Heads up......

5:18 am - Wednesday - June 12th - Ramona, CA - 60° F, 86% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the east by northeast.......still dark, but assuming it will be clear, blue skies today.  Forecast high is 91° F....a nice drop from Tuesday's 98° F high, but still hot!  No view today as it is still dark!  

As a heads up I am going to work at 6 am (today included) on days when the temperature is forecast to be over 90° F so I can be finished by 1 pm and avoid the worst of the heat.  It was an idea suggested by Rich, my manager, and I gladly accepted his offer as I do not know what I would have done the last two days it was so hot.  At any rate, I will not write my blog post about Tuesday until this afternoon as I need to get dressed and be off to work in less than 30 minutes now, and that will be the case on any day I go to work this early....thank you in advance for your understanding!

Have a great morning, and I will see you on the 'flip side'....thanks for stopping by!  Check back around 2 pm eastern time for the rest of the story!

Free at last!

8:19 am - Tuesday - June 11th - Ramona, CA - 80° F, 39% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the west by northwest.....clear, blue skies this day with a forecast high of 96° F.....the view this morning.......↴

3rd successive day with temps in the 90's....one more day to go and then back into the 80's

Monday marked one month since I had my right eye cataract surgery, and I had a date with my optometrist at Pacific Eye Institute to see how well my eye had healed post surgery.  The appointment was for 11:30 am, so we left a little after 9 am to make the two hour drive, which was totally uneventful. We arrived at PEI at 11:05 am, and by 11:45 am I was being shown into the examination room.  Within minutes I was pronounced completely healed, and able to suspend the night time eye patch, and 4 times daily eye drops.....ahhhhh FREE AT LAST!

We decided to stop by my son's office (Chris) to pick up any mail we might have, and spent a few minutes talking with he and his daughter, Cynthia, and then headed over to Rubio's for lunch where TLE had arranged to meet my daughter, Sharon and her son Brayden, as well as our daughter-in-law, Laila (Tim's wife), and her son Crosby for lunch at Rubio's in Rancho Cucamonga at 12:30 pm.  By this time the temps in Rancho has pushed north of 100° F.  We normally utilize their alfresco dining area, but wanted to sit inside on such a hot day.  Well, everyone else had the same idea....normally we are fighting for space outside, but when it's over 100° F the inside seating becomes the battleground.  There was one 4 person table  available inside, but we were a party of 6 so TLE and I snagged the shadiest cornier of the alfresco dining area and awaited the arrival of our kids.  Sharon is a teacher, and, therefore, is on summer break, and Laila is still on maternity leave so they were the only ones available for lunch on a Monday......

....what a nice time we had chatting and eating some amazing fish tacos.  By 1:20 pm it was getting even hotter, so we bid adieu to our kids and headed back to Ramona with planned stops at COSTCO and TJ's.  I've had all my prescriptions transferred to the COSTCO in San Marcos (next to Escondido) and it was time to refill my numerous prescriptions.  The blood pressure, beta blocker and cholesterol medications are not that expensive....about $50 per month, but the Brlininta (super aspirin.....makes your blood less 'sticky' so it won't stick to the stint in my artery) without any discounts is $418/month!  Fortunately I received my first 30 day supply free, and I received from Palomar Medical Center a Brilinta discount card reducing that cost to $275.  Fortunately I only have to take Brilinta for 12 months!  They do have other programs which could further reduce my cost, but I needed a valid RX# to apply for those discounts, and will do so now.

From COSTCO we drove a few miles over to the local TJ's where TLE stocked up on wine, and some other food items we prefer to get from TJ's.  We were on our way back to RORVR by 4:30 pm arriving just after 5 pm to a very hot Newell.  We had chosen to leave the A/C off while we were gone, but it got so hot during the day (the high ended up being 101° F in Ramona), that it took 45 minutes to cool off the interior of the coach.  I think we'll leave one A/C running next time it is going to be this hot and we are going to be gone all day.

We spent the evening watching recorded Women's FIFA World Cup matches, and were in bed by 10 pm  happy to be done with eye appointments, and doctor appointments for at least 6 weeks now.....I have a followup appointment with my cardiologist in late July.

