$300 remodel job

Our old school picture tube TV is on the fritz so we decided it might be time for a new TV in the motorhome. The problem is, the TV is build into a cabinet and the new flat screens are different dimensions than the old. The solution is a remodel job. So this is what I did.

It took some planning and guts due to wiring and screw holes. The wiring comes from the top of the motorhome down into the bottom portion of the cabinet so I had to hide the wires. Also the upper part of the cabinet was screwed to the wall with A LOT of screws. I managed to use parts of the removed upper cabinet to solve both problems. Oh, the reason this remodel job cost me $300, a new 37 inch flat screen TV (TV is on order. The one in the photo is my outside patio TV).

Sad but happy

As you might know, we bought a 2005 Saturn Vue during the summer.  We decided we didn’t need 2 cars so we put the Saturn SC2 up for sale.  I placed an ad on Craig’s List with no response.  Last night I reposted the ad again.  This morning before we even got out of bed we got a call.  I had just finished my morning coffee when he showed up with a fist full of 100 dollar bills.  About 30 minutes later he was driving off with our Saturn in tow behind his truck.  It was a bit sad to see it go away but we are glad it sold.  I told the guy I was sad and he said not to worry, he will take good care of it.  He even mentioned he wanted to fix the little things that needed attention.  I am glad it went to a good home.

Met a web follower today

I always enjoy meeting the people that follow our Blog.  The other day one of our Work campers said there was someone inquiring about me.  They have been following our Blog and were in the resort and wanted to meet us.  Today they stopped by and we had a good conversation.  Unfortunately I was on the phone most of the time with my insurance company and was not too hospitable.  Maybe we can get together before Monday, when they leave, and talk some more.  From the short conversation we had, it sure sounds like they have been having a good time.  They left the northeast and have been visiting the National Parks of America.  They even took a loop up through parts of Canada.

 

The snowbirds have been arriving at the rate of a couple a day now.  The park is filling up and the parties have begun.  Thursday we started our weekly hikes.  Jolene, the leader, took part of the group around the “low road” and I took the more experienced hikers over the “high road”.  I really though I might have scared them a bit but they told me they really enjoyed it.
 

 

Today the weather turned from a very bright and sunny high 80s degree to a windy cool high 60s day.  It is amazing how much change there can be over night.  The weekend is going to be cool but the heat will be back next week.  I prefer HOT.

Killer Bees

So yesterday I was our working on the resort. I was trimming trees along the street, up against the wall at the front of the resort. Suddenly I noticed a bee buzzing around my head. Knowing there are bees around here I didn’t think anything of it. Then there were more, then more, then more. I said to myself, this isn’t normal. Then the next words out of my mouth were SHIT as I made a run for it. There was a small swarm around me. Those little suckers were going down my shirt and down my work gloves. Then it hit! Yep, one got me on the wrist. I finally out ran the guys but not before getting stung. I looked and could not find the stinger. Apparently he didn’t loose it. After about 10 minutes the pain was gone and no other indication that I was stung was apparent. No marks or swelling. Now, I don’t know if they were “Killer bees” or not but after a few hours my wrist ached like arthritis in the bone. Then I noticed a little swelling. This was hours later mind you. This morning I woke to an arm that itched, ached and looked like it belonged to a 300 lb man. So the next step was off to the store for some benadryl. I have never had an allergic reaction to bee stings but I guess these guys pack a pretty good wallop. Now we are trying to figure out how to get rid of those guys.

Back in Havasu

I can't believe we have been back in Havasu for a week and I didn't update our Blog. California was pure STRESS! The traffic was a mess and it was sad to say goodby to our grandson for a few months. Hopefully we will see him again in March.

It is nice to be back in Havasu. The temps are a bit hotter but even though the humidity is higher than I like it is still lower than California was. I like the heat, just don't care for humidity.

This is our monsoon season and the thunder clouds have been hanging over the mountains ever since we got back. The storms seem to always go around us though. I don't know if it is the mountains or some sort of lake effect but we get very little of it.

California again

We are in California again. We have to take our grandson Landen back home for school. We just drove the car since Susan’s parents bought a house and have an extra room for us. Besides it’s $40 for fuel rather than a couple of hundred for the motorhome. Tomorrow we are taking Landen and his best friend to Seaworld since we didn’t get a chance to go anywhere with him this summer. Hopefully next summer will be different. We don’t really want to spend another summer in Havasu so I am thinking about heading up to Sonoma and go to the NASCAR race next summer. Then we will find something to do after that where it is below 100 degrees.

