The trifecta.....

 5:55 am - Monday - July 20th - LPG&RVR - 65° F, humidity 19%, cloud cover 3%, wind 13 mph out of the southwest....partly cloudy this morning with a forecast high of 91° F.  On this date in 2014 I was at Mammoth Mountain.....

....riding my mountain bike with friends from SoCal.

Sunday was the sporting trifecta of the summer....final round of 'The Open', Stage #15 of Le Tour de France, and the FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and Spain.  Since 'The Open' is played in Britain, which is 8 hours ahead of west coast time, the final round began around 3:30 am our time, so when I woke up around 7 am I just turned on the bedroom TV and watched until TLE said it was time to get up and make coffee.  Of course, she is always right, so I did.....got up that is....TLE makes the coffee.

The final round of 'The Open' had 6, or 7 players (or more) within a couple of strokes of the lead so it was up for grabs.  As it turned out Ryan Fox (New Zealand) sank a birdie put on the 18th and final hole to go 10 under and win by one stroke over Cam Young who held the 'Clubhouse lead' at 9 under par for almost 3 hours.  

We then tuned into Stage 15 of Le Tour and watched until 12 pm when the FIFA World Cup final began.  The score remained 0-0 at the end of regulation time (90 minutes) so they went to two 15 minute overtime periods, played in full.  At the end of the first 15 minute period it was still 0-0, then Spain, who was clearly the better team on this day, scored a goal 50 seconds into the 2nd overtime period, holding on to win 1-0 over Argentina.  It was a messy, foul plagued game which even saw a red card given late in regulation to a star player for Argentina.  The foul was 100% a 'serious foul play' offense, and 100% deserved a red card, so no controversy there.  At any rate Argentina had to play one man short the rest of the game.  I think they would have lost anyway as Spain controlled the game most of the time, and played most of the game in Argentina's defensive third.  The Argentinian goalie saved a record 11, or 12 shots directly on goal to set a record.  Without him they would have lost 6, or 7 to nothing.

Then is was back to watch the final 60 miles of Stage 15 of Le Tour during which the 2nd place rider, Jonas Vingegaard, had a very bad crash just before the final climb of the day and had to abandon the race due to serious injuries.  This will be the first time in 7 years that he will not be on the podium in Paris as either the first, or second place finisher.  It has be he and Tadej in first, or second the past 6 years.  Tadej went on to finish second in Stage 15, and now holds a 5 minute lead over the new second place rider, Remco Evenepoel of Belgium, who won the Stage.

It was a very busy day in the sports world, and how best to end such a day?  Well, we had two filet mignons in the fridge, so I lit the Sea-B-Que around 5 pm and grilled them to a perfect medium rare.  TLE added a side salad, and our day was complete.

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A nice day to be off work....

 7:44 am - Sunday - July 19th - LPG&RVR - 67° F, humidity 21%, cloud cover 66%, wind 11 mph out of the west by northwest....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 93° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were in West Yellowstone.....

......visiting with good friends Richard and Rhonda Entrekin and their 1999 Newell.

Saturday....what a nice day to be off work!  We began the day watching 'The Open', 

transitioning to Le Tour de France until 12 pm when the FIFA World Cup 3rd place match began between England and France began.  As you will recall, England lost a heartbreaker 2-1 to Argentina a few days ago, but got off to an impressive start against France ending the first half up 4-0.  France came back in the 2nd half scoring 3 unanswered goals to pull within one goal of England, but then England stiffened their resolve scoring two more goals to finish in 3rd place 6-4.  Sunday will be the final between Argentina and Spain.

TLE and I headed over to the Clubhouse just before 4 pm for the weekly putting contest.  I hadn't putted in almost 3 weeks, and had no idea how I would do.  I hadn't even hit a practice putt during that time until Saturday morning.  I was pleased with my practice putting, but still wasn't sure how that would translate into actual competition.  Well, on this day the translation was pretty smooth.  I made it through 7 rounds before succumbing to DeWayne Matthews 2-1, but that was good enough for 4th place out of 24 golfers; my best performance this summer....

Greg and Bernard putting on the 5th hole

.....upon return to the Newell I fired up the Sea-B-Que to grill a salmon steak we had purchased at Grocery Outlet on Friday.  It was the first time I've grilled on the Sea-B-Que since I installed the new stainless steel grill plates.  TLE had me grill 3 ears of corn at the same time.  She also added some white rice.....

