Final Countdown!

We have almost started pacing like wild animals that are caged up, and ready to be let out, and the heat and humidity aren't helping this year.  We both have been attending to the myriad of last minute items to be completed, and it is a bit more challenging this year as we don't have our storage unit anymore, but that's good.  We have had to liquidate several items and have been fairly successful so far, but we still have a few more to go.  There is just no way that we can carry all the stuff we have accumulated over the years here.  We have given away our big gas grill, weedeater, propane bottle, and a few other items.  We are going to try to carry our pressure washer, large pavilion, Yard-stash, and a bunch of bourbon, along with the stuff we always carry, fishing gear and things like that.

We are catching up with many things, we had a nice lunch out with Ray and Linda, yup, forgot to take any pictures, and Jan is doing the last of Ray's puzzles for the season.

Yes, this how you do it with limited room

Lots of lunches with and without people.  We had a nice lunch with Debbie and Harold, and were joined by Tom, and his son, our nephew, Walker.

Walker, Jan, Moi, Debbie, Harold, and Tom

We have been carrying a extra freezer in our basement since 2005 when we went to Alaska the first time, yes, the same freezer, amazingly dependable.  Since it is on a moving tray, the power cord has been somewhat of a challenge, I hung the cord from the ceiling, put it on a spring, but finally I reused a used coiled electric cord used for towing which has worked wonderfully for many years, but as we were loading some things we noticed that the insulation had split on the entire cord, damn, only got about 10 years out of it:-)  

I picked up a new coiled cord and just had to splice it in, easy and done.

Has to be some food, right?  We made a sautéed cod with peppers, onions, and tomatoes over a few potatoes!

Happy, Happy Hours have been enjoyed.

A video entertaining Harold and Phil

And we even had a block party!  Lots of fun, great food, and a fun corn hole competition.

We had a very nice treat, we drove over to Okeechobee to meet our daughter Kelly and son-in-law Brian, and to meet Brian's mom, Karen for a great visit and a delicious lunch.  We don't see Kelly and Brian very often, so it was especially nice, and we had never met Karen before.  We spent a couple hours catching up, and then they had to go back to West Palm to get ready for their foray down to the Keys for a few days, and we had to drive our 2 1/2 hours back.  So very worth it!

Jan, Moi, Karen, Kelly, and Brian

We have a few more things to take care of, take down our canopy, roll up our carpeting, do a final wash of the motorhome and the truck, store some chairs and our stepladder, and off we go.  

I have been hinting around about upcoming changes for some time, and one big change is going back out west this year, but a few of the others are still up in the air due to circumstances out of our control.  Time will tell. 

But for now, see you on the road:-)

Finalizing Plans

The heat and humidity has stayed with us most of the time since I posted last, then the crowning blow was our unwelcome shift to Daylight time making our Happy Hour earlier sunwise, and obviously hotter.  But the last 2 days have been glorious!  Overnight temps in the 50's, and hardly any humidity, and only high 70's during the day, awesome.

We have finalized quite a few of our plans, altered our appointment in Orlando for 6 new tires, getting the remaining Balance Masters, a front end alignment, replacement of our air dryer desiccant, and replacing an air fitting on our leveling tank, all at our favorite frame and chassis place, Josam's.  Unfortunately they are still experiencing some supply issues and we are disappointed the best we could do with the tires will be 6 months old.  But the 6 we are replacing are already 6 1/2 years old so it's time for us, especially since we are adding a trip out West to our plans.  So our last day here will be the 1st of April, our adventures will begin Sunday, the 2nd when we go and spend the night before our service right at Josam's.

We were able to get a few other projects completed.  We have had new mirror bases for some time now and the corrosion had gotten to the point where we needed to replace them.  We like the mirrors but their chrome plating is something to be desired.

Before and after.

With the heat and humidity all three of our air conditioners have been running almost nonstop.  We had the main circuit breaker at the post pop several times, a fairly normal situation in campgrounds.  You have to remember there are used as switches in addition to providing circuit protection as they are switched off when plugging in or disconnecting, then switched on to provide power.  After hundreds of ons and offs in addition to the very high draws it is not unusual for them to fail. The campground sent Donnie over to install a new breaker and when we pulled my plug out we both noticed that it was extraordinarily hot, indicating some issues with our old plug, maybe a loose internal connection, so I wanted to replace the end with another before we had any more problems.  The old plug had a nice feature with a movable arm that leveraged the plug out of the socket, but it was an integral plug fused on the cord that can't be repaired.  The new one has a handle to make it easier to pull out, but not as nice as the original, although it's nice and cool now.

The old plug

Done

We also are wrapping some things up for the season, visiting and having lunches with friends, lots of Happy Hours, and Jan had a nice farewell lunch with 2 of her Mah Jongg friends, Linda and Sam.

 And she has been working on even more puzzles from Ray.

I did the annual maintenance on the Aqua-Hot, new filter, new nozzle, and cleaned the combustion chamber.

I had another little project I have been mulling over in my mind for some time for the best way to handle it.  There is an aluminum extrusion that holds the fabric on our slide topper awnings.  Some time ago, when another service center was "fixing" it, they broke the extrusion on the end, the cost of replacing the whole thing was insane, not for the piece itself, but for the shipping, it is over 12' long.  So we spliced in a piece instead, it kind of worked but it tended to move too much.

Disregard the worn fabric, it has been replaced,
but you can see the "fixed" extrusion here

The splice in place and you can see how it moves

I came across a small piece of stainless steel that was to be used for mounting a dash cam or GPS, I don't remember what, but it called to me.  I thought if I trimmed it a bit, bent it a bit, it would serve as a connection between the two extrusions when riveted in place.  I am happy to say I think it worked perfectly, especially since it can't be seen from the ground.

Trimmed a little, bent a little, and 2 holes drilled

It worked

Now you're probably thinking, wow, no food this post, you are, aren't you?  But no way can I do a whole post without food:-)

Jan and I had an awesome Thai lunch with wonton soup, Tom Kah soup, Thai shrimp, and an incredible larb salad at a new favorite Thai restaurant.

We had a hankering for prime rib and didn't want to go out for it so.......

And capped the week off with delicious seared dry scallops!

I will probably post one more time before our departure, we have a few more things to take care of, still waiting on a couple other things, and I'll catch up and bid good bye to our winter digs.

Hot and Humid!

So I hope it wasn't me who jinxed our great friend, Debbie, because she broke her ankle the same night I posted my last entry, so I guess I'll have to go back and check that I didn't utter some incantation that I wasn't aware of.  She has already had surgery and is on her road to recovery.  We join her in being glad it wasn't more serious, and wish her well!

It has been Hot and Humid almost every day, no rain, very dry, and it is wearing on Jan and I, funny as we age instead of embracing the heat like most normal people, it is killing us:-)  Oh well, less than a month to go.

We had a very nice visit with Jason, Joanne, and Jax who were in Orlando for Jax's spring break.  Too short, and it was quite a drive for each of us to meet in Lakeland for lunch.  The traffic this year all over Florida is intense, in over 25 years of coming here, we don't ever remember it worse, wonder if it's that 1700 people a day moving here?!?

Joanne and Jax

Jan, Moi, and Jason

We have been busy, we washed, and Jan waxed the whole motorhome.  We have been meeting friends for lunches and happy hours, and Jan and I have made a few road trips.  We've been doing a lot of walking first thing in the morning as it gets too hot to do it later in the day.  We do still persevere and walk each evening before HH though.

Jan made an awesome fermented black bean and chicken stir fry!

Jan did another puzzle lent to her by Ray, the biggest one ever, 670 pieces!

Been enjoying pretty sunsets, and not looking forward to turning our clocks forward next week.

When Jan and I were having lunch at a local restaurant we got a glimpse of one of the natives.

We did have to do an unexpected project though, our washer/dryer combo stopped drying properly.  Our Splendide combo is a very welcome and necessary part of our full time life, some folks do okay with going to a laundry all the time, but not us, Jan much prefers to do our laundry right in our coach.  They are fairly small so it runs a lot, several times a week.  This will be our third new unit since we bought our coach back in 2008.  The first was to replace the stacked units it came with, we much preferred the combo we had been using for the previous 13 years in our other motorhomes, and didn't want to waste all the room a stacked unit took.  And the first one made it until 2015, and this one made it until now, so about 7-8 years, and each time it was an issue with the dryer side, hint, hint, manufacturer:-)  Murphy was actually working with us this time since it turned out to be a perfect storm, Camping World had the unit on sale, we are still here in Florida, BIL Tom is next door to help.

Our dying unit with a panel off for removal

Since we had to drive to Fort Meyers anyway we decided to try a new restaurant, Salty Papa's, and had an excellent meal!

Fantastic fried oysters and peel and eat shrimp!

And delicious onion rings

Then we picked up the new unit, came back.  Jan and I removed the old unit and got it up to the door, then we enlisted Tom to help take it outside, there was no way that Jan and I could have done it ourselves.  Then we went to take the new one in, well I must really be getting old as it nearly killed me, but it really nearly killed Tom who was carrying 90% of the weight going in the entry door, and then when I had trouble getting up the stairs backwards and nearly dumped the whole thing on poor Tom, but we made it.  Jan and I thought we could get it from the front door and into its slot. We got it to the opening, but we had an emergency when we lost control and it tipped back in and we couldn't get it straightened up and we couldn't get it out.  Tom to the rescue again, he and I, read mostly Tom got it under control and into its spot.  One good thing was both Tom and I survived our cardiac stress tests:-)

Thank you, thank you, thank you Tom!!!!!

Jan reaching in back to hook it up the new one

All in and running

We are finalizing some other things and since time is running short we are taking care of a lot more little projects before we leave, more on that later, and one more thing,

THANK YOU TOM!