Saturday's.....

 7:24 am - Saturday - November 5th - GNHS - 50° F, 46% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the southeast, with a forecast high of 75°F.  The view this morning.....↴

......and on this date in 2013 we were courtesy parked in front of my brother's home in South Jordan, UT....we awoke to snow on our 2002 T-Bird.....↴

Friday we helped Bob and Casey put the finishing touches on the office setup, I continued installing the tablet holders in the RAZR's, plus setting up our wash station.  I was so busy I neglected to remember to take any pictures Friday, except for the beautiful sunrise, and then in the evening our beautiful sunset.....

Sunrise....

....Sunset....

....we only ended up working about 4 hours Friday as Bob and Casey needed to drive into Niland to sign up for fuel delivery with a local supplier, plus do some shopping for the business, so we had the afternoon off work.

Personally, I took a nap, and did some reading. Around 5 pm TLE whipped up another of her tasty BLAT's (bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato)......I love bacon Friday's!  After that we headed outside to play a game of 'Phase 10', then finished off the evening with a fire, and great conversation.  We got a call from Charles and Phyllis (TLE's sister and brother-in-law), who are still going strong in their renewed relationship. Every time we talk with them you sense a lightness in their conversation, and happiness.  Of course, that makes TLE very happy for her sister.  Apparently a cold snap moved through the Phoenix area, so they hooked up the 5th wheel and headed for Long Beach, CA.  Phyllis just retired as a flight attendant for American Airlines, and is now adjusting to life not revolving around airports....lol.  I explained to her that everyday is now 'Saturday'.  For those of you who have not heard my theory on retirement and Saturdays let me explain.

Back in my workaday life I would occasionally awake on a Saturday morning thinking it was a regular work day, and then within seconds realized it was Saturday.  That feeling of suddenly realizing you don't have to go to work was so special back then....you just relax, turn over, and go back to sleep.....that was always a great feeling!  Fast forward to my retirement....suddenly waking up every day felt like Saturday, so I renamed the workdays of each week to First Saturday (Monday), Second Saturday (Tuesday), and so forth.  When you are retired you never go to Home Depot, or the grocery store on Real Saturday, but wait until 2nd, or 3rd Saturday when all the workaday people are back at their jobs, so its not as crowded.

Anyway, we had a delightful time talking with them, and it just kind of capped off a great evening on the 'lido deck'.

Thanks for stopping by!

RAZRing....

 7:16 am - Friday - November 4th - GNHS - 54° F, 40% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the north.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 71° F.  On this date in 2015 we were visiting friends in South Lake Tahoe on our way south.....we were shocked to see how low the lake had gotten since we left in early September.......↴

.....the view this morning.....

We awoke Thursday to a beautiful sunrise.....I love this time of year in the SoCal desert....just about the time you begin to wake up you can see the sunrise, which is often spectacular.  Then, within a few days DST will kick in again, and we will be seeing the sunrise at 5:30 am, instead of 6:30 am.....way before we want to be awake.  But then our body clocks will adjust over a month or so, and we'll get used to this man made, and completely unnecessary time change.

Thursday was to be an extremely busy day as we assisted Bob and Casey in getting the office set up, which would involve completely rearranging the furniture, and removing some built in shelving to make more room for a bigger table, and their shelving.  Bob wanted to be able to use the shelving in the CONEX they are using to store other supplies, and after ripping it out, I rebuilt it using all of the screws, and 20 penny nails I had just removed.  

Before I began to rebuild the shelving, I assisted Bob in installing their Starlink dishy.  We mounted it on top of the little office building, cut a hole in the wall to pass the cable through to the router, and had high speed internet within 10 minutes....Bob has never used Starlink before, and was astounded at how easy it was....no kidding....lol!....

....once that was done Bob and TLE got work setting up their two laptops, and programming 6 Samsung tablets which will be used as GPS devices in each of the RAZRS (by the way, the 3 two seaters are really Kawasaki's, not Polaris'.....my bad).  Once I finished rebuilding the shelving Bob had me begin installing the mounting brackets for the tablets in each RAZR....the installation in the Polaris RAZR's looks like this......

Mounted 'landscape' fashion

......and in the Kawasaki's like this......

Mounted 'portrait' fashion

.....I managed to get 4 of them done before 5 pm (3 RAZRS's and 1 Kawasaki).  Bob and Casey decided to take all the employees of GNHS for a sunset RAZR ride, so we met back at the office at 5:30 pm to do just that....

I'm ready to Rock 'N Roll

Bob (center just behind TLE in blue sweatshirt) giving us our pre-ride instruction

.....once all the RAZR's were assigned (we had one of the Kawasaki 2 seaters) Bob gave us our pre-ride instruction, and then we were off heading into the sunset......

