Hours of cart washing.....

 5:52 am - Monday - September 7th - LPG&RVR - 35° F, humidity 43%, cloud cover 1%, wind 6 mph out of the east by southeast.....cloudless, blue skies today with a forecast high of 76° F.  On this date in 2022 TLE and I were living at Likely Place Golf & RV Resort....

....it was our first season there.  Here we are taking a walk out Likely Place to Jess Valley Road.  We never get tired of this view.

Sunday was TLE's second day of work this cycle, and my first.  As you will recall she substituted for Kathie Smith on Saturday so she could attend a funeral.  This is what greeted me at 7:30 am Sunday morning....

....24 golf carts left over from Saturday.  Apparently we pretty much rented every golf cart we had Saturday, which is a good thing.  Our first golfers were not teeing off until 9 am so I had plenty of time to stage what carts had been washed and stowed Saturday (about 10), then begin washing the dirty ones 8 at a time.  Sunday was not quite as busy as Saturday, but we did rent 23 golf carts, nonetheless.

It took me most of the morning to get all 24 carts washed, and eventually staged for rental.  By 11:30 am we had rented 13 carts, and I had 10 more staged, which ended up being just exactly what we needed.  From about 11:30 to noon time I used compressed air to clear the grass off both of the Husqvarna mowers.  A lot of grass collects on top of the mowing decks when mowing, and it needs to be cleared before they are used again.  

I gave TLE her usual 90 minute lunch break, and then headed back to the 'Cart Return' area to begin washing/stowing more golf carts. By the time 3:30 rolled around I had managed to wash/stow 18 of the 23 rented carts.  I'll begin Sunday by washing the remaining 5....much better than 24...lol! In all I washed 42 golf carts Saturday.

I was very cold Sunday, and I'm not sure it got much above 62° F before the temps dove back into the high 50's.  I ended up wearing my hooded sweatshirt after lunch until I headed home at 3:30 pm.  Instead of taking a shower as I usually do, I changed clothes, sat down in my recliner, and took a nap.  When I awoke at 4:30 pm I took my shower, then headed down to the 'Night Office' to flip the sign, then back to the Clubhouse to join TLE and Claude for a seafood dinner courtesy Sunny's Likely Place Grill.  The dinner was by reservation only, and the restaurant was packed!  We sat eating shrimp and crab's legs, laughing, and talking until almost 8 pm before finally heading home for the evening.  I wish I had taken pictures.

As is our habit on work days, we were in bed by 9 pm....thanks for stopping by!

Four in a row.....

 5:54 am - Sunday - September 6th - LPG&RVR - 45° F, humidity 56%, cloud cover 70%, wind 13 mph out of the southwest.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2014 TLE and I were serving as lighthouse docents at Cape Blanco, OR....

You can see a lit bulb, and one that is not....when one burns out the platform rotates to power up the standby bulb

....these are pictures of the amazing Fresnel Lens used to project a light beacon many miles out to sea.

TLE had volunteered to work for Kathie Smith (TLE shares the office job with her) so Kathie could attend a funeral down in Reno, so I had Saturday all to myself.  By 9 am I was watching NCAA College Football, and continued to do so throughout the day.  The temp at 8 am was around 38° F; too cold to do any work.  By 9 am it had warmed into the mid 40's so I began to reinstall the carpet, and wood trim around the toilet.  It took less than an hour....

....once that was done I pulled the throw rugs, shook them out, and then proceeded to sweep the entire coach free of the outdoor elements which had invaded our home over the past few days.  By 10 am I was done with my work for the day, and settled in to watch more college football.

TLE came home for her lunch break, and I returned to the Clubhouse with her to practice putting in preparation for the weekly putting contest.  Including Saturday (September 5th) there are just two Saturdays left to qualify for the final to be held on September 19th.  Every person who has placed first, or second during the summer in any given contest is eligible to putt on September 19th for the 2026 putting championship, and I had not yet been 'in the money', so to speak (finished 1st, or 2nd).  I've made the putting final all four previous years, and in fact, last year (2025) I was in the money five times, but this year I kept falling just short, so I spent a good hour putting; something I haven't done this summer.

I returned home around 2 pm, to continue watching more college football, and then around 3:50 pm returned to the Clubhouse to see what the 'fates' had in store for me.  There were 22, or 24 putters on this Saturday, and through 6 rounds I had not lost.  I lost the 7th round after leading 1-0 through three holes, but my opponent had a hole in one on the 4th, and 5th holes to edge me out.  I then went to the losers bracket to win my next 3 matches and get to the final against the only guy who had beaten me.  He promptly holed out on holes 1 and 2 to go up 2-0, and my fate was sealed.  I made all my second putts on the remaining 3 holes, but so did he.  Nevertheless, I finished 'in the money' in second place, and have now qualified for the final in two weeks.....whew, that was close!  On this day I putted well, and did not beat myself.  I was beaten by a guy who made 4 hole in ones in four consecutive holes against me (4  & 5 in first match, and then 1 & 2 in the second match).  I putted the best I have putted this year, but just lost to a guy on fire for four holes.

