Sunday, April 15, 2018

Rant - Desert Dust and the Jacknife Sofa Incident

Been quite a while since I have posted on my blog, with the winter park guests almost all gone, time to get back to the Oasis and other projects that have been on hold...


All was going fairly well until yesterday!

One of my projects that has been delayed is getting the golf cart running again! Needs new batteries, at least one to start with since it shorted out and melted the post off. So had my budget for the month all set to get a new battery (2) out of 6 and buy 2 a month until all replaced. Also ordered new LED headlights and tail lights so I could drive at night. Yesterday the last of the lights and wiring parts arrived, so my plan was to get off work at 10:30 and head home, clean the trailer and then get the lights mounted and wiring ready for the new batteries.


DUST

The friggin wind has been howling for the past week or so and here in the desert it blows right through windows and screens and creates a layer of fine sand on everything - the floors, counter tops etc.

So I leave the office and decide maybe a short nap is in order before I vacuum and clean. I woke up very, very early and was half afraid to go back to sleep since I had to open the office early. So a nap was in order. First I had to load the crockpot with meatballs and sauce for my Swedish Meatballs for a group dinner in the Clubhouse, our next to last potluck before the last people head out.

Now the fun! And a laugh for all!

So Crockpot on and loaded - head in to the trailer and drop my fat ass down on the living room jacknife sofa and prepare to relax for an hour or so with a nap. Roll over towards the outside wall and all of a sudden the whole friggin thing collapses and the sofa folds up with me in it...as I slowly begin to realize what happened and quickly did a body analysis to see if I was damaged, I came to realize there was almost no way for me to easily extricate myself from this dilemma...my phone was just out of reach, as I thought I would call the office and have maintenance come lend a hand...as I reached up to pull myself up and over the cushion and frame, to get my phone, it slowly started to lay flat again, at least flatter so I was able to slowly crawl out of what was left of the sofa.

Now upon further examination of what had happened I realized that the wood frame that was stapled in to the side of the trailer wall had collapsed and the sofa which was bolted to the frame had broken the frame and split the wood...well it only took me about 15 minutes to determine that it was time for a change and it was not going to be rebuilt but rather a dumpster run was in order. Spent about an hour trying to get that heavy bastard unhooked from everything and wrestled into the middle of the room - no way I could lift it all and fold flat to get out the door. Called maintenance and requested a hand and the trash trailer and within a couple minutes it was out the door and on its way to the dumpster - Thanks Bob!


CLEAN!

So now the space is nearly empty other than some RV items stored under the sofa from the outside compartment that gave access to the underneath...fire up the vacuum and lo and behold it starts smoking and whining from the powerhead...so have to stop and take that apart and find 40 pounds of crap wrapped around the beater bar...by now the crockpot needs my attention and I pretty much said...screw it...time for a PBR!


Then it was time to head to the clubhouse for Potluck dinner and more beers.

Had to work again Sunday morning so after dinner - returned to the Oasis, made sure the vacuum was fixed and moved my zero gravity chair into the trailer and went to sleep....

Today, I am cleaning and have made plans for several alterations to the trailer, there goes the battery budget, so will have to wait until next month or if I win the lottery.

The bed in the bedroom is a queen and damn near impossible to get around and with the raised floor you cannot stand up beside the bed, major pain in the ass and the reason I have been pretty much sleeping in the living room on the sofa. My plan was (is) to remove the queen sized bed and put a nice twin bed in its place which will take up half the room and allow a "Hallway" along side the bed and with it being lower able to stand up. So that is all loaded in the Amazon shopping cart along with a nice recliner for the living room to sit in the slide-out where the jacknife sofa was. Will seal up the hatch that accessed the under sofa storage, no need for that anyway. That will be the next project - Oasis and Golf Cart back on hold.

Pictures tomorrow after cleaning up - the place is a disaster between the dust and debris from removing the sofa, I would be embarrassed to show....

I am off, Monday through Thursday this week so plenty of time for a major clean and dismantling of the queen bed in preparation for the new bed and frame. And the new recliner for the living room. Also going to get a bunch of crap around here for sale on the local Boo Koo site - selling my generator, sat dish, I have one of the Kegerators listed and the 5th wheel hitch for the trailer. Will try and get the wiring done for the lights on the golf cart and with luck sell enough to get a couple batteries for the Golf Cart.

Hope you all got a laugh at imagining my ass folded up in the sofa...funny now, but was a bit scary at first

Later


Capt. Jim - "The Wanderer"

Traveling and photographing the Southwest