......the bat caves are about 10 miles north of GNHS, and it took us about 35 minutes of driving to reach them.  The view looking north was beautiful as the sunset afterglow continued on for about 20 minutes......

Our RAZR parked at the bat caves

All those lights are Salton City, on the west side of the Salton Sea

One of the bat caves....we missed the daily flight of the bats

.....we were back at the office around 7:30 pm after a very exciting night ride home.  TLE asked me to take this picture of her showing how dirty her sweatshirt got....you can see the seatbelt marks.....

....this was only our third time RAZR riding.....you may remember we went RAZR riding with our good friend Tom McCloud back in 2021, and with my brother-in-law in Montana back in July of 2020.  At any rate, we had a blast, and are looking forward to many more rides this winter!

Thanks for stopping by!

They're here.....

 7:40 am - Thursday - November 3rd - GNHS - 58° F, 51% humidity, wind 18 mph out of the west.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 68° F.   On this date in 2011 TLE and I had just retired, and were spending a few days at Rincon Parkway just north of Ventura, CA to celebrate......↴

.......the view this morning.......↴

The guys (Bob and Casey) from Colorado Outback Adventures arrived sometime after midnight, apparently, as there was their truck and trailer parked near the office.....

......within a couple of hours we had a couple of them unloaded with advertising signs in place....

.....and the office setup was complete....

.....there are three 2 seaters, and three 4 seaters to rent, and a Kawasaki Mule for TLE and I to use (middle of picture below)......

.....and here is the lineup I mentioned above.....they are all Polaris RAZR's, and anywhere from 1-2 years old......

......in between the initial unloading of the first two 4 seaters, Bob and Casey had to make a run into town to drop one of their employees at the airport, then make a COSTCO run for supplies.  By 5 pm they had returned, and everything was unloaded.  Thursday will be our orientation day.   The name (again) of Bob and Casey's business is Colorado Outback Adventures, which gets 4.5 stars on Yelp, and on TripAdvisor 5 stars on over 300 reviews.  We are looking forward to beginning our adventure with Bob and Casey, who are extremely nice guys by the way.

So, now the real winter job begins.  I am sure there will be a learning curve for TLE and I as we get used to their systems, and equipment, but we are always up for a challenge.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Life's little annoyances......

 7:08 am - Wednesday - November 2nd - Niland, CA - 61° F, 61% humidity, wind 8 mph out of the west by northwest......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 73° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in Park City, UT with my brother and his wife (Dwyer and Lori) for dinner at the Stein Erickson Lodge.......↴

One of my all time favorite pictures

......the view this morning......↴

Tuesday was a day to fix little, annoying stuff that really did not affect our quality of life, but over time become major annoyances.  Since we arrived our Girard tankless water heater has been impossible to regulate temperature wise.  Normally, when taking a shower, we set the temperature to what we prefer....for me it is anywhere between 106-108° F, and for TLE is 101-102° F.  When we turn on the shower water we just turn the knob all the way to hot....makes it less complicated than trying to adjust between hot and cold, and it works wonderfully when you have adequate water pressure.  Here at GNHS the water pressure is lower than we've seen in our travels, and as a result when we turn on the hot water the temp goes right past the preset limit to 124° F.....way, way too hot, right?  If we try to regulate it by mixing the hot water with cold water it shuts off, and all we get is cold water.....doh!  There is no middle ground.  Someone (here at GNHS) had the same issue, and suggested the other day that we turn off the city water when taking a shower, and turn on our water pump to use water out of our fresh water tank....the water pump provides much better pressure.  At any rate, Tuesday I decided to top off the fresh water tank, and then see if using the on board water pump would work, and what do you know?  It worked!  Up until recently we just turned off the water heater and took a room temperature shower.....the water temp coming out of the hose bib here is around 93° F when it is sunny, and warm, so that worked fine, but the temps will be dropping, and pretty soon that was not going to work anymore, thus turning this minor annoyance into a major annoyance.  Okay, one problem solved, and a lot of relief felt on my part......I was becoming convinced that something was wrong with the Girard...my mind always goes to the place where major expense, and difficulty is involved.....most of the time it is something simple, just as it was in this case....

We'll have to keep the fresh water tank filled up all the time now....sitting at 150 gallons after two showers.

The next minor issue was to trim some branches off the tree which hangs over, and brushes against the roof of the trailer when a breeze comes up....a minor issue, but we're going to get winds over 20 mph Wednesday and then it will become a big issue, so I got out our telescoping ladder and trimmed those branches away with our long handled pruners we bought back in Alturas at the Rite Aid just in case of this very situation.....they worked well, and the job was done within 30 minutes......

