Sunday June 19th to Saturday June 25th 2022

Sunday and I’m back on the afternoon security shift this week, so I have till four o’clock before I start my shift. It is father’s day and I have the urge for some beef, we have been struggling through some of the food prices here on Vancouver Island, but in reality the price of beef has been getting stupid for some time, so other than some burgers and ground beef we have not had a steak or a roast of beef for some time. But today after securing a small personal loan I purchased a $29 sirloin tip roast, it was on sale for only $13.10 a kilogram ($5.95 a pound), and while not a cut of beef that I would normally buy, done as a pot roast in the Dutch oven with onions and carrots on the barbecue it will be just fine. I also had the urge for some French fries, so Miss Laurie cut up some russet potatoes and cooked them up in the air-fryer, no grease fix but still made for a great dinner break

Todays shift is only from four till nine, there are usually some projects that need to be accomplished in the shop, tonight it was the removal of a broken down fence by the play field near the pool. I soon realized it was a tractor job and still had difficulty removing the metal stakes that had been holding it in position. But with the leverage of the tractor the removal became a lot easier, but here we go again, as I realize the spot where the fence is is quite low and before the new fence is installed should have some fill to build the area up. So do I suggest that, or just put up the new fence? We all know the answer, of course I recommend the filling of the low area, so it has to be ran up the management flag pole for approval, and now I wait. The rest of the evening is quiet, I close the pool and the clubhouse, and do my security lock checks and finish my shift at nine o’clock.

Monday and because today is an afternoon shift, I’m going to venture down to the river again today, the water is still moving fast because it has continued to rain every couple of days. The walk down the hill is steep, but this slope has a rope to help people down and up, and I used it both down and back up. Here are a few photos of the Chemainus river I snapped.

On my afternoon shift today I had to finish assembling a barbecue for the rental trailer that someone else had started, of the 35 steps they had got to step 7 before they had to conveniently leave, it is always difficult taking over projects. So after I’m done the assembly there are five screws left over, never a good sign, but I found where three of them went back at step 6, now I just have two, and even after re-reading the picture directions, they still don’t have homes. Site 80 has a electrical issue, it appears to be the 30 amp plug, it is intermittent so I loan the guest a 50 amp to 30 amp dog bone adapter and make a note for a repair tomorrow. Again the pool and clubhouse closure, and my security checks and the evening is done at nine o’clock.

Tuesday morning and I’m back on a day shift, is is another cloudy day, cool enough that I’m still in a sweatshirt, I open the clubhouse before heading to the pool which seems to be the morning spot for the maintenance crew to meet, and discuss the days tasks. I’m chosen to repair the electrical issue on site 80, we all suspect the 30 amp receptacle so I will change it out, I will also finish off the picnic table rebuild that I started last night, move a couple of repaired tables out of the shop and get the next table ready to be worked on. Then a noisy golf cart pulls up and I’m elected to replace the muffler, not a difficult task, but there is no new gasket for the mount so I’m told to use muffler cement, now here is a product that I have not seen or used for forty plus years, in fact I was amazed that some company was still making it let alone people were still using it.

Lunch was a quick hot dog, Miss Laurie is working today in the office so I’m on my own for lunch and a quick nuke of a bun and weiner and lunch is served, this 30 minute lunch is a little difficult but it is a paid lunch so I will make the best of it. After lunch I know there is a water valve that needs to be replaced, but I was never officially asked to get involved so maybe I should have just stayed in the shop delivering the occasional bag of firewood, but there again we all know that’s not my style.

So first of all I need to say it’s always great that there is often a plan for a repair like this, and at one time that would have been a good thing. Back when we used to have quality parts that we made repairs with. But now everything is cheap, poorly designed and built, and imported from China. It is a shame but it is near impossible to buy a quality built water valve that is made in Canada or even North America for that matter, but enough of this tangent back to the plan.

