The difficulty factor.....

6:45 am - Thursday - June 20th - Ramona, CA - 60° F, 86% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the west by southwest......marine layer this morning.....slightly foggy.....with a forecast high of 75° F.....the view this morning......↴

After two days off work it is always difficult to get back into the swing of things on Wednesdays, and to add to the difficulty factor this Wednesday saw temps get into the low 80's after several successive days in the low to mid 70's.  My body is attempting to acclimate to the warming weather, but with temperature swings of 7-10 degrees, or more from day to day the difficulty factor increases exponentially for my almost 70 year old body.

After the heavy weekend use the pool was lightly used on Monday and Tuesday, so there was not much to do except fish a few pool toys out of the pool, and straighten the pool furniture.  Rich had a few projects for me to handle in the morning such as installing a new kitchen faucet in the cabin in site 64, install new door hardware on a door in the Red Barn, and hammer down nails on the deck of the owners cabin.  After taking care of those projects, and helping TLE freshen up the two restroom facilities, I finished the morning cleaning up the horseshoe pit area before meeting TLE at home for lunch.

By the time we returned at 1 pm we were into the heat of the day, and it was time for me to retrieve the hand blower and finish what I had started Sunday.....cleaning Oak Street on both sides of the island.  I had only finished about 1/2 of that area before it was quitting time Sunday.  It took about an hour to finish that, and then it was time for me to head up to Peppertree Street to clean it for the first time.  Peppertree is the highest point in the park.  There are only 7 sites on that street, and they are all 'Premium' sites meaning they have concrete patios, lots of shade, and a lot more privacy.  I think virtually all those sites are filled with monthly customers.  At any rate no one had cleaned that street since TLE and I have been here so I got to it.  It took me the better part of 2 hours to finish blowing the leaves, dust, and gravel off the length of Peppertree, and then it was 4 pm.....

......with the completion of Peppertree I have now cleaned all the streets within RORVR,  and now that they've all be cleaned thoroughly one time it should be easier to maintain them over the rest of the summer. 

The electricity will be turned off in the park this Friday (6/21) from 8 am to 3 pm, so I will need to hookup our Honda 2000 generator, which means I needed to fill up our 5 gallon gas can.  The odds are I have enough gasoline for 7 hours, but I've been meaning to fill it up anyway, so TLE and headed into town to do just that, plus TLE had forgotten to buy some bread when we were at the store Tuesday.

We were back by 5 pm, and settling into the evening.  We watched a recorded women's FIFA World Cup match between England and Japan, won by England 2-nil.  Frankly the game could have gone either way, but England took advantage of their scoring opportunities, and Japan did not.  Nevertheless, it was a very good match to watch.  We also watched 'The Amazing Race' live, closed the park facilities down at 9:30, and were in be a little after 10 pm.

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This and that.....

6:40 am - Wednesday - June 19th - Ramona, CA - 54° F, 97% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the west by northwest......sunny this morning with a forecast high of 79° F.....the view this morning......↴

On our non-work days we try to do something physical each day, and Tuesday we decided to take a walk together around the park.  TLE has this route she walks, when I am riding my bike, which covers about 1.25 miles, so that is what we walked......

.....I burned almost as many calories walking 1.25 miles as I did riding my bike for 3.6 miles on Monday, and in less time.....next time we'll do two loops!

We try to get out of the park at least one time per week, and Tuesday was that day this time around.  I spent about 30 minutes Tuesday before we went into town going through my two closets and my Rubbermaid storage bin pulling out items of clothing I had not been wearing.....mostly t-shirts, but there were also a couple of plaid shirts which did not make the cut.  By the time I was done I had a plastic trash bag full of clothing items to be donated back to the Goodwill.

We left RORVR around 11 am to make the 5 mile drive into Ramona where we had a number of errands to accomplish....

• visit several local stores looking looking for a few items.....Damprid, new sunscreens for our Newell windshield, butane to recharge our two lighters, and guy line adjusters.
• drop off my plastic bag of clothes at Goodwill
• have lunch at Rubio's......it's Taco Tuesday after all
• buy some groceries at Stater Brothers
• do some 'junking'

...we struck out on the Damprid, sunscreens, and guy line adjusters.....by the way, guy line adjusters look like this.....

.....we ultimately ordered those items from Amazon, and they will be delivered Wednesday.....there is it again....one day delivery for free!

