Let's begin the 'LONG' weekend.....

7:47 am - Tuesday - June 23rd - LPG&RVR - 69° F, humidity 28%, cloud cover 3%, wind 13 mph out of the west......crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 90° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were near Spearfish, SD....

....hiking up to Lookout Mountain with David and Denise Zonker, goof friends we met through the Newell users group.

What can I say?  The first day of our four day weekend is always special.  We completely disengage from our workaday life here at LPG&RVR, and just relax.  I rarely, if ever, leave our site on the first day of or long weekend, and this 1st day was no different.  I did a few things around our site, then we turned on the first FIFA World Cup match of the day between Argentina (defending World Cup champs) and Austria.  We expected a competitive game, and that is what we got.  In the end, however, Argentina prevailed 2-0 on two Lionel Messi goals, his fourth and fifth goals of this current World Cup.  I spent the 2nd half of the match in my anti gravity recliner on the 'lido deck' smoking a cigar, and napping.  

Now, to my credit, I did dump and flush our black tank before I even composed yesterday's missive, so I wasn't a total slacker....just a 90% slacker...lol!  Even though the day's high was 90° F, there were balmy breezes flowing through the 'lido deck' most of the day, which lessened the impact of the mid afternoon heat.  I was out there until almost 3 pm before the heat convinced me to choose the cool confines of the air conditioned Newell over the less cool confines of the 'lido deck'.

We had pizza for dinner Sunday night.....pizza from the Clubhouse restaurant.....and might I add further, anchovy pizza.  Sunnie makes the best thin crust pizza!  Anyway, I said that to say this....we had reheated anchovy pizza for dinner Monday night.  I'm kind of on the fence about reheated pizza....I really prefer cold pizza to reheated pizza, but I went along with TLE's desires on this evening, and it was pretty good.....not as good as Sunday night's, but pretty good, nevertheless.

The mosquitoes are still not very bad just 12 days before the 4th of July weekend, which is noteworthy, because they are usually getting bad by now.  I didn't get any mosquito bites during my multi hour sojourn on the 'lido deck'.

Thanks for stopping by!

Fathers Day.....

8:26 am - Monday - June 22nd - LPG&RVR - 68° F, humidity 20%, cloud cover 7%, wind 9 mph out of the northwest....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies this morning with a forecast high of 90° F.  On this date in 2014 TLE was making breakfast on the 'lido deck' in Tahoe Valley Campground.....

....while we watched the FIFA World Cup on TV in South Lake Tahoe, CA, and today in LPG&RVR we'll be watching FIFA World Cup soccer on our 'lido deck' TV....same stuff, just 12 years later.

Sunday was Fathers Day.  I always look forward to hearing from my kids on Fathers Day, and wishing my two sons, and two sons-in-law happy Father's Day.  This will be my 55th Father's Day in that capacity.  TLE and I had 5 children together....2 boys and 3 girls.  There has never been a day since our first child, Chris, was born that I have regretted having children.  Having children has a deeply positive effect on one's life.  When a man gets married, and has children he is no loner making decisions for himself, and every decision he makes affects 3 or more people depending on how many children you have.  In my case every decision I made affected 7 people.  That is a lot of responsibility.  You no longer live solely for yourself, but for something bigger than yourself.  As I look back over the 55 years of family life I am sobered by how well our children are doing raising families of their own, being apart of a community, working good jobs, etc. I see the values we instilled in each child being manifested daily. We now have 10 grandchildren, and a very, very soon to be 3rd great grandchild.  While we are at the end of adding grandchildren, the number of great grandchildren will continue to grow as our grandchildren mature, find mates, and raise families.  In a couple of weeks TLE and I will fly south to SOCAL to visit our kids, grandkids, and great grandkids.  The obligatory pictures will taken of our large extended family, and we will look at those pictures and think "except for TLE and I finding each other no one in those pictures would exist in that family context"....that is very sobering.  Intact families with a mother and a father, and several children are the bedrock of our civilization.  Please do not interpret this as a political, or religious statement....it is not.  It is simply a strong opinion forged over 5+ decades of living life as a father who is still married to the the mother of his children.  While my opinion may be considered anecdotal I believe it is representative of the hundreds of thousands of families just like ours which are also thriving, and building the next generation.