Thanks for stopping by!

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A pleasant surprise......

7:20 am - Monday - June 10th - Ramona, CA - 67° F, 52% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the east by northeast......clear, blue skies with a forecast high of 99° F (hit 97° yesterday)....the view this morning.....↴

We knew Sunday was going to be a scorcher, and it did not disappoint.  By the time we reported for work it was already in the mid 80's heading for a high of 97° F.  By the time I finished opening the pool I was already sweating and it wasn't even 10 am yet.

Sundays, as you know, are short days for us.....we only work from 9 am to 2 pm, and was I ever thankful I would not still be working at 4 pm!  Rich encouraged me to stay out of the sun for which I was grateful, so I started doing some more cleanup in the tool shed.  I was walking into the shed when I noticed, for the first time, what appeared to be some sort of street sign affixed to the inside of the shed door, but backwards so you could not see what it was.  Being a curious sort of guy I removed the two screws holding it in place to find out it was a warning sign for our park exit.....we have these spikes which prevent people from entering the wrong way, and bypassing our security gate.....one sign advises you are going the wrong way, and severe tire damage will result.  The other, the one I found on the shed door, faces the way you would exit and warns you not to back up or you will have severe tire damage.......

....I'm not sure who took down the 'SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE, DO NOT BACK UP' sign, but it was obvious to Rich and I that it should be put back on the pole, so I did just that.  I took down the one sign which was still there and then remounted them back to back with a piece of wood on one end to act as a spacer.....came out pretty nice.....

.....now people are properly warned about 'severe tire damage' no matter which direction they may find themselves going.

After I finished reinstalling the sign I moved over to the supply building to continue the reorganizing I had begun a couple of weeks ago when it was raining.  There is an air conditioning unit in that building so it was the perfect place to work on a very hot day.  By the time 2 pm rolled around the heat was beginning to overcome the small window A/C unit.  I picked up TLE from the office and we headed for the Newell.

There are reported to be 40 wineries in the Ramona area, and one of them, Ramona Ranch Winery (Yelp gives them 4.5 stars on 33 reviews) is just a mile down the road from RORVR.  They only do wine tasting on the weekends, and we had meant to visit them after work on a Sunday since we first arrived, so I took a quick shower, got dressed and we headed down the road arriving at the winery about 2:40 pm.

They have this lovely covered patio area just off the tasting room where we headed after tasting 4 of their wines.  We settled on their Savignon Blanc (2017) to sip while we sat outside.  They charge $2.00 per tasting, and a glass is $8.00.  Even though it was 97° F the steady breeze we encountered, plus the very low humidity made it quite pleasant....

.....much to our surprise they provide live music on the weekends from 3 pm to 6 pm.  On this day there was a guitarist providing the entertainment, and he was very good.....

.....by 4 pm we had consumed two glasses of their Savignon Blanc and it was time to head home for a nap.  Next time we go we will take some snacks to enjoy with the wine, and spent a little more time.  This winery and the patio setting was a very pleasant surprise!

We spent the evening watching recorded FIFA Womens World Cup matches.  We were finally able to turn off our A/C units around 8 pm when the temp got back into the 70's once again.  That's the first time we've run our A/C since the first day we arrived at RORVR, and I am sure it will not be the last!

Thanks for stopping by!

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Saturday projects......

6:35 am - Sunday - June 9th - Ramona, CA - 55° F, 82% humidity, wind - CALM.......clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 96° F.......the view this morning........↴

Saturday had a warm feel to it from the very beginning....it was cooler inside the Newell at 8:50 am than it was outside as I got ready to leave for work.  I put on my RORVR hoodie sweatshirt thinking it was cold, but as soon as I stepped outside I realized my mistake.....this was not going to be a hoodie day!

As days go Saturday was a normal day.  I opened up the facilities, checked the water level in the water tower.....turned on the pumps for an hour to add 2,000 gallons, then headed back to the office to see if I had any special assignments....there were.  Some replacement parts had arrived (parts for one of our Stihl weed trimmers, a new filter for our water fountain at the pool, and a new light fixture for the pool room), and I spent the rest of the morning taking care of those projects.  Unfortunately, the water filter was not the correct one so that will have to be returned, and a new one ordered, but I took care of installing the other items.

