Unexpected rain.....

 6:06 am - Sunday - June 28th - LPG&RVR - 40° F, humidity 49%, cloud cover 34%, wind 9 mph out of the north by northwest.....cloudy this morning with a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were working the 'CLOSE' shift at the General Store.....

....in Yellowstone NP at Mammoth Hot Springs....the General Store is right next to the hot springs.

There was NO rain in the forecast for Saturday, but that is what we got for the second day in a row....

.....as a result we did not send any golfers out until 9 am when the rain stopped.  After that we put out 25 golf carts.  Just like Friday, I put them out 1, or 2 at a time just in case it began raining again.  Once there was a lull in customer traffic I took a broom and spent about 30 minutes brushing the cobwebs off the wood roof structure on the Clubhouse deck.  That was the easy part.  Then I had to clean off the dining tables, and then sweep the entire deck.

I neglected to mention that I had 13 golf carts to wash/stow left over from Friday, so in between staging golf carts I washed, and stowed those 13 carts.  That took me most of the morning, but I got them done.  Over the course of the morning/afternoon many of them were staged again as golfers continued to come out of the wood work.

By 3:30 pm I had washed/stowed around 13 returning carts, so I'll have a bunch to wash again Sunday morning.  I headed home to change for the weekly putting contest, and was back about 3:55 pm.  I did not put well Saturday, but I managed to last through 4 rounds before being ousted.  As always, we all had a great time.

Thanks for stopping by!

Rain day.....

 6:22 am - Saturday - June 27th - LPG&RVR - 47° F, humidity 61%, cloud cover 79%, wind 15 mph out of the northwest.....heavy cloud cover with rain this morning, and a forecast high of 63° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in Keystone, SD.....

....with Tom and Darlene McCloud having ice cream....Keystone is where Mt. Rushmore is.

We were expecting no rain until late afternoon Friday, however, it began the minute we headed over to the Clubhouse to begin our workday, and continued until after 10 am.  A number of folks decided to play in the rain, but most waited for the rain to stop.  By early afternoon we had rented 20 golf carts, but that meant they would be coming back late, and sure enough at 3:30 pm only 11 had returned, meaning I'll have 9 to wash first thing Saturday.

During the day we received noticed from Rochelle, my daughter-in-law that their son, Chris,  and his significant other, Zoey, had had their baby......Lacy May....

....she came in at 10 pounds 5 ounces (!!).....already crawling...no, not really...and 20 inches in length.  Zoey is not a big woman, so this baby was delivered by C Section.  She is already wearing diapers for a 1 month old baby.  Anyway, our third great grand child is here safe and sound, and surrounded by love.

Since it had rained so hard until mid morning there was really no mowing, or trimming to be done until things dry out a little, so I hung around the Clubhouse staging one, or two carts at a time as customers paid for golf.  At that point we weren't sure if the rain was over so no point in pulling out a lot of carts only to get them wet, and have to them away again.

The clouds eventually parted around noon time allowing the sun to begin to dry things out, and that is when most of the golfers went out to play golf.  I was home by 3:30 pm, returning to the Clubhouse just before 5 pm to give TLE a ride home.  It began raining again around midnight, and continues until now.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cooling down....

 5:51 am - Friday - June 26th - LPG&RVR - 60° F, humidity 48%, cloud cover 56% (looks higher than that), wind 17 mph out of the west....cloudy today with a forecast high of 72° F.....rain in the forecast for this evening.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were in Yellowstone National Park....

....getting ready to begin our jobs at the General Store in Mammoth Hot Springs in a couple of days....here we are on a bridge over the Gardiner River.

After not doing much the past couple of days I got ambitious Thursday.  I haven't washed the Beetle in a few weeks, so while it was still cool, I headed outside to do just that.  It took me a good 15 minutes just to clean all of the bugs off the front of the car.  The only thing that works when it gets that bad is one of those 'Magic Erasers'.....

That black grill just below the license plate was chock full of deceased flying insects

.....by the time I finished it was getting warm, but I wasn't done yet.  There have been some nasty hardwater stains in the shower for a long time now, and nothing I've tried would make a dent in them, so I took the same 'Magic Eraser' I used on the VW and went to work in those stains (I've even tried CLR, but it didn't work either).  Much to my dismay, the 'Magic Eraser' did not have the desired effect on those stains.  Next I retrieved a pretty course 'Scotch Brite' from the trailer, and then used it in conjunction with 'Bar Keepers Friend' and that worked....

....it took a lot of 'elbow grease', and about 30 minutes to finally get rid of those hard water stains....that tub hasn't looked that good in a few years, and now I know how to get rid of them.

That was pretty much it work wise for me Thursday.  The weather was warm, and sultry, and not at all comfortable on the 'lido deck' so I spent the balance of the day inside reading, and watching FIFA World Cup soccer.  There were two upsets Thursday.  Germany lost to Equador 2-0, and the USA lost 3-2 to Turkey (I'm sorry, I'm not going to use their new, preferred spelling and pronunciation).  To be fair, the USA and Germany had already 'advanced' to the knock out round, and the USA was playing 9 new players who had not yet played in this World Cup.  The game was tied 2-2 with about 60 seconds to go in 'added time' when Turkey scored the winning goal.

