Friday Woes

Friday February 22, 2013
Site 49, Sebastian Inlet State Park
Vero Beach, Florida

 

 

Despite what it may look like, everything has not been a bed of roses here at Sebastian Inlet.  So perhaps it’s time for a dose of full timer reality here.  It’s a great life but it is life after all into which a little irritation must fall.

Irritation #1.

I have spent a ridiculous number of hours on my laptop trying to map out a trip to Maine and find places where we can camp on the way and not spend a fortune.  All suggestions eagerly welcomed.  

So far it’s looking like I’m going to have to come up with another summer plan.  Apparently if you haven’t made your reservations by November for the summer in New England there are no campsites to be had and absolutely no deals.  In November, we weren’t sure we could get out of Florida given David’s medical requirements, but I can see now that I should have made reservations anywhere I wanted to go and then just cancelled them.  A word to the wise.

I’ll keep trying for another week or so and then will have to go to some summer Plan B that hasn’t even been dreamed up yet.   Or maybe we’ll skip Maine and go directly to the Maritimes.  Anyone want to suggest places to stay and things we shouldn’t miss up there?

Sure does take a LOT of time to do the planning so if you do it you deserve a big pat on the back and if someone does it for you, you are really, really lucky and should thank them daily.  Seriously!

 

Irritation #2.

Even though we only have a 30 amp rig, we are pretty consistently getting low voltage messages from our Progressive Industries Electrical Management System.  Read that as the power goes off.  We talk to the park, they send out a ranger with a device to measure the voltage coming out of their box and he claims it is 110.  And of course while he is here we turn on everything, two at a time, the AC the water heater, the toaster, the microwave and couldn’t make the system fail. 

And it has been much better since he came until today when we try to leave the AC on while we go to the beach.  The Progressive Industries cuts off below 104 volts or above 132.  Apparently the power was out the entire time we were gone.  It is 89 degrees inside.  David’s medicine is inside.

The park claims, of course that no one else has contacted them about having a problem.   I ask our neighbors.  No they aren’t having trouble.  Do they have surge protectors?  No.  Electrical management systems?  No.   Is that why they aren’t having trouble.  Or is there something wrong with our system??

We have another 8 nights in this park and the temperatures are going to get into the upper 80’s again this week-end.  Sounds like no AC for us.

If we wanted to boondock in the heat we could save a lot of money by camping somewhere else.  The park is completely full or we’d ask to move.   Buyer beware I guess.

I’d like to return here.  I like the park and its location but I would want a site that isn’t on the back row.

 

 

Irritation #3

And finally,  late yesterday the realtor called and said she finally had an offer on my dad’s Largo Florida home.  It’s been on the market since October and I’m his Power of Attorney.   She says she has to have it back today to get it to the title company so it can close next week before the buyers go back to Canada.

A house closing in a week?  Really?  Maybe they do that in Florida.  I don’t know.   I have sure never heard of anything less than 2 or 3 months in Virginia.  Canadians going back to Canada in February?  What?  Maybe they do that too and I don’t know.

So I spend the morning reading the 18 page contract, signing and initialing all the places with an X, scanning it and emailing it back to her.

It’s noon, finally time to go to the beach on this exquisitely beautiful day.   I get there, flop down in my beach chair and she calls and asks where are the documents.  She didn’t get them. 

I had checked my sent documents before I left for the beach and they had gone without a hitch.

So I go back to Winnona and do it all again.   I email her to tell her I’ve sent it again.  She writes back to say she hasn’t gotten it AGAIN.  She’s trying to get this 18 page document on her cell phone.  She has to have it today to take to the title company.   She’s working “in the field all day”  she doesn’t have a laptop.

So I spend the afternoon trying this and that to shrink these documents down to the size her cell phone can receive.   I’m doing this of course in the coach with the AC going off every few minutes.   After less than 10 minutes it’s driving me crazy so I turn it off, open all the windows and turn on the fans.

It is 3:30 in the afternoon by the time I finally get something that she says she has received.   Too late to go back to the beach at this point and I haven’t had any lunch yet.  

Is this another case of we are the only people?   The only ones in the park with electricity problems.  The only clients who can’t get her documents small enough so she can get them back on her cell phone?   Do we have faulty equipment, poor electronics,  the wrong software???

 

Skip lunch, go directly to dinner and then to the sunset which turns out to be the only really fine thing of this entire day.

  A contract doesn’t mean the house is SOLD but it’s a step in the right direction. And tomorrow we’re going to see Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge so things have got to look up.   Right??