Ping Pong.....

7:54 am - Wednesday - 52 F degrees, 66% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the west.....partly cloudy, sun breaking through......rained on and off most of the night. Slept well....loved hearing the rain on the aluminum roof!  Checked my checking account online to find our paychecks had been deposited......YAY......three more paychecks and we are out of here.

Tuesday began with my writing my blog as usual, and then outside sweeping pine needles off the 'grass' and awning mat, then raking our site to kind of spruce it up a little, then began to get ready for work at noon.

We were on the job just before noon, and I immediately did my site check rounds......down to 105 sites occupied.  As I made my rounds I noted several sites where there was trash left behind by the customers, as well as one with three BBQ's left behind, and also 2 sites in the tenting area where two sites posts had been knocked over.  After I turned in the results of my site check round to TLE I headed back to the sites with trash in them and quickly picked it all up, then headed over to the site with 3 BBQ's, picked them up and took them back to the maintenance yard, got the post hole digger, dug new holes for the site posts, and reset the posts.

I spent time dragging logs to plug up holes where vehicles had been driving illegally, drug logs across sites 101-104 to keep people using the dump station from using them as shortcuts.....yeah, I was busy.

Then I got a call that there was no 50 amp in site 183, so I got my tools and headed over to see what was what.  I tested the 30 amp outlet and there was power, but there was none whatsoever in the 50 amp outlet.  I then noticed something odd.....there was just a single 30 amp breaker for the 50 amp outlet, which made no sense at all, so I got out my tools to open up the pedestal.  When I opened it up I saw that the 30 amp breaker was not hooked up to anything, and there were no hot wires going to  the 50 amp outlet.....wait, what?  How is that possible?  There was no evidence it had been hooked up for years, and the 30 amp breaker just appeared to be there to fill the space next to the other 30 amp breaker.  Why we have never had a complaint about this pedestal in the three years I have been here is puzzling  Nevertheless, I headed to the maintenance yard to pick up two 50 amp breakers and some appropriate wire to connect the breakers to the 50 amp outlet.  It took me about an hour to get it all wired up, and put back together, but I was successful.  I'm still puzzled at why no one ever complained, because we do sell that site as a 50 amp site, and I know we have had numerous 50 amp rigs in that site this summer....ah well, one of life's unexplained mysteries.

My next gig was to help the lady in site 151 connect to the internet, which I did successfully.....she offered me a beer for my efforts, but I declined as I was still 'on the job'.  Next up I had a call to report to site 112 to help the gentleman set up his portable tripod satellite dish.....that is not something we really do, and I have no experience setting up one successfully......ever.  I did show him where he would have to set his dish up to have access to the 'southern sky', and left the rest to him.  I've watched my neighbors setting up their portable dishes, and I know how long it can take, and the one thing I didn't want to do was get stuck for an hour doing something at which I had absolutely no chance of being successful.

By this time it was after 5 pm, I feeling like a human ping pong ball, and I hadn't taken my 'lunch break' yet, so I headed for the coach to each lunch and take a short nap.....yup, I was beat after 5 hours of doing what I had been doing.....beat!

By the time I was back to work it was after 6 and the end of my shift was in sight.  I closed the pool early because there was no one using it.....by the way, the problem with the pool heater was the lack of propane as I surmised.....the propane guys came Monday and filled our tank, so order in the pool world has been restored.

We were home by 8:20 pm, and sitting by the fire with our friends Charles and Bobbie for their last night here at TVC....originally they booked 5 nights, but like almost everyone who comes to Lake Tahoe they added 2 more days to make it a week.

I was in bed a little after 10 pm, and TLE a short time later.....thanks for stopping by!

The BIG EMPTY.....

7:59 am - Tuesday - 48 F degrees, 52% humidity, wind 1 mph out of west....sundown for the first time since April will be before 7 pm......sunny, cloudless.  

Our view out the back of our site becomes emptier and emptier.....we haven't seen this view since early May......