The day began slowly, but by the end we had rented 25 golf carts.  Other than taking care of staging golf carts, and then washing/stowing them I spent time moving sprinklers down at the 'Night Office', and the large grass area in the middle of the parking lot by the Clubhouse.  The grass by the Clubhouse does have automatic sprinklers, but there are spots that get too dry, and need an extra dose of water during the week.   This is due, primarily, to the several juniper trees in middle of the grass area.  Juniper trees require an inordinate amount of water to live, and tend to deprive every other green thing around them of the necessary water to sustain life.  The 'Night Office' grass is a different story....there are NO automatic sprinklers down there, so all watering is done manually, but there are no juniper trees competing for the water.

On the US Open front only three players finished under par....all the rest were even, or over par.  Wyndham Clark began the day at 7 under par, 6 strokes ahead of the nearest competitor, but as the day progressed the lead narrowed to just one as he finished 3 over par for the final round, however, he hung on to win with a four under par final score.  Sam Burns finished second at 3 under par.  Scottie Scheffler finished in fourth place at even par.

I was off work by 3:30 pm, and thus began our next four day 'weekend'.  I returned to the Clubhouse at 5 pm to give TLE a ride home.  As is almost always the case the four work days passed by quickly, and we begin the work of making the next four days pass as slowly as is humanly possible....lol.

Thanks for stopping by!

Saturday in the park.....

 5:56 am - Sunday - June 21st - LPG&RVR - 49° F, humidity 39%, cloud cover 6%, wind 9 mph out of the northwest......crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 86° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I were in Bar Harbor, ME.....

Left to right: Moi, TLE, Stephanie (Hilary's daughter), Bob and Hilary

.....having an alfresco dinner at the Bar Harbor Inn with my sister and her family.

After the rain on Friday, Saturday gave us partly cloudy skies, and temps edging back into the 80's.  I don't normally do any mowing on the weekend, but I was behind due to the rain on Friday, so after staging 10 golf carts I headed out to the course on the 2 bag Husqvarna  to mow around those tee boxes for which I am responsible.  I began with #10, then made a 10 minute drive out to the #3 tee boxes to mow around the pond sides of each tee box, then over to the #16 tee boxes, and finally the #18 tee boxes.  I was back to the Clubhouse a little after 11 am. 

I took about 30 minutes to lube both Husqvarna's, and use compressed air to clear each mowing deck of grass residue, then it was time to give TLE her lunch break.  I answered quite a few phone calls, and checked in a couple of customers to the RV park, and sent out two people to play golf, and with that 90 minutes had passed.

I was done mowing for the day, so headed down to the 'Night Office' to set a few sprinklers to run until 5 pm, and did the same at the large parking lot grass area.  After that I began washing golf carts as they returned, while making periodic trips down to the 'Night Office' to move sprinklers around.  We had about 17 golf carts rented Saturday, and 10 of them had returned by my 3:30 pm quitting time.  

I was signed up for the weekly putting contest to I headed for home to take a quick shower, change clothes and head back to the Clubhouse in time for the 4 pm starting time....

Sitting with good friend Greg Plumlee and his gransdson, Tyson

....I hadn't had a putter in my hand for over two weeks, so I had no idea what to expect, but I surprised myself making it to the 4th round, and the final four (the last round before the final) where I lost to DeWayne Matthews, good friend, fire chief, and rough mower.  I putted about as good as I have putted this year, but DeWayne was hot right off the bat getting a hole in one on the first hole.

Thanks for stopping by!

A 20° drop overnight.....

 6:04 am - Saturday - June 20th - LPG&RVR - 53° F, humidity 66%, cloud cover 18%, wind 11 mph out of the west by southwest.....partially cloudy today with a forecast high of 80° F.  On this date sometime in June of 1971 TLE and I were at Manhattan Beach......

....we went to Manhattan Beach every Sunday that summer....we were married August 29th, 1971.

