Classic!

One of the things I like about my job here at TVC is that no two days are exactly alike.  Every day presents different challenges, new projects, and an occasional surprise.  After completing my morning rounds I spent time at sites 294 and 336 which happen to back up to each other.  I wrote about placing logs at these sites a week, or so ago to better define the boundaries of the two sites.  Unfortunately unless these logs are secured to the ground they will inevitably be moved by humans, so Wednesday I went back to pound some 'L' shaped rebar into the ground to be sure they are not moved to increase the size of one site, or another.

The boundaries are now secure

We're in that sweet spot between the 4th of July blowout weekend and the arrival of the church groups at the end of July.  The park is about 75-80% full, but running smoothly.  There is that fine line between our current capacity and 100% where things go from running smoothly to seeming organized chaos.  When the church groups arrive (one after the other) we will go to close to 100% again and we will be juggling a lot of balls in the air for about 3 weeks.  

While I was making my afternoon rounds I came across this 1984 Newell Classic in site 255.....what a cool surprise....not many Newells come into TVC.  I met the owners and invited them over to see our 1982 after we got off work.  Eric purchased this Newell about 4 years ago after seeing it here at TVC.  He approached the owner about buying it, and it just happened the current owner at that time was thinking about selling.  It had a different paint scheme back then.....Eric had it completely repainted.....around 6 pm Eric and his daughter came by for the tour.  We'll visit their coach Thursday after work.....

I 'clocked out' around 3 pm as I was an hour over my 40 hours for the week coming into Wednesday......TLE followed an hour later.  She headed off immediately to Raley's to do some shopping and came home with a large ahi tuna steak for me to grill.  She added cooked spinach and barley sides.....we ate outside once again......the early evening weather is just perfect right now!

Thanks for stopping by!

The Ice Man cometh........

We arrived at the office/store around 7:20 am to find that the Ice House slide mechanism in which you place your 8 quarters to buy a 7 pound bag of cube ice had broken on Monday afternoon.  I remembered seeing a box of these old mechanical devices in one of the maintenance sheds a few weeks ago.  I went looking for that box hoping to just cannibalize the part which had broken from one of the extras to fix the existing one.  I don't even know if you can buy these things anymore......it is like 40 year old technology, if not older.  After emptying the box I began to examine each device.  Some were set up to take $1.25 in quarters, some $1.50 and one $1.75.....I finally picked up one that took $2.00 in quarters......it was brand new.....never used!  So I'm thinking "Hey, I can just take out the old one and replace it with a brand new one!" instead of cannibalizing anything.  I'm pretty good with mechanical devices once I figure them out, and that was the case Tuesday.  It took me a while to figure out how to remove the old one, but once I did everything else went quickly, and by 9:30 the Ice House was back in business once again.

I spent the rest of the morning doing my rounds, and greeting some returning customers (Richard and Liz)  who have been coming to TVC for 30 years to spend the summer.  TLE and I took lunch together at 1 pm and were back on the job by 1:30.  My afternoon involved lining the road into the Group/Overflow area with logs in anticipation of the arrival of our two church groups which come here for tent meetings late July and early August.  The logs will keep people from taking short cuts through the tent sites near the entrance of the Group/Overflow area, and will also keep tenters from entering their sites from the Group/Overlfow road.

Finally I put up the last of the signs......ONE WAY signs to discourage folks from driving the wrong way on our one way loops in F, A and E sections.  These signs combined with the very large DO NOT ENTER signs I have put up should reduce the wrong way driving occurrences.....we shall see what we shall see.

TLE and I were off work at 4 pm and home sipping our adult beverages by 4:15.....TLE had me grill some pollo asado which she turned into street tacos once again.....I love this woman!

Pollo asado street tacos

We dined alfresco for the first time in a while, and sat talking about this and that until after 7:30 pm when we headed inside.....not because of mosquitoes.....there were none as of 7:30 pm!

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When permanent is not permanent.....

A few weeks ago when visiting Sidellis Lake Tahoe Brewery we noticed a little restaurant next door that looked interesting.....Local's Brunch Cafe.....they serve breakfast and lunch all day from 8 am to 5 pm.....you can have lunch at 8 am if you wish, or breakfast at 4 pm!  They get 4 solid stars on 101 reviews.....the 101st is mine.  We decided to ride our Cannondale road bikes over to Local's for breakfast Monday morning leaving just before 10 am and arriving just before 10:30 after a 4 mile ride.

