Week eleven @ CMR

Sunday July 24th to Saturday July 30th 2022

Sunday morning and as I roll out of bed just in time to see Miss Laurie off to her shift at the campground store, there will be no catching up on the news this morning as there is no internet in the park, the internet had gone down at three o’clock on Saturday afternoon. And while as staff members we will definitely be asked about the internet being down and why and for how long we expect it to be down, and so far there has been no information regarding its possible return, I can only imagine the complaints that the office will be receiving. We have been relying on the campground internet for all of our entertainment and communication, and right now I have a blog sitting on my laptop that I have not been able to upload, and I fear loosing so much work if this drags on too much longer. If nothing more this proves again campground internet usually sucks! So I have ordered our own cellular hub from a Canadian reseller that should also work in the States, something I was planning on getting after shutting down our “Nomad Internet” service back in May, but I was holding off because we were making do with the park system (and saving a couple of dollars), looking at it now it was a foolish decision, as we have learnt that almost everyone else working in the park has their own network solution.

As we are hopefully through all our emergencies now, it’s time to get back to some more exploration of the island, so it is time to get the drone and video cameras charged up for some exploration. It appears that the weather is turning for us and we are expecting much warmer temperatures this week, maybe we will even get the kayaks wet, who knows.

Miss Laurie finishes her shift as I’m preparing to start my afternoon shift, the problem sites from last night have all been evicted so I’m hopping for a much quieter night. I start my shift in the workshop, my task which I was unable to complete last night is to pull batteries out of two of the new to us golf carts and to install them into the two seater Gem EV. It requires six twelve volt batteries as it works on 72 volts DC, so six 12 volt batteries connected in series (6 X 12 = 72). Our electric carts operate on 48 volts DC so they each have four 12 volt batteries, so to complete this task I’m going to disable two of the carts, so the shop is getting a little crowded with my project and not a lot of room for any other projects.

So after dinner, I close the pool and the clubhouse and take a tour around the park looking for areas of concern but all seems quiet to me so back to the shop and continue the battery swap. Then just before ten we get a noise complaint on site 8, now the workshop is about as far from site 8 as you can get, which means I will have to take my cart, but my gas powered cart is noisy, so I will park it at the pool area and walk to site 8, to be able to properly judge the noise, but site 8 is totally black and quiet, there are people at site 8A, but they are certainly not what I would call noisy. So now I’m thinking it was site 8 that was complaining about noise, so I speak with the people on site 8A and site 12 which is also nearby, and also has people sitting around, but still not what I would call noisy. I report to the office that I have checked the area and that all seems quiet to me.

After returning to the shop I get another call about noise, in the same area, so I head back down to site 8A, and again I find them around the fire making s’mores, some conversation but no music or excessive noise, I drive a dozen sites away and walked back to just listen, and as I’m standing in the front of their site, I can hear nothing but the occasional chuckle, so I report back to the office and kiddingly suggest evicting the site that is complaining, because there is still no noise issue as far as I’m concerned. I never heard any thing more and went back to work on my project for the night. I headed to the coach at eleven o’clock but sat and listened to my book till near midnight before turning in.

Monday morning and again I’m up too early, Miss Laurie is working in the campground gardens this morning then has five hours in the office, while this is my Friday and I have just one afternoon shift left this week. I spent much of the morning in the antigravity chair listening to the final few chapters of the Harry Potter series, with Mister Sam keeping me company in between watching the birds. Because we still don’t have any internet, I decided to work on cleaning up some files on my laptop, after lunch I unpacked the drone and sent it 100 meters (310 feet) just to get a little aerial footage, at 100 meters I was not able to see the highway in front of the park, but could catch glimpses of the highway north or south of us, and while I never moved far from directly over the coach I did see the river at couple of locations, and the mountains in the distance on the mainland. After a few moments I was able to work it back down through the trees and land it beside the coach.

My shift started at four and it was a wonderful quiet night, I was able to get my batteries reconnected and took the Gem EV out for a drive, I was looking to bring the batteries down enough to confirm if the charger built into the car would recharge the batteries, and I’m afraid to say that after all that time and effort the batteries are not being charged. A little history is needed here, the park used to have a 4 seat EV as well as this 2 seat EV, they had used them to show potential members around the park, since they no longer do that they sold off the four seater, but not before stripping a lot of parts off of it, then someone installed a bunch of new electrical components from the 4 seater onto the 2 seater, it apparently worked for a year or so then the charging issue started. Now bring on the new guy to try and figure it out, now if what I’m being told is correct than I suspect a faulty charger, but we have no shop manual on the charger to allow me to diagnose it, so I’m left searching on the internet for answers. A very quiet evening allowing me to head to the coach at eleven and head off to bed directly.

Tuesday and another early morning, Miss Laurie has traded her office shift today for one on Friday, to help out another member of the staff, and there is still no internet in the park as it’s only been three days why rush into fixing it now. Although they do have the office and store back up and operating online, too bad they don’t seem to care about the guests or staff, but there again most of the staff have their own systems.

