The Mighty Bungee

Except for a Swiss Army knife, can you think of anything more versatile than the simple ball bungee? As RVers, what would we do without them? They’re like elastic duct tape and no recreational vehicle should be without a ready supply on hand.

A Ball bungee is a short piece of rubber bungee cord looped together and knotted inside a small plastic ball. They come in different lengths, with the most popular and versatile being four and six inches. I like to have a supply handy and I usually stock up on them at flea markets, where you can buy bundles of them at affordable prices. They are also available at RV stores, from vendors at RV rallies, and on Amazon.

We have used ball bungees in so many ways that I can’t begin to count them. Hanging up our Gypsy Journal banner above our vendor booth at RV rallies, securing a floppy awning arm, to hold a sheet made into makeshift movie screen to a wall, to keep electrical cords and water hoses together, keeping the paddles to our Sea Eagle kayaks together, to keep the wheels on Terry’s bike from spinning when it is attached to the ladder on the back of our motorhome, to hold things in place inside our storage bays, attaching a tarp to a canopy frame and more. When we used a portable TV dish mounted on a tripod we used ball bungees attached to stakes driven into the ground to hold it in place.

Two or more ball bungees can be looped together to secure larger items like ladders, to tie down equipment in the back of a pickup truck or on a trailer, and to hold things in place on the back of a motorcycle or ATV.

Back in my newspaper days, I remember reporting a story in Arizona years ago when a hunter used two ball bungees looped together to create a tourniquet to keep from bleeding to death after he went off the road and rolled his pickup.

And there are lots of other uses, limited only by your imagination. What are some of the ways you have found them useful?

Yesterday was another cold dreary day, with showers off and on. Terry was busy stuffing envelopes and I spent most of the day writing, knocking out another chapter in my next Big Lake mystery, and I even let Bad Nick loose at the computer. Check out his latest Bad Nick blog, He’s Dead, So It Worked, and leave a comment.

Have you entered our latest Free Drawing yet? This week’s prize is an audiobook of The Last Call, the first book in my pal George Weir’s excellent Bill Travis Mystery series. All you have to do is click on the Free Drawing link and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – Insanity does not run in my family. It strolls through, taking its time and getting to know everyone personally.