The plan was dig down to the waterline, uncover the valve, then remove the top of the valve, and exchange the broken working parts from the old valve from the new valve. A good plan if the valves are from the same manufacturer and today that is just a guess, as the Chinese don’t build these valves to be repaired, and the manufacturer usually doesn’t even put a name on the valve, now that’s true pride. The valve being used is what I would call a full flow blade valve, when fully opened it offers no restriction of flow and to shut off the flow the valve literally pushes a wedge into a couple of machined surfaces that stop the water flow, this valve was defective, probably from the beginning had allowed the blade to go past the machined surfaces, impossible if it was properly machined, so most likely no go when new and certainly had no form of quality control, but this valve was installed last winter and only worked once, so was obvious junk from the start. Now that we know it is junk we need to replace the whole valve, not an easy task on a 75 mm (2”) line that is buried, difficult but we were able to dig back far enough to accomplish the task.

The only issue I could see is that we were going to have to reuse a couple of plastic pipe fittings, not something that I would normally recommend or do, but remember I just do as I’m told, so after the repair and the water was turned on again we had a drip, and I guess we all look a a drip differently. I see a drip as a leak, plain and simple, if any water connection in your house dripped you would agree with me, but we were instructed just to re-bury the water line, it’s only a drop, and it might stop, and my thought is yes it might, but my heart says it will never stop and will be a problem down the road. It is times like this that make me shake my head and head to the liquor cabinet.

Wednesday my Saturday, it is a much better day, I’m off today, but Miss Laurie is working from 10 to 4 in the office today, according to the weather dude on the television, we are in for an extended dry warm spell in British Columbia. I will take it, if it actually happens, Laurie and I are both off tomorrow and we have a road trip planned, it is a large adventure and one that is long overdue. But today I’m catching up on this blog, and following up on a number of other items, one being our nomad internet, a quick check shows that they received the hardware back on June 4th, but as of yet has not credited my account, the web site says 14 days and it now has been two weeks, but I will give it one more week. I just received a notification of an Amazon package at the local post office so I will pick it up, it should be the new drawer slide hardware so next weeks project is coming together. Lunch today was a roast beef sandwich, and after returning from the post office I’m enjoying a vodka and tonic in the Clam with Mr. Sam. I just tried the propane fire pit as it would not light when I moved it into the Clam, but it fired right up, I’m going to assume the sparker finally dried out, we don’t need the warmth today but I just wanted to try it, because it had worked flawlessly in Arizona but would not work a couple of weeks ago when I tried it.

Dinner tonight is going to be burgers we are making the transition from U.S. burgers to Canadian burgers, there is no noticeable difference, we just haven’t been able to go to Costco since getting on the island. And the second issue was that Costco Canada was using a MasterCard from Capital One, and our card was comprised when we first went to the States last fall, but because Capital One was being replaced by CIBC here in Canada, Capital One never even bothered getting us a new card so we went all winter without a Costco card. Capital One obviously has been an issue, for Costco to dump them and I must say their customer service has been none existent. And again I’m off on another tangent, and then I can’t understand why it takes me so long to write a blog … duh.

Thursday our “Road Trip” day, and it seems like a very long time since we were just able to go exploring, our trip today is to the west coast of the island, should be a scenic day with lots of precious views. We are going to get Laurie to the Pacific Ocean for the first time ever and me for the first time in more than forty years. I will include a link below to that blog if you have not yet read it.

https://wordpress.com/postTofino day trip/thebuchanansrollingdowntheroad.com/7074

We made it back to the coach to find a destrot Mr. Sam as we were hours past his dinner time, but a couple of hours before bed was a welcome break, as it is back to the grind tomorrow.

Friday and I’m back on a day shift, actually this is a special day, because we move to our “summer schedule” so from now to the foreseeable future both Laurie and myself have a schedule that will give us two days off together for the summer. Wednesday & Thursday and as a bonus I get every Tuesday off for the summer so I have a day shift on Fridays and work afternoons Saturday, Sunday & Monday so around 30 hours per week, and lots of daytime to work on my many projects. But on Fridays I’m responsible for opening the pool, which usually involves a vacuum, test the chemicals, and cleaning the skimmer socks, it eats up the best part of an hour so has to be started by eight o’clock to have the pool open by nine. After that there is an hour to kill before receiving the departure list for sites to be cleaned. Today I refuel my cart, top off the oil, it uses some oil, but is one of the quietest carts on the fleet, and I’m one of the only staff members that puts around the park at the 8 km/h (5mph) that is posted everywhere.