The branches are no longer touching the trailer

....another minor annoyance was the 'head bumper' rail attached to the underside edge of our overhead cabinets in the salon.....it is only held in place by 3 finishing nails, and 40 years of grabbing onto, and leaning against the 'head bumper' rail has loosened the grip of those nails. Usually I was just able to push it back into place, and it would stay, but Monday afternoon it came down for good, and would not press back into place....now a major annoyance! That is why I bought those finishing nails at Home Depot Monday.  The wood those nails go into is very hard wood, so I had to pre-drill holes for the new finishing nails, and then hammer them into place.  It only took two more nails to re-secure the 'head bumper' rail.....

'Head bumper' rail....all fixed now!

.....and with that 3 more small annoyances checked off the list.

TLE made burritos for dinner......she makes the best burritos!  We dined alfresco, chasing our burritos with......

.....Peanut Butter Chocolate Milk Stout by Lost Coast......I forgot how good this beer is.  We found these at Trader Joe's on Monday.....haven't found them for a few years now, but when you see them you buy them.....

....after dinner we played two complete games of 'Phase 10'....TLE won the first in a blowout, and I the second in a closely fought game.

Thanks for stopping by!

How far is too far?

 9:21 am - Tuesday - November 1, 2022 - GNHS - 70° F, 39% humidity, wind 9 mph out of the south by southeast......cloudy today with a forecast high of 83° F.  The view this morning......↴

.....and on this date in 2016 TLE and I hiked to the Mobius Arch in the Alabama Hills outside of Lone Pine, CA.....↴

There seems to be a trend developing over the past few years in our Workamper job locations....with each passing job we seem to be further away from a city where we can do major shopping like grocery stores, hardware stores, multiple dinning options, thrift stores, etc.  For instance, when we worked at Ramona Oaks RV Resort back in 2019-20 we were 6 miles from town.....not too bad, then in 2020-21 we worked at Seal Rocks RV Cove which was 10 miles south of Newport...still not too bad.  Next up was this past summer at LPG&RVR....where we were 20 miles south of Alturas.....right at the end of what we thought was a reasonable distance to drive to town.  Now, at GNHS, we find ourselves 37 miles from Indio/La Quinta.  'Driving into town' has now become a major commitment on our part.  By the time we drive into town visit all the stores we wish to visit, and come home half of the day has gone.  I guess it really comes down to how far is too far when you can live in beautiful, remote places for 6 months at a time.

It had been 8 days since we last visited Indio/La Quinta, and frankly, we could have just driven to Niland, which is about 16 miles away, but I needed to pickup my latest 90 day prescriptions at COSTCO (no pharmacy in Niland), plus we needed to visit the Home Depot again to augment our burgeoning garden.  We left home around 10:15 am and arrived at Home Depot around 11 am.  We bought two more potted geraniums, some seeds (cilantro, Italian pepperoncini), a jalapeño plant, a 6' x 8' piece of artificial turf, some finishing nails, some self tapping Phillips head screws, a watering pot, some Miracle Grow, etc.  Next up was Goodwill where TLE bought some pots in which to transplant a few of her plants.  

By the time we finished at Goodwill it was noon time, and we have not eaten at Rubio's Coastal Grill for a long, long time, so we headed there next.....

.....I always get their Original Fish Taco plate , and TLE their California Bowl with grilled chicken.......

......we, as we always prefer to do, took our meal outdoors in their lovely alfresco dining area.  

Next up was COSTCO for my prescriptions, then a quick stop at a Neighborhood Walmart before we headed for home, arriving back at GLNS around 3:30 pm.....see what I mean?  Half a day gone.....gone, but not wasted, and certainly enjoyed.

We spent what was left of our afternoon putting away groceries (TLE), putting away the hardware items we bought (moi), installing the new artificial turf piece, and setting out our new plants.  It was kind of warmish when we got home (over 85° F), so we turned on the A/C to cool the Newell interior, and relaxed.

There's always one more thing for the 'lido deck' right?  

The new turf piece looks great! 

Just after sundown I remembered to take pictures of the solar lights I deployed Sunday when they were actually lit.......

.....by the way, we filled up the VW for the first time since Minden, NV and got the best price per gallon for Premium Unleaded we've gotten in a year.....$5.19/gallon....in California, no less!  There is a reason why the COSTCO fuel stations are always jammed with waiting customers.....their prices are way below the competition....WAY below....I don't know how they do it.

Thanks for stopping by!