Holiday season on the road

I thought we would do a short update to get us caught up before posting our yearly year end analysis which will be pretty long and might remain on our main page for a couple weeks.

Let’s start with Diane’s shoulder issue. First off yes she is still having as much pain and has as little mobility as she was having in our last update and yes she did go to her first and second physical therapy session’s here in Casa Grande and it looks like she will be going once per week.

This says it all and is the first thing you see when you enter the office. TURN AND RUN!!

Even though she knew there would be some pain involved with the therapy I don’t think she thought there would be nearly as much as she ended up going through on her first visit and time will tell just how many she will end up doing.

Even though restricted to using her left arm she has still been out trying to play Pickleball. If you have the bug you have the bug.

She dropped down 2 levels of play and is trying to master playing with her left hand but as you can imagine that’s been a challenge. But she is doing much better than I would I’m sure and at least she is out trying and getting some exercise doing so as well as having a few laughs, even if at her own expense LOL!!

Playin with the guys. GIRL POWER!!

And during our perimeter walk around the park we sometimes stop off to play a little Hillbilly Golf and as bad as I hate to say it Diane beat me one day while she was playing left handed and I was playing right handed. Dang, that stung a little LOL!!!

Working on her left handed toss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diane is also still playing Mah-Jong one day per week and Mexican Train one day per week as well as our walks and bike rides and she is talking about taking a Gourd class soon. She hasn’t had to do any volunteering at the Pickleball Sign Up desk over the holiday season but will resume that right after New Year’s. Not nearly as active as last year but still doing her best to enjoy our time down south.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As far as me, well I’m an old broken record, Up around 5am, do a few exercise’s while waiting for the coffee to finish, planks, sit-ups, crunches ect, then spend an hour or so in front of the computer with my coffee, then breakfast and off to the Pickleball courts for around 3 or 4 hours followed by a trip to the gym and 30 minutes on the Elliptical, then lunch and couple mile walk or bike ride along with whatever else pops up. It’s almost like that movie Ground Hog Day LOL!!

A small group that gathered on Christmas morning for some Pickleball.

Even though we are never around our families during the holiday seasons we are very lucky to have so many friends here at Palm Creek that we don’t spend holidays alone. On Christmas I went to the Pickleball courts in the morning and played a festive Round Robin with about 30 other people and we were invited to our friends Clair & Stan’s where 10 of us enjoyed some great company and had a fantastic Christmas dinner later in the evening.

Unfortunately even though I did think about it once I didn’t take any pictures during dinner, it was just one of those evenings that the right time never seemed to present itself and phones where just not thought about.

I think we need a flag like this.

And we are still going out on average 1 time per week with our friends Drew & Becky for dinner. Normally we head to Buffalo Wild Wings for Two for One night on Tuesday nights but we did try a new hamburger spot once that we heard about but to be honest the burgers were nothing special so no need to go back as far as Diane and I are concerned.

Normally the temps here in Casa Grande are pretty nice during the winter but we sure are in the middle of a cold snap right now with temps dipping down to freezing at night and only reaching the mid 50’s during the day. Luckily the sun comes out each day and I still find myself on the courts in shorts and a tee-shirt but dang, this cold stuff needs to stay farther north.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also about now Diane’s and my approach on the 2 P’s (Proactive and Procrastination) are shining through, I have started taking one drawer or compartment at a time to start going through and throwing away stuff that we have accumulated and don’t need to transfer to our new rig and Diane says “we have plenty of time, it’s not like we live in a huge house” LOL!!! Both of us are right so we just do what we do. And hey, just because we live in a RV does not mean we don’t accumulate “junk” and hang on to stuff we don’t use. Just like in a house, if you have space odds are you will fill it up with something.

And as far as the new 5th wheel goes, well there have been a couple hiccups getting started but we will wait to see if things calm down.

We were told that we would be moved up in the production schedule a couple weeks back because of a couple cancelations but so far as it turns out the only thing that got moved up was our sending money and the actual production of the rig didn’t get the memo it seems. I’m a little leery about the rig being completed on time at his particular moment but will stay optimistic right now, at least until after the holiday season is over and everyone gets back to a normal flow.

This might be a good time to touch base on a little insurance issue you might have if you ever find yourself wanting a larger truck like the Ram 5500 we bought to pull our new 5th wheel.

When buying a truck like a Ford F550 or a Ram 5500 we found that some insurance companies consider them to be commercial vehicles and will only insure them as such which increases what you would normally pay. We also found that some insurance companies will insure a F550 or 5500 as a normal noncommercial vehicle if and only if the policy is combined with a RV policy, and only if the RV is large enough to require a truck of this size to pull it.

It seems that some commercial business insured a large truck for personal use and then use them for business use which obviously the insurance companies cought on to and created the rule of having to have a RV also on the policy in order to be classified as a personal use rig.

Then those trying to beat the system would buy a cheap little camper that even a Toyota could pull and tie it to the larger truck’s policy and could still save money by doing so but of course the insurance companies caught on to that eventually as well and now they make sure the RV tied to the truck policy is a monster worthy of a larger truck.

Now for us this caused a bit of an issue because we have bought our truck but will not take possession of our 5th wheel until April and we want insurance on the truck even though it will just be sitting until then but we certainly didn’t want to pay the commercial prices and didn’t want to start insurance on a 5th wheel that’s not even built yet just to save on the truck insurance. Do you get the dilemma?

It took some time and research but we finally found that State Farm would insure the truck as a personal use vehicle without the policy being tied to a RV. So keep this in mind if you ever find yourself running into this type of situation.

It’s still up in the air if we will keep the insurance with Sate Farm once we get the 5th wheel, we will be doing some comparisons again at that time no doubt but for now it works. I have a suspicion that we will end up insuring everything through Progressive when the time comes who we have used for the last few years for our full-timers RV insurance. We will report on that later.

Well, New Years is just around the corner and we have no real plans for the evening like normal. Not being dancers or big party people we just plan a good meal and watch the east coast ball drop in bed LOL!! Of course I guess we could have attended the New Year’s Eve Party here at the park this year, after all it ends at 9PM LOL!!! We better be off the streets to avoid all of the drunken golf cart drivers headed home. Or on second thought it might be fun to watch the couple hundred or so golf carts play bumper cars while leaving the party.

Anyway we wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!