Thursday, January 29, 2009

Another week gone by

Last week was our usual thing. We went back to Dickinson so Stella could work some, then went out with the kids to eat at Uncle Chans oriental restaurant. We went by the house and picked up several items there and met with a contractor to get a price on having the remodeling work done on the house. Jeremy has a friend of his that may do the work, but he is meeting with him in a day or so to get his prices for the work. We returned to the park that night and the rest of the week flew by. I spoke with Bill and learned that he was going into the hospital in Beaumont where Ornell works to be treated for pneumonia. I spoke with him throughout the week to check on him. I caught a cold last week and have pretty well gotten over it but still have sniffles and am stuffed up in the morning, but am feeling much better now.

We went out to eat breakfast with Ted and Donna on Sunday at a new restaurant in the Woodlands called Rise and Shine. It was very good, and Ted's pancakes were HUGE! They completely covered his plate and were much more than he could eat. We went to the Wal Mart on 242 and then over to their house after breakfast and had a nice visit. We talked about the plans to meet them and Rick and Brenda this summer in June after we get through at the Heartland rally and then they are at the IRV2 rally. I think we are going to have a great time with them.

Monday morning this week, we went to Coushata to the casino there. The bus ride was okay but I still prefer to drive myself. You can't beat the group rate of $80.00 a couple which includes the bus ride, a hotel room with $46.00 being returned to us to gamble with. We broke even on the trip with Stella's gambling winnings, so the only thing we were out was food costs.

We have the rest of this week and all of next week, which ends with the Mardi Gras weekend here at the park. We will leave here on Monday February 9th for Kerrville. We plan to stay overnight at Stephen F. Austin SP in Sealy to get our Golden Age passports in order and then go on to Kerrville for the Sweetheart rally. This rally is being hosted by some of the old Boomers, Terry Nance and Larry Ulmer and Jim McGee, one of our new friends from the Heartland group. We will also see others from the Heartland group, including Jim Beletti, TxBobcat (Bob Curry) and JD & CJ Wigley.

We are looking forward to going on the road soon.

See you next time,

Monday, January 19, 2009

Boomer Gathering, January 16-19th. 2008

This weekend was the next to last official Boomer gathering that I will host. I am having the last gathering at Rayford Crossing on their Mardi Gras celebration week, February 6-8th. Sandy is hosting my retirement rally at Rayford on March 20-22nd, and that will pretty much do it for me as a host for the Texas Boomers. I will attend any rallies or gatherings that I can go to in the future, but it all depends on where we are at the time. Hopefully the house will sell soon and we can hit the road officially.

We have lots of trips planned between now and April, but most of them are in-state. We are going to the Sweetheart Rally in Kerrville on February 10-15th and will leave there to go down to visit Tom Atkinson and his wife Judy at their winter park, Casa Del Sol in Donna. We plan to stay there for about a month, returning through Blessing to see some of the relatives there. We return to Rayford for my retirement "blast" and go to Albuquerque N.M. for the Good Sam rally there. We plan to stay at the High Desert RV park and drive to the rally every day. We've never been to a big rally like this one, so we are looking forward to it. When this rally is over, who knows where we'll go! We have to be in Port Arthur the first part of June to go to the Heartland International rally in Goshen with Bill and Ornell. We will stay at their house, hooked up in the back yard until time to go.

The new trailer is great! We have had zero problems with anything in the trailer and love the new floorplan. I especially like the way I can close the bathroom door into the bedroom so as to not disturb Stella when I shower and clean up in the morning. I am very pleased with it except for a few little things that I found after taking delivery. The trailer was not clean and had some black streaks on the side that should have been cleaned up. The tires that I paid to have changed should have been cleaned up. Joe told one of the service guys to have their detailers do it before we left, but they were busy and didn't get to it. It just looks tacky for a brand new trailer to have dirty wheels and tires. I felt like Camping World should have done a much better job of checking on the clean-up operation before releasing the trailer to me. Also, on Tuesday, I ran out of propane in one tank. Then I discovered the second tank was only about one third full. When the propane tanks are new, they have a lot of air inside them that must be expelled before they will take a full load of propane. Again its a little thing, but it needs to be looked into by CW.

