Race canceled

No not NASCAR. The Desert Storm Boat Race was canceled today and tomorrow because of high winds. The winds started up last night and rose to around 47 MPH today. Tomorrow it is supposed to calm down to around 25 MPH. Usually things get blown around pretty good here at the park during high winds. Car covers get blown away and patio furniture end up in the surrounding desert. I guess people have learned during the years because as I cruised around the resort I found nothing out of place. Anyway, even though the boat didn’t get to play they still plan to party. The airport reports full hangers from all the personal jets that came to town for the race. Yes, they not only have high powered boats and half million dollar trucks to pull them, they also have high dollar jets to fly them in and out. I think the only ones that are out of luck this weekend are the fuel stations that expected to sell lots of expensive high octane gas for the boats.

Unfortunately this is the first year for a while that I missed the Laughlin River Run. I say, “I missed” because Susan made a Laughlin trip with a few ladies the other day. Things just didn’t work out for me.

The boats are in town

I went down to main street today to check out some of the boats in town for the Desert Storm Shootout. Today they lined them up for show. Some decided to forgo the show and play. You could hear them on the water from just about anywhere in Havasu. Tomorrow is the parade through the channel and Saturday is the shootout. The weather says 47 MPH wind gusts for Saturday. This should be interesting. Here is a few photos for ya.

How about a little bling for your boat?

You need a car to go along with that boat?

Damn, ran out of room for more motors. 1,400 horsepower total.

Your gonna need one of these…

To pull one of these.

No, its not a Corvette.

So much going on

Some old warplanes are coming into town for the weekend.

For around $3,000 you can even get a chance to fly one of these. No license required. A bit much for me though. It’s still fun watching them fly over our motorhome.

Also this weekend is the Desert Storm Boat Races. So far there are 111 high performance boats signed up. It all starts Wednesday when they close off the main street in town and line then up and down the street for display. Friday morning they will parade through the channel for a look at them in the water the Saturday is the Shootout where they will run 2 miles down the lake for best speed.

Another event is the Laughlin River Run where bikers from all over come to the river for a week of fun and games. Lots of cool bikes and leather.

Bonsai

After the neighbors left there was no one to take care of their gardenias. I noticed they were dieing off so I brought them over to our place and trimmed off all the dead growth.

Now it looks like a Bonsai Gardenia. Kind of cool looking.

WORK!

Our park manager came to me the other day and asked if I wanted some work. I laughed. He said there is an owner’s lot that needs some maintenance and he didn’t have time to do it. I contacted the owners and put in a bid and got the job. The job consisted of repairing the irrigation, rebuilding some block walls, removing a couple of overgrown trees, and some general clean up. It was a 1 day job but I stretched it out to 2, didn’t want to work too hard.

Before

After

The weather is warming up. Today it almost got to 100 degrees but was shy a few tenths.

This lizard found some shade under these rocks. Fortunately we get a good breeze between the motorhome and the casita so that is where I sat under the awning and watched the NASCAR race today. Tomorrow I will probably do the same.

New generation

We found a new generation of humming birds in a tree near us the other day. There are 2 baby humming birds stuffed in this nest about the size if a golf ball.

The amazing thing is the nest is right out in the open along a busy traveled path. They don’t seem to mind all the people that stop by to take a look.

The weather is all over the place right now. We had a 100+ day a few back and last night rain. The wind has been quite strong today and for the next 2 days we are expecting a thunderstorm. Sure makes for great sunsets.

It’s thinning out

Won’t be long before we are one of the few left here at the resort in Havasu. The Snowbirds are migrating north at a rapid rate. We are planning to stay until we head to California to pick up our Grandson for the summer. Susan has not had to do much cooking this last week because of all the going away parties everyone is having. It’s starting to warm up here but it is still cold up north, especially for those folks heading for Canada. Yesterday it reached a little over 100 but the wind kept it under 100 today.

Bill Williams River Hike

I just added the photos of our hike at the Bill Williams River here in Arizona. This river was named after an early explorer in the area. It joins lake Havasu just north of the Parker Dam. The River area is a National Wildlife Refuge because of the many species of birds found there.

Snakes are out

Saw this guy on a hike today. He was stretched across the path in front of us. We tossed a couple of rocks toward him to send him on his way but he didn’t respond until we tossed some gravel at him. Boy that sure pissed him off. He spun around into a coil and looked right at us with rattle going a mile a minute, then ran off into the bushes. We could still hear him as we passed by on our way. I will post more of the hike pictures to our photo site soon.

This is what I did today

Yesterday I damn near wore myself out wiping down the motorhome. I was going to wash it after the dust camp we stayed at in Vegas but it really didn’t look that bad so I just got a bucket of water and a step ladder and wiped and dried the whole thing down. Going up and down the ladder and wiping with one hand and drying with the other gave me quite a workout.

Today I attacked the wheels. I have been wanting to shine up the aluminum for a while now and got it done today. Fortunately I have one of those Power Balls from Mothers

and borrowed my neighbors drill motor so it took me about an hour instead of 4.

All fixed

I finally got the seal replaced on my front wheel. I made the appointment and the day of the appointment I called the shop that first replaced the seal, and who agreed to pay for the replacement, to let them know I was taking it in and they should expect a call from the shop I am taking it to. This time however I got a hold of a different guy that gave me a hard time about it. I finally told him I had the appointment and am taking it in and will deal with who will pay later. I arrived at the shop and told them to call the first shop and let them know what they find and maybe expect a hassle. Turns out that when they called they got the first person I talked to and was told to fax over the bill and they will pay by credit card. Anyway I got the job done at no charge to me.

The trip back to our lot didn’t turn out too well though. I couldn’t avoid some debris in the road and ended up ripping some wires out under the motorhome and put a good dent in my tail pipe. The wires were an easy fix and I straightened out the pipe as well as I could.