.....as promised there were several naps, some reading and ultimately I installed the Fantasic Fan in the trailer....

The old 'static' vent.....you served us well!

....the old static vent came out pretty easily, and the new one went in easily, also.  This fan has variable speeds, and can be used to draw air into the trailer, or vent it as needed, and it is soooo quiet......

The new Fantastic Fan installed!

......I didn't have time, or should I say, didn't take the time to install the trim piece on the inside as it will need to be cut down to fit properly....I'll do that Tuesday.

I did take time to drive down to the maintenance yard to wash off two weeks of dust and grime.  Once that was done we headed over to Scotty's TruValue Hardware Store, and then DIY (Do It Yourself) to get pricing on 350 of fencing.  As I wrote previously we have approximately 335 feet of gaps in our fencing at the extreme south end of Melba Drive.  Victor and Robert asked me to spearhead the acquisition of fencing by getting pricing.  Scotty's had the best price at $55/50' X 4' for welded fencing bring the total cost in at $385 (plus tax) for 350 feet fencing....slightly over $1.00/foot.....not bad.

Around 6 pm we drove over to Classic Cue with Charles and Bobbie for Fish Taco Monday....all Tacos are only $1.50 each all day long.  TLE and I had a pitcher of Downtown Brown to chase the Fish Tacos.  We were home by 8 pm, and sitting by the fire sipping some Pinot Noir.....a nice way to end our off day......

.....thanks for stopping by!

'That's the ticket.......'

(.....a favorite movie quote of mine stolen from Jon Lovitz)

7:50 am - Monday - 36 F degrees, 67% humidity, wind 5 mph out of south......sunny, clear, blue skies.  Another day off, a few naps, installing the new Fantastic Fan in the trailer.

It got to 81 F degrees Sunday, but that just lent itself to watching the NFL outdoors.  As I sat at my computer around 7:17 am checking to see when the Broncos would be playing, and on what channel.....surprise, surprise, surprise....their game is not being televised by the networks.  This happened often last year, and no doubt it happens to many of you who have a favorite NFL team, and only want to watch them play each Sunday, Monday, or Thursday.  I've toyed with getting the NFL Sunday Ticket for several seasons, but never pulled the trigger, but this time I was bugged.....I wanted to watch them at home against Indianapolis.  I brought up the DirecTV website to investigate the cost for NFL Sunday Ticket, and found it was an extra $45 per month during the NFL season......that's about $11.25 per week......yep, it's worth it.  I clicked on the 'ACTIVATE' button, and within 5 minutes I had channels 705 to 718, and could watch any game I wanted......woooohooo!

Of course, my reason for changing up my schedule to have Sunday and Monday off was so I could watch NFL football.  Last year at this time we were in Cape Blanco at the beginning of the NFL regular season and I spent most Sundays all fall and winter watching football....in fact I spent most Saturday's watching NCAA college football.  At any rate, since we decided to remain at TVC until late October it was needful to change my days off for the sake of my football mental health, and now I also subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket......life is good.

We had no plans whatsoever for Sunday except to watch football all day long, and that is pretty much what I did......in between wonderful, delicious naps.  We watched the 10 am game inside, but as it got warmer we moved outside for the afternoon games.  The Denver v. Indianapolis game was close until the 4th quarter when the Denver defense scored two touchdowns to enable Denver to win 34-20.  Unfortunately, my other favorite team, the Seahawks, only managed a field goal in 60 minutes losing 9-3 to the L.A. Rams.....sounds like a baseball score.  We moved back inside for the Sunday night game between the Packers and Vikings, and that my friends was what my Sunday looked like.  

On a side note all that hard work repairing the fence along Melba Drive has manifested itself in sore hands, fingers, and shoulders.  I had to soak my hands in epsom salts for about 10 minutes to take away some of the stiffness......an oh are they stiff!  The epsom salts helped enormously.....I wish I could soak my shoulders in epsom salts!

