Pioneer Days

 There is a county park about ½ mile down the road from the campground and this week they are hosting an event called Pioneer Days. We purchased all week tickets and have ridden our bikes to the park twice so far this week. 

Millie browsing in the quilt booth

 Pioneer Days is mostly a gathering of antique farm equipment and stationary engine enthusiasts. There is also a large number of vendors selling all kinds of crafts and products, but with a larger than normal number selling hardware and used tools.

Better than new restoration of a large stationary engine

We’ve spent 6-7 hours there so far and haven’t seen it all yet, we plan on returning on Saturday to visit the park museum and anything else we’ve missed. Tomorrow we will drive to Plant City for the Strawberry Festival. We plan on touring the fairgrounds and purchasing tickets for a concert we will return to see next week. That will be two opportunities for strawberry shortcake.

A 1904 vertical engine (4 hp) operating a 10 gallon ice cream churn

Plant City strawberry shortcake is nothing like store bought cake. It is served in a bowl and consists of a square of cake covered with sliced berries. Both cake and berries are submerged in strawberry slurry and topped with ice cream and/or whipped cream.

Plant City strawberry shortcake

   

Peace River

On Sunday we moved south to the Peace River campground, we will be here for one week. We don’t have any plans for our stay here, just more riding bikes, soaking up the sun, etc. We may ride up to the Strawberry Festival in Plant City when it opens later in the week.

Last week we purchased a walking foot attachment for Millie’s sewing machine. She installed the accessory today and has been busy sewing bibs for the grandkids. She said the walking foot was the neatest thing she’s ever seen that you can attach to a sewing machine. 

Speaking of the grandkids, we skype'd with Evan and Marcus the other night. The three year olds are fireballs of energy that ran in and out of the picture on the notepad. Each time their mother called them back they would tell us some tidbit of information and then dart off again until finally they said they had talked enough to us.

We witnessed an exciting nature scene today. There is a ten foot alligator who claims the river bordering the campground as his territory. This afternoon we watched him fend off a six foot gator that was trying to get some of a deer carcass the larger gator had. We didn’t see the ending of this foray as it played out slowly. The smaller gator would retreat about twenty feet when threatened by the big guy but would slowly work his way back in to the deer. Unless the big guy decided to share I doubt the small one got any, the large gator was a formidable monster and could have easily eaten the smaller gator.

Snowbirds

As time progressed after the last posting I kept reminding myself that I should write something. It’s not that I’m bored with the Dispatch, it’s just that this week has been pretty routine and I didn’t want to bore you with the details.

I’m going to reveal a blog secret; I jot down short notes every day so I will remember what we have done in between postings. My notes for the past week have activities like; returned parts to Lowes, went to Costco, laundry day. There were a few items that warrant a line or two, I’ll try to make them sound interesting.

On our first Valentines Day, Millie and I traded our normal shorts and flip-flops for dress clothes and real shoes to attend a dance here at the campground. Music was a live band called Pure Country Gold, their name a bit of a misnomer as they had a large repertoire of good dance tunes.

Mike Thomas, who is another frequent musical performer at the campground, was at the party taking photographs of the couples. Photography is his daytime job; a lot of the promotional photography for Disney World is done by Mike.

I did some work on the motorhome that’s a little noteworthy. Most motorhomes use the same retracting steps and just by design they have a bit of a give when stepped on. Our steps were well beyond that and would spring down an inch or two under load. Investigation revealed the steps were ok but the undercarriage they were bolted to was cracked. We took a couple trips to Lowes for angle iron, some fastening hardware and a couple tools. My friend Stanley would have everything needed for any contingency packed in his motorhome and there was a time I would to, but you can readily buy anything you need no matter where you are now a days. A few hours work corrected the break and reinforced the mount to stronger than new. 

That sums up this past week, like I said it was fairly routine, but being a snowbird isn’t about being on vacation everyday. I was thinking about that while riding my bike the other day when I had an epiphany moment. It’s the middle of February; 85 degrees and sunny, I’m riding my bicycle wearing shorts and most of the country has been enduring a long cold winter. I guess we are in vacation mode. Life is good!

It's all just nuts and bolts

It seems every winter we come to Orlando someone tells us about the Webster flea market. It’s not too far away, only about 30 miles, so we drove over to see it. Every time I’ve been told about the market they say  to go early as there is much to see. We got there around noon and some vendors were closing already. The market opens at 5 am and apparently most shoppers come and go early. By 3pm it’s all over till next Monday. It is a large operation with vendors selling all sorts of new products, plus the normal used flea market stuff. Next time we go I will heed the advice to go early, but for me that will be 9-ish, there’s no way I’m going to be there at 5 am. We did by buy some nice produce and a palm tree appliqué for the window in door of the motorhome.

