When Wednesday becomes Friday.....

 8:34 am - Thursday - July 20th - LPG&RVR - 72° F, humidity 27%, wind 0 mph out of the south by southeast with crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today, and a forecast high of 95° F.  On this date in 2014 I was mountain biking at Mammoth Mountain with good friends......↴

Wednesday was our Friday this week, which means we will be able to watch all four days of The Open (British Open).  I was, once again at work by 6:30 am, and enjoying the early morning coolness, and quiet.  I have to say that I have adjusted much more quickly to the heat, and for those of you who live in Arizona, or another of the southwest states, the kind of heat I refer to is a day you would love to see when you are seeing temps up to 120° F, and over 100° F for weeks at a time.  The forecast high for Wednesday was only 94° F, but for me that is hot.  At any rate, the 90's temps are not bothering me the way they did last year, and for that I am grateful.

Once again the tee time sheet did not have many names on it, so I just staged the 10 Yamaha gassers, deciding Wednesday was the day to service the 6 Trojan deep cycle, 6 volt batteries in each of the Club Car electrics.  Those deep cycle batteries are very thirsty, especially when it gets over 90° F, and to top off all 30 batteries took 1 gallon of distilled water per  6 cart.  It took me almost 2 hours to go through all 5 carts, but now we're good for a couple of weeks....

Looking toward the 6th fairway (left), the 16th hole (foreground), and 17th tee boxes (right)

The 16th hole

.....once that was done I set out a few sprinklers to water some dry areas of grass, made a couple of rounds of the golf course to check on conditions, and play, but, as you can imagine, the few golfers on the course where pretty spread out.  I also spent time looking for lost golf balls between the 16th tees and the 16th hole, and found 8 before heading back to the Clubhouse.

By the time 2:30 pm rolled around only 4 of the 8 golf carts had been returned, so Walt will have 4 to wash first thing Thursday.  I watched most of Stage 17 of Le Tour.  At the beginning of the 16th stage just 10 seconds separated 1st and 2nd place, but by the end of the stage the 1st place rider had opened a 1 minute and 38 second gap, riding the best 'time trial' of his life.  In the 17th stage the second pace rider cracked on the final 17 mile climb to the finish line, and lost another 4 minutes to the leader, so the outcome of this year's edition of Le Tour i

has all but been decided.  There's really no way the 2nd place rider can overcome an almost 6 minute deficit in the remaining stages.

By the way, a couple of the new throw rugs TLE ordered arrived.....

In front of the shower door

....love the golf themed shower rug!

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An eye for an eye.....

7:58 am - Thursday - July 20th - LPG&RVR - 68° F, humidity 27%, wind 1 mph out of the south by southeast....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 95° F.  On this date in 2014 I was mountain biking at Mammoth Mountain with good friends.....↴

Well, I finally cracked Wednesday under the daily pressure...lol....of putting out content.  I'm now in the position of playing catchup, so this post will be about Tuesday's shenanigans.  I was on the job by 6:30 am for the third consecutive day.  I staged just 10 golf carts, and we sent out 8 in total for the entire day.  We're kind of in the 'dog days' of July, and the park is a tad empty right now, but that can be a good thing for those of us who toil daily in the fields of LPG&RVR.  When things are not so busy 'we' (Walt & I) can get other things done for which we do not have time on busy days.  For one thing I can knock out the tee box mowing in one session, unlike the past few weeks when we've been putting out 30+ golf cars per day.  

Tuesday was also the day the TLE had her first eye appointment in Alturas to begin the process of having her first cataract surgery.  Her appointment was at 10 am, so at 9 am Walt arrived to take my place for 3 hours so I could drive TLE into Alturas.  If they were not going to dilate her eyes she could have gone by herself, but it is not a good idea to attempt to drive with fully dilated eyes.  The appointment went well, and at the end of the appointment they sent a referral to the eye center in Klamath Falls, who in turn will call TLE in the next few days to set the appointment for her first surgery.  She's going to get both eyes done over a couple of weeks.  Her follow up appointments will be kept in Alturas.

We were back at LPG&RVR by 11:30 am, so I went back to work while TLE went home to wait for her eyes to get back to normal.  Lynn, one of the workers here, took her place in the office from 9 am to 4 pm, when TLE finally returned.  In the interim I gave Lynn her lunch break at 1 pm, and after that I continued working until 4 pm.  I was able to get the tee boxes at #3, 15, 16, 17 and 18 mowed, dragged a few cart paths, as well as all the golf carts we rented washed and put away before the end of my shift.  I worked until 4 pm to get in my 8 hours.  TLE finished out the last hour of her shift to close out the books on another LPG&RVR day.

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Time is slipping away.....

6:55 am - Tuesday - July 18th - LPG&RVR - 90° F, humidity 16%, wind 12 mph out of the west.....partly cloudy today with a just past high of 94° F....one degree less than the forecast high.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I were having lunch at the Asticou Inn in Northwest Harbor, Maine......↴ 

Monday saw another 6:30 am start for me.  After staging just 15 carts I headed out to use the weed whipper on the four sand traps.  I was back around 8:30 am to find just 7 carts gone, but we would end up renting 12 in all.  Monday's, of course, are 'clear the range balls off the driving range' days, but before I did that I needed to get started on mowing the tee boxes I do every week. Over the two summers we have been here that task has increased to include large swaths of grass too narrow for the big Jacobsen mower DeWayne uses to mow the rough.

I was back from mowing around the 10th tee boxes, and the grass behind the 11th hole around 10:30 am, and got out on the driving range immediately to clear the few balls which had been driven there over the past 4 days.  I finished in record time....just 35 minutes beginning to end to collect about 1/3 of a barrel of balls from the range.  I mowed a little more before giving TLE her lunch break at 12 pm, and then at 1 pm was back out for my final 90 minutes washing carts, and putting them away.  The days seem to pass by quickly when I go to work at 6:30 am, and I like that!

By 2:50 pm I had showered, and was in my recliner relaxing, and taking a nap.  I headed back over to the Clubhouse around 5:10 pm to retrieve TLE, and another day was in the books.

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Eight straight......

5:46 pm - Monday - July 17th - LPG&RVR - 92° F, humidity 17%, wind 15 mph out o fthe west......mostly cloudy today with a realized forecast high of 94° F.  On this date in 2015 I was spending some time with my brothers......↴

Left to right: Dwyer, moi, Philip....Dwyer is 10 years younger than I, and Philip is 13 years younger....Philip is closer in age to my son, Chris, than I am.

Sunday was my first early workday this summer....I began my day at 6:30 am, worked 8 straight hours (one hour sitting in the Clubhouse office giving TLE her lunch break), and was off work at 2:30 pm.....how sweet!

By 7:30 am I had staged 16 carts, and headed out to make my first round of the course.  I cleaned duck leavings off the #3 tee boxes....no more geese, then headed to hole #12 to weed, and rake the first of four sand traps.  By the time I finished weeding and raking the trap at hole #18 it was after 9 am.  The traps are all looking their season best now with very few weeds daring to challenge my extra ordinary weeding skills.

The cart path connecting holes 18 and 9 with the Clubhouse needed 'dragging' again, so I spent about an hour on that task, then headed out to make another round of the course, this time as 'Marshal'.  There were no issues with which I had to deal, so I headed back to the Clubhouse to see how the cart situation was, and found just 3 carts remaining of the original 16, so I deployed another 8 carts, and called it good.  We would end up renting another 5 carts, for a total of 20 rentals on Sunday.

Soon it was time to give TLE her lunch break, and by 1 pm I had just 1.5 hours of outdoor work remaining.  I managed to clean 9 golf carts before 2:30 pm, and was home taking a cool shower by 2:40 pm.  I had forgotten how much I like getting off at 2:30 pm, just before the heat of the day engulfs LPG&RVR.

I spent time watching Stage #15 of Le Tour, and composing my daily blog post before TLE arrived home just after 5 pm.  The temperature Sunday topped out again at 99° F, so we have yet to experience a triple digit day this season.  The temps for the next 15 days are in the mid to high 90's, but no triple digits numbers grace that forecast.  When TLE arrived home there was still almost 2.5 hours of Le Tour coverage of Stage #15 remaining, which finally concluded just before 7:30 pm.  I was in bed again at 9 pm.  TLE and I both woke up around 2:30 am to the sounds of booming thunder, and unexpected rain upon the roof.  It came and went in about 20 minutes, so it must have just been a local cell which hit us.

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A stain......

4:07 pm - Sunday - July 16th - LPG&RVR - 99° F, humidity 15%, 11 mph out of the west.....partially cloudy today with a forecast high of 100° F.  On this date in 2020 we were in Harlowtown, MT.....↴ 

We expected Sunday to be our first triple digit temperature day, but it got to just 99° F.....close but no cigar.  There is some psychological benefit to not hitting the dreaded 100° F, but telling the difference between that and 99° F  is like trying to tell the difference between 10 year old single malt Scotch, and 12 year old single malt Scotch.....frankly, I cannot.  Sunday has the same forecast as Saturday, so we will see if it hits 100° F, and if it does, will it feel discernibly different from Saturday?

My last task remaining from the flooring project was to stain my work station a darker color to more closely match the new flooring.  We purchased this work station at a Campingworld near Salt Lake City back in 2013 when we were installing the prior 'wood' vinyl flooring, and while it was a shade, or two lighter back then than that flooring, it is now quite a bit lighter than the new flooring.....

....originally there was a queen size convertible couch in that space where the work station now resides, and when we removed it we had to create a 'wire chase' to hide the wires which previously had run under the couch.  The top of that wire chase was, until Saturday, raw wood, but is now stained to match the wall, and new flooring.....

....once that was done we put everything back in its place, and turned on the replay of the 14th stage of Le Tour de France, and spent the afternoon watching that whilst watching the outside temperature slowly rise towards the anticipated triple digits, but it never got there, as I wrote earlier.

The temperature at the time of the weekly putting contest at 4 pm was still 99° F, and even though we were sitting in the shade, there was no breeze, and it was more or less stifling.  I managed to win my first match against the owner of LPG&RVR, Dennis Tate, in a playoff after 5 holes, but fell in the second round due to my poor putting from short distances.  After 4 holes I was tied with my opponent, whom I had defeated the week before, in spite of my poor second putts (my first putts were very good, as usual), and made an excellent first put to within 12" of the hole. He got a little closer than I at 6", so it appeared I was going to play another playoff hole, however, I missed my short 12" putt, much to my disbelief, and was eliminated....doh!  A little lack of concentration, and a little over confidence were my downfall.

TLE and I were home a tad after 6 pm to the ever so cool Newell interior.....our A/C is working splendidly.  Both of our roof units are 41 years old, and still working amazingly well.  We can still keep the interior very comfortable in 99° F temperatures with just one of the roof airs working.

I was in bed by 9 pm as my plan was to be up by 5:30 am Sunday, and at work by 6:30 am in order to work 8 straight hours, and be off by 2:30 pm Sunday afternoon, just as the temperatures will hit their high for the day, whatever that will end up being.

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Sunday

 In case you have wondered, I went to work at 6:30 am today to beat the heat. I'll write my big post about Saturday. this afternoon....thank you for your patience!!

Aspirations revisited.....

 7:54 am - Saturday - July 15th - LPG&RVR - 68° F, 39% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the east by southeast......crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 101° F.....the first triple digit day of the season.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were having lunch at Killarney's Irish Pub in Aird↴rie, Alberta, Canada.........↴

Okay, after deferring our aspirations for Thursday, we needed to get down to business and finish installing the balance of the wood trim pieces, and then caulk around the areas where our trimming of the vinyl flooring was not perfect......

Quarter round trim piece under kitchen cabinets

Quarter round trim piece under bathroom cabinet

Quarter round trim piece just outside bathroom

Brown caulk in kitchen

Wood trim piece under driver seat

Brown caulk in salon

Brown caulk around center console between driver and passenger seats

.....I didn't take pictures of every single trim piece, or every place I caulked, but you get the idea.  All of this took us about 3 hours, and then the heat of the day was upon us....granted it only got to 93° F Friday, but that's hot enough for me.  By this time the rear A/C had been engaged to keep the Newell interior hospitable, and it was time to begin watching Stage 13 of Le Tour.  It will get to 101° F on Saturday, so Friday's 93 will fade from the memory quickly.

The new flooring project has taken way more time than either of us expected, but like I said....'it will take as long as it takes'....that it would consume the better part of 2 four day weekends is a tad longer than we expected, but the results speak for themselves, and we are both extremely happy with the transformation of the interior living space.  TLE is still searching for the rest of the throw/area rugs, and there are a couple that are in transit as I speak, so the final touches will 'take as long as they take'.  We're going for a smaller footprint for the throw/area rugs so that more of the 'wood' flooring is visible.

By 8 pm it had cooled enough for us to make the short drive over to the Clubhouse so I could retrieve TLE's new putter from our locker, and so we could putt for a few minutes on the newly mowed putting green.  The reason for the retrieval of TLE's new putter was for me to remove the old grip, and install a new one more to TLE's liking, plus shorten the shaft about 1.5"....here is the new putter with the new grip installed.....

....it is a 'mallet' style putter, and she is really putting much more consistently....I'm trying to get her to participate in the weekly putting contests as she did last year, so I'm hoping this new putter, and her improved putting with it will give her the confidence to begin putting competitively again.

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