What are they doing????

We are renting out our RV lot for the months of February and March, so we need to vacate that space. Our golf cart is still not running, so we needed to push it from the RV lot to our park model lot (about a block), and we also wanted to move our patio heater.

When we had to push our golf cart a couple of months ago, we got a lot of jokes from people as we walked past them ("Aren't you supposed to be riding in that?" or "Taking your cart for a walk?") -- Carl wanted to avoid that, so we decided to move the items after dark. I didn't get pictures of pushing the golf cart...

... but here is Carl "taking our patio heater for a walk!"

We were a little concerned that a concerned fellow resident would report us to security for stealing a golf cart and/or patio heater, but we seem to have gotten away with it!

Exercise

We try to take advantage of exercise opportunities here at the park...

Stretch and Tone is held each weekday morning at 8am in the ballroom.

There are a number of pool exercise classes -- we like the one at 9am in the west pool -- this was posted for the participants in the various pool exercise classes -- a social and potluck -- I think this may counteract any benefits we're getting from exercising! Someone cheeky will usually say, "Come see what we look like with clothes on!"

No pictures of us actually in the pool exercising -- we like doing the exercises in the pool because it is low impact on knees and back, and we can make it as energetic as we desire by moving more underwater, using the resistance of the water to our benefit. It is also a social time -- in fact, for many of the participants, we think they exercise their voices more than any other muscles! But, it is a fun time, and there are definitely some who are there to get exercise!

Refrigerator saga - part 3

After they had finished getting the refrigerator into the hole, the lead guy informed us that he had not hooked up the water line for the ice/water dispenser because we had our own line there. We had read (I guess on another store's website, maybe Home Depot) that we needed to have a new water line, that they would not hook up an old water line. I guess Costco's rule is that they supply the water line, and since we had one already there, they wouldn't hook ours up... I wish they had said that up front because we would have been happy to remove ours and use their water line... but... they wanted to finish up quickly (see previous post).

So, one of us needed to climb into the hole behind the refrigerator to hook up the water line. We also wanted to put shims in behind the refrigerator to keep it from getting pushed too far back in the hole (the doors would hit on the countertop on the side if it was too deep in the hole).

We pulled the refrigerator out... I volunteered to go into the hole,  

... but Carl insisted (he said that he was afraid I wouldn't be able to get the fitting loosened).

There's not much room in there!

But he was able to get the water line hooked up. We also strategized what we needed to put behind the refrigerator so it wouldn't go all the way to the back, and I got some pieces of wood that we could put behind the refrigerator.

Then he had to get out!

We weren't exactly sure how wide the pieces of wood needed to be to put behind the refrigerator, so we made a stack of 4"x4" plywood pieces that the previous owner had left in the shed. We put a piece of duct tape around them to keep them attached, and tied a string so we could pull it back out and adjust it if needed once we pushed the refrigerator back in. We checked it, and found that we had made the stack a little too wide, so we removed one piece of plywood and that seemed to position the refrigerator just fine. We did a similar task on the side to keep the refrigerator from pushing too close against the left side counter as there is a on/off switch for the disposal (or "garburator" as the previous owner (Canadian) called it!) on that side.

Refrigerator in place -- hurrah!

We waited for 24 hours to be sure that it was operating and had cooled down and then moved all the contents out of the side-by-side into the French door refrigerator. Now we'll move the side-by-side to the casa at some point -- yet to be determined!

Refrigerator saga - part 2

Continuing our refrigerator saga...

The folks contracted by Costco to deliver the refrigerator were to come later afternoon on January 21 (we had scheduled it for 3-5pm as we had other things going on in the morning). 

The truck arrives -- 

There's the new refrigerator! (well, I guess that's it inside the box!)

I guess you can see it more easily without the box on it!

Carl had told them right when they arrived that the doors would need to be taken off to get it through the pinch point in our kitchen. 

Thankfully no extensions out the back to make it any wider.

In the kitchen at the pinch point -- you may notice that the doors are still on the refrigerator (top) section. They had taken the drawer out of the bottom, but, disregarding Carl's counsel, they didn't take the refrigerator doors off.

They were lifting the refrigerator (all 262 pounds) with straps over their shoulders. They lifted it high enough that the doors were above the height of the cabinets in the pinch point, but the wall just past the cabinet on the right was hitting the doors. They turned it around and got it into the space with the doors facing the back of the hole, but there was no room to turn the unit around in the space in the hallway. (Carl and I were thinking when they were taking it through backwards, "this'll never work!" but we stayed out of the way!) The delivery guys were talking to each other in Spanish, and I was thankful not to know what they were saying! Finally, the lead guy said, "This refrigerator is not going to fit."

