Be skeptical.....

7:16 am - Monday - November 20th - GNHS - 60° F, humidity 25%, wind 17 mph out of the north by northwest.....yup, another wind event last night, and continuing into this morning....forecast high for today is 76° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I were enjoying our 9th, and final sunset at Rincon Parkway....the sky was on fire......↴

We began our workday Sunday with one all day booking, but by the time 10 am came and went we had 2 all day rentals, and 2 half day rentals on the books....our best Sunday this season, so far!  The new trackers about which I wrote yesterday are working wonderfully, and being able to keep track of our customers, and their driving habits is helping us to keep a 'leash' on them.  Of the four rentals Sunday only one customer exceeded 45 mph, and that was one time at 47 mph.....not bad.  Now that they (our customers) know we monitoring them on a minute by minute basis they are driving much more conservatively, and as a result (I believe) all four rentals came back without incident.

In between the flurry of morning activity and the end of the rental day I spent time shortening the flag staffs on all the RZRs.  The fiberglass shafts are just too long, and because of that they whip around too much, and eventually break.  I shortened one a couple of weeks ago, and haven't had any issue with that one, so I shortened all of them 12", which should decrease the whip enough to prevent undo stress on the staffs.  I also washed one more RZR, and cleaned a couple more air cleaners.  Otherwise I was ensconced in my anti gravity chair watching football most of the afternoon.

Just after we checked in our final customer around 5 pm the wind began to blow out of the north by northwest....not a good sign...that's where the Santa Anas come from.  And when that wind is warm you know for sure what you're going to get.  They blew gently at first, but by 8 pm they were increasing in velocity so I took down the flag, took down the umbrellas, took down the wind chimes, took down the red wall on the dining canopy, and folded up the putting greens.  The forecast was for continued winds up to 18 mph, which is not too bad, but once again the weather guessers were wildly inaccurate.  In retrospect we should have taken down the dining canopy right then, as well as the 'sail shades', and should have been a tad more skeptical of the forecast.  By 2 am the winds were gusting over 30 mph, and ultimately by 4 am TLE and I were outside taking down the 'sail shades, and the dining canopy, and removing the tire covers that were almost ready to blow away.  Nothing like being up at 4 am, outside being blown around like rag dolls whilst trying to save your 'lido deck'.  We've been through this scenario several times over the almost 13 years of full time living in the Newell, and we have both learned to do what needs to be done without getting flustered, or out of sorts.  We were probably outside less than 10 minutes, but it seemed like an hour....lol!

As I write the winds have abated to around 10-15 mph, but if we are to give an credence to the weather guessers we are supposed to get more wind over 20 mph until late morning....we'll see.

Thanks for stopping by!