QC41-05 A slight move to the west

January 13, 2014 (Mon) Titusville, FL (4) 43/74°] - This has been a day that speaks more of rest and relaxation than adventure. We puttered around a bit - Joy vacuumed inside and sent out a few emails, Mark did some maintenance on the vacuum cleaner and published our newsletter. Other than that there was a lot of sitting, reading, knitting and visiting. That's the good news. The bad news is that Lamont's rear running gear is in bad shape. Repairs, which should be complete sometime mid day tomorrow will cost nearly as much as a whole new car. Well, not quite.

January 14, 2014 (Tue) Titusville, FL (5) 68/76°] - Lamont was released from the hospital today. Except for a very faint scraping sound (a normal wear-in sound according to the mechanic - will go away after a few miles) he seemed to be preforming like a youngster - well, almost.

The owner/residents of The Great Outdoors RV and Golf Resort (TGO) have bought the golf course, restaurant and other concessions there from what have been private outside people. Problems resulting of absentee ownership (and possibly bad management) can now be addressed more easily. Even though the sale is not yet final, progress is already apparent - according to Mike and Dorcas. We had dinner at the restaurant this evening and it was quite good.

Q901168 The Great Outdoors, Titusville, FL. 440 Cove (x5)
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January 15, 2014 (Wed) Titusville, FL to Lakeland, FL (68/1365) 56/68°] - We waved good buy Mike and Dorcas (thanks guys for a restful few days in spite Lamont's problems) at about 9:00am and made our way to US-50. The traffic was relatively light and fast most of the way. As far a we know, Lamont's wheels stayed cool and undamaged.

We discovered something about our new GPS (Hildene) today. Apparently She uses real time traffic conditions to calculate estimated time of arrival (ETA). As we approached Orlando, FL on I-4 (a 65 mph highway) from the east the ETA at Ed and Kathy's was 11:39. That was just before we hit a massive traffic jam (2 of 3 lanes blocked for accident clean-up) caused us to slow to stop and go for several miles. As we broke free and returned to highway speed, our ETA was 11:41, only 2 minutes! It would have been a much bigger difference had she been calculating a clear run all the way.

There are several very good Chinese Buffets in this area. When we got to to Ed and Kathy's we all took advantage of one of them, a new one for us, for lunch. We spent the rest of the day wondering why we felt so stuffed.

January 16, 2014 (Thu) Lakeland, FL (2) 41/57°- Harbor Freight Tools sells a build-it-yourself green house (several sizes actually). This afternoon Ed and Kathy (with marginal help from Mark) started to build the one they bought. It is a small one but it seems to be a good size for starting a small number of plants. We might consider getting one ourselves, if our gardening pursuits become any more intensive. Something to think about as the spring planting season comes upon us in a couple of months.

Walmart has camping type raincoats, by Coleman, that we have been looking at. The trouble is the colors we would like in the sizes we need have been in short supply (read absent) where we've been. The Walmart here in Lakeland had them but only one that met our requirements. Joy now has a new rain coat.

January 17 2014 (Fri) Lakeland, FL (3) 37/65° - We took three bags of paperback books into Book Bazaar, a 1/2 price used book store south of Lakeland, and walked out with one bag new purchases and one bag of rejects. We though we'd gotten away with a small credit to use the next time. Wrong! On the way out the door, we saw two relatively new books we just had to have. Oh well 14 paperback books for $3.20 isn't bad.

January 18 2014 (Sat) Lakeland, FL (4) 45/53° - A trip to Harbor Freight Tools yielded a kit to polish the haze off Lamont's head light lenses. They have become more and more hazy over the last couple of years. A poster in Jiffy Lube advertises that they could do it for me for $75 but I'll give it a try myself first. What an interesting store that is! Even Joy was fascinated with seeing all the different and interesting tools. The fascination wore off pretty fast for her though, much faster than seeing all the different and interesting fabrics in a quilt shop.

Ed has a growing garden railroad out beside his motor home garage. Over the years he has laid 700 feet of track along which there are a couple of villages providing the labor force for a coal mine and processing plant, a saw mill, an oil storage facility and other industries. He stores his 20 some locomotives and rolling stock (65 plus rail cars) in a yard beside their class A motor home in the garage. Although it was a little chilly for outside spectator activity Mark and Ed spent some time running one of the coal trains around the track and talking trains.

Q091256 Ed and Kathy's yard