....the salmon came out perfecto, and so did the corn, so my inaugural work on the new grill plates was a success.

After dinner I finished watching Stage #14 of Le Tour de France in which Tadej Pogacar attacked with 8 miles to go adding another 54 seconds to his lead over Jonas Vingegaard to now lead him by 4 minutes 30 seconds with 7 remaining Stages.  So, like I said it was a nice day to be off work.

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The simple things first.....

 7:46 am - Saturday - July 18th - LPG&RVR - 62° F, humidity 16%, cloud cover 15%, wind 12 mph out of the southwest....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 93° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I were in Northwest Harbor, Maine.....

....having lunch art the Asticou Inn, one of our favorite restaurants on Mount Desert Island.

Friday began benignly enough.  We slept in, had our coffees, I composed and published my latest blogosphere offering, then I headed outside to dump our black tank.  Once that was done I settled in to watch the second round of 'The Open'.  While I watched 'The Open' TLE started her first load of wash in our Splendide washer/dryer combo.  A typical first day of our extended weekend (3 days this week).

Sometime after 12 pm TLE announced that the washer did not drain after the spin cycle.  She tried he spin cycle again, and once again the washer drum did not drain.....doh!  I just wrote a few days ago how well our Splendide has run since we bought it back in July of 2020.  After she removed the soggy clothes from the washer I set about mopping out the water in the drum, then opened the inspection port to see if anything was clogging the drain, or pump; no clogs.  I was hoping for a clog, so I could clear it and get back to watching 'The Open', but no such luck.

Removing the Splendide from its cubbyhole is not for the faint of heart.  First TLE has to remove EVERTHING from the three pantry shelves, which takes about 30 minutes, then I remove the shelves, and the door structure so I can begin to slowly remove the Splendide, which takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour.

I want to stop here and talk about the fundamentals of TROUBLESHOOTING.  When troubleshooting (such a long word, with such simple advice) one should always begin with the simplest cause of the problem, in this case a clog somewhere in the drain line, and work your way up to the most complicated cause.  Do we all agree on that principle?  I have written about this on many occasions, but for some reason I had a brain freeze, and started with the most complicated thing first....removing the Splendide from the pantry.  I should have started at the point where the the drain hose enters the gray water tank.

Okay, back to the troubleshooting.  Once I had checked the inspection port and found no clog, I should have stopped right there, and thought about what to do next, but I didn't.  Once the Splendide was out of the pantry, right in the middle of the kitchen, I removed the back to get a look at the water pump, and drain hose.  Nothing looked out of the ordinary.  I spent too much time trying to figure out how to disconnect the drain hose from the water pump, before deciding it was impossible.  

It was at this point that I did do some thinking; always a good thing to do when facing an unfamiliar problem.  By this time I was pretty sure the Splendide drain hose was not clogged, so I disconnected it from the Newell drain hose, and blew air back through the hose to the pump, and found it was not obstructed.  I then blew air the other direction through the Newell drain hose and found it was clogged, and would not allow the air to pass through.  Okay, at least we know what is clogged now, and it wasn't the Splendide, so almost two hours of our time was blown doing something which didn't need doing.....removing the Splendide from the Pantry.

I went out side to the driver side of the water bay where the drain hose from the pantry area is connected to the gray water tank....

....the plumbing fitting Newell used 44 years ago narrows significantly where the red hose connects to the PVC fitting, and I suspected that was where the clog was.....

....I had to cut the red hose off the galvanized steel connector, and when I did I found that a Band-Aid was stuck in the narrow tube, and that was the cause of the clog....a stupid BAND-AID!*#*!  To think if I had started my troubleshooting HERE, I would have detected, and fixed the problem in less that 30 minutes....double DOH!

By the time I had reinstalled the Splendide in its cubbyhole, reinstalled the shelving, the doors, and TLE had put away everything it was 5:45 pm....almost 5 hours since I began troubleshooting the 'clog'.  Some lessons are hard to learn....START WITH THE SIMPLE THINGS FIRST.

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Back to busy......

7:15 am - Friday - July 17th - LPG&RVR - 59° F, humidity 15%, cloud cover 1%, wind 13 mph out of the southwest....mostly clear skies today with a forecast high of 93° F.  On this date in 2015 I rode my bicycle to the top of Mt. Rubidoux......