Broken Computer

Actually the computer is fine, it’s the operating system that’s broke. I should have known better but I clicked on a link in my email and from then on things were wacko. Some Internet pages took forever to load and some didn’t load at all. Google was especially difficult. When I did a search, Images wouldn’t work and if I clicked on a link it would redirect me to someplace completely different. I searched for viruses but found none. A while back I lost my ability to create restore points because of another virus. So I figured it was time to dump everything and restore my system. This went well but took a couple of days to get everything reinstalled and configured. Funny how some things don’t work the way they did before. I know it’s got to be some configuration setting I can’t find right now. Anyway I am back up and running again. Al least I know my recovery disks work. I was always wondering about that.

Craigslist is a winner

So I decided to yank the 12V battery from my golf cart. I could never figure out why the golf cart had a separate 12V battery just for the radio. The 12V lights and horn are connected to 2 of the 6V batteries so why not the radio. Every time the 12V battery needed charging I had to brake out my 12V charger and charge it separate from the golf cart batteries.

The battery box I pulled out looked like it might be something someone might want. I looked it up on the internet and they sell for $60 new. So I posted it on Craigslist for $20. Within about 30 minutes I got a call. The guy came out and not only took the battery box but the 10 year old battery along with it.

Less that an hour from placing the ad and it was gone.

How does that happen? Do these guys sit around all day monitoring Craigslist for stuff to buy? I couldn’t believe how fast I got the call.

Now I’m looking around for more stuff to sell.

No rain today

At least yet. It is 8:00p and the day has been rain free. There is plenty of moisture in the air though. It was, for the most part, an indoor day since the humidity was very high and uncomfortable. I can see out the windows that the thunderclouds are welling up again though. The weather says lightning, thunder and heavy rain until midnight but I kind of doubt it. Last nights rain was another bad one. There were more rescues in town and the streets got another dose of mud, rocks and debris. We got a dose of that one here at the resort. This morning I took a drive around to access the damage. We survived real well. The only real damage is the path through our common area. It is washed out in places and rutted pretty badly.

We took another drive into town to check on the houses we are watching today and they survived another one although the streets around them were near impassable. We did have to turn around on one street and find a different route. The bad weather should be all gone by tomorrow.

More floods tonight

The rains are back and there is more flooding in town. Tonight the storm is over us also. We are getting very heavy rain here at the park. I haven’t gone outside but by looking out the windows it appears everything is intact although there is a lot of water flowing down the roads. There is lots of lightning and thunder and of course our satellite TV is going in and out as the signal tries to get through the moisture in the air. I am listing to the Havasu Police, Fire, And EMS on the internet and they are very busy.

Susan and I took a drive in town today and it looks like a hurricane went through. A lot of roads were blocked off due to washouts and LOTS of debris and rocks in the roads. Unfortunately there was one death last night when one car was swept into a wash. Two in the car got out OK but the third was swept away and found dead 2 miles down the wash.

We checked on our friend’s houses, which aren’t in town right now, and all was well. Looks like we will have to take another drive tomorrow to make sure they survived tonight’s storms as well.

There are a lot of videos on You Tube of the floods.

Boss called today

My boss called from home this evening and asked if we got nailed by heavy rain here at the resort. He said they got hit so hard on the south end of town that his pool overflowed. We got nothing but a little rain and a very close bolt of lightning and thunder that knocked out our power for a split second. We figured we were going to be hit next. Luckily it bypassed us. I called my boss back and he said the south end of town was chaos. The washes turned into rivers and flash floods washed cars off the roads. Cars were washed out of one of the restaurants parking lots in town. Earlier Landen asked if we could go out to dinner. I told him not tonight. After telling him about the restaurant parking lot he said that is were he wanted to go tonight. We dodged that one but there are more to come.

116 degrees today

I started the day working this morning at 8:00a. The temps quickly rose to 100+. My shirt was so soaked the pool guy asked me if I went into the pool with my shirt on. That probably would have been a good idea. I worked until noon at which time it was around 114 degrees. For some strange reason Susan decided to put 2 pots of soup stock on the stove. This raised the inside temp to 90 degrees. The motorhome never recovered from that. We are supposed to get some thunderstorms starting tomorrow evening. This doesn’t mean it will be cool, it’s still going to be over 100 degrees and raining.

Yesterday I took the Saturn Vue into the shop to get the timing belt replaced. I knew it would take about 5 hours to complete so I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t call until 4:00p to say it was done. The ladies I bought the car from were pretty meticulous about the maintenance but for some reason the car was about 20,000 miles over due for the belt change. A broken belt means a destroyed engine so I feel a lot better now that it’s done.

Tomorrow the temp is supposed to be a bit lower. I am going to work again in the morning then I got a 2:00p dentist appointment to get my new crown placed. I have been running around with a plastic temp for 2 weeks now and will be glad to get the real thing. I have been so afraid of knocking it off that I haven eaten on that side. Takes me twice as long to eat that way.