After cleaning things up I happened to look over at the wheel that was worked on and spotted a stream of oil running down from the axel across the wheel and pooling on the ground. All I could do is stand there and laugh. After pulling the center cap off the wheel I noticed the oil was coming from the axel oil drain plug. A simple ¼ turn tightened it up and after cleaning up the oil there were no more leaks. Now I got a small mess under my tire that I either have to move the motorhome or jack the wheel off the ground to clean.

Better

Susan is feeling much better now. She still has a cough and is feeling a bit weak but she is at least up and around. This makes me feel much better also. I rescheduled the motorhome appointment to get the bearing seal replaced. I will also be calling Chem-Dry to get the carpet cleaned since we were going to have it done before Susan got sick.

The weather is shaping up real nice around here. It has been comfortably cool in the mornings and warm in the afternoons and the wind has not been an issue.

I added the NASCAR pictures from the Vegas race, enjoy.

Sick

We didn’t come back from the NASCAR race without a souvenir. Susan came back with the Flu. I am talking serious flu. The doctor said it is the Swine Flu…I thought that was gone. Anyway, they prescribed some high dollar drugs which I bought thinking it would make it all go away. I should know better. I am one that won’t even take an aspirin unless I am really hurting but I wanted her to feel better. Turns out that the major side effect of all 3 meds they prescribed is vomiting. I thought that was what we were trying to stop. For 3 days she could not eat, drink, or sleep because her stomach wouldn’t let her. She finally decided to stop all meds and today she feels much better.

If you get the Flu, don’t let the doctor talk you into paying mega bucks for Tamiflu. It will only make you feel worse.

Back in Havasu again

We made it back to Lake Havasu City today in spite of the high wind warnings. The weather report said the winds would be worst in the afternoon so we got an early start and made it through without problems. I filled the leaking wheel bearing and checked it a half hour into the trip. I had to top it off again so an hour later I pulled over to check it again. It was still full so I felt better about that. It hasn’t leaked since. However I called the shop that replaced it in December and they agreed to replace it again. The problem is they are 260 miles away. So they agreed to pay the bill if I take it to an authorized service center here in Havasu. Nice work! Even though it isn’t leaking right now I have an appointment Friday to get it replaced.

NASCAR was fun, as usual. Susan and I got into Las Vegas about noon Thursday and took time for a little lunch before heading into the track. We spent the days with our daughter, her husband and friends and headed out to the motorhome for the nights. Thursday was NASCAR practice Friday was qualifying and Saturday and Sunday were the races. I will post photos to our photo site soon.

The race is over

Well the race is over and Susan’s driver didn’t win. We still had a great time with our daughter and friends.

The races were exciting nun the less with some pretty spectacular mishaps right in front of us.

Tomorrow we head back to Havasu. I filled my wheel hub with fresh oil and I think we can make it back to Havasu with no problem there. The problem might be the weather. They are calling for High winds which makes driving a motorhome kind of tricky. I will just have to play it by ear and drive slower and more careful if the winds are too bad.

Las Vegas

Oh, did I mention we are in Las Vegas? We arrived Thursday for the NASCAR race weekend. The drive was good until we arrived in town then every stop we made we smelled something burning. I pulled over to investigate but didn’t notice anything. After arriving at the track and getting settled in I checked things out closer and found the culprit. I have a leaking wheel bearing seal on one of my front wheels. The fluid drips out on the hot brake rotors and hence the smell. I bought some oil and will top it off before we leave on Monday and see if we can make it back to Havasu.

Other than that we are having a great time as usual.

We are with our daughter again and it is so nice to be able to spend some time with her, her husband and Reese the dog.

Weather

I told you the weather has been unusually cool here. In the last 7 years there has only been snow on the mountains behind us three times and two of them have been this year.

This is what we woke up to this morning. You can see snow on the top of the mountains in the background.

Computer fixed

I may have fixed my computer without having to restore the whole system. It seems to be giving me the most problems when I was running my virus scanner. So I uninstalled the scanner and my system has not froze up since. Since yesterday was cold windy and just plane miserable I spent the day running down solutions for some other system errors that were showing up. I also uninstalled a few programs no longer used. Today was another miserable day with rain most of the day so I spent the day exercising my computer. It looks like my computer is clean and stable for now. I will give it a few days to make sure everything is stable then I will reinstall my virus scanner and see how that goes. In the mean time I will stick to websites I trust.

Cool windy winter

The weather here has just been miserable this winter. We have had very few good days. It is getting about time for some snowbirds to start heading back up north and they haven’t had a chance to enjoy the nice Arizona winter weather. The rain is supposed to come back in again this weekend. It seems to be worst on the weekends when most of the events are happening in town. Hopefully next weekend will be a good one because we are heading over to Las Vegas for the NASCAR race. Since this will probably the only one we will attend this year I hope it is a good one.

Lots going on here

There was a lot going on this weekend here in Havasu and more coming this weekend. Over the weekend we had our annual yard sale here in the resort. The problem is it poured rain the morning of the sale so we didn’t do too well. By noon the sale was over and so was the rain. The sun came out and the rest of the day was good. Also this weekend was the Annual Winter Blast Western Pyrotechnics Convention.

This is where pyrotechnics manufacturers from over the world come to show off their best fireworks. It was a 3 day show and was spectacular as you can imagine. The other event was the 3rd Annual Rockabilly Reunion featuring a car show and rockabilly music. Rockers from all around the country attended the weekend show. Next weekend is going to be the 2nd Annual HAVA BBQ London Bridge Style. There will be more than 80 competitors grilling for a $4,000 prize. This is a Kansas City Barbecue Society-sanctioned event so it should be YUM!