Just after being seated our server brought us a chips and salsa (both heated), and just after we ordered we were served a bowl of vegetable soup.....this is standard fair for every diner from 8 am to 5 pm!  They offer their version of Huevos Rancheros, so, as you might imagine, that is what I ordered......TLE ordered their biscuits and gravy.  Service was lightning fast, and we loved every morsel.....every bite.   Total cost for breakfast...$22.....very reasonable for the Tahoe Basin.

  It is very cozy.....just 8 tables

Just finishing our vegetable soup

After paying our tab we rode our bicycles a block down the street to visit one of my favorite thrift shops (not TLE's).....they have a very nice used tool section where I have often found things I could not live without, but on this day nothing tickled my fancy so my fancy and I got back on my bike and headed for home with TLE in tow.  We decided to take a ride through 'Campground by the Lake', which is owned by the city of South Lake Tahoe.  They have about 112 sites, most of which are dry camping sites.  They offer some water and electric sites, but no sewer connections at the sites.....there is a dump station, however.  Over all the campground looked well kept.....the main attraction of this campground is that just across the street (Lake Tahoe Blvd.) is Lake Tahoe, which can be seen from many of the campsites....

....they have camphosts who volunteer 14 hours each per week for a free site.....for me it is tempting, but TLE has no interest.  It would be nice to just walk across the street to the lake each day and the sunsets are said to be fabulous.

We were back home by noon time.....just after arriving home I received an email from Amazon regarding approved RV parks near Haslet, TX where we will be spending 7-8 weeks during their 'Peak Season'.  We have been expecting this list since April.  At any rate I immediately sat down to begin calling the closest ones to the fulfillment center to make reservations.  Of course, every other Camperforce person was calling, too.  I did manage to make contact with Alfred at Ranch of Rhome and it looks like we will be staying there....they are about 11 miles from Amazon, so that will work for us.  I notified our friends Mike and Lizzie who are joining us to work at Amazon, and they also contacted Ranch of Rhome.

Once that was done I plowed into the most important project of the day.....try and effect a permanent fix on the fan assembly for the dryer portion of our Splendide washer/dryer combo.  You will recall I had worked on this issue (fan rubs against the housing making annoying sound) and thought I had fixed it, and the fix did hold up for over 4 months, but the rubbing sound came back again a couple of weeks ago.

I was determined not to remove the machine from its cubbyhole and found that I could just remove the top to easily access the fan assembly.  As is my custom what I thought would be a 1 hour job morphed slowly into a 3 hour job, but this time I am quite confident I have effected a permanent fix.  I found that the actual fan motor was wobbling a tad and after disassembling it I found that the two bolts/nylock nuts were a little lose.  I torqued them down with my Porter-Cable torque driver, and then put it all back together.  I had just reinstalled the top of the washer/dryer when TLE walked over and asked "What are these 6 screws for?".......doh!  I turned around and saw the aforementioned 6 screws sitting on the counter sort of mocking me.....I immediately realized that when I took the fan shroud apart to tighten the fan motor bolts that I had not screwed it back together.  I had temporary visions of having to take EVERYTHING apart once again to install those 6 mocking screws, but once I had the top off AGAIN I could see that the screws could be installed with NO disassembly......YAY FOR MY TEAM!!  It took me just 5 minutes to rectify my error, and the job was done! All that was left to be done was putting all the food stores back in the pantry above the Splendid, which was TLE's project.

I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and mentally girding myself up once again for a 5 day work week here at TVC.

Thanks for stopping by!

"In-N-Out, that's what a hamburger's all about"

Well, sometime during all that sign fun the last two days I strained my left shoulder, and Sunday I woke up in pain.  I had big plans for Sunday, but they all involved the heavy use of my left shoulder, so TLE and I decided to take the day off.  Instead of rolling out that large piece of outdoor turf to cut it and fit it to our site we decided to take a drive down to Carson City to do some shopping.  Last year we drove down to Carson City every 2, or 3 weeks, but this was the first time for me since April 30th when we drove over Spooner Pass to spend the summer at TVC.  April 29th was the last time I had a haircut....yikes!......my hair is getting long.  I don't think I've gone this long without a haircut since the 70's when I, like many other males, wore longer hair, and it was time to sing the In-N-Out Burger jingle featured in the title today.

We left around 10:45 for the drive and arrived at Supercuts by 11:30 for my haircut.  From there we headed further east to the Carson City Goodwill, one of our favorites.  I didn't find anything I couldn't live without, but TLE found a couple of new outfits.  I did buy three tennis rackets at $3.19 each for TVC after checking with Victor.  Our loaner tennis rackets are worn out, and these three rackets are in very good shape.