The weather guessers felt we would have rain Friday morning sometime, and as we drove to the Clubhouse to begin our work day it felt, and looked like rain, but you just never know, however, on this day they guessed right.  I had barely staged the first 5 golf carts when it began to sprinkle, which turned into rain, and then into a downpour.  We were not expecting that.  It wasn't until 10 am that we tentatively sent our first golfers out on the course.

Once we knew it was not going to rain anymore I staged 5 more carts, then headed with Claude down to the back in sites along the meadow to trim all 10 sites, as well as along the cart path.  It took us the better part of an hour to trim everything....without Claude it would have taken me until after lunch to get it all done.

I then turned to cleaning the 1/2 bucket of balls I harvested from the driving range Thursday, and by the time I finished it was time for TLE's lunch break.  The 90 minute lunch break was pretty laid back....a few phone calls, and a twosome to play golf.  After lunch I headed back down to the back in sites to mow them, which didn't take that long.  By 2 pm I was finished, and returning to the Clubhouse to begin washing carts.  In all we rented just 10 carts Friday.

After a very hot Thursday (96° F) the temp dropped 20° overnight, which made for a very pleasant work day.  On the FIFA World Cup side of things the USA  won their second match 2-0 over Australia to mark the first time in their World Cup history to win 2 consecutive games.  They are guaranteed to advance out of their pool (D) into the 'knockout round', which means if they lose they will be finished with the tournament.....kind of like 'sudden death'.  For now they have one more 'pool' game before the knockout round.

I was home by 3:30 pm taking a long, hot shower, then a nap before returning to the Clubhouse at 5 pm to retrieve TLE.....thanks for stopping by!

Higher than high.....

 5:54 am - Friday - June 19th - LPG&RVR - 63° F, humidity 52%, cloud cover 79%, wind 9 mph out of the west by northwest.....cloudy skies this morning with a forecast high of 77° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were taking our first tour of Yellowstone National Park.....

....here we are near the Roosevelt Arch at the North Entrance to YNP.

Our first day of our four day work 'week' was hot, hot, hot!  The forecast high was 91° F, but it got closer to 96° F.  I'm barely getting used to temps in the high 80's on work days, and I was not ready for 96° F physically, or mentally.  There weren't many folks signed up for golf Thursday, and ultimately we rented 13 carts.  After staging the first 10 I headed out to the driving range to clear it of range balls.....Monday's and Thursday's we mow the driving range.  Usually I don't clear it that early (9:30 am), but it was going to be hot, and I wanted to be done well before lunch time.  In all I garnered about 2.5 gallons of balls, which is not much, but I was able to clear the range in about 45 minutes....nice!

After that I had planned to mow the employee sites, and I eventually did, but Claude needed help repairing his Husqvarna string trimmer.  Three of the screws which attach a plastic guard to the bottom of the motor had stripped out the holes in the aluminum casting so they needed to be re-tapped.  I have both metric and SAE tap and die kits.  The screws being used are metric, but the holes into which they are inserted were virtually threadless, so we needed to use a larger tap to rethread the holes, meaning we needed slightly larger screws.  We found some suitable screws (SAE) matched them to the proper tap (12/24's), then rethreaded the holes.  The new, larger diameter SAE screws worked perfectly.  We used a little Loctite on the screws to keep them from vibrating loose again.  In all it took about 35 minutes to effect the repair, but we were successful.

Claude was going to trim around the employee sites so I could mow, but since his trimmer was out of use for a few hours to allow the Loctite to dry sufficiently, I used another trimmer to get the job done finishing just a few minutes before TLE's lunch break.  Right now she is beginning her lunch break at 11:30 am each day, and returning at 1 pm....that give me 2.5 hours to get everything done in the afternoon which needs doing.  First up was to mow the employee sites, which I finished in about 30 minutes, then it was time to begin washing/stowing the 13 carts we had rented.  There were 8 to begin with, and as I continued washing and stowing the rest arrived.

I was moving pretty slowly due to the heat, and taking frequent water breaks to get out of the sun.  By the time I finished stowing the final cart I was beat, and it was 3:30 pm, so I headed for home to take a coolish shower before retiring to my recliner for a nap before returning to the Clubhouse at 5 pm to pickup TLE.  As I write this morning I am still feeling the effects of the heat on Thursday, bur delighting in the fact that today the temp will only be 77° F.

