7:52 am - Wednesday - December 14th - GNHS - 41° F, 78% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the south.....crystal clear, blue, chilly, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 61° F. On, or very near this date in 2014 Nick (son-in-law) got down on one knee and proposed to our daughter Kate....there is not much more a father could ask than a good man getting down on one knee to ask the question......she said yes.....
After trying to shop in La Quinta a few weeks ago on a Monday, we decided to try Tuesday this time, and it was much less crowded in the stores....only fractionally, but a big enough difference that we got in and out of Home Depot, COSTCO and Walmart in record time. Of course I get slightly ahead of myself.
It got into the high 30's Monday night/early Tuesday morning for the first time this winter. That is cold enough outside that it was time to employ the warming services of our electric blanket once again. It seems like forever since we turned on our dual controls, but it has really only been since last May, or June at LPG&RVR. I usually sleep with the window on my side of the bed open at night, but it was even too cold for that. To punctuate the coldness there was frost on the VW sunroof for the first time in a long, long time.
We wanted to be on our way into La Quinta for our 'big' shopping by 9 am, and we did manage to be on our way by 9:15 am, arriving at the Home Depot right at 10 am. TLE needed one more flower pot into which to transplant the final geranium, so while she headed off to the Garden Department I headed to the Lumber Department to find a 2' x 4' piece of 1/2" plywood that would not break the bank, and found a piece for $25....that used to be what a 4' x 8' piece would cost.....ouch! We also bought a 6' x 8' piece of astro turf to put in the COA office as our floor is simply plywood, and we wanted to dress it up just a little bit. We're going to have to move out the shelving holding all the COA helmets in order to roll it out on the floor. We used the self checkout line to pay for our purchases, and were back in the VW in no time.
From Home Depot we drove across the street to COSTCO to pick up some adult beverages, cheese, coffee, and other items we tend to buy there. Once again the lines were short, and painless....what a difference a day can make. Our final stop before lunch was Walmart, which is just a short block west on Highway 111. While the lines were much shorter than on a Monday it still took longer than it should to escape the gravitational pull of the vortex Walmart is.
We both felt like Mexican on this day so we drove another block west to Mariachi Mexican Cuisine. They get 4 stars on 301 reviews on Yelp....TLE and I would be somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars. I had their bacon wrapped shrimp combo plate (rice and beans included), and TLE their 2 Chile Relleno combo plate. The chips and salsa were excellent, as well as the service, and ambiance.....outdoor dining might have gotten us to 4 stars. The food was standard Mexican fare, and really pretty good. I cleaned my plate, and actually ate one of TLE's Chile Rellenos.
By the time we paid our check and got in the Beetle it was 1:40 pm, meaning we would get home somewhere around 2:30 pm, and we did. TLE had a lot of groceries to put away, so I spent time washing a few weeks of dust off the VW, installed the 2' x 4' piece of 1/2" plywood on the table in the trailer where we store some of our dry goods until they are needed. Those plastic folding tables are not meant to handle the weight of the tools and food, and begin to sag in the middle, so the purpose of the plywood is to better distribute the weight to save the table from eventually collapsing. I've been using a piece of 3/4" plywood for a number of years to do the same for the table upon which my three bags of tools reside for 5-6 months at a time....
....TLE was still putting away groceries when I finished those chores, so I moved the Kawasaki from its day positon back to its parked position for the night. We try to put out one of the RZRs, or TRX's with a rental sign on it each day to get the attention of park customers driving in and out of the park, but move it back to where the others are parked at night to prevent any pilferage. We actually had one of our fire extinguishers come up missing a few weeks ago. It's possible it fell off during one of our rentals, but those things are held on with amazingly tough VELCRO, and while it may be possible, it is not probable that it accidentally became detached from the RZR.
When we were in El Centro a couple of weeks ago at Harbor Freight I bought one of their aluminum telescoping flag poles to use as an alternative mount for our Starlink dishy in case the fixed one I installed when we first arrived at GNHS doesn't work at a future location. In order to utilize the flag pole I needed some sort of temporary mounting system, and found that a number of people on the various Starlink Facebook pages had used these large suction cups in combination with the Harbor Freight flag pole to accomplish that. I ordered the suction cups just before I got the new flag pole, but needed larger hose clamps to attach the flag pole to the suction cups. Those new stainless steel 3" hose clamps arrived Tuesday, so I set up the flagpole to see how the suction cups work holding the pole. I don't want to attach the dishy to it, and then have the suction cups fail....that would be costly.....
.....when I first received the industrial grade suction cups I mounted them on the trailer to just see if they would hold suction for a long period of time, and they have been there for over two weeks. Now we'll see how they do with a little weight on them. If they hold for another week, I'll then move the dishy to the top of this pole. I am thinking about ordering one more suction cup to mount further up the pole for a little better stability. Most of the weight of the pole is on the ground, as you can see.
WOW!!!
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