Jan's new toy

I have hinted at something that has come up in our lives unexpectedly and I was going to explain it, but have decided not to get into any kind of detail.  I'm not being catty, it's just more personal than I want to share in this venue.  I will say this much, it is something that scared me a little and I had it checked out.  It isn't serious evidently, but will require more investigation to get to the bottom of it.  Perhaps down the line when all is said and done, I will offer more explanation.

Now on to Jan.  She has been wanting a new telephoto lens for some time.  She has been talking to everyone she runs into, and trying to pick their brains for info on lenses.  I mentioned in Yellowstone that many of the distances involved are not obtainable with a telephoto lens, even ones costing many thousands of dollars.  So it came down to what can you reasonably carry and will get out to a respectable distance?  Being a Nikon person, sorry Sandy, she zeroed in on the 80-400mm Nikkor lens with VR, that's vibration reduction.  The vibration reduction system allows you to hand hold the lenses to take a picture, where without it there would be no way you could keep a 400mm from moving and blurring your picture.  It is much happier on a tripod though.  It is fairly heavy, so you wouldn't want to do a 5 mile hike holding it in your hand, but in a back pack it would be fine.  Even this lens is expensive, so we were waiting until this time next year ideally, but Nikon, and B&H Photo surprised us.  They popped up a short sale offering the lens for $350 off!  Well, it didn't take much persuading, we bought it immediately.  So Jan has been working with it over the last two days with some interesting results.

There is a bird rookery about 5 miles from the campground in Venice that draws bird fans from all around.  It is a little island in a little pond and there are many, many pairs of different birds, tending their nests and young.  It is a wonderful place to observe as you can get quite close while the birds feel secure on their island.

A Snowy Egret coming in for a landing

The baby birds are all different sizes from just newly hatched to much larger but still unable to fly.  They rely on their parents to feed them regurgitated food, and man, are they hungry!

Mom arriving!

Come on Mom, we're hungry!

Come ON!  We can't wait!

These couple photos show why Jan is so happy with her new lens.  In fact right now she is over at an eagle's nest checking out the baby, that will very soon be flying.  I'm sure I will have more pictures to add to these as time goes by.

A quick, short post

It's been quiet here on the Southwest Florida front.  Just waiting for items ordered to come in so we can get some of the work done.  Had an unexpected item come up that has taken precedence over much of the other stuff.  That should sort itself out by this weekend or maybe Monday hopefully.  I'll share later.

We had a short rainy cold spell, but that's over now and the weather is again beautiful!

A few more things

Well as I suspected the super-duper deal on the Suzuki 2.5hp outboard is in fact a scam.  The outfit with the incredible price has complaint after complaint.  So back to merely a good deal as opposed to an unbelievable deal.  Still not ordered yet.  I know I'm dragging my feet for some reason.

The awnings are ordered!  The estimate came back and we were very pleased.  So after Jan perused some fabric samples, the awnings are being made.  She picked a bit different color than we have, and even I who can't see color to save my life, think it's going to look great.

Our cat Bert gets motion sickness after sitting for a long while.  I know, the secret is to keep moving, and we try, but sometimes we can't.  I guess another secret is to not have pets. So he had puked on our leather couch in a couple spots, and also after putting Advantage on him a couple times, when he shook some came off and resulted in our dark chocolate couch having some light spots.  Also our captain chairs are an off-white leather and through use had been showing some wear and stain.  We decided while we were in Florida to try to get it taken care of.  So on another errand shopping for new dining chairs, yeah they need to be replaced after being redone once.  I should point out they are our dining chairs, our office chairs, our computer chairs, our occasional chairs, yes, they get a lot of use.  Anyway we asked at the furniture store if they had a leather guy?  They did and he came and worked absolute magic on our couch and chairs!  They look brand new!  It is amazing, you can't see any sign of the stains at all.