Joe French sent a young salesman named Damon out to the park this weekend with us to show off a Damon motorhome. It was a very nice gesture by Joe and Camping World to support our club. Damon and his family had a good time camping out in a $200,000 motorhome this weekend at a very nice park with good amenities.

So long for now.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Sunday January 11, 2008

We packed up Friday and went to Camping World in Katy to pick up our new trailer. We had gone in on Monday to pick out the additional items we wanted to have installed. We had decided on a second air conditioner and I wanted a Kwikee sliding cargo tray. Stella suggested that if CW put them in, they would be covered by a warranty, so we decided to have them install these. When we got there, the sliding tray was much more expensive there than I have been able to find on the Internet, so we decided to let it go for now and only do the air conditioner. We told them to go ahead with it, and left.

When we arrived on Friday, about noon for a two o'clock delivery time, they had just begun installing the a/c and then needed a part that they didn't have. They had to send someone out to find the part they needed. I don't understand why they couldn't have done this well before we arrived. It turned out to be only the first of many boo-boos they made during our delivery.

Holly, the "delivery queen", looked at us like a deer caught in the headlights, and said "you're so early". I immediately knew they weren't ready for us. Our friend, Joe French, took us into an empty office where he talked to us for a couple of hours to pass the time. If he had not done this, we would have been furious because we had told them we wanted to start moving our stuff into the new trailer. We had taken a lot out of the old trailer to a storage room that we had taken near Rayford. We spent two days moving stuff into storage. The main things left in the trailer were our hanging clothes and the refrigerated stuff.

To make a long story short, we didn't get through with the paperwork and change-over from one trailer to the other until after four o'clock. The store closes at five, so we knew we didn't have enough time to make our move. While standing inside the new trailer, a friend of ours, Joe Grundmeyer, dropped by to visit. His trailer is in the shop at CW and he found out we were there to pick ours up. We finally got started moving from trailer to trailer about 6:30, but decided to go eat before starting. We finished up and came back and got started about 7:30. We worked and worked until after 11 and stopped for the night. I woke early on Saturday morning and got started again and finished moving about 8 o'clock in the morning. We had to wait for the service guys to come in to move the old trailer so we could pull out. They didn't start arriving for work until 8:30, then they had other units that they had to move first, had a problem with their forklift that is used to move trailers, but finally got our's done and we were able to leave about 11.

Kim called and asked us to come down and pick up the boys because both she and Jeremy had to work, so the boys got to spend the night on our first official night in the new trailer. They loved the blow-up bed, and we all got a good nights sleep.

One funny thing happened this weekend. Dawn, the lady in the financial office at Camping
World used to work for Holiday World where we bought out first travel trailer. She knew several people that worked there that we remembered. Then Bill, the shop foreman, used to own Western RV's on Hwy. 290 where we bought our first trailer, a pop-up. Its a small world.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

My birthday, January 3, 2009

This was probably the best birthday I have had since I was a kid and had parties! It began at breakfast in the rally hall, when everyone wished me a happy birthday and then sang to me after breakfast. I got phone calls all day long fron friends and family, either to wish me happy birthday or to sing to me.

It's official, I'm an old retiree now. I got my first pension check and have signed up for Social Security.

We went out to eat at Crabby Daddy's restaurant tonight with Ted and Donna, Rick and Brenda and Ricky. Dee had to go to Louisiana to check on her mother, who had swallowed a pill down the wrong pipe and had contracted pneumonia. Hope she improves and gets well!

Again, the best birthday party in a loooong time!

New Year's Eve 2008

We went to the New Years Eve celebration at Rayford as usual. We have been to all the New Years parties that have been held here. This one was the best yet!

The theme was the 60's & 70's, so we went out and bought some costume accessories with Ricky and Dee. Stella and Dee came back and tie-dyed some shirt for us to wear, so we ended up looking pretty good.....

There were several people that were dressed up pretty well, including our friend Bryan from Lufkin in a huge afro, complete with a big hair "patch" for his chest. We all had a great time and stayed until the party ended.

The band, Main Street, was very good and we hope to see them again at another party.