The events of this morning had Richard uttering these words. He was frustrated. Newman is challenging him yet again with another conundrum.
The first thing on Richard and our neighbour Jim’s agenda this morning was to try and hook up the universal hose and ”t” valve connector to Newman’s propane tank, with the propane tank we had bought at Costco.
Hose and connector we had delivered by Viper Fuels a few days ago.
After trying diligently to get the two tanks connected, they both gave up, because the connection on the propane tank was seized.
Newman’s old propane tank. Richard and Jim were trying to get the hose and nozzle hooked up to the grey valve, to the right of the one that says “VAPOR”.
Luckily for us, the RV park has a lot of friendly people who all have ongoing repairs they have to do to their RV’s and seeing the dilemma that Richard and Jim were having, someone brought over some “liquid wrench” to try and unlock the valve. Someone else loaned him a wrench too. Nothing worked. Needless to say as we got into the car to go to Courtenay, he was very frustrated. He started lamenting about all of the things that have gone wrong with Newman since we purchased him, and all of the things that have gone wrong since we’ve been on the road since November 3rd, 2020. Then it started to rain as we drove up to Courtenay.
As we drove the 20 minutes up to Courtenay we talked about how this was not how we anticipated having our first winter of my retirement We miss Florida. We miss sunshine. We miss golf on dry golf courses! Some days its hard to put a good “spin” on things.
We should be thankful. And we are thankful. We have our health...And that is so very important and not to be taken for granted. And we are having lots of wonderful adventures. If we could just get the propane situation figured out, I think Richard would have a lot less stress!
We had to head up to Courtenay as my Amazon package had to be picked up today and we needed to do a “big” laundry, which our little machine in Newman couldn’t manage. We got our 4 loads of laundry going at the laundromat in Courtenay, and I left Richard reading his book, while I went to pick up my Amazon package at the locker.
I’m still amazed by the Amazon locker. It’s the coolest thing ever.
I scanned the bar code on my phone and then the door popped open.
I’m looking for a vintage Cowichan sweater while I’m here on the Island. We looked at a couple of vintage consignment stores yesterday, but they didn’t have my size. While I had the car, I stopped into a used clothing store to see if I could find a vintage Cowichan sweater. I had no luck today unfortunately. I will keep looking. I‘ve got a thing for sweaters as I’m always cold, and the real Cowichan sweaters are waterproof, which would be amazing to own.
We could not get our HBC flannel duvet cover to dry, so we decided we had had enough of the laundromat in Courtenay and would try to dry it instead, at the laundromat at the RV park.
Once we got back to Newman, Jim and Richard again put their heads together and decided that perhaps they should get a gas fitter to come and help with the propane tank. In the meantime, we are now using ceramic electric heaters, to try and preserve our propane, since Viper fuels isn’t coming until next Saturday. We have to try and preserve the propane, or we need this spare propane tank hooked up, to give us more propane to keep us going til Saturday.
Richard got the bright idea to call Matt, the owner of Lighthouse RV Park to see if he knows a gas fitter. Matt was nice enough to come down to see what the problem was with Newman and took some pictures to send to the gas fitter that he uses. So now we are waiting to hear back from Matt. It’s great that everyone is so helpful in the RV park!
While Richard was dealing with Newman, and since it had stopped raining for a bit, I decided that since we weren’t getting out for a hike today, I would see what was up with Fanny Bay, as the waves were crashing in the Bay today. I was also playing around with the Manual settings on my camera. Typically when we are out for a hike I’m letting the camera choose the shutter speed, so I’m shooting in Aperture priority Mode. I would prefer to shoot in Manual mode, but unless I have a lot of time to get the light, and shutter speed correct, a lot of the photos, don’t turn out very well. So since I had a lot of time on my hands, I challenged myself to figure out the Manual mode settings on the new Fuji X-T4.
Here are some of my Manual shots from Fanny Bay today.
I ran up to the black oystercatchers to get them to fly.
Black oyster catchers.
Fishing boats in Fanny Bay harbour in front of Newman.
I was practising panning to try and get the seagull in focus.
Black oystercatchers all lined up in a row...
I was able to watch some golf this afternoon from Kapalua. What a nice golf course! The day we played it though, they had “punched” or aerated the greens the day before, so all we saw of the greens, was sand. Such a disappointment to fly all the way to Hawaii to play that beautiful course, just after an aeration. We had friends drinking Prosecco, sitting behind the 18th hole today texting us from the Sentry Tournament of Champions. Ah to be in Hawaii!!!
Richard read me the weather forecast for tomorrow. “Parade of Storms: another parade of moisture fuelled Pacific lows are lining up to march through B.C. with several days of soaking, and windy weather, with wind gusts up to 90km/hr for coastal B.C. and rain from 100-200mm expected. Wonderful! Let’s hope Newman’s roof doesn’t start leaking again or I think Richard is going to go over the edge!
Tomorrow I think after my strength training, we may be hitting up more vintage stores looking for that Cowichan sweater. With rain as bad as they are forecasting, I am not sure we will get in a hike...but we’ll see!
And frankly we really didn’t have a crisis today. Richard is chilling reading his book, a cold glass of his favourite Chardonnay in his hand, we have heat, we are conserving our propane, we have chicken tandoori and vegetables cooking in the oven and life is good on the Island man!
Comments