Three full days

Thursday Carol had her eyes examined and while she was doing that I went to the American Legion and joined. Seems like a nice group and a nice club. In fact on Friday 09/04 our favorite entertainer, Jay Smith will be playing there and we will be going to have dinner and dance to his music. Gus and Marilyn Lopes will be joining us as they also enjoy Jay.

More racquetball on Friday and I still feel tired while playing but my game is coming back a little. We also went to Sam's, Home Depot and Lowe's shopping. Contacts at Sam's for Carol and then at Lowe's e bought a new sink to replace our white one in the kitchen. It as a mess for plumbing under the sink and the white plastic sink stains and is not easy to keep clean. Got a stainless one and it has a nice large sized bowl on one side.












Decided to put the sink in on Saturday and nearly got sunk by the sink. It was a longer job than anticipated because of the "mobile home" type plumbing. but I finally got it in and it really looks good. It is also a larger sink than they put in mobile homes. Some before and after pictures are included.












Here is the plumbing before and after. We now have more room under the cabinet. A drawer is the next project.


Tomorrow we pick up Gail at 5:30 AM to take her to the Ft. Myers airport. She is going to Colorado for a week visit with her son Steven. We will pick her up the following Sunday.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I was still worn out on Monday morning from the dive on Sunday but we still went to the YMCA. An hour of racquetball was nearly more than I could handle. My calves were so sore from the swim back to shore yesterday that I had a poor night of sleep. Got our mail and got all caught up on that stuff.

Tuesday I brought the Bus back to the house and washed it .... boy it is big!!!! It really needed it. I then polished the headlight lenses which had gotten hazy from age and were reducing the lighting. They now look a lot better and I am sure will be better at night. Also stopped in at the Venice American Legion Post and got info on joining. I then dug out my military records that they need to see to verify that I had active service in a wartime period. I guess I am going to make it even though the only active service I had was my Enlisted boot camp in January 1953 and my Midshipman cruises in 1954, 55 and 56 that were wartime periods.

Wednesday back at the YMCA for another hour of racquetball. I played better but I was still tired. Still not sleeping well with my sore calves. Went out to the beach and found out how much weight I have to wear when snorkeling to be slightly positive in buoyancy. Nine pounds seemed to be OK but then after I picked a lot of shells I became negative and had to work to stay on the surface. I will start with less weight the next time. Without any weight I float up quite quickly when diving for a shell. With less buoyancy I can swim an the bottom longer and pick up more shells on one dive.

Bob King and I were going to go for a motorcycle ride in the evening but the weather was not good. Raining where we wanted to go!!! I also got started getting information on the Jacksonville area for the Hazelwood reunion in 2011.
Hope to sleep better tonight. Later!!

SCUBA

Well, I made it to the beach to go diving for sharks teeth today. I even convinced Carol to go with me so she could watch our stuff on the beach. There was a good sized group that met up at Venice SCUBA Quest.. about 20. They had some goodies to eat at the beach and some non-alcoholic beverages.
I got buddied up with a young fellow who had never hunted for sharks teeth. The surf was not too bad when we went in and it was not a problem. You need to swim quite far out from the beach to get in the good hunting ground ...... into about 27 feet deep water. It was a lot further than I expected. We snorkeled out several hundred yards .... to conserve our air in the tank... and then decided to dive down. It was only about 13 feet deep!!! The visibility was not good at all, only about 2 or 3 feet. To keep in touch with each other he held onto part of the line for our dive-float. The visibility was so bad we decided to come up and snorkel out further for a while .
This time when we went down it was about 20 feet!!!! So we just kept swimming on the bottom going further from the shore. As it got deeper the visibility did improve and we had up to 10 feet at time. My buddy did find some small teeth and he was pleased at that. I didn't even find one!!! I was looking for the big ones though. When our air went down to 1000 PSI ... from a start of 3000...we turned and started back toward shore on the bottom. When we reach 500 PSI we came up and snorkeled to the beach.
It was a really a long way to the beach. I was really getting tired but I had my vest inflated and could just lie on my back and keep paddling. I was getting small cramps and and I was getting quite tired but we finally made it
In total we spent 1 hour underwater and at least that long on the surface and got down to a depth of 23 feet.
All in all a good day but I am not sure I am going to do another beach dive. It is just too tiring for an old guy like me.

The DELL Exclusive RV Resort

We arrived in Sevierville, TN and the Dell RV Resort on Wednesday afternoon and it is really a top flight resort. We have 2 nights of free camping that we got at the Tampa RV show. This is a resort with only 27 sites that they are selling to those who will buy them. The cheap sites are about $170,00 and the ones on the pond area ... with fancy concrete that looks like stones ..... are about $195,000. They do have a storage shed and the sites are large. We also took a tour of the home sites .... some of the smaller homes cost less than an RV site!!! ..... and it was really quite beautiful. It is on hilly ground and just driving around was exciting. Not the place for us.
The entire area has really grown up and is much more commercialized than the last time we were there about 5 years ago. We did some shopping and I got a good bargain on a drill with a wire instead of a battery. We also had a good dinner at Damon's. Their ribs are still very good.
We will depart here on Friday, stop in Valdosta on the way, and be home Saturday. I am planning to do a SCUBA dive on Sunday to look for sharks teeth. I hope it is a good day for it.

Stuck in Cincinnati

I finally got all of the items cleaned from the do-list at Lori's. We then decided to depart on Sunday, August 16 rather than Monday. It was just a longer drive to Sevierville, TN ( in the Smokies) than I wanted to make in one day. When we got to the FMCA campground in Cincinnati, I fond I had a problem with the Jeep. The 4 wheel drive not shift out of neutral and locked into 4WD in gear. It was drivable but I would not be able to tow it in that condition.

I was lucky and found a garage about a block from the campground and they looked at it first thing on Monday and found the shift cable had worn out, came off the transfer shifter and needed replaced. It was ordered and would not be in until Tuesday so we planned a Wednesday departure.

Back in Zanesville

Arrived back in Zanesville at our parking spot. I still have a lot of items to complete and will be working on them this week. I also had to fix the wiring on the drivers seat in the Bus and replace the grey water drain as it was leaking. There is always something to fix in the Bus or the house in Florida!!!!

Carol's Birthday

Carol’s birthday!!!! We are planning to go to Parente’s in Trafford for dinner. Peduzzi’s, Serafin’s, Jeannie and Susan will join us. Peduzzi’s granddaughter joined us also.
I went to the cemetery and got some info about Grandmother Julian that I did not have. Her birth year is 1861 and she died on March 21, 1921. The lot cost $18.00 and was apparently purchased by her son John. I entered all of the information in my Family Tree program.
During the day I called Wayne and spoke to him. He was, as usual, in great spirits and was thankful that he made it to his phone. He said there were several times while crawling he got very tired and thought about taking a nap but knew he might not wake up!! He said he will do well with a “wooden foot”.
We had a great time at Parente’s and the meals were excellent Italian cuisine.