Beginning 2021 with Murphy Hanging Around

January 1 2021 – January 15, 2021                            Most Recent Posts
Oscar Scherer State Park,                                Alafia and Continuing Slide Troubles
Osprey, Florida                                                  Decorations and Postal Problems

For those of you hoping my slide problem has been fixed by now after over a month, as of today January 28, 2021, in short, NO.  I still have no slides, no jacks. Luckily my site is fairly level and I can use a couple of blocks. But that wasn’t my only problem in the first half of January.  Murphy clearly has it in for me.

I was moving to Oscar Scherer and at this point thought I needed a full shop rather than just a mobile tech.  The closest one was a shop in Port Charlotte.  I stopped before going to the campground. 
There I found myself in the hands of the unscrupulous Mr Mobile RV, who is now not mobile, so be sure never to use them. 

Bill, the owner and head honcho, took my motor off of the RV and took it apart.  Then he told me a new hydraulic motor would be between $700 and $900 from his supplier and that HWH (the hydraulics manufacturer) only sold to suppliers and never to shops or individuals.  That was the only clue I needed since David and I have bought parts directly from HWH for years.  I told him this and he got angry and told me to go get the part then and come back.  I took the chance to get out of there with no charge but he has my motor in pieces which turned out to be a real problem in ordering a new one.  But ultimately with the help of the RV tech who worked on this at Alafia, I was able to get the part number and order it.

I got to Oscar and backed into my site feeling pretty discouraged.  If David were here, this would be fixed by now.

I don’t watch much TV but  thought I’d better check it out and make sure everything worked for the Inauguration and so I could watch the nightly news to make sure nothing outrageous happened in the days left of the trump mess.  And of course,  something did. 

When I tried to put the antenna up, the handle came off in my hand.  One cannot drive a motor home with the antenna up but it’s a number of days before I leave so I have time to figure this out.  I was able to use a pair of pliers to get it all the way up.  Next day  I asked my on line Brave buddies and they said order a new handle.  Piece of cake to put in. Hmmmm 

But I did, the handle came, I asked the GREAT GOOGLE what to do now.   With a wonderful YouTube video from a WOMAN RVtech, I found that the handle was easily replaceable just like I’d been told.  I installed it, got up on the roof and lubricated the antenna and it works better than it ever has.  YEA ME!   If only I could fix the slides.

I got the handle fixed just in time to see the attack on the Capitol Building.  Needless to say, like I hope everyone else, I was horrified.  Who wasn’t paying attention to the 2017 Charlottesville Domestic Terrorist attack and Trump’s response then?  If that man is not impeached this time to make absolutely sure he can never run for office anywhere again, I may just give up on my country and especially on any thing remotely resembling Republican patriotism.  This isn’t about a man or a party, it’s about our country and democracy, about truth for a change and justice. We cannot just let him walk away from this or those who perpetrated it either.   Ok, that’s it back to days following.

Next fun thing was that a fraud charge showed up on my credit card which I had to cancel and have them send me a new one.  Thank goodness I was here long enough to get it.  But then, being full time, I have most of my bills for the farm to autopay on that card as well as my internet and phone and ……   So I had to change all of those which took most of a whole afternoon.    Is Murphy ever going to leave me alone?

In the good news department, the gifts I sent to Carrie and her family arrived 24 days after I sent them so we had a gift opening Skype session over the week-end. 

Other good news is that I found a reputable RV Mobile Tech Brian of Suncoast Mobile RV who came out and with his guys, put the motor and its solenoid in but before they could do that Brian discovered I’d have to order this  little thing no bigger than the end of my finger.  I forget what it’s called but Brian discovered Bill took it off and kept it.  $58 for part and shipping.  That’s bad news.

They came back but even with all 3 pieces,  still no slides.  HWH says they will send another motor but that can’t be it since Brian tested this motor before putting it in and it worked fine.  So I wait some more and pay for yet another service call to have the second motor put in. That happens but nothing is different.  Another call to HWH.  Now they think there isn’t enough power coming from the battery to the motor so I’ll need a new power cable since the battery tests fine.  Obviously like  Brian said, the first motor wasn’t bad.  Does anyone know what’s going on here?  I know the bills are mounting.