I spent most of the day cleaning up file on the laptop, and removable hard drives, working on this blog on the iPad still holding out hope that I have not lost last weeks blog. As the days have rolled by that hope is sinking a little more each day, but it will be whatever it will be, Mister Sam is playing with his yellow (his favorite colour) spring in the clam, in between the birds at both feeders, it is good to just have a quiet day to kick back and sneak in a little shut eye here and there.

Wednesday and we are off on an adventure today, we are going to get our kayaks wet, it has been way too long, and now that we are getting some sunshine and warmth we need to take advantage. We are going a little more that half an hour down the road to Bear Lake, this little lake is more like a really big bend in a river, but it was teaming with wildlife I have done a separate blog for the Bear Lake kayaking adventure.

After our little adventure we made a slight detour into Duncan to pick up this weeks supplies, before heading back to the coach. We have had one air conditioner running to take the humidity out of the air, we are on a thirty amp circuit and but with the new SoftStart install, there has been no issue with the breaker. Well that’s not totally true, we have been using our onboard washer/dryer, as well as using the electric water heater, and because both of those items operated on the power leg feed that does not have an inverter to assist with any extra power demand, so we have kicked the breaker off a couple of times. The benefit of the hybrid inverter is that it allows me to limit the load on the power grid by assisting the demand with the power from our battery bank, the second inverter on the other power leg would be nice but not a priority at this time.

Thursday and because the kayaks are still in the back of the toad we decided to explore Fuller Lake today. Fuller Lake is a small lake that we have driven past multiple times as we visited Chemainus, there was a gravel boat launch that allowed easy access to the lake, motor boats were limited to 7.5 horsepower motors so there will be no noisy jet skies scaring off the wildlife. No here on Fuller Lake they have a children’s summer camp to make sure the wildlife stays away, the lake was also surrounded by a lot of residential properties, so not really an adventure worth more than just a mention.

We also took a quick look at Waddle’s Lake, another little lake just minuets from the coach, and while there was no cottages on the lake, it was just too small for any serious exploration. We took a quick trip down to Kinsman Park in Chemainus but with the tide being out and the parking lot being full of vacationers we decided to just headed back to the coach to spend a quiet afternoon, enjoying the sunshine, which was a long time arriving.

Friday and we both are working today, I have a day shift, so I start with the pool opening, followed by opening the clubhouse, then into today’s site cleanup, and with more that thirty check outs today, it keeps me humping till after twelve o’clock. Bruce was working on a campsite with the excavator trying to get it ready for the long weekend so I did all but two of the departure sites. After lunch I have some weed whacking that needed to be done (we always seen to need to trim around the pool fence on busy weekends), then some pruning, changing out a picnic table, exchanging some recycling bins and presto whammy I’m done for the day.

Miss Laurie on the other hand has the day from hell ahead of her, remember if you will the day she agreed to switch out with the other staff member. It earned her this Friday shift on a long weekend, with only a hundred guests checking in today. Her shift is noon till seven, so I’m thinking there could be a cocktail in her future, possibly even a second one.

I have finally got the television back online with the campground internet, it is still a crappy intermittent signal, but I have been unable get the WineGard back on the free connection, but I can at times get my laptop to connect to the store connection. I have a modem and router on order for the new cellular based system, but now I just have to wait. But we did get caught up on some YouTube videos before turning in.

Saturday and I’m on the afternoons shift and Miss Laurie has a float day, which she had planned to work around the gardens, but a sudden case of the long weekend flu and Miss Laurie has been asked to cover a shift in the camp store, it always amazes me how much illness there seems to be around us but we never seem to catch it (I guess those vitamins we take really do work).

I finally got a decent enough connection today to recreate last weeks blog, and allow me to get it published, the signal was not strong enough to upload any photos, other than the featured photo from the drone, I have never been this late on a publication time. Damn internet!

As I’m getting dressed for my afternoon shift, I have decided on wearing a pair of shorts, for the first time as I usually wear blue jeans, I’m hopefully that I won’t regret the choice. Because it is a long weekend my shift is till midnight an hour longer than normal, but this is also the first long weekend that has any warmth, up until now shifts it has been cool enough to even make a sweatshirt a very nice option. I also received a text from Costco that my new glasses are ready to be picked up, but it will most likely be Tuesday before I can pick them up.

I start my shift in the work shop, I’m back to work on the GEM EV, there is a second used battery charger on a shelf, so I’m going to switch out the charger and see what happens. The charging system just seems over complicated, the world has been charging electric golf carts for decades, so this should not be that difficult, the difference is that because it is built in, they have tried to make it way to complicated, by having a charge indicator on the dash that flashes green when it is charging, and turns solid green when charged, or flashes red if there is a problem.

The rest of my shift was just the normal hot evening items, breakers that had been overloaded, the recycling of internet antennas, unplugging toilets, selling firewood, closing the clubhouse and pool, and the regular security checks. As I went up the hill to do my security check I had a little company keeping an eye on me on my rounds.

Saturday evening of the long weekend was one of the quietest this year, and while my expectations would have been different I was pleasantly surprised.

Staying strong & positive!

Blog 432

Day 1762