Frustration

I got so frustrated today. We woke to another beautiful day. Absolutely NO wind. The weather reports said by 11:00a the winds will start and be 30+ sustained and 50 to 60 gusts. Well…11:00a came and went with no wind. Hell we could have been in Barstow by now. I finally got on line and checked the current weather in Barstow. 35mph sustained and 50mph gusts. That made me feel a little better. It wasn’t until about 2:00p that the winds got to Havasu. We are now (at 7:00p) experiencing some pretty good winds. The question now, will they still be here in the morning when we want to leave? The weather report says 12mph but it also said high winds at 11:00 this morning. I know how wrong “The Weather” can be.

Missed opportunity

Today was an absolutely beautiful day, just perfect for a trip to Riverside. But we are still in Havasu. We are still shooting for Wednesday even though they are still predicting wind. Thursday is supposed to be a good day. If when Wednesday gets here and it looks bad we may wait until Thursday. We really want to take the motorhome because…well, it’s nice to be home, no matter where you are.

Not a happy camper

Today was NOT supposed to be windy. Well guess what? The wind is blowing hard and gusting even harder. We are leaving Wednesday for Riverside California. Usually the winds will last about 3 days around here so I was not too concerned at first but since this wind was not predicted I decided to check the weather report. NOAA Weather Service says, “Winds increased this morning as a strong surface pressure gradient developed.” It goes on to say that a strong storm will pass through Tuesday and Wednesday with wind gusts over 60mph. Not good for driving a motorhome. We may have to re-think this. We really don’t have to be there until Thursday since we are taking a “Red-Eye” out of LAX on Thursday night. But NOAA also says the local gusts will continue Thursday into Friday. We might just have to leave the motorhome here and take the car to Riverside.

Starting to get busy

They are rolling into the resort more and more everyday. The cocktail parties have started. Yesterday we had our first owners meeting for the season. It went surprisingly well. You can imagine how these meetings can be when you get a bunch of ol’ farts from different cultures around the country and Canada together with their different ideas.

Last night after the meeting a few of us headed into town for the Relics and Rods car show. There were over 900 pre 1070’s cars involved.

This is another one of those events where practically all of Havasu show up. The streets were packed and there were lots of Really Nice Cars. If you drove it in the past, it was there. One of the hits of the show was this truck.

It is powered by a Detroit Diesel V12. This thing is all hand built by one man and is something to see. There will be a video interview of it on YouTube soon. I will post it as soon as I see it. It’s still a work in progress. Here are more photos.

A shortened Nomad

Converted to a Motorhome

Well already I had a problem with the new furniture. The stitching on one of the cushions is coming apart. I grabbed the cushion and off to Home Depot I went. Of course they sold out all their stock so an exchange was out of the picture. The manager however called the company and arranged for a new cushion to be delivered to us here at the resort. Then he handed me the one I brought in and said, “Here, sew this up and you will have a spare.” Nice!

They’re coming back

People are starting to come back to the resort here in Lake Havasu. They are coming in at the rate of a couple a day. We are taking another trip over the Halloween weekend and I am sure when we get back the park will be pretty much full again.

That means the wildlife will be heading back into hiding. This guy was a little upset that the lizard he was chasing ducked under the pot and he couldn’t flush it out.

Well, the sun has taken its toll again. It was time to replace our patio furniture. I started looking around and checking prices, looking for a good end of the summer sale. We got a pretty nice patio dinning set last year from sears for half price. I set out to pick up a $20 item from Home Depot and came across this set.

Not quite half price but a good price anyway. I went back to get Susan to show her and get her approval. We got lucky and found a buyer for our old set the same day so we didn’t have to find a place to stash it until we could get rid of it. Now if we can just keep the sun from destroying this set for a few years. Now that we have a covered patio and I am going to install some sun shades we should be good to go for a few.

Made it back

We pulled into Lake Havasu about 12:20 this afternoon. It was an uneventful trip, which is a good thing. We did run into a bit of dense fog going over the Cajon Pass on I-15 but it was short and I only lost sight of the truck in front of me for a couple of brief seconds. The rest of the trip I had the cruise set so it was just sit back and steer. I am glad to be back in Arizona where the price of gas is close to a dollar less per gallon. I had to stop about 100 miles from the border for fuel but only put enough in to get me to Arizona where I filled it up. I like to park it with a full tank. As usual we had a really great time at the track. Got to see some friends which I only see a couple of times a year, usually at the track and got to hangout with our daughter and her husband. That’s always a good time. I took a few photos (check the thumbnail link in the sidebar NASCAR Oct 09) but for some reason the camera had a hard time with the focus so I had to trash some.

This is one of our friends spot at the track. Yeah they are a bit of a fanatic but the really know how to have a good time. I guess they got themselves on ESPN with all their NASCAR paraphernalia. Last year a photographer came by and we all got our pictures taken at their spot to be used as advertising. Somewhere my mug is probably plastered on a billboard or in the back of a magazine. Well, a few more folks have arrived here at the resort and I expect more will show up in the next few weeks. Let the parties begin.

Extenze

The NASCAR weekend is over. We are heading back to Havasu first thing in the morning. Susan is a happy race fan as her favorite driver, Jimmie Johnson,

Extenze his lead in the Race for the Championship. Sorry for the pun…

Jimmie's Burnout in the backstretch right in front of us after the race.

It was a pretty good race for California, which usually hosts some of the most boring races during the whole series. There were still plenty of crazies in the infield. That’s one thing California has going for it. It makes quite a show at times.

We arrived

We arrived in Ontario, California yesterday about noon. It was a good drive, nice weather, little traffic, and they are fixing more and more of I-40 along the way so there are only a few spots of rough road. I usually move it on over to the hammer lane where the road is in better condition. There is little traffic so I don’t have to worry about holding up traffic. I just keep an eye out behind me for upcoming traffic and pull over when necessary. This place is pretty much full. We were lucky to get a good spot.

On the move

Tomorrow we will be on the move again. We are heading back over to California for the NASCAR race in Fontana. We usually get there on Tuesday so we won’t have a problem getting a spot for the weekend. Where we stay, they don’t take reservations so by getting there on Tuesday we have never had a problem. This morning I thought I would give them a call since I know some of the people and see if they can save my favorite spot for us. Well it’s a good thing I called since a bunch came in yesterday and there was only one spot open. Even though they don’t take reservations, they will save the spot for me. It’s good to know people.

The last couple of days, it’s been pretty windy here. I was hoping the wind would stop for our travel on Tuesday and it looks like we are in luck. Today is a perfect day and tomorrow is suppose to be the same. The temperatures are dropping here. No more 100+ days. This morning it was 61 when I got up at 7:00a and I hear it was in the high 50s earlier. Our air conditioners are finally getting a break along with our electric bill. It won’t be long before I will be burning the dust out of the furnace.

Speaking of burning, I had to fix our convection oven again yesterday. The fan that circulates the hot air stops working about once a year and I have to partially disassemble the oven to oil it. Susan doesn’t use the gas oven. She cooks everything in the convection so it gets a lot of use and since the fan is basically in the heat the oil gets burned off after a while. I have been oiling it with the same Mobil-1 synthetic oil that I put in the engine. This has worked pretty well. This time however I didn’t have any on hand so I used some regular “Dino” oil I had. That was a mistake. Now when Susan cooks anything in the oven it smells like an old oil burning car. I am hoping it goes away soon or I will have to go in again and clean it out and use the synthetic. From what I can tell, it looks like a major oven removal and disassembly job to go in and replace the fan. And if I did the new one would probably do the same thing.

Well we are pretty much packed up and ready to head out in the morning.