In the afternoon I received some new signs to install in the pool area (gender neutral bathroom signs, no smoking signs, and then two signs which feature the summer hours for the Red Barn and Pool area (10 am to 9:30 pm).  I removed the winter hours signs, and hung the summer ones.

Once that was done I retrieved some 'liquid nails' caulk and headed back to the Red Barn to re-glue a piece of vinyl flooring on the dance floor which had popped up at one end.  I thought I had fixed this a week, or so ago, but apparently I did not apply sufficient 'liquid nails' on my first attempt.  So we'll see if my second, more generous application will do the trick this time.

So, now it was 2:30 pm....what to do for the last 90 minutes?  Well, those rascally eucalyptus trees keep shedding their leaves upon the mini golf holes, and I had not had a chance to blow them clean yet, so I retrieved the Stihl hand blower from the tool shed and went to work.  As I finished the 9 holes I transitioned over the paved road (Maple Street) to remove more eucalyptus leaves from that surface.  I slowly worked my way down the hill (moving my golf cart occasionally so I would not need to walk all the way back up the hill to retrieve it when I was done).  By the time I reached the intersection of Maple and Oak Streets I could see that there was a lot of sand, leaves and gravel on the section of Oak that passes by restroom #1, so I kept going.  By the time I finished cleaning that section it was almost exactly 4 pm, and time to head for the barn once again......

My leave blowing route Saturday afternoon (in green)

......TLE followed me home about 15 minutes later, and after my shower joined me outside to enjoy the early evening breezes before heading inside for dinner around 6:15 pm.  We spent the evening watching a couple of recorded FIFA Women's World Cup 2019 matches.  The World Cup (women) is in France this summer.  There is a 9 hour time differential between France and California so a lot of matches will have to be recorded as they will be played in the early morning hours while we are getting our beauty rest.....:-).  The USA plays their first match this coming Tuesday (June 11th).  

Thanks for stopping by!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel.

Blowin' in the wind.....

6:52 am - Saturday - June 8th - Ramona, CA - 57° F, 88% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the south by southwest......clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 83° F.....the view this morning......↴

Love seeing that shadow back on the road this morning!

Blowin' in the wind....Bob Dylan

Prior to beginning our work day at 12:30 pm TLE took a 2 mile walk around the park, and took a two mile ride around the park on my Intense 5.5 mountain bike.  That is the furthest I have ridden since my cardiac event.  I can already see an improvement in my breathing.....not getting as 'winded' climbing to the water tower.

I always feel a little out of sync when we go to work at 12:30 pm.....normally we would be at lunch, and have only 3 hours of work left in the day, but on Friday's we are just beginning our work day.  Since Rich opens the park on Fridays I usually just get right to work on whatever project on which I am currently working.  Each month at the end of the first week we change the security gate, and bathroom codes.  Rich asked me to perform this task this month.  Whatever code we assign to the security gate will be the same for the bathrooms to keep it simple for our guest....just one four digit code to remember.  Within 30 minutes I was done and then it was time to retrieve the Stihl hand blower and head back to the storage area entrance where I left off Thursday.  I spent from 1 pm to 4 pm blowing dirt, gravel and leaves off Oak Street down to restroom #2 (across the street from our site).......↴

Cleaned from the storage area entrance to site # 70 (in blue)

......the breeze came up about 3:30 pm....nothing like trying to blow leaves, dirt and gravel in one direction with the wind blowing them in the opposite direction!   

At 4 pm on Fridays TLE and I take our lunch, which is really an early dinner for us.  By the time we get back to the office it is 4:30 pm and almost time for Marnie and Rich to finish their workday.  Instead of heading back up to site #70 to continue cleaning Oak Street, I decided to head back out to the entrance to blow the oak leaves off the entrance road.  I did this about 10 days ago, but oak leaves never stop falling and it was time to do it again.  I finished with that around 5:45 pm.  Rich has been digging a ditch from the propane tank to the new power shutoff switch and had dug up some old conduit and wire in the process.  He asked me to pull the old wire out of the pvc conduits and put in in the recycle bin in the supply building.  That took less than 15 minutes, but when I went to drive the wire down to the supply building I discovered my left rear tire on the golf cart was flat as a pancake!