Carl said, "Yes it will, there is plenty of room for the refrigerator to fit in the hole. You just need to take the doors off."

The lead guy then told us that the warehouse won't let them remove the doors, there are electronics in the door (yes, we know that, we removed the doors off the side-by-side refrigerator, they have quick disconnect connectors), the warehouse has had a situation where doors were removed and then the refrigerator didn't work and the warehouse has now decreed that the delivery guys would have to "pay for" the refrigerator if they broke it. He said that this was a decision communicated to the delivery guys 2 weeks ago. Carl said, "So, if I had had this delivered 3 weeks ago, this wouldn't be an issue?" Oh, well, maybe the meeting was 6 weeks ago. Carl said, "I'll need to talk with your supervisor." They started making phone calls and talking to each other in Spanish; no one was answering their phone calls. Finally someone answered, they talked with that person, and without Carl talking to them.... 

... they started removing the doors.

After that, the refrigerator got through the pinch point without difficulty... 

Reinstalling the doors

The refrigerator turned on just fine, the front water/ice dispenser is working fine, there are no issues with the wiring that we can tell.

We know that we were their last delivery of the day, and we think that they just didn't want to take the time to take the doors off. Ultimately, it took them longer to ditz around with trying to get it in there with the doors still on than it would have taken if they had taken the doors out to begin with. We're not sure whether they really contacted their supervisor and he gave the go-ahead to do the "un-authorized door removal" or whether they just made a show of calling someone (maybe they were looking for a friend who would "verify" to Carl that they were not allowed to remove the doors). We had already decided that if they couldn't get it past the pinch-point, we were going to tell them to leave it and we would have the edge of the countertop removed to get it in there ourselves. I don't know what they were going to do if we said, "Okay, take it back" because then they'd have to re-pack it up in the box... I don't know... it was an odd situation! At any rate, we're glad to have it in place!

Refrigerator saga - part 1

When we purchased our "new" park model last spring, it had a side-by-side refrigerator - older, but it was still working. Unfortunately, it just did not have as much storage as our French door refrigerator in the rig -- and I really don't like side-by-side freezers -- they are so narrow and I am convinced that they have a device that launches the frozen food out onto your toes when you open the door! The refrigerator compartment is also tall and relatively narrow, and this refrigerator seemed to need an additional shelf (which are no longer order-able) so we had to stack up towers with containers of food in the refrigerator section.

Since it was working, it was hard to justify replacing it, but the refrigerator in the casa (older park model) is a really old top freezer model that has doors that are no longer sealing well... so we decided that we could get a new French door refrigerator for our "new" park model and then move the side-by-side to the casa.

We measured our space and found that the most common sizes of French door refrigerators would not fit in the hole in our kitchen -- commonly the refrigerators are 35-36" wide, and our hole is 35.5" wide -- not enough for airflow around the unit. So, we needed to look for a narrower unit and we found an LG model that we liked at 33" wide. It would be a bit deeper unit than the side-by-side, but we figured it would be okay. The only sticking point was that we have a pinch-point between two cabinets that the refrigerator would need to fit through -- the pinch point is 29.75", and the depth of the refrigerator (without doors) was indicated as 29.5". I contacted LG customer support to make sure that it is absolutely no deeper than 29.5" and they assured me that there were no additional appendages on the back and it would fit through a 29.5" opening.

Costco had a good sale going at year end, so we purchased it and had arranged for it to be delivered on January 21, after we would be back from Quartzsite. Just to make sure that our calculation on the opening being 29.5" was going to work, we took the doors off the side-by-side refrigerator, built up the sides to 29.5" with pieces of styrofoam, and moved it out from the hole (with all the stuff still in the refrigerator) and through the pinch point. It fit, so that gave us greater confidence that the new refrigerator should fit through the pinch point. We decided to put it in the dining area so we could use it until the new refrigerator came, and not have to rush to get the things moved over to the new refrigerator.

More in the next post... 

Bocce ball leagues are back in session

The winter bocce ball leagues started the first full week of January. We missed the first week while we were in Quartzsite, and had arranged for substitutes. One of our subs showed up (the guy), the lady did not show up -- but our partners found another person to sub... as it turned out, the team they were to play did not have a full team, so the other team had to forfeit, so we won our first match (in absentia).