Thanks for stopping by!

A repeat performance.....

 6:42 am - Saturday - September 5th - LPG&RVR - 35° F, humidity 47%, cloud cover 28%, wind 11 mph out of the south......clear, blue skies this morning with a forecast high today of 71° F.  On this date in 2010 TLE and I were in Pismo Beach, CA.....

.....we were spending the weekend in Ventura at an RV park there over Labor Day Weekend, and decided to drive up to Pismo Beach for lunch.  We still had the 2002 T-Bird Retro back then.

Just before I went to bed Thursday evening I noticed the small throw rug in the bathroom was damp.  When I felt the carpet around the Dometic toilet it was damp....doh!  This exact same thing happened a few months ago, and it turned out the water supply connection needed tightening.  I was a simple fix, and hasn't leaked again until Thursday.  This time I decided I needed to take the whole assembly apart, clean up the connecting 3/8" nipple threads, apply some new Teflon tape, and then reassemble....

....on the left (in this picture) is the braided supply line which connects to the RV supply line (gray PVC on right).  There is a galvanized 3/8" nipple in between the braided line and the PVC line.  That is what I removed, cleaned, and rewrapped in Teflon tape.  Once it was reassembled I turned on the water, and there was NO more leak.  In all it took me about an hour beginning to end.  The carpet piece was still drying out yesterday afternoon so I will reinstall that on Saturday.

A few days ago we received the new ultra violet light filter for the reverse osmosis system I wrote about a few days ago.  This new ultra violet light filter is the OEM part, which is what I should have ordered originally.  It took me less that 10 minutes to remove the old OEM filter, and install the new one.....this time NO leaks.....

New ultraviolet light filter installed and working!

.....will I ever learn the lesson that you ALWAYS replace OEM parts with OEM parts.  Cheaper is NEVER better.

I spent the rest of the day reading, and watching college football.  Yes, college football is back as of this weekend.  My USC Trojans won over Fresno State 39-0, and it wasn't really that close.

Thanks for stopping by!

They guessed wrong.....

 8:05 am - Friday - September 4th - LPG&RVR - 48° F, humidity 56%, cloud cover 56%, wind 10 mph out of the west by southwest....partly cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 60° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I were at Cape Blanco, OR....

.....watching another sunset.  Over the 15 years of our nomadic wanderings we have spent a lot of time on the Southern Oregon Coast.

We literally had no plans for Thursday as the weather guessers predicted we would have rain here in the Pitt River Valley from 5 am until 2 am Friday morning.  That, my friends, did not happen.  Did it rain?  Sure about 5 minutes every couple of hours.  The end result was the same as if it had rained continuously....we did nothing all day long.  Every time it started to rain we thought this was it, but then it would stop 5 minutes later.  Every time I would go outside to do something it would begin to rain, chasing me back inside, and then stop after just a few minutes.  All that being said, it did rain just enough to settle the dust for a few days, and that is a good thing.

I did, however, have one rainy day project I was saving for Thursday.  TLE and I keep very few hard copy files.  Ever since we have been on the road we will save paperwork that we get in the mail, or otherwise, and when there is enough to justify setting up our scanner we'll do it all at once, then shred the paperwork, or sometimes burn it.  Until we are ready to scan we store unscanned paperwork in a pouch behind the driver seat....

....that pouch was overflowing with paperwork needing scanning, so I removed it all and began to sort through all of it separating it into three piles....scan, store, throw away.  The purpose of the scan pile is obvious....it is stuff we need to save by digitizing it.  The 'store' pile is full of owners manuals for appliances, and other equipment we have purchased in the past couple of years such as our Predator 5000 dual fuel generator, the Eco Worthy dual axis solar tracker, Bluetti batteries, etc.  I will need to find a place to store these manuals. After about an hour of sorting I had a stack of 'throw away' paperwork which was larger than the scan/store piles combined....

....the pile on the bottom is the scan pile, and the pile on the top is composed of owners manuals.  Now that the paperwork is manageable I'll do a second sort, and winnow out more to throw away, such as duplicates, etc.  That was my project for the "rainy day".