We were in bed a little after 10....I slept for almost 10 hours....thanks for stopping by!

No heating......

7:17 am - Sunday - 36 F degrees, 69% humidity, wind out of the south at 3 mph, sunny, clear blue skies......once again.  Up too early......once again.  Much NFL football will be watched this day.

Around 9 am (way too early to be out and about on a cold morning) I drove the Ranger cart, Lucky 13, over to Section F to pickup a large (12' X 34') piece of indoor/outdoor carpeting (all one piece) gifted to me by one of our customers (Bryan) who is here from July to October each season.  He doesn't like to haul this stuff back to his winter home.  Now, seriously, the last thing we need is another piece of carpeting (we have the artificial turf grass already), so I asked Victor (our assistant manager) if he wanted it.  He lives here year round and right now has a very small piece of indoor/outdoor carpeting.  This large piece will provide 5 times more coverage outside his 5th wheel......of course he accepted the gift with great enthusiasm.  

When I arrived Bryan was about half way done rolling up the indoor/outdoor carpet so I helped him finish, thanked him repeatedly for his generous gift, hauled it in the Ranger cart over to Victor's site in Section A, and then unloaded it.  I was back to the coach by 10 am at which time I finished writing my daily blog entry.

We're going through a minor warming trend and the guessed high would be around 77 F degrees Saturday with the guessed low to come in around 42 F degrees......Sunday it will hit 80 F degrees for probably the last time.  As we drove to the office/store to begin our afternoon shift around 1:45 pm I could feel more of a warmth in the air that had been missing the previous two days.  After punching the clock I drove back out to the overflow area to see if the fence repairs I had made had survived any additional attempts to breach them, and found them still intact.....good!  I continued working my way south along Melba fixing more holes and managed to cover another 100 yards of repairs, which are getting more difficult.  This section of fence is probably in the worst condition of all our fencing as it has been neglected for years, but I managed to resurrect it to a state where it will prevent biped ingress.

TLE called me into the office after an hour, or so to do site checks.....they haven't been done for a few days so I made the rounds of all 156 sites occupied finding a few anomalies for TLE to ponder, then returned to my fence mending ways until about 5:30 when it was time for 'lunch'.  After lunch I spent time at site 147 helping the folks there figure out why they couldn't get our cable TV channels, then spent time closing down the pool early as we apparently ran out of propane Saturday, which means the pool heater is not working, which means the water is getting very cold.  The sides have been taken off the 'big tent', all the chairs stacked, and in a few days the roof will be taken down, which will officially mark the end of the 'season'.....

The rest of our shift was pretty slow, however, we kept the office/store open until 10 pm.....I dry and wet mopped the entire building (office/store/lounge and laundry) and we were off to inspect the restrooms, make our last 'quiet hour' rounds, and then home.  We spent an hour, or so with Charles and Bobbie around the fire sipping some Zinfandel, talking and laughing.

Saturday was a good day for me....only another 150 yards of fencing to mend and it will be on to other challenges.....thanks for stopping by!

Breached!

8:26 am - Saturday - 41 F degrees, 56% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the south.....clear, blue, sunny skies once again.  I forgot to mention in my blog post about Thursday that we got our VW back from Higher Ground Autoworx.  We had gotten a few check engine lights last winter whose source was hard to nail down.  John spent parts of two days doing his diagnostic magic and found the culprit....a bad PCV valve/hose.  I rode my bike over to pick up the VW and drive her home.  For the first time in months she started right up with no rough idle.....and no 'check engine' light!

Friday was pretty laid back, but I did spend an hour running 12 volt wiring to the static vent opening in the trailer, which, as I wrote previously, I am going to replace with a variable speed Fantastic Fan.  Now that the power is run all I need to do is remove the old vent and install the new one.

For Friday's work shift I got back to working on the fence once again......I discovered that one of the openings I had closed Thursday had been opened back up by someone living in the RV park across Melba Drive, so this time I tripled my efforts.......

