOO.

--Joan
 
• I'm going down a highway and all traffic must detour, you exit and guesswhat? No signs to tell you where to go. Probably not that much problem for those of you with GPS, but another adventure if you don't have one. You pull

over, break out the map, and Gee Whiz, the road you have been detoured onto is not on the map. I have been to some very interesting parts of the rural South.
--Charles D. Thigpen II
--Thigpen's Law: Murphy was an optimist
 
• Most RV parks don't have instant phone connections for my laptop so I can  surf the web and get e-mail.  That's inconvenient and I hope more parks update their service soon.  I know alot are modem friendly but I like to be in my coach and take my time on AOL.  The last park we were in the had connect.net in the clubhouse @ 5cents a minute.  It's better than nothing but then you have to just have flash sessions so you don't overdo it financially. Also, the space in the kitchen has really turned me off to cooking.  It is really laborious to make a decent size meal.  You constantly have to wash and keep things put up or you will be unable to function.

--CherylKay
 
• Camp sites are crowded here in Canada, this is necessary because so many of us want to be out and about on those glorious weekends and we have approximately only 10, good weekends a year.  I don't mind this, BUT, what does bother me is the camper that arrives right beside you, pulls out their awning, a small table and places a cheap, tinny sounding radio on it.  Now they find and tune into the local radio station that plays only music from "back in the day", blasts it and then promptly leaves their camp site for the rest of the day leaving us imprisoned in our camper trying to get away from the noise.  If the loud music isn't bad enough (really, how many times can you listen to "I can't get no Satisfaction" by the Stones and still enjoy it?), just having to hear the endless stream of bad commercials is worse!  This seems to happen every time and every campsite we go.  People, keep you music inside. And...(I'm on a rant now) when you are actually at your campsite, none of you seem to listen to your radio, only scream over top of it.  Turn if off for a minute, listen to the birds, the bees and the wind sweetly rustling the leaves (I have to admit that I even prefer these sounds to U2...really)   In summary the commercials are the worst, their killing me!!  Happy camping to everyone in 2005.

--Christine