These golf carts are very low to the ground, and to jack them up you need a floor jack.  We have a bottle jack in the tool shed, but it is too tall to use under such a low slung vehicle, so I picked up the housekeeping golf cart and drove up to Rich's 5th wheel to see if he had a floor jack, and as I suspected, he does.  Once I had the floor jack the rest was easy.  I retrieved a spare tire from the supply shed (we have several), picked up a 3/4" socket from the tool shed, and headed back to my disabled golf cart.  My Porter/Cable impact driver works well to remove lug nuts on golf cart wheels (I used it several times at Tahoe Valley Campground to change gold cart tires).  Within 5 minutes the old wheel was removed, and the spare installed.  In all it took me less than 40 minutes, beginning to end, to get back on the road.

I decided not to do any more work on Oak Street as it was going on 6:15 pm and I did not want to disturb our customers with a loud blower as they sat outside enjoying the evening, so I went up to the Red Barn with some wood screws to fix a few of the Adirondack chairs, which were missing a few screws.  Then down to the pool to straighten up some of the pool furniture, and then to the office.  By this time it was going on 6:45 pm, and I was out of gas.  I spent a lot of time Friday in the sun, and it got up to 85° F.  I got a Dr. Pepper out of the fridge, and sat outside the office on the porch relaxing for about 10 minutes before heading back inside to wait for TLE to finish closing the office so we could go home.

We were home by 7:30......I took a long, hot shower, and then retreated to my recliner to 'veg out' until it was time to close the park at 9:30 pm.  I was in bed by 10 pm, and asleep a couple of minutes later.....thanks for stopping by!

P.S. - The Amazon Affiliate link below is the only one that works correctly for some reason.  I am trying to fix the numerous other links you will find on my blog pages, but for now if you wish to use our affiliate link please use the one below......↴

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel.

Ash and Pine......

7:54 am - Friday - June 7th - Ramona, CA - 60° F, 88% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the south by southwest.......marine layer this morning with a forecast high of 81° F.....the view this morning......↴

After opening the storage yard, Red Barn, and pool I retrieved the Stihl hand blower and headed up to Ash Street (see map below) to blow leaves, dirt and gravel off the entire length of the street.  This has been on the 'to do' list for a couple of weeks now and  thought I could knock out Ash Street by lunch, and hopefully Pine Street in the afternoon.....

.....it is boring, tedious work, but with the aid of my blue tooth hearing protection I listened to some tunes while I worked at clearing each of theses streets of a winter's worth of detritus.

By 4 pm I had finished 98% of Pine Street, and all of Ash Street (I call it the pool road).  All that remains now is to clean Oak Street from the kiosk up to the storage yard, and then Peppertree Street, which is relatively short.  To be fair, between Alika and I, we have done about 30% of Oak Street already.

 The view from the water tower Thursday.....

 .....looking down on Peppertree Street.....

 ....there's the Stihl hand blower

On Thursday's TLE works until 5 pm as she is the only one in the office in the afternoon, so I head home at 4 pm to take a shower, and then return to pick her up is she decides not to walk home.  After I took my shoes and socks off I was a little startled at how dirty my legs were.  The following picture is not for the faint of heart, so just scroll past it if that applies to you.....

The result of blowing dirt of roads for 6 hours

.....TLE decided to be picked up from the office at 5 pm, and I was back down there just before that time to give her a ride home.  We sat outside for about 90 minutes relaxing and enjoying the early evening before I lit the Sea-B-Que to grill a couple of Ahi (tuna) steaks.  I grilled them for about 3 minutes per side to get a good sear, but leave them a little 'pink' in the middle.  They came out perfectly.....I'm still thinking about how good those Ahi steaks were as I write this morning!

We watched a few recorded shows ('The Amazing Race', 'Elementary', and 'Alone') before heading off to bed about 11 pm....since we don't have to be at work on Fridays until 12:30 pm we usually stay up a tiny bit later on Thursday nights.

