Time is ticking away...

Yes, our time is starting to tick away down here in Florida. Tomorrow is the begining of our travel month, as we start laying plans to somehow make our way back up to Ontario by the end of the month.

Judy and I have been talking about possible plans, and they could involve a trip to Savannah, Georgia, and maybe Washington, D.C.

Maybe I will pull up to the Big House above, and knock on the door and see if I can visit with the President! Anyways, we will keep working on our plans to keep us occupied in April! We will probably be hanging around Frostproof until mid April as it stands now...

I went down to visit Tom today after our walk this morning, and found him on the business end of this wash brush... thing is, that is not his Motorhome... he was cleaning this rig for his neighbour, as his neighbour had helped him out a number of times. I put my name on the list of his friends, to have mine done next!

What is that thing in the picture above????

Yup, your right... it is the device that holds your main door open during the day. Our old one and had simply worn out, so I installed a new one today... all of 8 bucks. The old one was letting go of the door during windy periods, so I was afraid of the door slamming, and maybe breaking the window in it!

Had a great early morning factime call with Kristina and Charley. He is able now to stand on his own! He was showing me here how he makes music with this fancy toy of his. Gwenny was still in bed, so Charley and I were able to have a heart to heart talk! Kristina reports still new teeth coming as well.

Till tomorrow...

 

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Batteries Plus to the rescue...

The other day I was heading to Lake Wales for some erands, and decided to take my trusty Honda Shadow... well, it wasn't so trusty it seems...

I bought this motorcycle in May, 2007, and this week was really the first time I have had any problems with it! 53,000 klms. and 8 years later, my original battery decided it could not hold much of a charge anymore it seems.

These are smaller, totally sealed 12 Volt batteries. I think 8 years of reliable service is pretty good for my old one.

Batteries Plus came to my rescue today in Sebring, having the exact battery that I needed to fit my Honda. Only problem was, small battery, big price! $91.00 for one of these babies... ouch. My new house batteries for the RV cost less! Oh, well... can't start the bike without it... they did away with the old kick starters!

Not much on the go today, took a shopping trip to the Sebring area with Tom for a few different things, while the women were up in Lake Wales shopping. The local economy is doing well.

Later this afternoon we had big time rain... just to keep our grass green... still better than snow!

Till tomorrow...

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A nice way to start the day!

I was sitting minding my own business, eating my corn flakes this morning, and then my iPad jumped to life!

Gwenny wanted to say "Good Morning" to her Pop Pop and got her Mom to dial me up on Facetime at 7:00 this morning... What a great way to start my day! They had been missing me, as Tom and I go walking at 7:30 now to avoid all the heat. Gwenny was doing some colouring for me. Nice to be able to capture screen shots off of Facetime!

I have a product recommendation today... I have had problems with stains and dirt marks on our Jeep cloth seats. Wish it had leather! However after using Blue Coral Upholstery Cleaner this afternoon, my seats are looking close to new again. This product works and makes a difference! It was only a couple of $$$ for the bottle above, and I used the whole bottle on the job. If you have cloth seats, give it a try! If I remember right...I bought it at Walmart.

What do you get when you cross a 57 Chevy and a Harley???

A "Charley" of course...a Friend from Gravenhurst sent me this...thought it was kind of cool.

Till tomorrow...

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Florida Bankers...

I received an email from a Gravenhurst Friend, Sharon, who is on holidays for a couple weeks in Florida. Sharon worked in my Branch Office of Scotiabank in Gravenhurst, and when I made the switch to Royal Bank, I convinced her of the merits of coming along!

Sharon is on the left in the pic above, along with Hubby Reg, and on the right is Gerard and Sharon. Sharon worked at Scotiabank with us, but retired 5 years ago. Gerard and Sharon have a nice condo in St. Petersburg, and that is where we all met today.

St. Pete's is about 1 hour and 45 minutes from Frostproof, passing through Tampa (slowly...) along the way.

They built a bridge across Tampa Bay to enable you to get to St. Pete's real fast and easy.

So, as you can imagine a lot of Banker talk went on today in Florida! Great to see them all...we had a blast!

Till tomorrow...

 

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A visit today from Family...