.....in Riverside, CA.  We were in town for the wedding of my brother Philip's daughter, Danielle; she and Miguel have been married 11 years now and have two kids....man, I'm getting old!

After the very unbusy Wednesday (only four carts rented) we got back to normal Thursday renting 20 golf carts; that's more like it.  After staging the first 11 carts I headed back to the hedges which separate the parking lot from the Clubhouse/Cart Shack to finish trimming the final four.  The hedge trimmer we use is cordless, and the battery is only good for two hedges at a time, so I trimmed the first two (of the day), then put the battery back on the charger so I could finish the final two hedges before lunch.  While the battery was charging I hauled the clippings from the first two hedges to the burn pile.

Upon my return I staged more golf carts, then retrieved the now recharged battery to finish trimming the final two hedges.  They turned out quite well....

....after raking up the cuttings from the final two hedges I hauled them to the burn pile, then headed out to the driving range to clear what few balls had been hit since Monday.  In all I collected a little less than one 5 gallon bucket of balls in about 50 minutes....

....which I was able to wash, and pour back into the 55 gallon trash can in the Clubhouse closet before TLE's lunch break.  It was then time to give TLE her lunch 90 minute lunch break.  I sent out one twosome for 18 holes, and answered a bunch of phone calls before TLE returned.

Just a few of the 20 gold carts had been returned by 1:30 pm so I retrieved the 2 bag Husqvarna riding lawnmower and headed over to the four employee lawns to mow them.  Claude had, graciously, agreed to trim around all four sites before I mowed, so when I arrived I was able to mow all four of them without getting off the lawnmower one time....

....so our lawns are mowed, and looking great for the weekend, which will be a busy one sports wise.  'The Open' (British Open) began Thursday, there is the ongoing Le Tour de France, and the FIFA World Cup final on Sunday.  Looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend before returning to work on Monday.

By 2:45 pm only 12 of the 20 rented carts had returned, so I took off about 40 minutes, and returned around 3:25 pm to wash four more carts before calling it a day.  I don't like to leave carts for Steve to wash, but he will inherit the final four carts Friday morning.  By the time I headed home it was getting close to 4 pm, and with that the heat of the day.  Time for some air conditioning, a shower and a nap!

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The slowest.....

 5:59 am - Thursday - July 16th - LPG&RVR - 62° F, humidity 21%, cloud cover 11%, wind 13 out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 92° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I were at the Vista Point near Conway Summit.....

......on US-395 just north of Lee Vining, CA on our way to SoCal from Lake Tahoe for a wedding.

Wednesday was the slowest day this season since May 1st (opening day).....we rented just 4 golf carts the entire day.  It was a good day to be on the golf course....now waiting....lol!  Wednesday was also the hottest day this week so far peaking at 90° F.  After staging the carts I hauled 12 five gallon buckets of gravel from our gravel pile down across the street from the bathrooms/showers/laundry to spread around the area where I stage carts each day.  The torrential rain Tuesday exposed numerous low spots in the gravel, into which I poured the 12 buckets of gravel, then raked it flat.

Next up I was tasked by Jose (General Manager) with trimming the 6 large bushes which separate the parking lot from the Cart Shack/Clubhouse.  We have a cordless trimmer we use for this task.  I managed to get 2 of the six bushes trimmed before needing to put the battery back on the charger, so I hope I'll get the other four done Thursday.

I hadn't done much mowing this week (just the tee boxes on Monday), so I hopped on the 2 bag Husqvarna then headed up the hill to mow the three residential lawns, then down the hill to the back in sites next to the meadow and mowed all 10 of them, plus the first three tent sites, then back up the hill to mow the large grass area next to site #30, then over to the parking lot grass to mow that grass before it was time to give TLE her lunch break.

During her 90 minute lunch break I watched the FIFA World Cup semi-final match between Argentina and England.  At the end of the first half it was tied 0-0, but in the 57th minute (2nd half) England scored a goal to go up 1-0.  They held on valiantly until the 85th minute when Argentina scored the tying goal, then in the 89th minute the go ahead goal.  The final score at full time was 2-1 in favor of Argentina who will now face Spain in the the final on Sunday.  Argentina is amazing!