Todays departure sheet has only four sites, three are marked as priority, and the only one not priority is empty so I start there, then the manager call and asks for a site to be done first, and I’m half way through that site when my supervisor calls and says some one is waiting for another priority site. So in my most tactful voice I ask over the two way which one is the the real priority, knowing it ends up being manager against supervisor, then the response from my supervisor is that they are both high priority, as I know he is in the Managers office. Oh well, I just continue doing what I’m doing in a timely manner, but never even responded to the last comment, because what I wanted to say if they are both so important get off your ass and do the other one yourself! But I didn’t say a word, Miss Laurie later congratulated me on biting my tongue, but I explained it wasn’t worth even responding to.

My afternoon was a little bit lazy, as I had expected some sort of an apology from my supervisor, but as none came, I just figured, I would work equal to that level of respect, so I wasted over an hour staining four boards, for a project on the rental trailer. After that I went and helped Bruce level some newly expanded tent sites, in between backing a trailer into a site for a lady, and checking a full septic tank and calling for a septic truck that most likely won’t show up till Monday. And that was how I filled my afternoon. Landing back at the coach by four for a cocktail, before barbecuing some sausage and watching the local news followed by some mindless television.

Saturday and I’m on the afternoon shift, Miss Laurie is in the store this morning so I’m working on a blog before heading to Duncan to pick up a few items for the drawer repair. The supports for the drawer were made up of 19mm (3/4”) plywood, screwed together, which meant the weight of the drawer was held by literally two screws, should have been four, but obviously some one got lazy twenty four years ago and only installed two. But the location will allow me to support the drawer on the subfloor, eliminating the need for four screws to support the heavy drawer. So here I’m in a Home Depot on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and I had hoped to find a fir board to make the support, none available, the selection of pine boards was just sad, so I ended up buy a laminated board that was from Romania, I’m here in our lumber province buying a board from Romania, what’s wrong with this!

I have made the initial cuts, and now just need to trim the boards to fit, the weight of the drawer will now be on the subfloor, and the metal brackets just hold everything square, now to mount the drawer slide and road test the operation. It’s lunch time so I’m making a roast beef sandwich, along with a large vodka and tonic for a lunch break in the Clam with Mr. Sam. After lunch the drawer is in and operating, I need to secure the new boards in place, but it is working better already, and I get cleaned up just in time to head out the door for my afternoon shift.

This afternoon shift started as most with a few little projects, then the firewood run, being nicer weather I sold more firewood, restocked the wood shed and reloaded the truck, and by then it was time for my dinner break. The time for closing the pool has been moved back to nine o’clock, which really makes no difference to me, but it means the clubhouse doesn’t get closed by nine as well. For a beautiful warm weekend everyone seems well behaved, and with no issues I’m headed to the coach by eleven o’clock to sit and relax before turning in.

Well another week in the books, the park has gone less than a week with no rain and already some areas have turned into a dust bowl, apparently we are the only park in the Holiday Trails RV Resort system that does not have paved roads, The way the water lines break that may be a good issue, but for dust control it does not help at all, I understand that they spray the roads with water when it gets too dusty, so from dust to mud in one easy step, maybe they have never heard of calcium for dust control. Oh well that would be a management call, way beyond my control, have a great week.

Look at that, it’s only six months till Christmas!

Blog 426

Day 1726

Sunday June 12th – Saturday June 18th 2022

Sunday morning immediately following yesterdays afternoon shift, and I have to admit, I’m a little slow to get up and started, but I get some breakfast and head out the door by eight o’clock. This is my second week of dayshift work, the extra hours are welcome but there are lots of tasks that are dirty, difficult and just not appealing. But I just do what I’m asked as the decisions are made way above my pay grade. So this morning I was tasked with replacing a roof vent on a trailer, not a difficult task, but it’s not a job that anyone would step forward and say pick me. The park has purchased an older fifth wheel trailer and they are planning on renting it out, which is a fine idea if the trailer they had purchased was in better shape. From what I have been able to gather they paid top dollar for this trailer and it has needed a lot of work to bring it up to a standard that is acceptable for rental. But today my task is remove an old vent and replace it with a new unit, the worst part of the job is the clean-up time after removing the old vent and preparing the area for the new vent, which has to be sealed properly.