Big change for 4th

The weather around here in Havasu has been consistently over 100 degrees for quite some time. The 4th of July, however was much different.

We had rain in the morning and the temps never reached 100 all day. This didn’t stop most people from partying in the channel.

In fact it was much more comfortable than the 100+ temps. The cloud cover was high so the fireworks were great.

Oatman

One of the things Landen likes to do while here in Havasu is take a ride up to Oatman to feed the burros. Oatman is an old gold mining town up in the Arizona mountains on the old route 66. The burros are descendants from the burros that were used by the miners. After the price of gold went down and the mines didn’t produce enough to make it worth looking for the operations closed and the burros were let loose. Everyday they roam into town to look for a handout from the tourists. You can always count on a few babies tagging along also. Here a couple of photos of Landen having fun in Oatman.

Landen and his buddy

Landen clowning around

Landen feeding the burros

Burro lunch box

Missing TV

No it didn’t get stolen.

It gets too hot on the patio for the TV. The specs say not to operate the TV over 104 degrees. Well, it is 104 about noon. So I decided since the grandson's game console uses an HDMI port only and none of the inside TV have HDMI it makes sense to move the patio TV inside and get some use out of it. So now Landen is happy he has his own TV for his games.

Normally I would not let him sit inside all day and play gamer but when it reached 114 outside it’s just too hot for him to play outside. He did go to the movies with Susan today while I wiped down the motorhome and flushed the holding tanks…someone has to do it.

Crash And Burn

Landen and I went over to the racetrack again today to run his car. We did a reprogram on the electronics because he lost braking and reverse. The test drive went well until he crashed and broke the right rear suspension piece. We packed up and headed on over to the RC shop to pickup a new part thinking, “How much can this cost”. I was thinking somewhere around $3.00. Was I surprised… $10.00. $10 was the price for a set of left and right but still. So I thought I would see if I could glue it back together.

I drilled the pieces and inserted a pin for strength and used a 2 part epoxy. I got to thinking that even if this held, it is a weak point and will most likely break sometime down the road so I got on the internet to search for a better price. I ended up placing an order from an Ebay seller for the left and right set for $3.74 with free shipping. We should be getting it in the mail by Thursday. Hopefully my fix will hold until then.

RC Truck Racing

Landen and I had a guy day today. We headed over to the local RC car track to run his Radio Controlled Car. He has one of those really fast RC Off Road Trucks.

He has never been on a dirt track and found that to be a different experience than running it on the streets.

There were lots of turns and jumps and his tires didn’t have much grip so the car was all over the place. After a while though he got the hang of it. I asked him if I could give a try and I was wrecking all over the place. After the track we checked out a couple of RC shops in town to see the new stuff. We also headed on over to the RC Airport to see if anyone was flying their RC planes. We found that the airport is only open on Saturdays so we might go back tomorrow. By this time it was lunchtime so we stopped at In and Out for a couple of Double Doubles.

HOT Summer

It’s been HOT. Everyday the temps are over 100 before noon. It drops into the 80s during the early morning for a while then starts heading back up to the 100s. Landen and I went to the Aquatic Center today for a couple of hours. Unfortunately (for me) it was Summer Camp Day. Bus loads of kids, good for Landen though. He had plenty of kids to play with. At the center there is a LARGE pool and a water slide. At one point the pool was so jammed with kids that I couldn’t move without running into one. I had to just get out and wait it out. The line at the water slide was too long to deal with. Fortunately the kids only stayed a short time then they packed back into the busses and left the pool to the rest of us. Landen is worn out…well so an I.

Back in Havasu again

We left California this morning. Since we picked up the “new” car (Saturn Vue)

we had two cars to bring back to Havasu. Susan wanted to drive our original car and I drove the Vue. Landen, our Grandson, rode with me. We made several stops

to check on each other and see how the trip was going. Everything went well and now we are back at the Resort in Havasu.

We had a great time at our daughters house in California. The weather in California was sunny and overcast at times. The temp in the high 60s was comfortable. We arrived in Havasu to sunny skies and 107 degrees. But then again, we are used to it so it didn’t feel bad.

Visiting Friends

Today I went down to the State Park we used to host at to see some old friends. After visiting friend I took a drive down the coast. It’s good to see the beach again.

It was a good day since I can now stand straight up. Let me explain, Before we left Havasu I messed up my back doing some work around the resort. I was laid up for 2 days before we left and was hurting pretty bad the day of travel. The drive wasn’t too bad since the seats in our Saturn are comfortable enough but I was really stiff at the end of the trip. Today I can finally stand straight up with no pain. I still have pain bending and twisting just right but it just gets better everyday.