I managed to wash three of the four carts we rented before 3:30 pm, then headed home to take a long, hot shower, take short nap, and watch the final 28 miles of Stage 11 of Le Tour de France before returning to the Clubhouse to give TLE a ride home.  Just one more day left in our rare 5 day work week, then three days off work before beginning another 4 day work week.

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I did not see that coming.....

 5:53 am - Wednesday - July 15th - LPG&RVR - 54° F, humidity 36%, cloud cover 24%, wind 10 mph out of the south.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 90° F.  On this date in 2019 TLE and I were in Carlsbad, CA....

.....we were working at Ramona Oaks RV Resort that summer, and took a day trip to Carlsbad...one of our favorite Coastal California towns.

I initially staged 10 golf carts to begin Tuesday....4 Club Car electrics and 6 EZ-GO's....why only 4 of the 5 Club Car Electrics?  Well, #5 would not move.  It would try to move, but then stop....HMMM?  After staging the 10 carts I opened up the seat of the Club Car electric to see if anything obvious was wrong.  I had just topped off the distilled water in its six 6 volt batteries the day prior, and it had been charging all night, so it should move.  The tops of the 6 batteries were quite dirty, so I decided to clean all the terminals with a solution of water and baking soda.  In doing so I discovered a connector on one of the wires connecting two of the batteries looking a little sketchy, and when I attempted to wiggle it to see if is was solid, it broke off in my hand.  Okay, that must be the problem, right.....

.....I then removed all of the defective connector from the wire.  I then retrieved a new copper connector from the 'Caddy Shack', trimmed back the end of the wire, then crimped on the new connector....

....once it was reinstalled I attempted to move the cart, and it moved!  I love it when the problem is so obvious, and can be fixed quickly.

Around 10:45 am I hopped on the 2 bag Husqvarna and headed out to mow around those tee boxes for which I am responsible, returning back to the Clubhouse around 11:50 am to put away the Husqvarna, and give TLE her lunch break.  I rented one cart to a couple for 18 holes, and answered a few phone calls while watching the semi final FIFA World Cup match between France and Spain.  France was the heavy favorite to win and advance to the final on Sunday, but that is why they play the games.  Spain dominated the game defensively, while scoring 2 goals to win 2-0 in regulation....I did not see that coming.

After lunch many of the 15 carts we rented began to return, and then I heard thunder in the distance, and then a few minutes later it began to rain quite hard....

.....the torrential rain hitting the metal roof of the cart shack was deafening.  Another thing I did not see happening Tuesday.  The rain stopped in time for me to wash all 14 carts, dry them, and put them away before 3:30 pm.

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The post 4th of July slowdown.....

 5:51 am - Tuesday - July 14th - LPG&RVR - 63° F, humidity 49%, cloud cover 59%, wind 6 mph out of the south by southwest.....heavy clover this morning with a forecast high today of 83° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were in Harlowton, MT.....

.....with Claude and Gail at a city campground during our summer of the  Wuhan Flu travels through rural America.

Monday was the first truly slow day in quite a while.  I initially staged 6 carts based on the 'tee sheet', and by the end of the day we had rented just 7 carts, all of which returned before 3:30 pm....perfect.  After staging those first 6 carts I spent over an hour going through the five electric carts checking the distilled water levels in all 30 batteries, which is a low process.  As as we now in the 'heat' of the summer I'll need to check them more frequently.  I think this was the 3rd time I've checked them since May 1st.

By that time it was 10 am and time for me to begin clearing the driving range for the first of two mowing this week.  We clear the range on Mondays and Thursdays.  It took me until 11:40 am to finish, then fill the three 5 gallon buckets with soap and water so they could soak during TLE's lunch break.  As might be expected the 90 minutes was pretty slow....just a couple of phone calls, and one couple going out for 9 holes.  It rained for a few minutes during that 90 minutes, and later around 3 pm it rained quite hard for about 30 minutes.  We were not expecting that rain.  It rained on an off most Monday night into Tuesday morning.

After lunch I washed and dried the golf balls, and washed the 7 golf carts we had rented, then headed for home.  There were no FIFA World Cup matches Monday, and no Tour de France as Monday was a rare rest day.  The temperatures in France have been averaging around 100° F the first 9 stages, so a rest day was a welcome relief to the riders.

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