Quite a change in our weather today, as we had lots of sun, but the north wind brought cool air down with it, and it only got up to the mid 60's this morning. Tom and I walked anyways, just grin and bear it! Bet all you people up north feel sorry for us now!

Judy's Brother Howard and his Wife Teri came over this afternoon from Sarasota. They are heading back home this weekend coming, and brought a few large items over this afternoon that we will transport for them.

We took a tour of the park with them... this afternoon it warmed up a quite a bit so it was nice for a walk.

They were checking out some of the ducks that live on a couple of our ponds inside the Resort.

They were impressed with this machine above...

I am not sure how many people actually use this chair at our Resort, but it is there!

Teri was facinated by how the dead branch on this Palm Tree above had turned to seed. This is happening to the trees all over our Resort right now...they drop all the seeds on the ground below.

Had a great visit and wished them well on their trip up to snow country...

Yes, our darling Grandaughter Paige turned 4 years old this week! She is a little sweetheart and is doing very well. We had a great Facetime call with her the other night, and watched as she opened gifts that Judy had shipped to the house. What a blast!

Till tomorrow...

 

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It's OK, we bought the "Auto Fix Model"...

Our Resort is full of beautiful Palm Trees, lush grass, and many exotic plants... they do not all stay very nice without a whole bunch of rain, and today was a rain day. We had some rain this morning during our regular 5 1/2 mile walk, but it was really warm, and felt good. This afternoon however, it cooled down a bit and rained quite hard for quite a while... At least everything will stay green!

Not much on the go today, other than a trip up to Lake Wales to return some material to the library. While I was driving up in the Jeep, I realized that I did not report back on the blog about what happened with our dreaded "check engine light" that came on in the Jeep.

I reset the light myself, just to see if it would come back on again before I did anything... you can do this by disconnecting the negative wire off of you vehicle battery, and then hook it back up again. After about 100 miles, the light came back on again... rats!

I decided to take the vehicle to a Company here called Auto Zone. They read your engine codes for free I had heard, and they did. It only showed one code, relating to the catalytic converter not being right. They recommended the garage right across the road from them too look at it. I made an appointment and took the Jeep in.

The mechanic/owner read the code again, and explained to me that it could be a variety of different things that caused this code. He was surprised that there was only one code reported. His suggestion was to reset the light, and see how the Jeep operated for the next week again. He said it could be many different things, and it could correct itself. I thought to myself, "OK, this guy does not want to deal with me right now, so I will humour him". Well, it has been about 1,000 klicks later, and still no light has come on! I have run a couple tanks of 93 octane gasoline in hopes it will clean things out a bit. So far so good, so it is nice to have the "Auto Fix Model' of Jeep.... did not cost a penny to fix! Speaking of the Jeep...

After the rain this morning, I washed and cleaned it all up pretty, after the trip down to Key West. Looking good now...

Next item on the Auto Fix list, is Judy's Asus S200 E Touch Screen Laptop.

When she got up in the morning a few days ago, the laptop battery was exhausted, and it was plugged in overnight! What? The laptop was not showing that the battery was being recharged.

We tried a bunch of different little things, but nothing worked. I even tried to take the case apart so I could disconnect the battery and hook it back up again, but with these new fancy computers, you can't even do that it seems. The other night I got the computer to shut down, and plugged in the cord again, and it started the battery light flashing! OK, I will leave it overnight. In the morning the computer was charged, and after another day now, Judy has the problem all worked out, and it is working fine again. OK, we are two for two on the "Auto Fix" devices! Perfect! No computer nerd needed!

On a sad note however, I have another problem to report that may not benefit from an "Auto Fix"...

I was talking on the phone with my Mom who lives in Ontario this morning, and she reports all kinds of problems with her desk top computer. Seems it is being attacked by all kinds of evil bugs that lurk on the internet. This computer runs Windows XP and it is not as though Computer Rick from Blogland has not warned us all! Support from Bill Gates and his Crew has now stopped for this platform!

 

My Mom's computer has all but stopped working on the internet... not good. Looks like when I get back to Ontario next month, we will have to get a new computer for Mom. Problem is she is real good at operating Windows XP, and will have to learn Windows 7 or 8 now. No "Auto Fix" here unfortunately.

