Workaday man......

6:15 am - Friday - May 18th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 46º F, 53% humidity, wind 11 mph out of the north.....clear, blue skies with a forecast high for today of 58º F.

Work day 2 began at 8 am for me Thursday, while TLE began her day at 9 am.  Day 2 was a much better day for me physically.  My ribs hardly bothered me for my four hour shift.  My job was to spend the morning cleaning all the chaise lounges (10) and chairs (14) in the pool area.  They had been kept inside the restroom during the winter, but there is still cleaning which needs to be done.

In order to mold proof them for the summer Todd had me use an air pump sprayer to apply white vinegar to each chaise lounge and chair.  None of the chairs had any mold on them, but the white vinegar apparently not only will remove mold, but when applied will prevent mold from growing.  When you live in a cool, humid environment mold is an inevitability, so preventative action is important.

Once the white vinegar was applied I took one of those 'Magic Erasers' to clean all the surfaces (vinyl and metal).  The vinyl was pretty clean, but the metal (coated in white rubber) had stains, and paint scuffs which the magic eraser removes so easily.  It's obvious these chairs have been taken care of over the years (they are 5 years old) as they still look almost new.  Apparently at the end of each season in October they take time to clean all the suntan lotion off the vinyl before they are put into storage for the winter.  If I hadn't been told so, I would have thought they had been purchased within the past few months.

After cleaning all the surfaces I then rinsed each chair with water so they would not smell like white vinegar.  In all it took me almost exactly 4 hours to finish the job.....Alex, and Tony came over about 11:30 am to help me finish the chairs, otherwise there would have been 5, or 6 of the 14 chairs left to clean.   We knocked out the final 8 chairs in about 15 minutes.

I was off just after 12 pm and on my way walking back to the Newell feeling much better than the day prior.  Hopefully after 2, or 3 more four hour days I will be ready to move up to 8 hour days by the time the park opens in a week.  

According to Todd and Rain (our employers) we will be busy over Memorial Day, but then things will quiet down until the 4th of July weekend when things will get very busy, and it will stay very busy until after Labor Day.  A very similar pattern to Tahoe Valley Campground where we spent 3+ years working.

I needed to buy some rubber boots for when we are power washing the bathrooms, and other situations, such as cleaning the pool chairs, where regular shoes would get soaking wet.  I had been told there was a West Marine in town, and that they had rubber boots, so TLE and I headed over there about 1 pm.  As it turned out they had several brands ranging in cost from the high $40's to over $100.  The ones I chose were the West Marine brand which happened to be on sale (40% off) for $47....they don't have to last forever.....just 5 months, and I think these will last well beyond that........

.....TLE and I owned a Columbia 26' sloop rigged sailboat from 1992 to 2004 which we kept in a marina in Long Beach, CA during that time so I very familiar with West Marine, as most boaters are.  While in town we noticed a lot of businesses are now beginning to open, or have signs up advising they will be open sometime this week, so the summer is beginning to get underway here in Southwest Harbor.

For dinner TLE had me grill up some pollo asado for tacos (yay for me!) around 5:30 pm.  I believe we've used the Sea-B-Que at least 4 times since we arrived here at Smuggler's Den.  I think the last time we filled up our 5 gallon propane bottle was back in May of 2017 while at Tahoe Valley Campground.  I am amazed we are still using that same propane almost one year later.  We have a propane company coming to fill up our 60 gallon tank on Friday, so I think it would be a good idea to fill that 5 gallon bottle, too!

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