We made it to Rubio's about 12:30 pm and split two original fish tacos.....

.....from there we walked over to Stater Brothers and did our shopping.  I had not given up on the butane to recharge our Olympian lighters, and stopped at a 'smoke shop' on our way home to see if they had what we needed, and they did.  It used to be you could get the aerosol butane almost anywhere.  I guess most people just buy the disposable lighters now, but we really like the Olympians.....

....we were back home by 2:30 pm, and setting up the outdoor TV to watch another women's FIFA World Cup match between Italy and Brazil, which was won by Brazil 1-0 on a very questionable penalty kick.  For the most part the officiating at this World Cup has been pretty good, but there have been a couple of matches where it was really subpar from beginning to end.  While the officiating in this match appeared to be pretty good, we were disappointed in the awarding of the penalty kick late in game.

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Workin' it out.....

8:12 am - Tuesday - June 18th - Ramona, CA - 58° F, 87% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the west.......sunny today with a forecast high of 77° F.....the view this morning.......↴

We slept until after 8 am Monday....not because we needed to, but because we could.  Nothing better in the world than lying in bed with TLE snuggling, cuddling, and giggling about this and that.....having no where in particular to go, and no where in particular to be....just the two of us, and nobody else.....😁

You may recall that a few months ago we were battling dampness in the closets behind our bed.  Once we got things dried out we hung a bag of 'Damprid' in each closet....below is the result......

......each bag was full of water, and it was time to replace them with new 'Damprid' bags....these things really work, and the closets are completely dry now!

Around 11 am I walked up to the trailer to putter around, and maybe get in a workout.  I'm kind of working back up to what I used to do, and I am making progress.  After my workout I would usually go out for a 15-20 mile bike ride, and that is the part that is taking a while.  Monday was my best day riding so far.....

.....I rode my Intense 5.5 for about 32 minutes covering 3.41 miles, and burning 252 caloric units.  I probably could have ridden longer, and further, but I'm going to obey my doctor and work up to longer distances slowly.  Before my heart attack 10 miles was about the shortest ride I wanted to do....I felt like I was barely warmed up at 10 miles.  I really miss those long bike rides.

After taking a shower, we set up the outdoor TV and watched a couple of women's FIFA World Cup matches, before being chased in by the cold air by 4 pm!  I know in a few weeks we will look back longingly on this cool weather when it becomes too hot to sit outside in the afternoon.

For dinner the amazing TLE made us Chicken Marsala.....I think the picture tells it all......

.....I literally licked the plate to get all of the Marsala sauce.  TLE's rendition of this amazing Italian dish is about as close to restaurant quality as one could get.....

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A kind of hush......

8:28 am - Monday - June 17th - Ramona, CA - 60° F, 90% humidity, wind 4  mph out of the west by southwest.......marine layer again today (YAY!) with a forecast high of 76° F......the view this morning.......↴

Sundays are like night and day compared to Saturdays.  A 'kind of hush' falls over RORVR.....all of the Saturday revelers are busy putting away all the stuff they brought in case they wanted to use it, but never did.  Within a few hours Sunday RORVR will be mostly deserted bearing little resemblance to Saturday RORVR.  There is no music, there are no 'corn hole' games in progress, and the pool area is deserted.......

......and a deserted pool area is just what I need Sunday morning.  Normally I would vacuum the pool Wednesday, or Thursday, but the heavy usage of the pool Saturday demanded a response Sunday morning.  Both the pool and Jacuzzi were a little cloudy first thing, and had PH's approaching 8.0, but by the time I finished adding water, vacuuming, adding chlorine and muriatic acid both had achieved beautiful clarity once again.  It took me until almost 11:30 am to finish my pool work, and then it was time for lunch.  

On Sunday's we take lunch at 11:30 am since we only work until 2 pm.  When we return from lunch at 12 pm we have another two hours left in our day.  For the last two hours I tended to the horseshoe pits putting them back in ready to use condition, blew the eucalyptus leaves off the mini golf holes one more time, checked the water tank level (added 1,000 gallons), and finished my day blowing leaves and gravel off Oak Street where it runs along the fishing pond.