Till tomorrow...

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Sunday Recovery...

After our whirlwind tour of Key West the past few days, we took life a little easier today.

 

Judy and I attended Church Services up in Winter Haven this morning. Weather today was second to none! Just perfect for doing whatever you want to do.

This afternoon I was over at Tom's site, and helped him install some new wheel trim pieces on his GMC 3500 Truck. These are nice chrome wheel well trim pieces that had to be screwed into place. Seemed like a real easy peasy type job, but you know how it goes! Turned into a couple hours and we only did the front wheels. Tom and his neighbour did the back wheels yesterday. All done now and it looks great! Just did not have a camera or iPhone with me, so you will have to picture it in your mind!

Till tomorrow...

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Wrapping up Key West...

Typing this blog from back home in Frostproof tonight. We left Key West this morning at 8:30 and arrived at about 4:00 p.m. this afternoon. Beautiful drive in great weather. Mid 80's today so the A/C got a workout on the Jeep today.

Too busy enjoying Key West to get a blog together for last night...sometimes you just get too tired to do it at the end of the day!

So, on Friday morning, we went to a Rental Shop in North Key West, and rented 4 great bicycles. Debbie wanted to do this, and make the tour of the outer areas of Key West, so we did exactly that, driving the bicycles all the way around Key West. Took about 4 hours or so to complete, including a stop for a great lunch on the beach.

Key West has done a terrific job of building a bicycle route that you can follow around... some of it is still under construction, but it is coming. Above Judy is riding against the Atlantic Ocean on the East side of Key West. What a great day for a bike ride!

Gerard is watching Deb get some nature shots...

You get to see lots of this above...

Judy above is yelling at me for taking pictures with my iPhone while I biked... oooppsss...

Need I say more about the weather than above...

We found one of those round driveway mirrors, and this picture above was taken by me with my iPhone... you can see me doing it!

We enjoyed another great Italian Dinner at this Restaurant above, on the east side of Key West... after we decided to head down to the Docks to catch the Busker Shows! Key West is famous for these shows, that start at sunset each night and go for an hour or so... there are lots of them.

Yes this guy above, trained his cats to jump through rings of fire... he had a good show, and apparently has been doing shows for the past 24 years!

This guy above had a highwire, unicycle type of show...

Above, these two guys performed a great juggling type of show... they were great, and I took a few videos I will post here of their act. They had a real large crowd watching the show. These are not long videos, less than 30 seconds each.

Don't try to do this stunt at home now Kiddies.... too dangerous! These guys were good.

The ladder above is free standing, only held by 4 ropes held by spectators... might not want to try this one either...

We had a blast in Key West for the past few days, with by far, the most favourite activity I enjoyed being the Snorkelling Tour at John Pennekamp State Park.

Deb and Gerard left us today, and are heading on a trip up the West Side of Florida, before they beat feet for Ontario in a few more days. Sure was great to spend some time with them, doing a bunch of activities over the past weeks.

Patra was happy to see us when we got home tonight... she was well taken care of by Cheryl while we were gone... got to enjoy happy hour with Cheryl and Tom after arriving home tonight.

Till tomorrow...

 

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Can't get any further south...

We were out on the road by 10:00 a.m. this morning, heading south to Key West! Our next destination.

You simply cannot get any further south in the Continental U.S.A. I guess! What a terrific drive it is down from Key Largo to Key West!

You see lots of this above... helps when it is a terrific day weather wise outside!

That is one of the longest bridge spans heading south right behind Judy in the distance... 7 miles long.

This is what used to be running on these bridges many years ago!

We got set up in our RV Park, and took the bus this afternoon to visit Key West, about a 20 minute bus ride. This is a picture of the famous Duval Street of Key West, where all the action takes place...especially at night time!

We walked around a bit, and got a little thirsty, so had to stop for refreshments, Key West style...

We got to watch the Magesty of the Sea take off from Key West heading out to sea!

We stayed downtown for dinner, and enjoyed walking the docks on the west side of Key West. It was a real nice night out for walking around!

Till tomorrow...

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