Some of the difficulty is always picking up where someone left off, so the person had ordered the new vent, ordered Dicor sealant but did not get any butyl to install the vent, we had some old product in the workshop, but it was very old and therefore not the best for sealing the new vents but I was told to carry on and use it anyway, so I did. My thinking was if it leaks later on, it won’t be my problem, and that has been a hard hurdle for me to get past, I don’t want to come across as being bitter, but for a long time I have either made decisions or at least had some input into the process, and here and now I have no input. And it is just hard for me to just let it go, when I see something that is wrong, I just report it now and then have to let it go, which is so much not my way.

The afternoon my first job was repairing the brakes on one of the golf carts, apparently Bruce was asked to look at it but he never got it done, so now it is my job, there is a fleet of ten or so carts, and they are all gas powered, and to say that they are all in need of some repair would be a safe statement. On this particular cart the brakes actually worked fine, the problem was the pedal would not return properly, and golf carts are designed that when the accelerator is pressed it releases the parking brake as well as starts the cart motor. But in this case the pedal was not returning, holding the brakes on, the problem was that the pivot point on the brake pedal, was seized onto the pivot bolt, so lots of penetrating oil and manual operation I was able to free up the pedal so that it would return when released. This was not a complete and proper repair, as I should have taken the pivot bolt out and cleaned and lubed it properly, but that was not the way I was told to repair it, so again I just did what I was told to do. And the rest of my day was spent moving picnic tables, we are in a ongoing process of replacing the boards on picnic tables, repainting them, so every few every week we remove and replace tables with refurbished, repainted tables.

Monday morning and back for another dayshift, and again this morning I am tasked with installing a second roof vent on the rental trailer, this time it is a power vent, one that can be set to automatically open and start the fan at a certain temperature, it is a new fan but obviously one that has been sitting around for a while. but the actual task is the same as yesterday, and takes about the same length of time, to clean up the area and properly seal the new vent into place.

After lunch we have another water leak reported, on same water line, but this leak is between the other two breaks, here is an issue with the Kubota tractor, the back hoe is not operating, Bruce broke some linkage and bent a hydraulic cylinder ram trying to remove a stump, just after the last leak, so we have to get a rental unit in before we can start the repair. So we know where we need to dig, now we are waiting for the equipment to arrive. So I use the bucket on the tractor to fill move the picnic table and steps away from the rental, as there is a contractor building a deck in the next day or two, and with the deck we will no longer need the set of temporary steps, so I moved them to the maintenance compound.

Around three o’clock the truck gets here with the rental back hoe, it is another Kubota with a back hoe but it is a much smaller unit that ours, so as we start the digging process the rocky soil around here is being a little tough on the unit but we find the leak, it at one of the original glued connection, and needs a new piece of pipe, a connector as well as a mechanical connector, so two glued connections and the mechanical, the problem is that there is a constant flow of water, so we are bailing water while trying to glue the new fittings, not the ideal situation, but we succeed and have the water back on by six o’clock, I’m getting tired of these water leaks, as I’m always the guy in the hole.

Tuesday, and I will spend most of today working on sites, today it was site 44, which was previously a narrow tent site near the base of the entry hill, now I’m not an engineer or anything but I have learned over the years is that water will always run downhill and it will find the path of least resistance, so this project had no real designing, other than someone just thought it would work. The plan last fall was to dig in what I would call a French drain, using washed stone, surrounding a perforated drainage pipe that would carry the run off water to a tank that was buried underground with a sump pump that would pump the water back up the hill to the other side of the entrance road. Then they covered that washed stone with soil, the idea of the French drain is to leave the stone exposed and open to allow the water to enter it, as soon as it was covered the water just went in a different direction, so now the previously narrow dry tent campsite is now a wide wet tent campsite, and with a rainy year so far, lets just call this project an epic fail, and to add to the fail, we are just keep adding more soil to site, acting like a dam, again I’m just doing as instructed, while I know the only way to correct the problem is to re-dig the French drain all across the back of the site and leave it open and exposed, but as our Arizona buddy Lincoln would say “not my monkey, not my circus”, and I will just leave it there.

