January 19th - 25th, 2021 - Fun and Projects

Wednesday was a nice day so the guys got out the cornhole game and set it up on the street. Here are a couple of pictures of us old-timers at play.

Dave and Jean's trailer needed a major cleaning when they arrived from Michigan. Dave just had a pacemaker put in so he is not allowed to do much for a while. Others quickly jumped in to get the trailer cleaned up. Here is a picture of Terry cleaning the gutters.

Thursday morning I did laundry here in the park. There are always magazines and reading materials laying around on the tables to read. On the table nearest me was this.

Who would think you would find a map of Croatia in a laundromat in an RV park in Florida?

Friday, the 22nd, there was a porch posted for sale in the park. The folks were moving and couldn't take it with them. My neighbor Chris is a little unsteady on his feet so I thought it would be great for him to get in and out of his rig.  I checked it out right away. It was really nice but BIG. Here is a picture.

The steps didn't go with it. It was large and heavy. Really well-built. I rounded up Chris, he liked it so he then rounded up some help to move it. Luckily the guy getting rid of it had a trailer so eight of us walked it on to his trailer and he delivered it to Chris' lot. 

It had been built for a fifth wheel, which is taller than a trailer, so we had to cut the legs down in height. We also cut off the angled section you can see in the above picture because it stuck too far out on Chris' lot. We made new railings for the new shape. We then found a used set of steps at the park dump area and added those. Here is a picture of it all installed and in use. Chris and Marj are thrilled.

On Saturday the women on our street organized a potato bake. It was a warm, beautiful day. Several guys built a fire to cook the potatoes on and each rig brought a potato to bake and a topping to share. Our topping was Steak n Shake chili. It was a great time and we had plenty of room to social distance on an empty RV lot.  Here are some pictures. There were 34 in attendance in a huge circle all around the lot.

Our street, Audrey Street, is known throughout the park as the "party street". Almost all rigs on the street have one or more palm trees in front which we light up at night. It is cool.  Here is a picture of the street as I left the potato bake. Our rig is the first on the right. We had one palm tree and Kelly bought another.

For next week the women have organized an iron pie cook with folks bringing different ingredients to put in the iron pies.  Should be fun. The following week is Super Bowl Sunday so we will start earlier with a scrambled egg brunch. Every rig will bring scrambled eggs in a bag which are then boiled on the fire and served with toast. Should be fun as well.

I've been waiting all morning for tech support to call me back about a continuing issue with the new Dish receiver we bought since down here. She had me change a few settings and wait and see. I'm not optimistic.

77 degrees, sunny and breezy today. NICE. Sitting outside to do this blog.  

January 16, 2021 - Golf and Camper Repairs

On Wednesday I played in the park golf scramble in Tampa. Here is a picture of those of us lined up to tee off.

It was a gloomy day and about half way through it started sprinkling on us. I actually shot very well for me and our team came in four over par - totally out of the running for any prizes but we didn't care.

The last two days I have been working with a friend on my next door neighbor's camper. The camper sits here all year round so it is always a challenge to get everything working when they arrive to use it for the winter. Chris and Marj are from Michigan and the greatest people you ever want to meet. The first problem they encountered was a gas leak. I will get back to that because it is a long story.

The next problem we found was that the hot water heater was not working on electric. I assumed that the electric element was worn out but it seemed to check out OK with the meter. I took off the cover for the reset switches and found one had been burned through.  Here is a picture of the burned one.  I ordered a new one for $20.00. 

While the electric was off we discovered that the camper was not getting any power from the battery. If the electric was off all 12 volt was off as well. I pulled the cover off the converter and upon checking it with a meter found that it was putting out 14 volts, as it should. For some reason that power was not getting to the battery.

We traced the wires down and found the ground on the frame. The connection and the frame were both quite rusty. We could not get continuity (a circuit) between the converter ground wire and the frame.  We pierced the wire and could get continuity at a cleanly scraped spot on the frame. The connector was too corroded to make a good ground we broke it off and drilled a hole and put a new lug connector on.  Here is a picture of the new lug connector we installed. I have since painted it all black to protect it from quickly rusting.

Problem solved, the ground problem that is. We still had no current from the converter to the battery. We went back to the battery and started tracing the hot wire back and soon found a circuit breaker which was completely rusted and not allowing any current to go though. Here is a picture after we took it all apart.

The red arrow points to the circuit breaker. The green arrow points to the wires that connect at the circuit breaker. Upon touching the two wires together we had battery power to the RV. We headed to the auto parts store and to buy a new circuit breaker. The third auto parts store had what we needed. We installed it and now the converter is charging the battery. Problem solved.

Now back to the hot water heater and gas leak issue.  

Upon turning on the gas valve on the water heater it was acting a little squirrely. We checked the regulator and decided that it wasn't working correctly because the indicator was not popping up showing the gas was "on". Chris purchased a new regulator and a new crossover valve. We put them on and still no gas was getting into the system from the tanks. Upon further checking we found that both pigtails to the two LP tanks were bad. What are the chances of that?  Chris purchased two new hoses. We installed those and we finally had gas getting to the hot water heater. 

Chris did not think the water heater valve was shutting off properly because he used up a quarter of a tank of LP overnight and we could smell propane. He ordered a new gas valve. Unfortunately he ordered the wrong one and after getting it and then spending a day hunting around for fittings to make it work he gave up. I found the correct gas valve online for half the cost of the one he had ordered and ordered it. It came in two days and we put it on. It worked fine but we could still smell LP all the time. Unfortunately even with the new valve, the new regulator, and new gas tank pigtails, we still smelled gas. I sprayed soapy water on all the fittings, all hoses, and the black iron gas pipe running from the front to the back of the camper. No bubbles showing any leak. The LP gas smell continued to be bad. We knew this wasn't right. I decided to put my tank on his trailer to eliminate the possibility that his tank had a leak. We still  had a strong gas smell around the camper. He turned off the gas and we gave up for the day.

Yesterday morning we decided to do the "flame test" on the gas line with a BBQ lighter. I started at the tanks and put a flame on all the connections at the tanks and down to where the hose connected to the black gas pipe running to the connections in the rear of the camper. No leaks. I then crawled under the wheels to the spot where the black gas pipe connects to the furnace, the hot water heater, the refrigerator, and the stove. I ran the flame around all those connections and no leak. I moved forward slowly running the flame along the black gas pipe. I got two feet in front of the front wheel and "WHOOSH" a fireball two feet wide and six inches high blew up scarring the crap out of me. I yelled for Chris to get a fire extinguisher as I tried blowing out the flame. Luckily I was able to get it out before it melted anything. 

I FOUND THE LEAK.

Of course the black gas pipe leaking pipe is the worse case scenario. The entire pipe is extremely rusty and must be replaced. The guys here at the park have lots of tools but not really what is needed to replumb the entire threaded black pipe gas line of the trailer. Chris got on the phone and has two plumbers coming Monday to look at it.  It will be a costly repair but absolutely necessary.

Yesterday evening Chris's golf cart would not charge. I took apart the charger this morning and found that the reset switch was bad. I ordered a new one and we bypassed the switch so he could charge his cart until the new switch gets here. Another problem solved.

  

January 10, 2021 - Cold So Not Much Happening Here

 We've had a chilly week but today it is even colder.

Hopefully it will be warming up soon. It is too cold for us to sit out in the afternoon for a Happy Hour although our Michigan friends have not been deterred. I believe they are a little more cold weather hardy than these Perryville Missourians.

The furnace is set on 64 degrees and it kicked on at 5:00 a.m. this morning. We are getting a lot of use out of our electric fireplace when we are up. 

We've been dealing with Dish Network issues since we arrived. We updated our receiver to a Wally receiver upon arriving here so Kelly could record programs while watching other channels. This entailed having an external hard disk for storage. We transferred the hard drive that worked fine with the old receiver to the new one but it has not been working. After numerous phone calls to Dish over the last several weeks we were told the hard drive must be bad. We purchased a new one and the same problem.  We contacted the retailer for the Wally and were told that the hard drive we purchased will not work with the Dish receiver because it is not the right brand and it is too large. It has to be a certain hard drive. No one had ever mentioned that. So we ordered a disk drive from them. Hopefully if this does not solve the problem they will take all the equipment back and issue a refund. I say "hopefully" because I had been communicating with Dish and not with the retailer so the 30 day return policy expired by a few days. We now think it is the Wally receiver but won't know until the new hard drive arrives.  I'll keep you posted.

 

December 24th-28th, 2020 - Christmas Season

There isn't much room in a fifth wheel for a Christmas Tree or for lots of Christmas decorations. Kelly did a paint by number of Santa before we left home so we brought it along and hung it on the back window over the couch with some bell decorations hanging from the cabinet handles nearby.  Here is a picture.

A couple of years ago my sister, Renee, gave us a ceramic camper with a Christmas tree on top that twinkles. We put it on the couch under Santa for our Christmas Tree. Here is a picture.

Kelly's birthday wsas on December 23rd. As the week progressed birthday and Christmas presents began arriving from FedEx, UPS, and USPS. With little space to put them we piled them on the couch. Here is a picture.

Christmas Day we Zoomed with the kids as we all opened our presents. It was a nice way to be in touch with each other during this Covid period.

Our thirteen year old grandson, Kellen, wanted a new skate board for Christmas. We sent him the money so he could pick out what he wanted. They went to a skate board store in Stockton on the 26th and he picked one out. Here he is proudly displaying it for a picture outside the shop.

The next day he was riding it around the neighborhood and fell off resulting in a broken arm.  Here he is in a sling until they decide next week if he needs a cast. Fortunately it is not a bad break. War wounds of skate boarders. At least it is his left arm so he can still use his new gaming mouse with his right hand.

Several years ago I replaced a florescent light in the kitchen area of Marge with two LED work lights. I made a wooden box to mount the lights in and for mounting it to the ceiling.  Here is a picture.

I went to all of the trouble to make a custom box for these lights because they are work lights which I assumed would be tough and last a long time. WRONG. With probably less than 200 hours on them, they are starting to go out.  Here is a picture with one already having three of five lights out. So much for LEDs lasting 20,000 hours. What a joke.

Now the question becomes: "Should I buy a replacement light that fits my custom made wooden fixture or should I start over with a different kind of light that may be more dependable?" I haven't decided yet. I can't do anything until I get home where I have the proper tools for any replacement or modification. It just ticks me off that this stuff is so crappy no matter what price you pay. 

More RVers are beginning to arrive here now that it is after Christmas, even more will arrive after the 1st. I don't believe any of the Canadians will make it down due to the Covid restrictions which is keeping them from crossing the border.  We have no New Years plans other than a nice meal. Normally there is a really nice New Years Party here at the park but all of that has been cancelled this year. Hopefully next year will be a completely different situation for all of us.

Happy New Year!!!!!

December 15-16th, 2020 - Christmas Lights and Another RV Project

Tuesday I began working on removing the burgundy decals on Marge because they are faded and cracked. They make the rig look old. In just two hours I removed all of the decals on the driver side. I heated them up a little and peeled back a corner. Once I got my fingers on the corner they decals pulled off in various pieces with little effort. I was pumped. This was proving much easier than removing the gold decals a few years back. I then removed all the glue residue with a product I bought online that is awesome.  Here is a picture of the driver side with arrows pointing to where the burgundy decals were that I removed.

Last night we drove to a subdivision about seven miles away that puts on a massive Christmas light show. Virtually every house in the subdivision is lit up with thousands of lights. They started doing this 28 years ago to honor a good neighbor who needed hospice care. There is no charge to drive through, they just ask for a donation to the hospice. In that 28 year period of time they have raised over $970,000. I'm sure this year will put them over a million. What a tribute to a friend. It is quite a display and took 45 minutes to wind through the subdivision. So much to see. Here are a couple of pictures while on the move.

Each house was different and better than the next. A fun evening.

Yesterday I decided to tackle taking the burgundy decals off the passenger side of Marge. This side looked worse than the driver's side because it faces the sun at home all the time. Here are two before pictures.

You can only appreciate how bad the decals look with a couple of close up pictures. Here are two.

Removing the decals leaves a "shadow" because the gelcoat underneath is bright and shiny like new while the surrounding area is dulled and a little yellowed from fourteen years of weather. The "shadow" left behind is much less offensive to me than the old decals.

Upon starting the passenger side I quickly found that these decals were not going to peel off like they did on the other side. I did a section of about two feel in length with the heat gun and plastic scraper. It took well over two hours because the decal only came off an eighth inch at a time. A horribly slow process and painful on my feet up on the ladder. There had to be a better way.

I had brought along a decal eraser which is a round rubber wheel that chucks into a drill. It is used by autobody men to take decals, pinstriping, etc. off. I had it a long time but never used it because I was afraid the spinning might burn the gelcoat surface under the decal. It is not as tough and hard as automotive paint. After two hours with the heat gun and scraper I decided to give the rubber wheel a try. It worked fantastically but was a little slow. because the wheel is only a half inch wide and these decals are over a foot wide in some places and up to ten feet long. An added benefit of the wheel though was that when I was finished with the wheel there was very little glue residue remaining to be removed with solvent. 

Just as I finished it started raining. Here is a picture of the final result. The first picture has arrows pointing to the "shadow" from where I took off the gold decals a few years ago. 

The next picture has arrows pointing to the the "shadow" for the areas of the burgundy decals I removed yesterday. It stretched from the end of the slide out to the back cap. 

I am glad this project is completed. It's been bugging me for a while but it was not something to do in the hot sun in Missouri if I could avoid it. Nothing makes an RV look dated more than old. faded, cracked decals. The only decals left on Marge are the black decals on the bottom and the "Carriage" logo on each side. They are in good shape so I will leave them alone for now.

As I said above, just as I finished working the rain started. It rained all afternoon and into the evening. At one point Kelly's phone alerted. She was on a Zoom call and ignored it thinking it was a "silver alert", i.e. an old fart missing. As it turned out it was a tornado warning and one touched down and did some damage in an industrial area about two miles from us. From now on we are going to pay more attention to such warnings. The park does have a large block building we can go in an emergency and a large block clubhouse.  Let's hope we never have to go there. We have a Midland weather alert scanner but for whatever reason it won't work. Figures.

    

December 10-12, 2020 - New Palm Tree and Golf Cart Parade

Kelly ordered a new palm tree because our old one is now only lighting partially. I have no idea how old it is. It was pulled out of the dumpster about four years ago and given to us by a neighbor. Here is a picture of the new one, which is on the right. It is a totally different style than most on the street but is a nice touch with white lights in the greenery. I ordered a set of new green lights to fix the old one on the left just for the hell of it. It's worth spending $10.00 bucks on it.

At 6 pm Thursday night the park had a golf cart parade. Decorated golf carts and bikes wind through the park after dark lit up and Christmas music playing. We could just sit at our site with a cordial and watch it go by. People did a great job decorating their carts. The pictures in the dark as they drove by didn't come out but here are a couple as they lined up to begin.

Due to Covid and many residents not coming down to Florida it was a smaller parade than in years past.

Yesterday was an equipment upgrade day. We used Kelly's phone as a hotspot for the internet for a few days but it became pretty obvious that is is not adequate. Her hotspot is "unlimited" but due to the usage they notified her they were throttling her down. So much for "unlimited". We made a trip a half mile away to the Spectrum store and got a modem and router. I thought about bringing our router from home but didn't. I would have saved $5.00 per month. I'll bring it next year.  Here is a picture of the modem and router set up on the couch end table with the cable running through the seal in the slideout.  It is totally out of the way which is important in our small quarters.

The internet speed is great and there is good coverage outside the RV as well. 

We next turned to the update of our Dish receiver. The one we purchased down here about five years ago, with the addition of an external hard drive, would allow us to record shows but we couldn't record while watching. Kelly didn't like this shortcoming (She's used to the "Hopper" at home). Additionally the old receiver could not access the internet so we couldn't watch Netflix. Kelly found a half-price receiver deal so we ordered a new "Wally" receiver. It allows us to record and watch at the same time as well as get the internet. Here is a picture of it installed above the TV.

While we can now get the internet with the Wally, they didn't tell us that you have to buy a USB antenna for it to work with the router. No one mentioned that ever! Yesterday we ordered the antenna from Dish for $30.00 with shipping. Hopefully this will make everything work when it arrives. What a pain.

Our last technology project of the day was setting the Facebook Portal to the correct time zone and city for weather. When we got here it did not correct for the change in time zone and city. I got online and it said I had to do a factory reset. We did that but by doing so lost all of the contacts in "Messenger" so we have to put them all back in or call people on "WhatsApp". The kids are on "WhatsApp" but none of our friends.

We reset the time and city manually. The Portal is a nice piece of equipment for video calls. It has a camera that follows you around as you talk on a video call. It is much nicer than having to hold the phone for video calls. (Thanks to daughter Annie, who works at Facebook, for buying it for us). If you are on Facebook and do video calls with friends and kids and grandkids I strongly recommend you get one for about $120.00.

Kelly is making cookies today for the ladies "Red Hat" luncheon on Monday. Each lady is supposed to make cookies and put a few in a dozen sandwich bags to exchange with others. Their lunch will be a box lunch so no contact with anybody.  She enjoys the Red Hat Lady activities. Later on they are having a pulled pork dinner fundraiser and Kelly volunteered me to be a gopher picking up cooked pulled pork from various "cookers" around the park and bringing it to the clubhouse where they will make up box dinners for people to pick up outside. Everyone is being really cautious with Covid, which is good and necessary.

Up to 75 degrees and sunny today. Nice! We can't wait for the rest of our friends to arrive over the next few weeks.

 

December 7, 2020 - Doctor Visit, Hose Repair, and Signs Up

The day before we left home my left eye started hurting and was all red. All the way down it bothered me. We got here late Tuesday so on Wednesday morning I went to an Urgent Care to get it looked at.  This was my first urgent care visit ever and I found it a strange system. Walk-ins were welcome so I arrived at opening time of 8:30 a.m. I was told to check in using the kiosk. I did that and was then told my appointment was in four and a half hours. I voiced my incredulity at that so the nurse talked to the nurse practitioner and she said if I came back in 30-45 minutes they would squeeze me in between vaccinations. She gave me some anti-biotic cream to put in four times a day. I put it in and over the weekend it still wasn't any better so I decided to find an ophthalmologist. I found one and they got me in at 9:30 this morning. He said it wasn't infected but the cornea was all irritated. He gave me drops to put in every two hours and a salve at night. He wants to see me back in a month so he can dialate the eye. He was concerned about three bumps on the lower eyelid of that eye that I have had for about a year. He said I needed to see a specialist to see if it needed to be biopsied for skin cancer. I have an appointment in four weeks for that as well.

When I got back to the RV the package had been delivered with a new hose coupler. Here is a picture of the old coupler after I took it off. It was plastic. I'm not crazy about plastic coupler because they tend to crack over time.

I installed the new (brass) coupler and water squirted all the way across the lot to the camper next door. I turned off the water and found that the hose was cracked.  Here is a picture after I cut the bad part off.

It is easy to see the crack which I didn't even look for when installing the new coupler. I cut off this piece and reinstalled the hose. Here is a picture of the completed project with no leaks.

This should be a good repair for several years. This hose connects the RV to the water filter and water pressure regulator. We really need a water pressure regulator here because the water pressure at the spigot is insane.

A project yesterday was to hang all of our signs. We have several that go on the fifth wheel, including a new one I just got for a Jack Horner prize at Thanksgiving. (It is on the bottom.) Here is a picture.

The top sign my dad used when he went camping. When he died in 1984 I inherited it. It didn't seem fair to only have my name out there so I made the second one for Kelly. 

This year we have a separate sign I made to set out that states that masks and distancing are required at our campsite. It has a decal on each side that I put on a painted black board. Here is a picture.

It rained all night and it doesn't appear that the glue on the decal is fairing well with water. We will see how long it lasts. I may have to take it down when it rains - a pain but the sign is important.  Everywhere I have gone down here people wear masks. It is very good to see that. 

We ordered some groceries online at Publix and picked them up and we will continue to do that to stay away from people. They charge $4.00 for the service but it well worth it. Aldi does it as well.

Kelly got a new paint by number today and is already busy working on it while she listens to music.

We have been using Kelly's hotspot for internet and it has worked quite well but today she was notified that, although it is unlimited, at 6 more gig they are going to throttle her back. So much for unlimited. So I'm doing this blog from the campground clubhouse where the internet is fast and free. It's good exercise for me to ride my bike up here anyway.

The sun has come out and it is 63 degrees, light jack weather - nice.

December 4, 2020 - All Setup for Christmas

Yesterday was a sunny, warm and thus busy day. We laid down the mats which decrease the amount of sand we track into Marge. They also make it easier to blow off the leaves as they fall over the next month or so.  We also set up the Dish satellite. I always have a terrible time getting the dish pointed correctly. I absolutely hate this project every year but I am too cheap to buy an automatic dish. Two neighbors from across the street, John and Jack, were a great help. Once the dish is pointed correctly we have to call Dish Network and have them move the service to Florida (for an extra $7.00 per month) and reactivate the receiver. Here is a picture of our site with the mats down and dish installed.

The tan mat I pulled out of the dumpster here two years ago at the end of the season. There is nothing wrong with it, it is just a little stained so someone threw it away. The black mat in back is a mesh mat I bought at Harbor Freight two years ago. It is thin but works fine. The little blue mat is the one we usually have under the steps but since we have a concrete patio we don't need it there so I placed it forward.  You can see the sandy soil with grass sprouts around. 

We didn't bring the little refrigerator this year but we do have the portable icemaker set up on a table under the fifth wheel to keep it out of the rain. I need to clean it out before plugging it in. One of today's projects. 

In the picture you can also see our little palm tree. Most of the Audrey Street residents have a lighted palm tree. It is cool driving down the street at night. This one was pulled out of the dumpster by a neighbor about four years ago and given to us. It worked fine but this year about 1/2 of the lights are out. I will trash it before we leave, it isn't work trying to fix.

The plastic female hose connector on the hose to the water filter cracked yesterday. I went to Home Depot early this morning to get a replacement. I couldn't believe that they were sold out of the size I needed. I didn't feel like driving seven miles to the next closest hardware store to check so I will just use a longer hose until I can find a replacement fitting. 

We did online grocery shopping at Publix yesterday with pick up service. It worked out great. We now have all the groceries we need allowing us to just sit around and eat and drink!!!! I grilled chicken last night which was the first full meal we had since we left home. On the road we ate sandwiches and soup we made so we didn't have to go in anywhere.

The park is about half full. Many Americans are not coming down due to Covid and the Canadians cannot get across the border. Basically all park activities have been canceled due to Covid. They are still having a bonfire every other Friday but we will probably skip that as well. I don't get much out of a bonfire I have to sit ten or more feet away from. We also saw pictures of a lot of people at the last one without masks. We don't need that.

Kelly decorated for Christmas. She hung the Christmas bells, the Santa picture she painted, and we put out the lighted ceramic Christmas camper decoration Renee gave me.  Here are some pictures.