The temp never got higher than 53° F, and it was windy on top of that, so even without the promised rain, it was a day, if one was not required to be working, to stay inside where it is warm.  We passed the time reading, and watching some YouTube videos, stopping periodically to listen to the rain on our riveted aircraft aluminum roof.  Our electric heaters remained in the 'ON' position until we went to bed.  As I write Friday morning the sun has broken through the clouds, and soon we will be able to see if Eagle Mountain attracted any snow.

Thanks for stopping by!

No plans? Yeah, right!

 8:10 am - Thursday - September 3rd - LPG&RVR - 53° F, humidity 89%, cloud cover 95%, chance of rain 100%, wind 7 mph out of the north by northwest.....heavy cloud cover with occasional rain showers, and a forecast high of 59° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were in Yellowstone National Park.....

....working at the Mammoth Hot Springs General Store.  I worked in the fountain that summer serving ice cream.  We had a surprise visit from long time Whatsnewell readers Jill and Gary.  They began following our nomadic adventures when we worked the beet harvest back in 2013.  The view this morning....

We, initially, had no plans for Wednesday other than to relax after our four days of work.  Sure, there were a few small projects I wanted to tackle at some point, but I was flexible.  I could do them Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday....lol.  As I was in the process of trying to restore order to my disheveled coif TLE called out from the Salon advising we should probably go into town to do our weekly shopping 'today' as Thursday it would be raining, and by Friday the Labor Day weekend crowds would be upon us.  I immediately replied that we should, to which she replied, "Let's go around 11 am".  So, in a manner of speaking, the 'die was cast', and our 'no plans' day suddenly had plans.

I like our days off work as I can linger over the current iteration of my daily blog posts.  I didn't begin to compose the 'what happened on Tuesday' post until around 8 am, and didn't finish until almost 9:30 am.  On days off work I can be more creative, and expressive with an endless amount of time available, but on days we work I tend to get a little more stilted, and perfunctory with the composition.  When we work I get it done in about 25 minutes, or less, and am not always happy with the end result.

We were in the VW a little after 11 am, and arriving at Dollar General ( we skipped ACE Hardware) around 11:25 am.  By the time we finished with Dollar General and Holiday Market it was getting close to 12:30 pm.  You will recall that a couple of weeks ago we checked out Double A Coffee Community for the first time, and loved it, so we decided to revisit them on our way out of town.  We both ordered Americanos (large for moi, and small for TLE), and decided to split their Hot Pastrami Panni sandwich....

Look at that layer of lean pastrami!

.....Halloween is still 8 weeks away, but the decorations are already popping up everywhere.  Dollar General has a whole aisle dedicated to Halloween decorations, and Holiday Market a whole 'end cap'.  Personally, I don't get it.  Anyway, we had a delightful interlude sipping our Americanos, and consuming our hot pastramis on this chilly, blustery day.

We were home by 1:30 pm unpacking the Beetle, and stowing away our purchases.  Speaking of purchases I did buy 4 metal sunflowers to put in one of our flower beds.....

....by the time I put away a few of our grocery purchases in the trailer I was getting much colder, so I headed indoors for the balance of the day.  Sometime around 4 pm I got inspired and decided to tackle a couple of small projects, such as finding out why the display on our brake controller would not shut down as it always has for the 16 years it has been installed.  I had to unscrew the Technosha Prodigy brake controller (for the trailer brakes), and then unplug the cable.  Once I did that, of course, the display went dark.  When I plugged it back in it showed the normal 'NC' meaning no connection to the trailer, which is what it should show, and within minutes the display went 'dark' as it should.  Hmmm, that was easy....

....the display is once again 'dark' as it should be. I next turned my attention to the switch which turns the recessed LED strip lights around the salon on and off.  They would NOT turn on the other morning, and I couldn't figure out why at the time.  I thought maybe the switch was defective, so I rotated it in order to unscrew it from the wall when it began to work again.....doh....

When the switch is rotated downward the lights work, but when it its normal position facing outward they do not.....hmmmm?

....normally the switch faces outward, but as I rotated it counter clockwise to get at the phillips head screw the lights turned on again.  Obviously, it is not the switch, but some issue with the wiring connected to the switch.  Well, at any rate, they are working again.  Further investigation will be necessary to determine what the wiring issue is.

In just a few minutes I totally (in the case of the brake controller) fixed one problem, and partially fixed another (in the case of the light switch).  Time to take my victories, enjoy them, and relax again....lol....so I did.

Thanks for stopping by!

Staying busy....

 8:01 am - Wednesday - September 2nd - LPG&RVR - 53° F, humidity 45%, cloud cover 90%, wind 15 mph out of the southwest.....heavy cloud cover today with rain on the way for Thursday, and a forecast high today of 63° F.  On this date in 2015  TLE and I were at Cape Blanco, OR (just north of Port Orford).....