Wednesday which is my Saturday, a day off “oh yeah”, but I’ve got a lot of things to do today, the radiator for the toad is in and Miss Laurie is going grocery shopping, so after a cup of coffee, and some breakfast we head off to Duncan to gather our needed items, and we attacked the tasks as if we were on a mission, which we were. I wanted to get the new radiator installed as well as the new front brake pads on the toad, we were back at the coach by eleven o’clock and I proceeded to start the radiator change, and it turned out to be a bigger problem than I had first realized, you may remember back in March I had that collision in Arizona well the radiator was damaged then, actually I have never seen a radiator bent out of shape like this one, so it was a bit of a job to get it out and then the new one will not bolt up properly because of the damage, but it is in place and will work just fine until we get to the body shop, next the front brakes, which is just a simple brake pad replacement, the brake rotors look fine, so I saved another couple of hundred dollars there.

I usually don’t do a lot of my own mechanical repairs any more, it is just hard doing some of these repairs with out the use of a hoist, but when quoted $375 labour for a couple of very simple tasks, I can get my hands dirty and I was able to reduce a $1600 estimate down to only $500 worth of parts, after all my last name is Buchanan not Rockefeller. The repairs are done, I’m all showered and kicking back in my chair by four o’clock, we will see how much pain the old joints are in tomorrow, but right now I’m feeling quite satisfied.

Thursday, my Sunday, and I’m actually feeling pretty good this morning, it rained overnight and we are expecting more rain today, this is why the toad repairs had to get done yesterday. Today I have a few small jobs around the coach and I need to sit and catch up on the blog. Miss Laurie is working in the gardens today but all I have outside is some trimming of the grass with the weed wacker, it has been a couple of weeks since I did it, and it is starting to show. Inside I have to fix my chair, there are a number of loose screws that need to be tightened, then there is the propane alarm that has been going off every couple of days, a check of the date shows it is over five years old, time to be replace, and then there are the drawers under the refrigerator, we don’t have a lot of storage drawers and we have overloaded these two drawers with canned goods and now have broken the supports for the rails, there aren’t a lot of items that I would call cheap or poor build choices in our coach but all the drawer slides are one, so I have ordered a couple of rails that will support fifty pounds of weight, more than strong enough to handle our canned goods, but delivery is over a week away so it may be a week or two before I get a chance to change them.

An update on our streaming service, I contacted “RiverTV” to get the service switched to British Columbia, it was a bit of a task, because our billing address is in Ontario, so they had to verify that we were actually in British Columbia, which took a few days but we are now watching local news and broadcasts from “RiverTV” and well as “CityTV+”, it is just nicer to hear and see local information, when watching our morning television. We are on a two month promotional rate of $9.99 per month then it goes to $16.99 per month, but we have no contract so when we leave Canada near the end of October we can just cancel it with no issues.

Friday morning and I’m awake early, no particular reason, other than it just seemed like the right time, today I’m on shift from 8 to 4 again and I can only imagine what they have planned for me today. After a bowl of cereal, I head off to the swimming pool, this is the priority every morning, it must be vacuumed and open for the adult swim at 9 o’clock, then to the clubhouse which also needs to be opened, just a simple task, just unlock four door, turn on some lights, and start the television, as the remote for the television is kept locked in a cabinet, a quick check of the washrooms, unlock the laundry room door and all is well. Then I’m off to get the firewood truck to restock the wood shed at the store, a quick look in the shed told me it would need a whole truck load … but there was a problem, the people that supply the firewood had dumped a load of firewood in the road blocking the route of our firewood truck, so I needed to take the tractor up the hill to clear the wood out of the way, to get the truck out.

Now we get into the fun stuff, and today we are going to install a (I really don’t know what to call it so for lack of better titles, I’m going to call it) a water manifold. It is going onto a new two inch water line up near the office. Now some background on this project, the water line was installed over the winter, it feeds the managers park model home, and the irrigation system around the entrance and office, but this part of the water line simply runs under the managers trailer and was brought through the skirting at a terrible angle, it also stuck out from the trailer 8” at the bottom and 4” near the top, and stood nearly three feet off of the ground, then they had added a 2” brass ball valve sticking out from the trailer then the plan was to add this manifold piece, to support this plastic water line there was to be a post dug into the ground beside the trailer, the manifold has five water hose spigots, and was so large I felt it might need a post to support it as well, because it was protruding over a foot out from the newly added post by the trailer.