Next we headed directly for In-N-Out Burger for a #2 Combo (Cheeseburger, fries and a drink)......it was 1:30 pm by this time, but In-N-Out was packed......of course it was Sunday so I guess that's not unusual.  Just across the street is Walmart, so we headed there next, then to Trader Joe's and finally to Costco before heading back over Spooner Pass and into the Tahoe Basin once again.

 The 'drink' part of the #2 Combo

The fries and cheeseburger part of the #2 Combo

We didn't get home until after 4 pm......what a nice, relaxing day spent with my best friend and love of my life.  TLE did all the driving.....usually I drive, but my left shoulder preferred I defer to TLE this time for the 70 mile round trip drive.

Around 6 I fired up the Sea-B-Que to grill some carne asada......TLE put together 4 street tacos for me......the perfect end to a perfect day off work!

Thanks for stopping by!

"Sign, sign, everywhere a sign......" Part II

Saturday's are our Friday and back in our workaday lives we loved Friday's as that meant we had two days off, of course.  On Saturday the sign fun continued.....I felt like a kid in a candy store.  We have had a problem area in Section E for the 3 years we have been coming to TVC.  Just past the cabins the road splits and forms a 'Y'.....if you are in an RV of any length over 20' the road to the left is very difficult to negotiate due to the position of the trees.  Many inexperienced operators have hit one of the trees trying to 'snake' through the road to the left.  Now we have the proper signage to send RV's to the right.......

.....instead of creating a sign advising no RV's over certain length attempt the left road we decided to just direct all RV's (trailers, 5th wheels, Class C's, Class A's) to the right to avoid any misunderstandings.......

.....additionally we were given several yellow signs reading "CROSS TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP"......at the entrance to TVC we have the intersection of Melba Drive and C Street.....folks driving west and east on Melba Drive must stop while traffic going north and south on C Street (the entrance to TVC) do not have a stop sign.  We've had a number of close calls over the years, and a couple of fender benders as many people thought it was a four way stop.  I took two of those yellow signs and attached them just below the two stop signs.....I hope the local constabulary doesn't mind.....I'm sure they won't......

......additionally the road leading out of the Group Area has never had a stop sign, and when we are full this creates another potential for collisions.....there is a large dumpster there and it creates a sort of blind spot, so I dug a hole for a 4 x 4 post and attached my last stop sign there......yeah, I know, the post is short, but that is how all our traffic signs are mounted here in TVC......

.....in between all the signage fun I did my rounds, pumped propane, watched the entrance to keep the traffic unjammed and flowing, picked up trash and ran errands for our office staff.  One of our office staff (not TLE) spends time each day comparing the length of RV for future arrivals to the reported length of the site to which they are assigned.  On occasion they will find a situation where the RV is clearly longer that the site and will call me to go and measure not only that site, but a possible alternate site.  Most often these mismatches are the fault of the Thousand Trails (a national camping membership program) reservation personnel.  Thousand Trails only sets aside and pays us for 45 sites out of the 406 sites here for its Thousand Trails members.  They deliberately assign people to sites too short hoping we will move them to a retail site when we discover what they have done.  When we  do this they get one of our retail sites, for which they have not paid, for a deeply discounted price.  Mind you, we are prohibited from putting a retail customer into one of the Thousand Trail sites.  We have finally caught on to their 'game' and everyone in the office except for one, or two will not move them anymore.  When they arrive and are unhappy we direct them back to Thousand Trails who made their reservation.  What needs to happen is Thousand Trails needs to set aside and pay for more sites instead of playing this game.  Anyway, I say that to say this.......measuring sites for a future arrival is not high on my list of priorities....I am always working on something, and when I get those calls it takes me away from something that has more immediate importance.  I have asked several times that office personnel write down these requests and save them up for when I come back to the office after doing my morning rounds, or afternoon rounds, and I will do them all at once.  Again one, or two folks believe what they are working on is more important than anything else in the park......yup, a minor source of irritation.

TLE and I were off and riding our bikes home a little after 4 pm looking forward to two days off.....we are at the half way mark of our summer commitment......hard to believe.

Thanks for stopping by!

"Sign, sign, everywhere a sign....

.....blockin' out the scenery breakin' my mind. Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?".  This refrain from the 1971 song entitled 'Signs' by The Five Man Electrical Band would gain special significance for me during my Friday shift......read on.

Friday was another 100+ arrival day, and Friday was about as good as it gets for me.  As bad as Wednesday was Friday was its complete opposite.  My morning rounds went smoothly, and by 10 am I was making small repairs around the park when I came across a site post in one of the tent spots that someone had backed over and broken off at ground level.....  

