What are we smiling about?

In just 8 days the Lovely Elaine (background) retires. She has worked for the same company for the past 21 years. I think the longest I worked for any single company since age 22 was 12 years, and I cannot really explain why I stayed there that long, BUT that is another long story...lol!

So, about 5 days after Elaine retires we are flying up to Spokane to spend a week with my sister, brother-in-law, and their two amazing daughters. Spokane is a great place to be in the Fall. We plan to do so bicycling, and just decompress a little, especially Elaine. I think it will take me a few weeks to get used to NOT hearing the names of familiar co-workers, or the many issues she dealt with over the past few years with her employer, and supervisors. So, to some degree, I am retiring too....from being a sounding board.....haha!

When we return from Spokane it will be just 2 1/2 months until we pull anchor and set sail for unknown territory. Our tentative plan (which has been evolving over the past 6 months, and continues to do so) is to get on Interstate 10 and head southwest eventually over a month, or so hitting the Gulf Coast around Corpus Christi, and then meandering eastward as the spirit moves us. How far east we will get this time around we don't know, and, "frankly Scarlett, we don't give a damn"! Wherever we are in May we will begin to head north by northwest to the great Pacific Northwest and spend the summer there visiting with friends, bicycling to our heart's content. In late August we will head down to Lake Tahoe to meet my brother and his family for a week, and then we're not sure. The NOT BEING SURE is really the cool part, because we don't have to be sure....maybe we'll head to Colorado for a few weeks of Autumn weather, maybe we'll head to Yellowstone after the summer crowds have gone. We will just make it up as we go, and isn't that the real reason we "all" aspire to this lifestyle? I've known where I'm going to be everyday for the past 41 years. As a soccer referee my life has been proscribed by the length of each match I do....90 minutes at a time, 80 minutes at a time, 70 minutes at a time, depending on the age group. I yearn for the days when I don't know what time of day it is exactly, and I may even forget what day of the week it is, when I don't have to be anywhere unless I choose to be there, when I can wake up one morning and decide it's time to move a 100 miles to a new view, and new adventures. I look forward to the day when I can chase the almost endless summer.....live in short pants, t-shirts and flipflops, stay up to 2am if I want, and sleep in if I want.

I have been gradually reducing my time in the office to a few hours a day, and 2, or 3 days a week, but that has been a psychological adjustment. I went through feelings of being a slacker, because I wasn't physically in the office, even though I was working from home. However, I am happy to report that I have gotten over those emotions and have adjusted to my new semi-retired, part time schedule. Through attrition I have been reducing the number of customers I will continue to service whilst on the road. Obviously, I haven't been adding new customers in quite some time, by design.

The weather here in Rancho Jurupa Regional Park has continued to be very moderate this summer. We've had a few days of triple digit temperatures here and there, but generally it has been in the high 80's and low 90's with low humidity. Autumn officially begins today so here's hoping we escape this year without an "Indian Summer". I remember years ago...maybe 10, we had a 4 day Indian Summer when temps hit 110 degrees on November 1st! Obviously, that is an extreme, but until we get into November there are no guarantees that it won't get really hot, if only for a few fleeting days. For today, anyway, there is a crisp feel to the early morning air.

Well, that catches you up to date on our fulltime life.....thank you for reading!

Living Life

Not much to report since our July 4th post. Elaine is counting down until her official retirement on 9/30/2011...tomorrow it will be 6 weeks +, or 47 days to be exact! Monday through Friday we wear our workaday hats, and clean a few cabins on the side. On the weekends we have been doing a lot of bicycle riding. Three weekends ago we rode our single bikes from Angel Stadium in Anaheim down the SART (Santa Ana River Trail) to Newport Beach where we had brunch at Cucina Alessa, which is right on Pacific Coast Hwy just south of where the Santa Ana River Trail terminates at the ocean. The total round trip mileage was 26.

Two weekends ago we did a shorter 10 mile ride to a local Starbucks for breakfast.

One weekend ago I spent 2 days at Mammoth Mtn. riding in their mountain bike park doing about 54 miles of downhill riding over two days.

Mammoth Mountain Pictures

This weekend Elaine and I got out our recumbent tadpole trikes and headed up to the Pacific Electric Rails to Trails bike path in Rancho Cucamonga. Normally we start our ride at the eastern most trailhead in Rancho Cucamonga on East Ave. just above Baseline (a few hundred feet west of Interstate 15). When this rails to trails bike path is finished it will run from Rialto, CA all the way to Claremont Colleges in Claremont. This path follows the right of way for the old Pacific Electric railway, which, in its day, was one of the best mass transit systems in the Western U.S. There were literally hundreds of miles of track running all over Southern California on which the Electric Red Trolley Cars carried citizens at very little cost. When this amazingly efficient mass transit system was replaced by buses the right of way sat dormant for decades, and was, frankly, an eyesore. Now the cities of Claremont, Upland Rancho Cucamonga, and Fontana have joined together to repurpose this right of way providing a wonderful local resource for recreation for thousands. Our intent this day (Saturday, 8/13/2011) was to ride west to Vineyard where the trail temporarily ends as "they" construct a new bridge over Foothill Blvd. We did not realize that in the past few months Fontana and Rancho Cucamonga had connected their two sections under the I-15 freeway making the trail virtually complete now....just awaiting the one small section on the one short stretch over Foothill connecting the Rancho Cucamonga and Upland sections. As we were riding westbound an older gentleman (like we're not older, too....haha!) pulled up along side us as we pedaled and informed us that the Fontana section was now connected! After making our turn at the Vineyard closure we decided we would head all the way back into Fontana and see how far the trail went. The ride we had planned was about 13 miles round trip, but with the addition of the Fontana section we ended up riding 27 miles total. Below is a video of our ride.

The weather has been very moderate the past 5 weeks....maybe one day over 100, but mostly high 80's, low 90's with a lot of heavy overcast many mornings, aka: marine layer. The campground has been 90% full each weekend.

So, that't it from Rancho Jurupa Regional Park for now. Thanks for reading!

Happy 235th Birthday America!

Mt. Rubidoux, July 4th, 2011

For me the 4th of July weekend is always the real beginning of summer and the attendant heat in Southern California. We have this annual ritual provided by Catalina Eddy. No, Catalina Eddy is not a person, but an annual weather pattern that creates what we call "May/June Gloom". This weather pattern off the coast drives a heavy marine layer sometimes up to 50 miles inland, and keeps temperatures in May and June in the high 70's to mid 80's. The overcast burns off by noon most days. By late June we usually see the end of this pattern, and we wake up to bright sunshine each morning. Often temperatures are into the 80's by mid morning with day time high's into the mid to high 90's.

Our last marine layer morning was Wednesday, June 29th. Thursday broke with BRIGHT sunshine and temps into the high 90's. By Sunday, July 3rd, we broke triple digits to 102.

Normally our only responsibility in the park is taking care of the cabins, but on holiday weekends all the hosts take turns working in the kiosk to help with the influx of large holiday crowds. Elaine and I were assigned two shifts: 10:30am to 2pm on Sunday, and 10:30am to 2:30pm on Monday, July4th.

One issue this park has had on past holiday weekends occurring during the summer is power outages. By 10:30am on Sunday it was already in the low 90's. One of the rangers went to each RV park to check voltage readings and came back to the kiosk advising voltage had dropped from 120 to around 108 in both parks, as well as at the kiosk. Fearing another outage he took one host and went around asking people to shut down one AC unit if they were running two, or if they had generators, and wanted to keep using both AC's they could switch over. Everyone was co-operative and we made it through the day with voltage running around 109-110....low, but not destructive to AC compressors. We thought Monday, the 4th, would be easier since the forecast was for about 8 degrees cooler. NO SUCH LUCK.....by 1pm the voltage had dropped to 105 and we had personally turned off our AC to avoid damage. Not everyone did, however, and by 3pm we had our power outage.....UGH!!! So, we returned to our coach after our kiosk shift to no AC, and no prospect for electricity anytime soon.

As you know, we do have on board a 7500kw propane generator. Normally I would not hesitate to fire it up....when full we carry 48 gallons of LPG. Our generator burns about 1/2 gallon per hour, so we could, theoretically run it for 96 straight hours, or 4 days. HOWEVER, we last filled up when we moved into the park, and after 5 months we are down to 1/4 tank, or less. I have been planning to drive out of the park in the next week, or so to refill. Theoretically I could run for 24 hours on 12 gallons, but when it gets this low the reading is not as accurate as when it is full, and I didn't know when power would come back, so we sat outside in the shade. Two of our kids camped overnight Sunday night, and had gone into town to buy a small wading pool. How fortuitous was that! We put our bathing suits on and submerged ourselves in the deliciously cool water. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking, laughing, and drinking cold drinks.

As the sun set we noticed some lighting coming on at the Club House (houses showers, laundry and restrooms), and then some of the interior lighting came on, but NO power at the individual site pedestals. Eventually I remembered I had the little Honda 1000 watt portable generator and 5 gallons of gas, so I plugged it in and fired it up, so at least we could run the "attic" fan and move air through the coach, as well as lighting, and the outside radio. It ran until we went to inside around 10:30pm, and it was getting cooler by that time. Still no power restored.....we noticed around 9pm that lights were on in the cabins, but still no power in the RV parks.

One reason Rancho Jurupa Regional Park fills up with thousands of people on the birthday of our country is the spectacular fireworks show the City of Riverside puts on each year on the top of Mt. Rubidoux, in whose shadow we reside. Pretty much anywhere in the park you can get an unobstructed view of the mountain top. The show starts precisely at 9pm, and it did on this evening too. We had all our chairs set out with our 3 daughters and their boy friends to watch what we thought would be a 25-30 minute show. We were around 10 minutes in the show when it suddenly stopped. We sat there for 20 minutes expecting it to restart, because, after all, there had been no GRANDE FINALE! You have to have a GRAND FINALE, right...it's a rule, isn't it? It soon became clear that the show would not restart, so the cars began to surge toward the one exit to the park. After the traffic had leasened we said good bye to our kids and headed inside for the night...around 10:15pm we heard two loud "KABOOMS" from the direction of Mt. Rubioux and rushed outside to be greeted by the resumption of the fireworks show, and it was spectacular, and there was a "GRAND FINALE"! We had no clue what had happened, but 80% of the people who had come to the park to view the show missed the ending.

We found out the next morning that 3 fires had ignited on the east side of the mountain (we are on the west side) and the fire department had told them to stop the show until the fires were put out.

We then went to bed with only the basement Norcold fridge still on. Every other DC source was off to preserve our battery power with the exception of the attic fan that I ran for about an hour to pull in cooler air. I awoke around 4:30am to find that the power was back on and quickly went outside and reconnected our cord to the pedestal. Today we ran the AC from 9am until 9pm, but, of course, the park is empty so we had nearly 120 volts all day long.

Well, that our 4th of July story, and we are sticking to it! Thanks for reading!

Extended workstation!!!

The PitProducts.com extended workstation

I've had a number of projects for the car hauler that I've been holding back because I wanted to find and install some sort of "foldup" work bench in the front of the trailer. Since I wasn't sure what the dimensions of the work bench would be I couldn't install a few other items there until I found what I was looking for. I've been looking for several months and thought I had found something at Lowe's that would serve my purposes (but was quite heavy and bulky) when I stumbled across Pit Products.com. They make stuff for the interior of trailers like mine and they had exactly what I needed (Pit Products). It is called an "extended workstation", and has a 46" X 20" fold up/down table. Made of stainless steel, and surprising sturdy, and very light. Well, it arrived via UPS a few days ago, and yesterday afternoon I eagerly ripped the box open to begin installing it.

Work table folded up along side the screws and small parts cabinet

Work table folded down. Has two shelves.

Some of my stuff on the shelves

Wall mounted odds and ends storage...I love these organizers!!

Wall mounted TEAC CD/am-fm stereo....a guy has to have his music to work by!!

The extended workstation came with 8 self tapping sheet metal screws. I added a couple more to make 10 fastening it to the front wall of the trailer. It is really solid and very well made. Once the workstation was installed I was able to mount the "odds and ends" organizer for all the small bike parts, electric connectors, screws, bolts, nuts, etc. I have. Then I was able to mount the TEAC stereo. Now my work area is complete, and it sits right over the tandem bike, my mountain bike, and the road bikes. I have to remove the mountain bike and road bikes to use it, which takes a couple of minutes, but I don't have to take out the tandem!

Next on the list for the trailer are a few wall mounted cabinets and we're set. We are really enjoying checking off one project after another as we prepare for our traveling adventure in just a few months.