We bought replacement dining chairs, pretty cheaply, got them back and in a week or so we realized they were too cheap and would not cut the mustard.  So back to the store and after an hour or so, we ordered custom made chairs of high quality (and price) to replace our chairs.  They should be in in about 4-6 weeks.  They should last as long as we do :-)

We attended another birthday party for two of our friends.  Had a good time celebrating Ann's and Jean's birthdays, both on the same day!  It was a shortish party though, as Dick after several, who's really counting, martinis, decided he needed to get home.  Ha!

On the final note, we are going to have fresh tomatoes any day now!  3 are turning red, so if we don't lose them with the forecasted frost tomorrow night, we should be picking and enjoying them soon!

Ahhhhh, the weather!

Being a northerner for most of my life and having lived in New Hampshire for 20 years, all I can say is ha, ha, haaaaa!  We've been enjoying fabulous weather 70-80's in the day and 50-60's at night, ooohh yeah.  Is it just me or are they exaggerating and sensationalizing every storm, snowfall, and weather system more and more?  It was like New England never got snow before, granted it was a big storm, but give me a break, it's winter in the north.

My kayak sold on eBay, quick and easy.  A nice older couple came and picked it up yesterday.  So on to the Kaboat.

I've been telling you about our list of projects, probably to the point of boredom, but it's funny how new ones pop up unexpectedly.  Our window awnings have always looked a bit ratty, loose, dirty and stained.  

It doesn't look as bad in this photo
as it really is

We think while it sat at the dealer in Florida, the awnings were left partly out, and parked under Florida pine trees in the heat and humidity took it's toll.  We've tried to clean them numerous times with no success.  Well, it is kinda breezy here and we looked up under our door awning and found it had split down the middle.  

Whoops!

Need to get that taken care of, well I had heard of a small company that does nothing but awning fabric, and has an excellent reputation.  Stonevos out of Brooksville, FL.  I contacted them and they said they would restitch the seam, but could not make any guarantees as the fabric is almost 6 years old.  Doesn't sound too long, but you have to remember with us full-timing they are out in the sun and weather 24/7.  So we are waiting on an estimate on new fabric. 

It's time to do the maintenance on our generator.  It's a 10KW Onan.  So I get looking at the maintenance schedule and it says at 800 hrs it needs to have it's valves adjusted.  Whoa.  So I call Cummins who does the service on Onan, and they tell me for $1000-$1200, I can get it done!  Wow.  So I do a lot of research and find out most, not all, say the valve adjustment doesn't need to be done unless it's running funny, and it's not.  So I'm going to do my own maintenance on it, oil and filter change, fuel filter, air cleaner, drain and replace the coolant, and replace the belt.  The only big part of all this is the belt and that's just an access issue, that's why I have a son who can help me:-)  And the best part, I can do all this for about $100!

Odds and Ends

Looking back over the last few days, we didn't really accomplish too much, but we felt we were busy all the time.  We had a nice visit and breakfast with Dick and Ann, we don't seem to see them often enough, so there are many things to catch up on when we get an opportunity.  They are in the midst of determining their future as it applies to the end of RVing.  We will all get to the point where the wanderlust slows or our abilities to safely get these big machines down the highways wane, or we just want to stop and let some roots regenerate.  

My Mom had to be reevaluated for hospice this week and we obviously wanted to be there for that.  Due to Medicare requirements, if you are in hospice for 6 months and don't leave the planet, the government wants to know why!  I can understand the various funding requirements, but it seems a bit funny that they come evaluating whether you can stay in hospice or not all because of good news......the fact you didn't die!  So, of course, she stays in hospice, but after this first eval, now every 60 days she has to be reevaluated. 

I hadn't had my eyes examined for over a year and hadn't gotten new glasses in almost 3 years, so I figured it was probably time.  I am a real stickler with my glasses, it took a lot of experimentation, research, and trying various lenses until I found ones I was really satisfied with.  Bottom line, I am a fan of Zeiss lenses, Individuals to be exact.  In our process of determining where our doctors will be, eye doctors and glasses is one of the concerns, and the fact that my eye doctor in Atlanta isn't using Zeiss anymore made the choice easier.  I found a eye place here in Sarasota that uses Zeiss and to make a long story short, my eyes had hardly changed, good news, and I ordered new glasses, and we both liked the place a lot, so one more thing taken care of.