My job, was to dig the post hole, and I did that 18” deep was my orders, but when the post was put in place, the handle for the ball valve would not turn because it hit the top of the post, so the decision was made to cut the post off at the level of the pipe, it was right about now the manager came out, and quite literally put me in a difficult spot, she asked my opinion, that’s never a good thing, because I always have an opinion. And it could have been my reference to this job looking like a pimple on a pigs ass, I’m not sure, but she did like my opinion on how I thought it should have been done.

Now bring in my immediate supervisor, and the discussion moves along to the fact that if the water line came out of the skirting at the correct angle the manifold system could be mounted to the trailer and held securely into place the valve mounted on the riser pipe, but it would mean someone crawling in under the trailer to cut and repair the waterline, so it came out straight. Now I’m sure you can guess who got that job. Correct little old me, it is times like this that I curse myself for opening my mouth, but it was the only correct way to fix the mess that was actually was. So between crawling under the trailer to realign the waterline and cleaning the departure sites for the day, that was pretty much the balance of my work day.

Saturday and I’m back on the afternoon, lock-up & security shift, and thank goodness after it rained off and on all day, and the sun finally came out late afternoon, the park is nearly at capacity, and there are some groups of baseball players in the park, which may or may not be an issue. So I went to do the firewood run with the truck and wouldn’t you know, the firewood people had dumped another truckload of firewood, blocking my path!

So after I hand bombed enough fire food to get the old Mazda pick-up out, I made my way around the park to sell only one whole bag of firewood, but at least I was able to restock the the wood shed at the store, before returning to reload the truck. Miss Laurie is working the evening shift at the store tonight so my dinner break was just a quick bowl of soup before heading off to close down the swimming pool.

There were not a lot of tasks for me to accomplish tonight but some were a bit of a pain in the butt, it seems that we are sometimes on a make work project, so here is todays example. The rental trailer needed a new propane detector, just as our coach does. There are a variety of styles and sizes, some are surface mount, some are recessed into a wall, so it would just seem natural to replace the defective unit with the same style, and because I need a new one as well I have been looking at the choices and options, as well as the pricing. The rental had a recessed sensor, and someone purchased a surface mount, and rather than get the correct one, it was decided to try to make the surface mount unit work. The prices vary from $55 to $95 and they come in three colours, so the rental had a brown recessed unit and we are installing a black surface mount, so we have a hole in the wall that the surface mount will fall right through. Now I’m just trying to paint a picture here and the phrase “a pimple on a pigs ass” come back to my mind. This sensor is located just inside the only entrance to the trailer, so lets call it a high traffic area, where people will be removing shoes and the like, so to have the surface mount style sticking out is not desirable, so lets take a piece of wood and cut and router it and then verathane it to try and resess the sensor, then get the new guy to try and install it into the previous recessed unit opening. So I wasted close to an hour enlarging the opening to accommodate the larger block of wood which I’m sure has at least a couple of hours worth of work, so three hours at minimum wage is over $50 in labour and it still looks like “a pimple on a pigs ass”.

Closing the pool this evening was challenging, with the sunshine finally out the pool was busy, and no one was in a rush to leave the 80 degree pool, but I managed to roust everyone out by 8:10, then off to check the office area for being locked, close the woodlot gate and do my first security round, because it rained most of the day people are trying to get some outdoor time, but there were no signs of possible party zones. I get the clubhouse closed up by nine o’clock. Around nine thirty I take Miss Laurie up to the office with the store sales from the day, because the office is so far away, it is necessary to have a golf cart ride, after returning Laurie back to the coach I make security round number two. it is now near ten o’clock and I had to take a photo of the western sky.

After a couple of small projects in the work shop I made my final security round of the park, only one group of people that were a little on the noisy side, but after being asked to quiet it down, they decided to break up and shut it down, and I was able to head to the coach feeling confident that there would be no noise complaints tonight.

Now – “monkeypox” – like seriously?

Blog 424

Day 1720