My project for this week was to replace the dump valves on the holding tanks of the motorhome. They have never sealed properly since we’ve had the bus, not really a problem leak just a nuisance if that makes any sense. I’ve been procrastinating fixing it not only because it is would be an odorifious experience, they are hard to get to. The valves are located in the back of a small access bay with cables operating the valves from handles located on a remote panel. 

I have a friend, Mike Sobieski who is a master mechanic. A long time ago when I was questioning my ability to repair my boat, Mike gave me this sage advice, “It’s all just nuts and bolts, go for it.” On Tuesday I started the project by removing all the fittings and controls from the outer panel. I then removing the panel itself so I could see the drain pipes and valves. Deciding it was something that could be done by me Millie and I then drove to the RV parts store for replacement valves. We also stopped at Lowes for standard plumbing supplies we would need. From this point on I would have the water and drains out of service until the job was done so I decided to wait and proceed first thing in the morning.

The next morning Millie went shopping and I shut down the plumbing systems. Originally I intended to somehow articulate my old creaky self into the access bay.  Once there my upper body would miraculously become flexible and I would be able unbolt the flanges and replace the valves. After much articulating and bending body parts into positions they hadn’t seen in quite a while I was able to get my fat head in the dark little space. It was then that I noticed the drain piping was not contiguous to the tanks but was instead connected to each tank with a large rubber connector. By loosening two large hose clamps I was able to remove the whole section of piping that contained the valves. I was able to maneuver the assembly out of the access bay, where I could lay the whole mess on the ground and do the repair. It turned out to be a fairly easy job, like Mike says; it’s all just nuts and bolts!

On Thursday we treated ourselves to a day off from our daily grind of.....well......of being Florida snowbirds. We drove uptown to Clermont and went to the movies, seeing the new George Clooney movie “The Monuments Men”. It is a based on truth story of art scholars who in the waning hours of World War II recovered tens of thousands of pieces of art the Germans had collected. Besides the churches and museums the Nazis pillaged, they stole thousands of paintings and sculptures during the genocide of the Jewish people.

While not an epic adventure film, it is a good story with an excellent cast of actors. More importantly it is a story that should be told and retold so the world never forgets the horrors that man is capable of.

It somehow sounds insensitive of me to jump from the holocaust to eating pizza, but this isn’t any sort of literary narrative but merely our blog. Friends from New York had just arrived in town so we met them for dinner at the local pizza shop. As you may remember Clay and Rebecca have a farm along the Hudson River that we visited last summer, it was good to see them again and hear about all the goings on around the farm.

Thats all for now, stay warm.

A week of music and cookies

Millie is watching the Beatles reunion concert and I’m going to try and bring the blog up to date. Speaking of music, we listened to several musical events in the last week. The night before we left the Orlando campground we attended a concert by Mike Thomas. He is a professional musician that we’ve seen before. He puts on a good show, playing mostly mello’ish Rock and Roll standards.

After moving to the Peace River Campground we attended several venues. First was the TT Jammers on Tuesday night. This group of transient Rv’ers and some local musicians get together at the campground once a week for a jam session. They have these groups at many snowbird campgrounds but this is the best group we’ve ever seen. Thursday night was karaoke at the campground and they were mostly good singers, none of them was terrible. On Friday the campground had a Branson Missouri act called Sweethearts of Branson. They perform nine months of the year in Branson and the rest of the year performing on the road. The leader of the group, Denny Yeary is a baritone singer and has sung bass on 79 albums for many popular groups. As professionals you’d expect them to be good and they didn’t let us down.

Sweethearts of Branson

 Sunday night back in Orlando after our mandatory week out (timeshare camping rules) we attended a country gospel.........yes... you read that right, country gospel by Jerry Jones Ministries. All Millie’s friends are going, hum that’s very nice. Larry’s friends are going, what the h*%! has gotten into that boy!  Hey, I’ll take all the help I can get, halleluiah!

I kind of jumped around the timeline while I was taking about music, back to finishing up our last week activities in Peace River. On Wednesday we drove up to Brandon which is just west of Tampa. The objective was to pick up a replacement skylight for the bathroom, which we did. Two things trumped going to the RV parts store. We discovered a delightful Cuban Bakery. The presentation and aroma of all those wonderful pastries and breads was sight to behold. A man couldn’t be any happier, not even in the tool department at Sears. Of course we had to buy lots of things that will make me round and happy! I’ll just have to do a few more laps around the park on my bike.