Thanks for stopping by!

P.S. - The Amazon Affiliate link below is the only one that works correctly for some reason.  I am trying to fix the numerous other links you will find on my blog pages, but for now if you wish to use our affiliate link please use the one below......↴

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel.

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy.....

6:51 am - Thursday - June 6th - Ramona, CA - 56° F, 98% humidity, wind - CALM......clear blue skies this day with a forecast high of 83° F.....only 4 more day sof wearing an eye patch to bed at night (cataract surgery).....the view this morning.......↴

Makes me happy to see the sun hitting the road before 7 am

It is nice seeing the sun and blue sky first thing in the morning, and Wednesday was the first day in a long time that happened.  While I do love it when we have the marine layer in the morning, it is nice to start the day feeling the warmth of the sun on your shoulders.  I know the days are coming when we will fondly remember the marine layer and pine for its return.

Rich and Marnie are off work Wednesday and Thursay each week so we (TLE & I) pretty much run our own show on those days.  Rich did leave me one project to do Wednesday......pull the shower mats from the restrooms and pressure wash them.  I went about my normal morning opening duties, including checking the water tower and found the tank down about 4,000 gallons so I set timers on each pump for 2 hours.  The Red Barn was already open as we have a group in the park that is using it for morning get togethers, and coffee.  The trash cans did need emptying, so I retrieved some large trash bags and did just that.  

Before I got to the pool to open it I was stopped by a gentleman as I was heading down the hill from the Red Barn asking me to check the voltage on his pedestal as his hard wired voltage regulator/surge protector kept shutting down the electrical flow into his motorhome.  Normal voltage in a park can run 12 volts above or below 120 and not hurt your appliances.  His voltage was at 115, which is fine, and will not cause harm, but many of these hard wired voltage regulators have very narrow parameters, and will shut down your system if voltage is at, or under 115.  There is nothing we can do about that, unfortunately, except what we are doing, which is upgrading our 50 year old electrical system.  By the end of July we should have all new pedestals, and much better voltage.  At my site the voltage routinely reads 122-124 and rarely, if ever drops below 120 volts....even when we had 3 electric heaters going during a lot of May!

After checking the voltage for our customer I headed up to open the pool, and record the PH and chlorine levels for the pool and Jacuzzi.  By this time it was around 10 am and time to pull the shower mats for pressure washing.  That task took me right up to lunch, and I was beginning the feel the 'heat'....it was all of 80° F......lol!

After lunch I dedicated most of the rest of my day to vacuuming the pool, which had not been done for a week.  As one might imagine all of that pool decking (concrete) really absorbs the heat from the sun making it feel much warmer than it is, but about half way through the task the breeze picked up a little making the rest of the job tolerable.

I spent the last hour with the Stihl hand blower moving leaves off the road up to the pool and off the road up to the Red Barn, which brought me to 4 pm.....quitting time.  I put away the Stihl hand blower, retrieved TLE from the office, and headed for the barn.  A long, cool shower was in order.  Just from that one hour of using the blower I was filthy from head to toe.  Once I was clean, and cooled down I headed outside to read, and enjoy the early evening breezes.....a nice way to end the day!

For our evening entertainment we watched a recorded episode of Masterchef Junior, which happened to be the finale.  An 11 year old boy named Che won.  It is amazing the level of talent they had this year ranging in age from 8 to 13 years old.  The three finalists were all 11-12 years old.

Around 9:20 pm we headed out to close down the park facilities (the storage yard, Red Barn, and pool).  We arrived at the barn a little after 9:30 pm to find it fully occupied with the RV group that had used it in the morning.  We let them know it was time to wind things down, and then headed over to close the pool.  By the time we returned they had finished cleaning and had already locked the doors for us....what nice people!

We were in bed by 10 pm looking forward to another sunny day Thursday.....thanks for stopping by!

P.S. - The Amazon Affiliate link below is the only one that works correctly for some reason.  I am trying to fix the numerous other links you will find on my blog pages, but for now if you wish to use our affiliate link please use the one below......↴

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel.