Winding down already, are you kidding?

Here we are in the 3rd week of March and yes, things are already winding down.  There are two mass snow bird exoduses from Florida, the first on April 1st, and the second on May 1st.  In fact while I was taking my morning walk the other day, I counted over 50 units that will be leaving on April 1st!  And I think that is a woefully low number, I would guess closer to 40% of the park will leave then.  So there is a sense of a rush to get everything done, see everyone you want one last time, hit those several restaurants you've missed so far, in our case see good friends that live here and we won't see until next winter most likely, hope that we will be able to get together with family that haven't been able to squeeze us in yet in their busy schedules, fit in a visit from our daughter and our grandkids over spring break, have our son stop down for a few days, finally finish the last of the projects we've planned for the season, do our planning for the spring, summer, and fall.  You get the idea.

We've been riding our bikes more often lately and have decided to take them with us this year instead of leaving them in storage.  One of the factors is that we are going to be in Durango for 5 full weeks this fall, and they have a superb bike path along the river we want to ride.  

Along the beautiful bike path in Venice

A quick break on one of the bridges

We've completed all of our Doctor appointments, had some excellent meals out, been to two birthday get-togethers, celebrated some incredible news with Ray and April, plan to go down to Gasparilla Island next week, had the truck in for a small repair going on 3 times now, but that's another story, Jan's been playing Mah Jongg, and we are waiting for the parts for our almost last project to show up.

Our last significant project involves replacing our rear view mirrors that are losing their chrome.  We plan to replace the mirror heads and the bases, but retain the arms which have fared much better.  The shell of the mirrors is plastic, and with wear and tear, and I think not the best job in manufacturing at the time they were made, the chrome is coming off and they look horrendous!

It's hard to show how bad they look in this photo, but
look carefully and you will see where the chrome is
bubbling up and peeling off

In this photo you can see the base and arm.
The square unit hanging down from the arm is one of the side cameras
We will replace the head and the base keeping the arm.

That leaves only two small projects that I want to complete before leaving. One is a rewiring of our towing harness.  Right now we connect an umbilical electrical cord between the motorhome and the truck that contains the wiring for the turn signals, brake lights, and parking lights, and then I connect another smaller wire to provide an indication at the driver's seat when the truck brakes come on through our braking system.  It is a bit of a pain to connect this small spindly wire to provide that indication, so my plan is to replace our present 4 wire cable with a 6 wire cable and incorporate the signal wire in the main cable.  That way with one connection I will have all the indicator and running lights in one easy to fasten cable.  

The last one is I want to straighten our rock guard in the rear of the coach.  When we climbed and descended that incredible hill to Mama Gertie's Campground in NC, I mentioned that we drug the coach several times, well it put a bend, almost a crease in our up to then, pristine rock guard.  So with Jason's help, we will pull it off and try to straighten it out.

The offending crease is right between the
"Holiday" and "Rambler"

Of course I don't want to make too much of this idea that we only have 3 more projects, as Murphy may get the idea that things are running a bit too smoothly:-)