 Our drive home took us thru the heart of strawberry country and here in Florida it is strawberry season. We stopped at a roadside stand on the way home had an unbelievably good serving of strawberry shortcake with vanilla ice cream.

They forecast occasional showers on Thursday so I didn’t do the skylight installation and of course it didn’t rain. Friday morning it looked like it was going to rain but I went to work anyhow, the job went smoothly and was done by about 1:00 pm. The old outer dome of the skylight was plastic and had succumbed to 13 years of sunlight.

This is the old skylight

Saturday we drove to Port Charlotte where we did some woman shopping. That’s not what you think; woman shopping is walking around a whole mall and just looking at stuff but not actually buying anything. This is very confusing to men who are disciplined “man code” shoppers. That’s why you see so many blank faced men sitting on mall benches, they tried being shopping companions to their wives but ended up dazed and confused. The good part of the trip was I got to pick the restaurant for lunch so we enjoyed a delicious deep fried meal at Ali-Gators!

That’s it the blog is up to date. We’ll be in Orlando for two weeks and have a mix of work and pleasure planned. I have to replace the drain valves on the holding tanks of the motorhome; we are going to the state fair, probably to Universal or Disney for a day. Tomorrow we are going to a large flea market in the town of Webster.

It ain't easy being me!

The blog has completely gotten away from me this week; I have no excuse, not any good ones anyhow. I used to have a saying about myself during my working years, “It ain’t easy being me”. Years ago I used it in reference to the long ours I worked, but my life is still going at a whirlwind pace, just look at my notes for Monday; “Stayed in the campground all day, rode bikes, walked dogs, soaked up sunshine.”

The whole first half of the week was like that, this snowbird lifestyle is not for the weak, and if all that bike riding and sun soaking isn’t enough, we had even more on our plates this week.

First I’ve been trying to log on to my medical insurance website all week without success. I keep getting the same very pleasant lady when I call for tech support, but....well I said pleasant not tech savvy, she hasn’t able to help. But it may not be her fault, my benefits are managed by the United Auto Workers (UAW) which is blindly loyal the Democratic Party. I’m thinking they must be sharing web space with Barry’s infamous healthcare site. To date I still have not been able to log on to the site.

The second course on our plateful is watching DVD’s. Millie and I have been watching the second season of the TV series “24” with Kiefer Sutherland as rogue government agent Jack Bauer. The closer we got to the end the more we watched it, usually watching three episodes at a sitting. Of course in the final hour Jack saves the day, in this case preventing world war 3.

Much more to tell about the week but we’ve got things to do and places to see this morning, like I said, “It ain't easy being me!”

Hot weather, Cool cars

We had a couple cool rainy days in the end of January with temps in the 50’s. brrrrr. Millie and I hunkered down and didn’t do much of anything other than our routine activities around the campground. Millie does her tread mill running every morning and I even did a little weight training at the campground exercise room. We rode bikes between the rain drops and walked the dogs several times a day.

I worked on a couple projects in the motorhome, one planned and one water leak. I had salvaged a small safe from our old motorhome and secured it inside a cabinet. Now anyone who’s ever owned an RV knows they’re pretty much held together with glue and staples. That might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. After the first installation the safe didn’t feel secure so we went to Lowes and bought a selection of anchors and toggle bolts. The safe is now connected thru a side, the back and the bottom. I’m sure if the motorhome is ever picked up in a twister and dropped into Kansas that little corner with the safe attached will still be intact.

The water leak is coming from the skylight over the shower; we’ve made a temporary patch until we can get a replacement for the outer dome which has several cracks in it. Thirteen years of sun has taken its toll on the plastic. It will be an easy repair once I get the new part.

On Saturday Wayne and I drove over to Old Town for the Classic Car Cruise. Several of the cars were for sale with prices as much as $85,000. I told Wayne it would be smart to sell a car like that soon, as the prices will drop once the baby boomers move on to some other interest. Several of the hot rods had compact coil spring front suspensions that Wayne informed me was from a Mustang 2. Probably one of the better uses for that particular model, IMHO.

Our 14 day stay at Orlando ended on Sunday and we moved about 60 miles south to the Peace River Thousand Trails campground. We have a wonderful site right on the River. Millie said we may start getting hate mail if I tell you this, but sitting in the shade of a palm tree by the river in 80 degree weather on the 2^nd day of February is what dreams are made of.