Single RVers in a Win Win Situation

As I’ve written previously, RVing is a means to an end not the end in itself. I like the mother ship metaphor because it stirs up ideas of a self contained vehicle supporting all your basic needs including bringing you to a destination. Once there you detach your “shuttle craft” whether it’s a truck or a towed vehicle and you launch out to discover new worlds. Vivian Grybko is a widow from somewhere in Kansas. Nothing unusual about that but she is getting up in years and, well, I was afraid to ask her age for fear of being impolite. Let’s just say she's a mature single adult. After her husband died she looked at the RV sitting in the driveway and decided to start using it. She’s been using it full time now for the past six years. She joined an RV singles group called “WIN” which stands for “Wandering Individuals’ Network.” This group is a high-energy group of mature adults who hike, bike, kayak, dance, tour, sail, boat, raft, ride horses and generally make me tired just thinking about all they do. To join this group you have to be single but if you get romantically involved with someone and get married, they let you stay in the group anyway. You just have to be single when you join. You also have to be under 70 years old and own an RV. Most WIN members become expert boondockers.Vivian says, “We boondock most of the time and rarely get a place with full hookups. We’re generally not a wealthy group of folks.” I asked her how many really close friends she has in her WIN community and she said, “More than I ever had when I was living in one place for many years.” Vivian is the only WIN member I’ve met so far, but if she represents a majority of WIN members then I want to get to know a lot more of them. She is truly a free spirit with her own kayak strapped to the Jeep she tows behind her motorhome. When I caught up to her she was doing laundry and had a few minutes to spare for an interview. She was headed for a couple days of WIN sponsored dancing lessons and evening dance socials after she was done with laundry. I don’t know where she gets all her energy, but It probably has something to do with living large in the great outdoors with her RV. I asked her, “If you were not a member of WIN would you RV as much as you do?” She said, “Probably not. You have a lot more fun when you're with somebody else to share the experience.” So I asked her to tell me about her kayak experiences and she told me that she’s been kayaking all over the country and loving it. She says that in her WIN kayak group there are 50 or 60 kayakers and that she’s recently been to eight different spots on the Colorado River with her group. She receives a WIN newsletter every two months telling her what’s going on and where. She can join a WIN group touring Alaska or go on tour of Florida. They like to get together on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas and celebrate with a huge feast. She's planning a kayak tour of Missouri and then on to the Great Lakes this summer. WIN was founded by a woman named Dorothy Prince so I asked Vivian what advice she would give to a single woman thinking about doing this, “Come visit us and see what it’s like.” You can find more information on their website here WIN. Whew, the interview is over, I think I’ll go take a nap. Jim Twamley, Professor of RVing