Broken site post

......most of the time we can just dig a new hole and insert the old post, but this one was now too short, so I drove back to the maintenance yard to find a suitable 4 x 4 post to cut to length, paint and then install the number plate and site tag clip from the old post......

 Finished product

......I think it came out quite well what do you think?  Just about the time I finished packing the dirt around the new post I got a call from TLE to come to the office, so I dutifully drove over to the office/store to see what was up.....she was acting mysteriously so I wasn't sure if I was in trouble, or what.

Back in May one of our long time customers sent an e-mail to Robert asking if we might be interested in some street signs he had recovered from a mall he had torn down.  Robert gave me the e-mail and asked me to contact the customer to see what he had.  After exchanging several e-mails I decided most of what he had we could use here at TVC.  He was slated to arrive here in July, so I kind of put the signs on the back burner and forgot about them.  Well, the customer had arrived and that is why I was summoned to the office.  He took me out to his pickup where he unveiled a treasure trove of signs......8 "STOP" signs, 6 pedestrian signs, 6 "DO NOT ENTER" signs, numerous "ONE WAY" signs, "NO STOPPING AT ANY TIME" signs, etcetera, etcetera.  It was way better than I thought!

I spent the better part of the rest of the day hanging the new signs.......

........with a supply 8 stop signs I could finally realize a dream I have had for 3 summers now......move our portable stop sign out into the street, and install a permanent sign in its place......

.....and then the crush began......RV's began arriving three and four at a time and soon I was sending them directly to their sites as the line was back around the trolley shed a couple of times.....by the time the smoke cleared it was 4 pm and time to hand off the baton to the night shift and head for the barn.

Friday was a day to remember.....everyone did their job....everyone showed up for their shift on time, and the number of unhappy customers was almost non-existent. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Buried......

We have been looking at this ditch between site 427 and 429 for a couple of weeks now, and Thursday it was time to turn off the power, disconnect the new 50 amp cable, put it in a conduit, pull the cable up through the bottom of each pedestal, reconnect at both ends, and bury it...........

Before.....

.....I had arranged with Adam and Alex to meet me at my site Thursday morning about 9 am so we could finish what we started over two weeks ago.  I notified the few customers whose power we had to turn off to complete the task advising it would take about an hour......in fact, within 25 minutes the three of us had managed to erase the work zone.......

 After!

......the ditch is gone, the cable buried and power is restored once again!  We'll give the earth in the ditch a little time to settle, which will involve wetting it down over the next week, before we begin renting out this site once again.

A few days ago a customer (Dan), who has become a friend, asked me if I wanted the turf he had in his site after he headed back home......he didn't want to haul it home.  It weighs about 200 lbs., and is about 300 square feet of expensive artificial turf used on football and soccer fields.  Adam helped me move it to my site, and this Sunday when TLE and I are off we will open it up and cut it to fit our site.......

I spent the rest of my day doing my job....interacting with customers, helping a few into their sites, watching the entrance when it got congested, fixing a few things, and at the end of the day washing the dust of a few days off the Ranger cart.....it was, indeed, a good day.

We received tragic news of the passing of a good friend, Sandra Katora.  She was the same age as my sister Jill, and they became friends at summer camp in 1966, the same year I met Sandra.  She was an amazing woman, and mother....her passing was totally unexpected....

Left to right: Sandra Kotora, Jill (my sister), moi, and Rika Nilson...from our college days....1969, or 1970.

......just another reminder at how fragile life is, and how important it is to live every day to the fullest.....you just don't know when your number will be called....RIP Sandra!

A few weeks ago serendipity struck once again......one of our customers, David (pictured below) severely cut his left index finger almost severing the tendon (90% cut) requiring he and his wife, Linda, to extend their stay so he could have micro surgery to repair the tendon.  Through this experience we became friends.  I helped him move his 36' Class A motorhome a couple of times as TLE found them sites to extend their stay.  Ultimately they ended up in a site directly behind us.  Last evening they asked if they could treat us to dinner at Sonney's BBQ, and, of course, we said 'Yes!'.  Around 5 pm we rode over to Sonney's in their car for a wonderful dinner of conversation and baby back ribs......

Left to right: Moi, David, Linda, TLE

......David and Linda are from South Carolina, and are on a 6 month odyssey exploring the Western U.S.  They are our kind of folks......we can sit talking about any subject for hours.....it feels as if we have known them for years.  We are a little sad they will be leaving us Friday, but their journey must continue now that David has been cleared to drive once again.  Safe travels David and Linda.....we'll see you on the east coast in 2017!

Thanks for stopping by!