It did cool down to just 85° F Thursday, then on Friday the temp will drop into the very low 70's, and by Saturday we'll see 60° F, and rain if the weather guessers are correct.

For dinner I grilled a couple of filet mignon medallions, to which TLE added a side salad, and a baked potato....delicious!  Time to get ready for the first day of or four day work week (Friday through Monday this time).

Thanks for stopping by!

To the shops.....

 7:40 am - Thursday - June 25th - LPG&RVR - 66° F, humidity 29%, cloud cover 39%, wind 14 mph out of the west by northwest....partly cloudy this morning with a forecast high of 85° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were in Keystone, SD.....

....courtesy parking near Mt. Rushmore, which you can see in the background.

We needed to make a run into Alturas for our weekly shopping foray, so we designated Wednesday as that day.  We were on the road before 10 am, and in downtown Alturas by 10:20 am.  We had done a pretty big shopping last week, so we made just two shopping stops....Grocery Outlet, and Holiday Market.  TLE found a nice salmon steak on Grocery Outlet which we ended up grilling that evening.  The rest of the shopping was pretty routine, and by a little after 11 am we were heading back down Main Street toward home.  We made another quick stop at 'Java Doc' to acquire a large Mocha Frappuccino for moi....

....they are strictly a drive through affair, which is fine.  I should have taken a picture of the 'large' Mocha Frappuccino....it is enormous, and lasted me all the way home, and another hour after we arrived....life is good!

We were home at exactly 12 noon, and within minutes had all three TV's (salon, outdoor and trailer) tuned into the latest FIFA World Cup matches...yes I said matches.  There were two matches in each of the three timeslots Wednesday....12 pm, 3 pm and 6 pm, so we had double the viewing pleasure.  There were no big surprises Wednesday....the teams we thought would advance to the 'knock out round' with victories, or ties did just that.

I spent most of the afternoon on the 'lido deck' until almost 4 pm before succumbing to the rising heat, and retreating indoors for the balance of the afternoon.  Here in Modoc County at over 5,000' elevation the heat of the day does not arrive until 4, or 5 pm each day, and begins to dissipate pretty quickly after that.  Usually, within a couple of hours it is back into the 70's, so we've got that going for us.

It appears we have another cooling trend arriving tomorrow, Friday, which will see temps dip into the 60's and 70's for the next week plus, only getting back into the 80's after the 4th of July....nice.  In fact we may have rain again  beginning Friday night through Saturday afternoon.

Thanks for stopping by!

Annual service.....

 8:30 am - Wednesday - June 24th - LPG&RVR - 71° F, humidity 25%, cloud cover 75%, wind 13 mph out of the northwest.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies this morning with a forecast high of 87° F, down from 90° F yesterday.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were visiting Devil's Tower.....

.....in Wyoming.  One of those ubiquitous bucket list items, right?

Something I have not done for over a year is service our two 44 year old A/C units.  That they still work, and work well, is remarkable to me, hence I am remarking.  A service basically consists of removing the filters, cleaning them, and then vacuuming the condenser coils free of lint buildup.  Considering it has been over 12 months they looked pretty clean, but that is the reason we use filters, right?  98% of the time we can only run one unit at a time as it just gets too cold.....

The front A/C....Rotary Duo-Therm Sunchaser XL

These units are no longer in production

....the only time we run both at one time is when it is over 100° F, and then only for an hour, or two during the heat of the day.  Typically, just running the rear A/C unit keeps the salon at a comfortable 76° F.  To be sure they both get exercise on a regular basis TLE will turn on the front A/C when she takes her lunch break on days we work, and it will run for 3, or 4 hours until I get home.

Anyway, that was the extent of my physical activity for the balance of the day.  As has been our habit for the past 10 days we watched more FIFA World Cup soccer matches, or fútbol matches as the rest of the world calls them.

On a side note, with the end of the War with Iran world oil prices per barrel have fallen from a high of $110/barrel to just under $70/barrel as of this morning....down over $3/barrel since Tuesday...

....which means gasoline/diesel prices per gallon should begin to drop, also, which will make our return trip to northern Arizona much more affordable in October.

We normally eat dinner around 5 pm when we are at LPG&RVR, but we wanted to eat alfresco so we delayed our dinner until 7 pm when the temperature would be back down in the mid 8o's, and the sun much lower in the horizon.  TLE made Missouri Pot Roast sandwiches, served on a Kaiser roll.  We invited Claude for dinner, and had a great time as we always do. 

You may not know that Claude and I, when we were much younger, used to do long range, multi day bicycle tours.  I recorded those trips in 'journal' form and posted them on Crazy Guy On A Bike (crazyguyonabike.com).  This link will take you to four of those journals, if you are interested.  Our longest tour was just under 500 miles from Indio, CA to Lone Pine, CA through the Mojave National Preserve, Baker, CA, up through Shoshone, CA, through Death Valley, over the Panamint and White Mountains to Lone Pine, CA....I entitled the journal "Mystical Mojave Meanderings".....check it out....

.....it does not seem that this was 18 years ago, but it was.

Thanks for stopping by!

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!