The Birds Are Singing, Spring Is In The Air

 I guess you can tell from the pictures I like the birds

You just gotta love spring.  We have our feeders up and American Finch are everywhere, along with the odd "fat little Sparrow," as seen in the bottom picture.  He's just to the right of and below the feeder.

The last few days have been warm and dry and you can finally feel "Spring in the air."  It's so nice to go outside in a Tshirt and shorts.  The neighbours are big golfers and are finally getting the sun burns they pay for each year.  Are you there D & D?  All but one of the "Arrowhead RV Park" regulars are back and we had our first Happy Hour" yesterday.  Life is returning to summer normal for everyone.

A couple of hours West people are still in a huge fight with the flood.  All of these things are controversial and this one is no exception.  Everyone coulda or shoulda done something different but didn't.  The people hurting the most are the farm families, many of whom are loosing an entire growing season.  Not a nice situation to be in when the government decided to flood your land to protect others.

Bernie has been able to get back on her regular schedule at the gym.  As I mentioned before I love the result and she has my support 24/7/365 to get down there.  She enjoys the program and over the last five + years has developed a circle of friends there that help keep it enjoyable.

From the picture below you'll see I've set myself up with a new summer gig.  The plan is to keep busy and to keep me from driving Bernie around the bend.  Everything is in place and the prospecting and advertising are underway.  The hardest part is always getting the phone to ring those first few times.  I've done it before and this time is no different, just a matter of plugging away at it.  As the saying goes, slow and steady, although I think "Steady" is more appropriate.  Slow doesn't work too well for me.

We took our truck in to have some new brackets made to hold the car ramps.  Lifting them on and off of the deck became a pain so we figured out a way to hang them from the frame just behind the rear axles on the truck.  A fellow just down the street, who has a welding shop in Ile des Chenes, offered to build them for me and of course I said yes.  I'm old but not dumb, (at least that's my opinion.)

Have a great weekend coming up doing some child care for a granddaughter.  At almost 14 there isn't much to do except enjoy her company.

That's it for today, stay well, and please do leave a comment when you can.

Neal

Cold and Wet in Manitoba

Greetings from flooded and cold Manitoba.

We got back to Arrowhead (RV Park) last week and are getting settled in for the summer.  The problem is - no summer.  The nighttime temperatures are running in the 2 or 3 degree range (low 30's F) and in the daytime we get to  7 or 8 (mid 40's F). 

We're not close to it but the Province is pretty well consumed by the flood fight.  We drove through some of it but the worst is West of here where they are fighting a flood unlike anything we've had in the last 300 years.  It's ugly and getting worse.  They're to a point now where they are having to break a dike, which will flood a couple of hundred homes and thousands of acres of farmland, in order to prevent an uncontrolled breach of another dike, that would flood 800 to 900 homes and tens of thousands of acres of farmland.  Tough decisions but they have to make them.



The highway is acting as a dike



Right up to the bottom of the bridge



As far as you can see, just water

  The trip North from Salina to Winnipeg was VERY enventful.  We had an electrical problem in Oklahoma City that delayed us by a day.  They diagnosed the problem and told us we needed to replace 2 of the 4 batteries on the truck.  We weren't happy but did what we had to do and the next day we were off.  Things were good the next day and remained good until we fired up to leave Salina KS.  The truck was dead, wouldn't even turn over.  There was a Freightliner dealer a couple of miles away so I called and he recommended a mobile service guy from another company to fix it up.  Well -- $375 later he had replaced a starter solenoid and repaired a faulty ground.  We were on our way - ahhhhh - life is good  - NOT.  We did ok for another day or so but now it was time to cross the Canadian Border.  This story needs a new paragraph

We get to the border, wait our turn, pull under the canopy where the Customs Official gives me the kill it (shut it down) signal.  I shut it down and we answered all of the questions  He very kindly gave us the go ahead, I hit the starter,  -- NOTHING.  Absolutely dead, we're stalled right under the Canada Customs canopy.  Let me tell you - this is embarrassing.  The Canada Customs people were great, they directed me to a telephone and a couple of them even came out to chat with us. 

At this time I would like to recommend CAA where we have an RV Plus membership.  They sent out a heavy duty truck from Winkler MB to get us going.  They tried and tried but finally, about 5 hours later, gave up.  They hooked us up and very slowly towed us to Steinbach MB.  In Steinbach, our always helpful (Darcy from Integrity Diesel Ventures) diesel shop gave us a place to park for the night.

Darcy had his man Alex on it in the AM and 15 minutes later told me what the problem had been all along.  It was simply a bad ground connection from the battery box, that had been improperly repaired in Salina.  They also found that a connection between two of the batteries was faulty.  These two things combined to give us the problems.  If the battery guy in Oklahoma City had caught the faulty connection we would have eliminated one problem and if the mobile technician in Salina had fixed the ground properly we wouldn't have had the issue at the border.

So you can see why I called the trip EVENTFUL, it was certainly one we'll remember

All in all it could have been worse and in hindsight it will be another memory.  You don't forget being stalled under the Canada Customs canopy for hours on end.

So that's about it for now, more later.

I noticed from the reports this blog gives me that people from all over the world are stopping by from time to time.  Europe, S. America, USA, Russia, Spain, far East, and more, thank you all for stopping by and please do come back often.

Stay warm and healthy and please leave a comment when you can.

Neal & Bernie