......what do you think?  Will that withstand a breach attempt?  Basically I wove 5' steel bars into the fencing and then tied everything off with wire, then added an old chain link gate for good measure.  It's possible someone could open that up again, but it would take a couple of hours I'm thinking, if not more.

We went to work at 2 pm (we're open until 10 pm on Friday and Saturday nights still) and I worked steadily on the breach, as well as other holes in the fence until after 6 pm......it starts to get a little dark and cold in the woods by 6 even though the official sunset is not until 7 pm.

The rest of the evening was slow, as one might expect, but I managed to find things to do, and before we knew it 10 pm had arrived and it was time to close up the office/store for Friday......we had a big full harvest moon hanging over the office/store when we got in the cart to drive home......

.....thanks for stopping by!

Holes.....

6:53 am - Friday - 33 F degrees, 76% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the south, sunrise 6:43 am, sunset 7:05 pm, clear blue skies.  Slept well....went to bed at 10:30 pm, and awoke at 6:32 am.

Nothing remarkable to report about Thursday morning....I puttered around the trailer for a while, read a little, and then it was time to get ready to report for our shift at Noon.  We clocked in about 11:50 am, and I immediately headed out to begin working on the fence that borders TVC along Melba Drive.  I had observed a lot of holes in the fence over the summer, but never had the time to spend closing them.....

Before.....

....after....the hole is closed!

......the first hole I closed was the one we opened deliberately when we had the two church groups here for a month to make their ingress and egress easier.  I worked from Noon until almost 6 pm and managed to close 90% of the holes, but there are few more, which I will, hopefully, take care of Friday.

We were off a little after 8 pm, and headed to Lake Tahoe Pizza for a late dinner with our visiting friends Charles and Bobbie.  We essentially closed the place down and were on our way home a little after 9:30 pm.

Thanks for stopping by!

Verde.....

8:31 am - Thursday - 40 F degrees, humidity 69%, wind - calm, sunny, clear blue skies, forecast high today is 71 F degrees....order is restored.....

The TVC population continues to shrink.....and without looking at DigiRez (our reservation system) to verify how many sites are occupied, I'm pretty sure we have less than 100 sites occupied right now.  It was my decision to haul some of the stuff I took out of the trailer over to the storage shed in the maintenance yard that brought the even emptier nature of TVC to my attention.  I  also spent a little more time organizing the trailer and beginning to put more stuff away in anticipation of our departure in a few weeks.  

Our on site Thousand Trails sales guy, Dan Burnette, asked to take TLE and I to lunch at Verde Mexican Rotisserie Grill out in Meyers as a 'thank you' for our help this summer, and Wednesday was the day.  Dan picked us up at our site (our car is in the shop as you may recall) around 1:30 and whisked us out to Meyers in just a few minutes.  We chose to dine alfresco in spite of the still frigid temperatures, but found a table in the sun which made all the difference.  We've gotten to know Dan over the course of the summer, and have become good friends.  Dan works the same days we do, and usually wraps up his work day around 9 pm at which time I follow him down to the maintenance yard in my cart where he plugs in his cart to recharge overnight, and then give him a ride back to his car.  We had a lovely 2 hour lunch and were back home a little after 3:30 pm.

We had friends arriving at TVC in their new to them 42' travel trailer between 6 and 7 pm, so we hung around to be sure we were available to help them into their site when they arrived.....as it turned out Charles and Bobbie had some truck trouble, and didn't arrive until just after sundown, which always adds to the excitement of backing into a site.  Nevertheless we got them into their site successfully.  We left them to hookup their utilities and get set up, inviting them to join us for a fire at their convenience.  We sat around the fire talking until after 9:30 pm before deciding it had been a long travel day for them and we all headed inside for the night.

It's back to work Thursday, but we are changing up our schedule.....while we will still be working the afternoon/night shift, we have changed our days off to Sunday and Monday.  I'm sure we will be moving back to the day shift within the next 10 days, or so.

Thanks for stopping by!