Elaine will be submitting her application for her retirement benefits in the next couple of days (you can apply 90 days prior to your retirement date), so she is inside 90 days now until retirement.....yea!!!!

Nothing much new to report from Rancho Jurupa. Life is good here. We have made some great new friends, and love waking up every day in "parkland", as we call it. It is soooooo quiet here at night....I don't think I have slept this soundly in years. It is as if we were a 100 miles from anywhere, and yet we are only a few minutes from "Old Town" Riverside for services and great eateries. Last night we ran over to "The Brewery" on Mission Inn Blvd. and Lime, a local micro brewery, and had the best hot pastrami sandwhiches washed down with a couple of pints of their own locally brewed Vanilla Porter.

We've also been doing a lot more bike riding since my last post. We've taken the tandem out twice on 25 mile jaunts around the Riverside area, and last weekend rode our road bikes down the SART (Santa Ana River Trail) about 24 miles round trip.

So, you are now up to date on the "goings on" at RJRP (Rancho Jurupa Regional Park). Thanks for reading!!!

4 months!

This weekend we mark the end of 4 months living in our Newell fulltime. We have our coach and trailer waxed and detailed every six months to keep them both looking new, and to protect the paint from the UV rays of the sun, but also from the overspray from the sprinklers. 10 days ago we had Integrity Mobile Detail come out to Rancho Jurupa to perform their semi-annual magic, and while they were here we had them wash and detail both cars, so it was a long day for them. For those who live in Southern California and are interested, they now have a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Integrity-Mobile-Detail/185500384828328).

The 'Bird has her top off


The boys getting up high to clean the roof

Lookin' good!!!

For the past 4 months we have been filtering the water we drink here at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park using a "Zero Water" filter. When we first moved in we were going through a filter each week (they cost over $20 each). To slow down the water filter replacement we installed an "in line" RV water filter at the point where we hook into the city water supply. That helped reduce the filter replacement cycle to one every 2+ weeks.....a big improvement. But, alas, it was getting tiresome to have to be worrying continually about filtering water every day to keep up with our consumption. We decided this week to install an "RO" (reverse osmosis) system in our coach. We have been doing business with Ruben at Kool Filtration in Alta Loma, CA [909-948-2465] for for over 24 years at our home in Ontario. We went with a 1.5 gallon holding tank, and added a 4 watt UV light which will kill any bacteria, etc. that manages to get through the RO system. This is of great importance to us when we are using water from the fresh water tank on board our coach, and I am sure it is the same for our readers. Again, if you live in Southern California, we highly recommend Kool Filtration. Ruben stands behind his work.

Yesterday we were once again reminded that we are getting old.....haha! My grandson, Christopher, whom I have blogged about recently, had a promotion ceremony at his elementary school where is has now advanced on to 6th grade!. Geeze, it seems like he was just born a few years ago, and now he will be 11 in just a few months. My grand daughter, Cynthia, graduates from High School Thursday, so this week is really forcing us to acknowledge the rapid passage of time.

The graduate!

The past few weeks have seen a rapid increase in cabin rentals. We've even been renting them mid week now. Memorial Day weekend they all are rented, so we better get them all clean by tomorrow.

The weather continues to be colder than normal, and we have been getting a steady dose of May/June gloom. The marine layer (we are about 50 miles from the coast) pushes way inland this time of year giving us a heavy cloud cover until later morning, early afternoon most days keeping the temperatures in the high 60's, low 70's most of the time. I heard on the news last night that there is a lot of concern up in the Sacramento river delta area about the huge snow pack in the Sierras that has not begun to melt yet. If we get a sudden heat wave it will begin to melt with a vengeance resulting in flooding. Certainly not on the scale of what is happening in the Mississippi River valley, but a concern, nevertheless. At Mammoth Mountain (Sierra ski area) they had a record snow fall this year of well over 600", and have added an additional 24" in May.....very unusual. Resevoirs that were way down just 12 months ago, are now full and water is being released.

Well, that's it from paradise! Thank you for reading......

A lot of stuff......