The next day, I’m going to out for a hike and when I walk around Ruby I see that her rear passenger tire is totally flat.  SO  I called around to service nearby and only Firestone was open.  SO I got out my compressor, inflated the tire and prayed it would make it the 10 miles to them.  They were swamped but found a hole that appeared to be from a nail but no nail.  The whole ordeal took 4.5 hours from discovered to being back at Winnona.

Can there be any more bad news?  Oh, I order a supplement I take, Glucosamine Sulfate, and Amazon sent a glass bottle in a lightly padded bag.  When it got here, this is what it looked like.  The tablets were in the bottom of the bag mingled in with the broken glass.

Is it just me or does it seem to you that I’m leading the opposite of a charmed life?

In between all these horrors, I hiked.  The hikes would relax me, help me feel more optimistic and then immediately something else would go wrong.  It was like a cycle.  But I’ll end on the up beat note.  Here is what I saw on my hikes.

I hike every day.  Oscar Scherer has a series of trails that range from half a mile to 5 miles and most of them can be strung together to give about 20 miles of hiking if you want to do that. I enjoy the trail that runs along South Creek from the campground to the boat dock and picnic area and then to the ranger station and beyond.

It’s a lovely easy trail that is partially handicapped accessible and runs right along the water.

There are several water overlooks along the trail.  Look who I met up with at one of them.  Are they fantastic or what??

The park rents kayaks and canoes.  I suppose the lucky one that is right on the dock belongs to the park.  Usually I bring my kayak down here and lock it up so I can go out as often as I want but this time I was too busy waiting for help with the slides to be able to go out on the water unfortunately.  Hope there will be a next time.

Other days I hike over to Hidden Lake under puffy cotton clouds.

The trail to Hidden Lake goes right under a rail road tressel.  The abandoned rail bed has been turned into the Legacy Bike Trail which runs from the park to Venice and the beaches.  It also runs North though I haven’t been that way.  Ultimately it will go between Sarasota and Venice.  I don’t like to kayak or bike on week-ends.  Too many people for me so I was not able to do any biking here either because on work days I was waiting for calls or visits from RV techs.  My various troubles have taken over  my life.

At the lake there were a few birds and one gator nearly every time I went.

Not a very good picture of the candy corn bill of the Moorhen.

Better of the Little Blue Heron with his green legs.

Tri colored heron.

On the way back I saw this beautiful hawk.

Another day, another trail and this red bellied woodpecker.

Oscar Scherer is known for its groups of the endangered Florida Scrub Jay.  Luckily there are 3 groups  in the park which really is maintained with prescribed burns to maximize their habitat.  The only time I was able to see them was at dusk when the lighting was terrible so I’ve had to lighten these pictures in order show their beautiful color.

 

While I wasn’t able to kayak or bike for fear of getting to far from Mobile Techs, I did do a lot of hiking and multiple times went to see the newly hatched eagle chicks.

That little ball of white fluff in front of mom just at the top edge of the nest is the new chick.

Mom left, I guess he wonders why.

This is what much of the Scrub Jay habitat looks like.  On this day there were no Jays since the hawk was hanging around.

A couple of days later, the eagle chick has grown.

The third bird of prey I saw up in the sky – the Osprey.

Late one afternoon, I did go over to Siesta Key Beach for the drumming down the sun.  But it wasn’t on the beach, they had it up by the bath house so I didn’t hang around up there. 

Birds were numerous – mostly gulls and terns.

I thought the heavy clouds would push the sun down.

While I haven’t biked or kayaked here, I have done a lot of reading and would recommend these books in this order  Caste a very important book I believe everyone should read in order to understand what is going on in this country today by Elizabeth Wilkerson,  The Midnight Library a fantastic time travel about reliving sections of your life book by Matt Haig, The Vanishing Half  compelling story about the lives of twin sisters, one of whom passes for white by Brit Bennett.

On those happy notes I’ll leave you with this piece of yard art from, one of my neighbors.  Pooh looking very fine as he turns his head back and forth.