January 1, 2023

 7:36 am - Monday - January 2nd - GNHS - 41° F, 81% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the southwest.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 63° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were at Kona Joe's in Cedar Key, FL having some Kona coffee.....one of my favorite pictures......↴

....why was TLE so happy?  Well, we had just finished working 11 weeks at Amazon in Campbellsville, KY, and traveled to Cedar Key for a 5 week stay to recuperate.  It was our first workamping job.

First of all, happy New Year from TLE and I.....here we are enjoying the beautiful New Year weather here at GNHS......

Happy New Year!  Yup, I am growing a beard.

The air quality was spectacular!

As I wrote in yesterday's missive, it rained most of the night New Years Eve, but little did we know how that might affect our rentals for New Years Day.  We originally had 3 bookings for 3 RZRs, but one of the customers was still recovering from his New Years Eve over indulgences, so he cancelled.  The other two customers were at the office shortly after 8 am and on their way by 8:30 for their all day rental.  Personally, I was happy to know I only had two RZRs to wash at the end of the day.....sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Because of the rainfall, which was the heaviest we have experienced to date at GNHS, we had some standing water on the 'lido deck' under the artificial turf.  TLE and I used some of our old bath towels to sop up the water, then I raked the 'grass' to help the morning sun dry things out.  

Out in the parking area on the driver side of the Newell there was more standing water in a low spot, so I scooped up about 15 gallons of gravel from the piles I had created the day before with the Toro hand blower, and dumped that in the low spot to get rid of the water and mud....

....there is a lot of clay around GNHS, and when it gets wet enough it sticks to the soles of your shoes, and is hard to remove.  I managed to, unwittingly, walk through some, and it took me a good 5 minutes to wash it off my shoes.  This should have set alarm bells off in my brain, but, alas, it did not.

Once the customers were out in the field I spent time detailing the remaining 5 UTVs by wiping off the rain water to avoid an water spots, and because a number of park residents chose to drive their UTVs through our parking lot at high speeds, I repositioned some of our UTVs to block the path....

The first RZR returned around 3 pm caked in muddy clay from bow to stern, and inside the passenger compartment as well.  When I saw how much muddy clay was on each of them my heart skipped a beat as I immediately knew it would take me quite awhile to remove it......

A close up to show bad it was

.....it ended up taking me two hours to clean just two RZRs....usually it takes me 10-12 minutes per UTV.  By the time I finished the two RZRs it was after 5 pm, and I was wet and muddy from my knees to my shoes....I wish I had taken a picture.  So, what was mostly a very pleasant day finished hard.  I am so grateful the one customer cancelled his reservation, or I would have been out there until 6 pm.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we have no bookings, so we are both looking forward to three days off work, and to sleeping Monday morning until the Rose Parade begins, which we are watching as I write.

Thanks for stopping by!