Thanks for stopping by!

Typical....

 5:56 am - Thursday - June 18th - LPG&RVR - 54° F, humidity 27%, cloud cover 48%, wind 9 mph out of the west by southwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 92° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were in Yellowstone National Park.....

Standing by the 45th Parallel sign on the Gardiner River

Same location three years earlier - 2017

....standing by the 45th Parallel sign along the Gardiner River near the North Entrance....cold, and rainy in 2020, and hot, hot, hot in 2017.

Once again we slept until after 7 am.  It was to be another low 90's day, and there was no reason to begin the day any earlier.  It was also another day in which I did not leave our site (#55) all day long.  TLE did twice, but not moi.  We began the day watching FIFA World Cup soccer, and ended the day watching FIFA World Cup soccer.....aka: Football in the rest of the world.  There was only one draw (tie) out of the four matches, with all the other matches having winners.

On the international front the war with Iran has come to a conclusion, and the price of oil is falling like a brick down from $110/barrel in late May to $75/barrel on Wednesday, so fuel prices for our trip back south in October should be back in the normal range by that time.  It cost us over $800 in diesel to make the trip back to Likely in late April, but should only cost us in the neighborhood of $400 in October for the trip south.

Other than that it was a typical day four of our four day weekend.  One notable thing is in spite of the warm weather the mosquitoes are not too bad.  I think I got one mosquito bite in the last four days sitting on the 'lido deck' watching World Cup soccer.  No doubt they will get worse in the next two weeks as we head into the 4th of July weekend.  Time to get ready for the first of four days of work....thanks for stopping by!

The Rubio's itch.....

 7:46 am - Wednesday - June 17th - LPG&RVR - 67° F, humidity 19%, cloud cover 9%, wind 10 mph out of the north by northwest.....clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 92° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were dry camped at La Duke Springs Campground on the banks of the Yellowstone River....

The Yellowstone River is in the background

.....and frolicking in Yellowstone Hot Springs.  The hot springs were a 2 minute walk from the campground.  You can see Claude's Wanderlodge to the right of our Newell.

For the 3rd consecutive day we slept until after 7 am....just because we can.  Tuesday promised to be the hottest day of the week if the forecast high of 95° F was realized.  We left for our weekly shopping run around 10:15 am arriving in Alturas around 10:45 am at the ACE Hardware to buy a couple of things, then over to Dollar General to buy a few more things, and finally Holiday Market to do the main shopping.  I'm not sure if I mentioned it previously, but Holiday Market is an employee owned chain of grocery stores numbering around 21 as I write.  Their area of operation is Northern California.  There are three grocery stores in Alturas (four if you count Dollar General, but I don't), but we prefer to do the bulk of our grocery shopping at Holiday Market as they have the largest selection, and are always well stocked.

On our way out of town we stopped at Rubio's Taqueria, the go to place for street tacos in Alturas.  Their street tacos, in our never to be humble opinion, are in the top two or three we have had anywhere in the lower 48 contiguous states.  TLE ordered two of their pollo street tacos (chicken), and I three of their carne asada street tacos with rice and beans.  Once we had secured our orders we headed over to the city park next to eat them at one of the shaded picnic tables.....

Do we look like were are in the middle of our 77th trip 

around the sun?  I think not!

....it is truly the simple things in life which make life good.....a shaded picnic table, Rubio's street tacos, and The Lovely Elaine at your side.  As we sat there savoring every single bite we talked about this and that as we always do, occasionally commenting on how perfectly seasoned those street tacos are, and how fresh everything tasted....nothing out of bottles, or cans except for  the Dr. Pepper and bottle of water....lol.

Around 11:30 am, with our Rubio's street taco itch suitably scratched, we headed back to LPG&RVR to stow our purchases and spend the balance of the day watching World Cup matches, all of which were very entertaining.  France, Norway, Austria and Argentina won their matches handily.  Messi (Argentina - the defending World Cup champions) had a hat trick in the match with Algeria, which were all the goals Argentina scored on this day, so Argentina is off to a good start defending their championship.  The final match between Austria and Jordan ended around 11 pm, and we were heading to slumberland shortely thereafter.

Thanks for stopping by!