Guess I need to catch up. Weekends are killer busy now, and even week days are busier than we thought they’d be. Last Saturday I turned in $6900 for the week. Our bosses here are still driving everyone crazy. They have a total lack of consistency. One day they’ll say “sure they can do down into the park and unload, then come back and park where they’re supposed to”, the next time they’ll say “absolutely not!“ One time Larry will say “put in the hours you need to do the job, and put anything over 40 on your wife’s time sheet”, the next time he’ll say “work fewer hours, leave things undone”. This is a frustrating job.
Temps have been in the 90’s and even a couple of days over 100. One day got up to 105. On that day our air conditioner kept tripping the breaker and shutting down. The temp inside the house got up to 95F. We have a new air conditioner in the booth. On slower days when we can keep the upper door closed, the temp in the booth will stay down in the low 80’s, but on days when we are busy and we have to have the upper door open to collect money, etc, the temp gets up to the high 80’s and low 90’s. Yesterday I worked the noon to 5 p.m. shift and was so busy we had another gal in the booth working the other side, so both doors were open all the time. The temp in the booth got up to 96F and stayed there from about 1:00 on. Shirley and I were both miserable.
Ya’ll know we’ve been having issues with our electricity here at Cemetery Point. The Company called the Power Company, they came out, took a reading (1 reading only) on the meter and said we were fine up to the point they were responsible for. So then Rick, the Area Manager brought in a retired electrician to check the power from the Power Company box to our trailer. He didn’t even have a meter with him. He looked at the wires and said everything was okay. He did say the wiring at the meter was so hot, the insulation was burning off, and one of the legs has been arcing. He also said the wire was too small to handle the job. I guess nobody but Thom heard what he was saying because Rick and Larry both felt things were just fine. None of this felt right to us. We have blown two bug zappers, and it looks like our big air conditioner has blown a condenser. The air conditioner has always worked fine before when plugged into a 50 amp power box, now it won’t even work on our big 7000 watt generator.
Today we decided to hire a certified licensed electrician to come out and check out the system from the main box to our trailer. He found all kinds of things wrong. He said the breaker box, where the wires going to the trailers all come from, is a fire waiting to happen. The voltage at both the box and our power hookup pedestal ranged from 102 - 118, changing minute to minute. Anything under 110 will cause damage to the equipment in our RV, which is probably what happened to our A/C and bug zappers. He said our big surge protector at the box will keep us from having a fire in the rig, but not from having damage to more electrical equipment. It’s not only our RV that is in jeopardy, but all 4 of the RV’s up here. The electrician (who is really really good, by the way) is going to write up a report on his letterhead so we can share it with the company we are working for. At the least, we want them to fix the wiring for our RV’s, but will also try to get them to pay for repairs/replacement to our equipment. When you’re on a fixed income, $45 is a bit steep when you have to spend it every month to replace the bug zappers, and the thought of the cost of repairing/replacing the 1500 A/C is frightening.
Mike, Tiff, Coen and Tiff’s family came up here yesterday to play. I had to work until 5 p.m., but was able to join them after that. I was so tired from being on my feet 5 hours in 96 degree temps, and bending over the top of the bottom door to grab cash and hand out parking tags and change, that I didn’t last very long down on the beach.
Thankfully, today was a fairly slow day. I worked from 7 a.m. to noon and we are now off tomorrow and Wednesday. We do have to do some grocery shopping and Wednesday is our day to use the washer/dryer here, but we plan on getting the heck outta Dodge (Cemetery Pt) for as long as we can.
I’m still enjoying my surroundings here, and love the canyon, critters, and flowers. This morning down at the booth I saw a young Redtail Fox and a whitetail fawn, still in spots. We’re afraid the fawn may have lost it’s mother. It was quite skinny and spent a lot of time on the road just standing. I don’t think a mother deer would let the fawn stay up there that far away from her without calling it in. I’m sure I’ll miss the canyon a bit next summer, but am tremendously excited about having west coast flora / fauna and scenery to enjoy and photograph. With luck, we’ll be there late enough to gather berries and bake pies…. and only 12 miles to the Tillamook cheese factory and all those yummy fresh cheese curds!
Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!
Toodles!