We showed up our second league week (it is a 10 week season).

We played and our team won, but not much due to our contributions! Carl and I had thrown a few balls to try to get used to the new courts (they were re-surfaced over the summer), but I can't say we played stellar games! Our partners carried us through!

Signs from the bulletin board

Someone here at Venture Out likes to find pithy sayings and post them on the bulletin board; I take pictures of them...

Hope they brought a smile to you!

Smoked Cream Cheese

We made smoked cream cheese for another pot luck while in Quartzsite and this time I got a picture of the final product:

Doesn't that look good? And doesn't it remind you of salmon?

It was all eaten at the second pot luck too... we like to have leftovers of what we serve (so we can enjoy later), but it is also nice to know that we have provided something that fellow participants also like!

Sunsets in the desert

We often have beautiful sunsets while in Quartzsite -- they weren't quite as magnificent this year, but still were nice!

From Sunday night -- we had clear skies most of our first days so the sunsets weren't as interesting.

Monday...

10 minutes later on Monday...

Yet another 10 minutes later on Monday.

Tuesday looked like a pathway to heaven!

Wednesday was again mostly clear...

... but we also enjoyed a campfire and viewed the International Space Station as it flew by.

Having the ability to see the full sky without buildings or trees makes us appreciate it even more!

Some pictures from our SKP Christian Fellowship gathering

We always enjoy getting together with our friends at the Christian Fellowship Rally near Quartzsite...

Pastor Jerry faithfully led us in the study of James each morning.

We enjoyed potlucks!

James and Amanda with two of their children and another friend led us in worship one morning.

Our group!

One afternoon, James and Amanda along with their children (minus the youngest who was busy with a nap on a convenient lap) provided a concert. James' mom and dad, Nancy and Bob, with friends the Fasts, also shared in song.

What a blessing!

SKP Christian Fellowship parking area in the desert

While I was on the roof of the RV, I took some pictures of our fellow SKP Christian Fellowship RVs in the desert...

Looking west...

... a little north...

... and east.

We are grateful to have this part of the desert to meet up with our Christian brothers and sisters!

Oh no! Fire! (thankfully not anything of ours)

On Sunday afternoon, we saw black smoke coming from a spot in the desert about a mile away...

I climbed up on the roof to try to see better -- we figured the black smoke meant that it was an RV fire.

 I searched for information on Facebook...

From someone closer to the vehicle involved... 

Aftermath

Evidently there was an RV fire at New Years too, also close to the area where we are parked -- these pictures were shared on Facebook...

At the time of the fire

Aftermath of the New Years fire

Another view of the aftermath

For the fire that we saw on Sunday, there was no one in the rig and no one was injured (no people, no pets -- the owner was in town at the time of the fire and came home to his rig destroyed). For the New Years fire, we have heard that a man and his puppy were killed.

Fires in RVs are very fast and there isn't much that can be done to fight them. Depending on where it starts, you may not have enough time to escape. It is scary, but we try to be as prepared as possible (fire extinguishers, escape plans). 

Sharing meals in the desert

We get together with our Christian Fellowship Group for Bible Study each day, and usually for a meal of some kind. On Saturday, Nancy had scheduled "Burn your own" for the evening meal, asking us to each cook our own meat, and bring it along with a side that we would eat together. 

Since we would need to have to grill going to "burn our own" (hamburgers), we decided to fire up the smoker and fix smoked cream cheese.

I was scoring the top of the cream cheese with a knife, and then sprinkled a rub seasoning over each block (we did two blocks with Sriracha & Onion, and two blocks with a garlic and brown sugar seasoning).

Carl smoked them for about two hours, and then we took the cheese off and used the smoker to cook our burgers as well as brats for a fellow attendee at the rally who did not have a grill.

No pictures of the completed cheese -- it is always funny when we bring this as people initially think that it is salmon. It seemed to be popular as there was none remaining at the end of the meal time!

Our spot at Plomosa Road BLM

Our SKP Christian Fellowship Rally is held in the desert outside Quartzsite, Arizona, at a spot near mile marker 2.2 along Plomosa Road on Bureau of Land Management land.

We parked near the end of our group with views behind us of mountains to the south and east...

So pretty with the setting sun painting the hills pink!

It is always a blessing to join with our Christian brothers and sisters!