A lot has been happening the past two weeks. About 4 months ago we started working on getting our mortgage with a large national bank modified. We had a 5 year interest only loan going with a pretty good interest rate that had about 2 years to go. We needed to get that refinanced and back on to a regular fixed rate mortgage, and if we could get the interest rate a little lower that would be great, too! Well, two days ago a large FedEx envelope from the lender arrived. Now, I know this lender is notorious for dragging their feet for months, and then saying "NO". I slowly opened the envelope and began reading the first page of the multi page document. It took several seconds for the obvious to sink in.....we had been approved, and the lender had lowered our interest rate to a wonderful 4.5%, and our payment remained the SAME!!! Well, today we had to get the documents notarized, copied, a cashier's check, and then FedEx it all back to Pittsburgh, PA so it arrives by Monday. OK, one thing off the long term check list that we will not have to worry about when we hit the road in the Fall.

This past weekend we rented out 5 of the six cabins, and then we (me) had to clean them this week to be ready for this coming weekend. Elaine had to go down to Orange County for a two day overnight meeting for her employer, so it was left to me to get the cabins cleaned, and the linens washed. I started at 8am on Wednesday and finished around 4:30pm. Wow...that was a long day. I have a whole new respect for the hard working men and women who clean hotel rooms. Surprisingly, only one of the 5 cabins required a lot of work...the tenants must have had a bunch of small kids. What a mess.

In about 10 days Elaine flies up to Oregon for her annual week long women's retreat in Cannon Beach, so I'll be baching it again, and it will be up to me to clean any cabins rentals that occur. Hmmm....how is that working out for me?

As the summer season grows closer the park is filling up more and more each weekend, and actually there are a lot of people still here through the week. It's fun to watch our neighborhood evolve into something new each Friday. Right now as I write the motorhomes and trailers are steadily rolling in. The kiosk stays open until 10:30pm on Fridays so all the weekenders can check in.

On our way back from getting all the mortgage paperwork done and sent off we got a call from our oldest daughter and agreed to meet her at Islands Fine Burgers and Drinks in Riverside for lunch. I love their fries, and their Big Wave burger is great with a wheat bun.

Well, that's it for Rancho Jurupa Regional Park today....sitting watching the San Antonio Spurs on the verge of losing their opening series to Memphis. My Lakers closed out the Hornets in fine style last night winning by 18, and it wasn't really that close.

Thanks for reading!

Vacation from our vacation...

Big Bear Lake with Snow Summit in the background

My brother called me a few weeks ago asking if we could join them at Serrano Campground on the north shore of Big Bear Lake, CA for a long weekend starting April 14th. Of course, we never turn down an opportunity to change the view out our front door, so I said "YES!".

We live at around 800' elevation in Rancho Jurupa. Serrano Campground is at 7,000' elevation. We would gain over 6,000' in elevation in less than 40 miles on State Route 18. I had been noticing the past 6 months that even on moderate climbs on cool days that my Detroit Diesel 6V92 was running hotter than it should. Normally on the flats the operating temp is around 180-182. On climbs it might get up to 195, but lately it was getting over 200, and once up to 220. I had been applying Simple Green degreaser to the radiator, but apparently I was not getting all the gunk off. Knowing that I would have to climb around 6,200' in less than 40 miles had me concerned, so this past Tuesday I applied a heated solution of Simple Green and water to both sides of the radiator several times washing it off each time with hot water. I saw a lot of particulate matter fall to the ground. I repeated the process again Wednesday and got even more off. On Thursday the temperature never got past 188! Big, big improvement.

We left home around 10am, and arrived at Serrano around Noon time.

Serrano Campground is a National Forest campground, but is administered by California Land Management. There are 4, or 5 loops. Only one loop, Snowberry, has full hookups. The rest of the loops are strictly dry camping. There is a bike path that runs from Serrano into Big Bear City. We rode this path a couple of times. The bike path ran along the lake providing great views.

We were assigned site 42, and my brother, Philip and his wife were in 41, right next to us. The campground was very quiet, and very well maintained.

On Saturday we rode into town to find a bike shop where I could have my front hydraulic brake line bled to get out an air bubble that had developed causing the front brake to be useless. We found a shop called "Chains Required" and got the work done in about 20 minutes.

We waited outside the bike shop next to some unmelted snow from the storm last weekend that dumped about 12 inches of snow, most of which melted by this weekend due to warm weather all week.

Near the boat launch ramp on the east end.

Looking westward from the causeway at the east end of the lake