We were home by 2:15 pm where I immediately deployed the outdoor TV so we could sit outside watching the USA women play Chile in their 2nd match of the Women's 2019 FIFA World Cup.  The USA won handily 3-0 (it was not that close), and except for exceptional goalkeeper play by Chile's Ender it would have been closer to 7, or 8 to nil.  After watching the USA match we settled in to watch the final 9 holes of the U.S. Open Championship which was won by Gary Woodland with a 13 under par score.....3 strokes ahead of Brooks Koepka.  Tiger finished at 2 under par for the tournament......he never really got it going.

We have now completed 7 weeks here at RORVR, and are really enjoying our summer home.  Our RORVR managers are the exact opposite of those for whom we worked last summer at Smuggler's Den, and I can not emphasize that difference enough.  It's one thing to enjoy the people you with whom you work, but if your managers are petty, unappreciative, and only critical it can make for a miserable experience.  Here we are treated like adults, allowed to take on tasks which we see need doing, and trusted to do our jobs.

So far the weather here in Ramona at 2,200' elevation is even more moderate than we expected, and the long May/June gloom season bodes well for a comfortable summer.  We do expect it to get into the high 90's, and even low 100's, but those occasions should be the exceptions this summer and not the rule.....we'll see, right?  The humidity, while sometimes in the 90's some mornings, quickly drops to somewhere in the 50-60's range by late morning.

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Crazy Saturdays......

6:46 am - Sunday - June 16th - Ramona, CA - 58° F, 90% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the northwest.....foggy again this morning with a forecast high of 78° F.....the view this morning......↴

As one might imagine Saturdays are the busiest, and craziest days during the summer in an RV park.  Friday has its own craziness, but by Saturday mornings all our customers have arrived, and are in full weekend mode attempting to cram as much 'fun' into a short weekend as is humanly possible.  Saturday, June 15th, was by far our busiest day so far this summer.  The pool was being utilized in a big way......

Within a hour of this picture it was even more crowded!

.....pretty much everywhere you looked there were kids and adults on bicycles, skateboards, battery powered cars....there were a dozen'corn hole' games in full swing, with the horseshoe, mini golf, tetherball, volleyball, shuffleboard facilities all being fully utilized.  The sounds of music are everywhere you go.  At the pool there were the sounds of no less than 5 different music genres wafting over the continuously roiled waters.

After doing my 'opening' thing I settled into the day installing new locks around the park to reduce the number of keys we need to lock and unlock doors.  By 3 pm I had reduced the number of keys needed by 3.  Now one key opens all the bathroom storage areas, the pool pump house, the supply building, and eventually the Red Barn attic.....we had an issue programming one of the new locks to accept the new key.  

I spent part of the last hour vacuuming out the supply building now that I am pretty much done reorganizing it, and then blowing the eucalyptus leaves off the mini golf holes for the third time Saturday.  It seems that just the slightest breeze sends the leaves cascading down to earth literally forming a blanket of vegetable matter on the astro turf for each hole.

On Saturdays in an RV park I always find myself looking forward to Sundays when the large, unseen vacuum sucks all the workaday folks back to their workaday lives, and the park returns to its quiet, sleepy, empty self once again.

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the U.S. Open Championship at Pebble Beach.  We had all the windows open, as well as the screen door while enjoying the gentle afternoon breeze...a nice end to a hectic day.....thanks for stopping by!

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Split shift.....

6:45 am - Saturday - June 15th - Ramona, CA - 59° F, 81% humidity, wind 3  mph out of the southwest......marine layer once again this morning.....should burn off by 10 am.  Forecast high is 79° F.....view this morning.......↴

After working the late shift for a few Friday's I decided I would prefer to start work on Friday's at 9 am, work until 2 pm for 5 hours total, then return at 5 pm for my final two hours to help TLE close down the office.  Rich agreed as it is only TLE that needs to come in at 12:30 pm.  I just need to be there the final two hours when TLE and I are the only ones on duty.....perfect!

I performed my usual opening shtick finishing at the pool to do the chlorine and PH tests, add a little chlorine to the spa and pool, and clean the skimmers.  Once that was done I returned to the tool shed to pick up the pressurized weed killer backpack dispenser, a trash can, and the Stihl hand blower.  I had noticed some weeds beginning to emerge again in the playground area next to the pool, and around the Red Barn, as well as some leaves which needed to be blown off the artificial turf in both locations.  I mixed up four gallons of the weed killer, and ended up using all four gallons.  By the time my lunch break rolled around I had finished treating both locations with the weed killer, and blown the artificial turf clean once again.