....beginning our second Fall season as lighthouse docents.  Our favorite volunteer job ever.  How has it been 11 years since then?

To begin our fourth work day in this current 8 day cycle I staged 4 Club Car gassers of the 'round nose' variety.  These carts are some of our oldest, but not as old as the 'square nosed' carts, which is what the Club Car Villager #20 is that we drive.  They have been running well, but have not been run in over 3 weeks, so since Tuesday promised to be an unbusy day I staged them, and that is exactly how many carts we rented.

After all the manual watering I did Monday it was time to roll up all those hoses so I could mow them later in the morning.  The hoses down at the 'Night Office' are quite long in order to reach the furthest areas from the two hose bibs.  The two longest are over 150' long....each, and it takes a while to coil them.  

Next I began hauling gravel, three 5 gallon buckets at a time, up to the Clubhouse to fill in some low spots where water tends to pool during rain storms, and since we have what appears to be an all day rain storm coming Thursday, I will be able to see how effective the work I have done will be. In all I think I hauled 10 buckets of gravel before spreading out the piles.  Five gallons of gravel does not go very far, so I've been working on this project a little bit at a time for a number of weeks whenever I've had extra time, and I had a lot of extra time on Tuesday.

Around 10 am I headed back out to the driving range to clear the forest on each side of the range of golf balls.  I didn't have time Monday to do that, but I also knew there would not be many out there, and there weren't.  In all I filled one shag bag full of balls....probably about 1/3 of a 5 gallon bucket.  By the time I gathered them, and washed them it was 11 am, and time to mow the parking lot grass and 'Night Office' grass.  There is probably over 2 acres combined of grass to mow, but it only takes me about 40 minutes.  By the time I returned the 2 bag Husqvarna to the 'Caddy Shack' it was 11:40 am, so I had enough time to clear the grass clippings off the Husqvarna, and refuel it before TLE's lunch break.

The temp never got much over 70° F Tuesday, and that combined with a pretty stiff breeze most of the afternoon made me rethink taking off my hooded sweatshirt late morning as it was pretty chilly.  By 3:15 pm all four Club Cars had returned with no issues, and within 15 minutes I was driving home to begin another four day weekend.

The park will be filling, beginning Thursday, for the Labor Day Weekend, and with containment of almost all the fires to the south of us we should should begin to see an increase in business for our last month.   US-395 between Likely and Reno has been closed due to fires 5, or 6 times in the past few weeks creating a lot of uncertainty.  The detours around the closures add 2-3 hours of travel time to LPG&RVR from the south, from which a goodly portion of our business is derived.

Thanks for stopping by!

Reverting to form....

 5:55 am - Tuesday - September 1st - LPG&RVR - 54° F, humidity 27%, cloud cover 26%, wind 17 mph out of the south....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 74° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in Spokane, WA.....

.....having dinner on the deck at my sister's home....like TLE, my sister is a wonderful preparer of wonderful food.  It seems almost déclassé or jejune to call either of them a 'cook'.

After a rather nice weekend of cart rentals we slid back to our old ways (reverted to form) Monday renting only 5 golf carts.  I had 7 left over from Sunday to wash/stow when we arrived at the Clubhouse at 7:30 am.  After staging two carts (we only had one person signed up for a tee time at 8:10 am) and washing/stowing the 7 carts I set out a sprinkler between the putting green and Clubhouse deck, then a couple more at the parking lot grass, and all four sprinklers we use down at the 'Night Office.  I then spent a couple of hours moving said sprinklers from dry spot to dry spot.  Thankfully, we do not have a lot of dry spots right now as both Steve and I have been very diligent in doing the manual watering the past month.  

Now that the daily  temps have declined into the 80's the grass is staying greener with less watering.  In fact the temps this coming week are dropping first into the 70's (today), then into the 60's tomorrow (Wednesday), and into the 50's on Thursday when it is supposed to rain.  The temps will stay in the 70's until after the 10th when they creep back into the low 80's for a few days.

Around 10 am I used the 2 bag Husqvarna riding lawnmower to mow the employee sites, then spent the rest of the morning clearing the driving range of range balls so it could be mowed in the afternoon.  I managed to harvest two 5 gallon buckets of balls this time, a sure sigh of increased activity this past weekend.  Coming up we have the final summer long weekend called Labor Day, and before we know it we will be working the final 4 days of the 2026 season here at Likely Place Golf & RV Resort.

By 3:30 pm only 2 of the five rented golf carts had returned (more late afternoon golfers).  By 3:40 pm I had taken a shower, and was in my recliner taking a nap before returning just before 5 pm to the Clubhouse to ferry TLE home to close out the 3rd day of our four day work week.

Thanks for stopping by!