My kayak hasn't sold yet, so we haven't gotten our 15' KaBoat yet, yes, we did decide on the 15', so that decision is made as well.  Then yesterday I found a 2.5hp Suzuki outboard at a price 1/3 below everyone else I had found, and frankly don't know what to think?  You know when you see a price way, way lower than even the lowest price you had found, you really wonder if it's a real deal or a rip off???  I'm going to try to research the company a bit and see what I find.  But if it's real, it's a real deal :-)

Busy, busy

In addition to making some decisions, we have taken advantage of this glorious weather to do a few more projects.  First of all, I decided to sell my kayak.  Although I enjoy it, it doesn't give me the pleasure that Jan gets from paddling around.  Of course just deciding to sell it doesn't mean it's sold, time will tell on that.  We are going to get the KaBoat, but haven't completely decided on the 14' or the 15', but we are leaning toward the 15'.

We did already sell the 37" TV we took down on Craig's list.  The WiFi external antenna and amplifier was returned to us all fixed so that needed to go back on the roof, and we had a problem with our Satellite antenna after we replaced the AC units.  Our Wingard Trav'ler antenna is an extraordinary device, with one push of a button, it raises up from a stowed position on the roof, whirls around a few times and locks on to 5 satellites to give us HD TV!  Amazing, even the DirecTV guy was impressed with the signal strength it gets all automatically.  When we replaced the 2 AC units this summer, we noticed that the front one interfered just a bit with the dish when it stowed, but figured it wasn't a big deal.  You see, the new AC unit was just a little bigger than the old one, so when the dish came down the LNBF would press against the AC unit then go past and stow.  We thought we might have to alter the front of the AC to make it miss, but hadn't done anything yet.  A few weeks ago, all of a sudden, we stopped getting HD channels.  At first we thought the receiver had gone bad, so after a few minutes on the phone with DirecTV, we confirmed it was not the receiver.  I called Winegard about the dish antenna, and we found out the LNBF was good but not aligned properly.  We knew immediately why.  The constant rubbing against the AC unit when stowing and extending took its toll and bent the arm, although we didn't admit to Winegard what had happened ;-)  We ordered a replacement, mounted it, and got our HD channels back.  We knew we would have to fix the problem.

Well, we got out our installation manual for the antenna, and determined we had room to move the antenna 2" forward so it would not interfere with the AC unit.  That would be a much better solution than cutting or altering the AC unit.  So with two projects to do on the roof we waited til the weather got perfect.  As you saw in the pictures we have NO shade at our site.  So with 65 degrees and a nice breeze we decided it was time for our high level work.  So Jan and I moved the dish, and remounted the WiFi antenna, and all is well.  No interference at all as the dish goes up or down!

We have awnings that sit above our slide outs, called slide toppers, pretty novel, huh?  They keep rain, dirt, snow, etc off the top of the slides.  We had replaced the fabric awhile back, and we noticed that some of the stitching was starting to fray.  When we went to the big RV Supershow in Tampa, I stopped at the Carefree booth to complain about the way the fabric was wearing.  The rep was very nice and asked how long I had had the fabric, well I thought it had been just over a year, she said even though it was out of warranty, they would fudge and replace all my slide toppers.  WOW, super!  She said she would call me after the show and I could give her the exact model numbers, and the exact date I replaced them.  I said sure.  So we got back and looked it all up and found out they were really a little over 2 years old, whoops, how time flies!

Well, she called and I sheepishly told her I had been wrong about how old they were, and was sorry to have bugged her.  She said no problem, and for goodwill they would replace ONE for free if I wanted to determine which one was the worst.  So that arrived here 3 days ago.  So I rented two big stepladders and Jason and I replaced the slide topper.

So busy, busy, feels good to get things done.  Our list is getting smaller!