Just as I was finishing lunch I got a call on the 2-way radio from Rich asking me to go to site  81 to help the customer there with an electrical issue.  They were tenting there, and were attempting to use the 20 amp receptacle to pump up their air bed, but the breaker kept popping.  I felt it was the breaker that was at fault.  Rich came by and after a few more tests concurred, so we headed over to the supply building to pick up a new 20 amp breaker to install.  Within 20 minutes we had installed the breaker, and everything worked as it should once again.

As I was heading back to the Newell to pick up a new pair of gloves I was stopped by one of our full time tenants who was having difficulty stowing the patio awning on her Class C motorhome.  It took about 10 minutes to figure out what was wrong, and get it stowed.  I finished the first part of my workday blowing those rascally eucalyptus leaves off the mini golf course for the 3rd time in three days, and no doubt I will have to do it again Saturday.

The three hour break between 2 pm and 5 pm was a time of rest, and watching day two of the U.S. Open Championship, plus a nap, or two.  I reported back to work at 5 pm, and began by puttering around in the tool shed cleaning, straightening, and vacuuming a week's worth of sawdust, grinding dust, pipe threading, and then proceeded to do the same in the supply building.  Once that was done I transported 3 trash cans of accumulated trash from the two buildings to the dumpster.

For rest of my shift I made runs to the pool area to see how things were going there (the chlorine levels were doing fine), and to the barn to tidy up the horseshoe pit area.  We are at about 90% of capacity this weekend.....not bad for a non-holiday weekend!  7 pm came pretty quickly, and soon TLE and I were headed home for the evening, save for the closing we do 4 nights a week at 9:30 pm.  

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Monthiversary.....

6:32 am - Friday - June 14th - Ramona, CA - 57° F, 87% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the south by southwest.....foggy this morning with a forecast high today of 75° F.....the view this morning......↴

Hell of a marine layer this morning!

The forecast high for Thursday was 80° F, but I don't think it got above 78....there was coolness in the air all day, and after our 5 day heatwave it was a welcome relief.  After doing my opening rounds I settled in at the pool to do the tests, clean the pump filters and repair the pool vacuum hose fitting......

The fitting with the crack....the tape really didn't help at all!

I had to cut off the old fitting to screw on the new one

Easy peasy......

.....these fittings just screw on to the hose (they are reverse threaded), but the old one would not unscrew so I just cut it off and screwed on the new one.  Once the pool was done I headed down to the tool shed to retrieve the hand blower, a square point shovel, a rake, and a broom to take to the Red Barn.  After the wind last Sunday there was debris covering the artificial turf, and I needed the blower to clear everything away.  The shovel, rake and broom were for the horseshoe pit area specifically, and the shovel was also for the road down by the mini golf which had a layer of silt still remaining from our last rain....it's too thick to blow away, so I needed to shovel most of it, before finishing with the blower.  All of that took me up to lunch time.

After lunch I returned the shovel, rake and broom to the tool shed and retrieved a string trimmer to trim some weeds and grass down by the fishing lake.  I did a lot of trimming there, along the fence up near our site, weeds around our site, the grass in front the of the restroom across from us, as well as the big hill behind it.  I finished at the mini gold trimming weeds around the 9 holes, then blowing the weed debris and leaves off each hole.  By the time all that was finished it was almost 4 pm, and time to return the Stihl tools to the tool shed, and call it a day.  TLE works to 5 pm on Thursdays, so I headed home with my 2-way radio in case she needed any help between 4 and 5 pm.

After taking rather long hot shower I settled in to watch the men's U.S. Open Golf Championship being held at Pebble Beach this year (near Carmel, CA).  By the end of the day there were five players tied at 5 under par....Tiger finished at 1 under par, just 4 strokes back.....a good opening round for him.

After TLE returned home from work we watched a couple of recorded women's FIFA World Cup matches (Australia vs. Brazil.....won by Australia 3-2 after being down 2-0, and South Africa vs. China....won by China 1-0).  We finished the evening watching 'Alone', and a recorded 'Masterchef' from the night before.

Thursday also marked one month exactly since my 'cardiac event'.  I'm feeling really well, and find myself recovering much more quickly after working all day.  I have to keep reminding myself to take breaks, and not push too hard even though I feel so good.  My only real Kryptonite seems to be heat, as it always has been.  I'm hoping I will begin to acclimate to the warmer temperatures over the next month.

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