Neighbors: the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good...
One of the joys of full-timing is meeting myriad people who also have a home on wheels.  Since my knee injury, several couples have asked if they could help out by taking us to the grocery store or doctor's appointments.  This included a very nice couple whom we have never met that stopped by yesterday.  They occupy a site across the road from us and saw me on crutches. They offered rides to where-ever we need to go to keep us from having to drive the Volvo.  Like virtually (a word that I rarely use because it has a built-in escape clause) everyone we've met on the road, they were thoughtful and helpful. 

The bad...
Of course not everyone is perfect on the road (see "virtually" above).  We have had a neighbor for the past two or three days that keeps a radio on all day and evening outside of his RV.  It's not blaring, but just loud enough to be heard during lapses in conversation or during lulls in the din of the TV. The odd thing is that he's never outside.  I guess it's one of the drawbacks to living fairly close to one another.  But he may be leaving today as Val just told me that "Mr. Radio" appears to be packing up.

And the ugly...
Sorry.  Here's my chance to give a link to those awful "people who shop at Walmart" slideshows, but I won't.  We're all beautiful people out here.. 

Pics and pain.

This was a pic from an early morning walk by the lake in Clermont.   We also walked the nature trail which was enshrouded in fog which made it seem like a fantasy scene from a movie.
Later we saw two Sandhill Cranes with their colt, and we were able to get a few pics.. 

I've been playing pickleball at 3:00 with three excellent players, and the competition has been intense.  Unfortunately, I went up for a shot yesterday and came down awkwardly on my left leg and felt something pop in my knee.  Val ended up driving me to the closest hospital where they said that nothing was broken in my knee but they referred me to an orthopedic guy for a likely MRI.  I see him Tuesday, and until then they gave me a knee immobilizer and crutches.   Man, just when I was getting good.  The good news is that it made Val drive the truck which she has resisted slightly.  She did great. (I knew she would.)
I'll keep you posted on the knee.

Oh yeah, the helicopter.

I forgot one part of our foray to Old Town.  We were walking back toward the reverse bungee jump when I spotted a man outside of a toy store flying one of those neat remote controlled helicopters.  It had lights flashing and he was having a great time flying it.  It occurred to me that I could have fun flying one of those. Hmm, I wonder how much they cost.  Then, just as I was pondering that very question and imagining the fun things I could do with a remote controlled helicopter, it quickly dipped toward the sidewalk and then swooped back up. Now imagine, if you will, one large rotor blade and one small one rotating ultra fast and hitting long hair.  In this case, the long hair of a nice teenage girl.  What a mess. My first thought was that I really didn't need a remote controlled helicopter.
It took a good twenty minutes for this guy to pull and tear her hair out of the blades.  Luckily for him the girl was nice about it and seemed more embarrassed than anything.
I think I'll be satisfied with an RV and a motorcycle as my toys. 

Moving on,

This was the scene just before we left on Thursday for Thousand Trails in Clermont.  It was a beautiful morning with an almost full moon. 
It's nice to be settled in for three weeks before we head north to VA to visit friends and family.  Everyone's happy that the weather has finally warmed into the 80's where it should be.  Of course this has pushed the 3:00 pickleball games back to around 5:00 which meant two days ago that folks brought grills and their favorite food (we slow-cooked a huge pot of baked beans which everyone loved), and we played and ate for a good three hours.  Oh yeah.  And drank a little too as there was plenty of beer to go around.
Then last night we went out with 3 couples to have some pizza and take a walk through Old Town.  It was darn crowded since it's spring break, but we enjoyed the parade of antique cars. It was hard to get a good picture with Val's compact camera but we managed to get a couple of fairly clear ones

and a lot of this ghost-like style.

 And there was no lack of odd characters like this guy with his pet skunk.  That's our friend Bob probably saying something nice to the guy.  Like "who the @#!$ brings a skunk to Old Town...."

There was also a reverse bungee jump (You Tube Link) that catapulted two people at a time to what looked like over 150 feet in the air and then dropped them back down as the chair spun around so that sometimes they faced up and other times they faced right toward the ground.  They would bounce up and down about 5 times before finally coming back to earth. At $25.00 a pop (and I'm sure several things on our bodies would have popped), we skipped that one. 

We got back to our RV at almost 11:00 pm which is a tad late for us, but we had a great time.

So, an RV guy comes over and asks me to help with his organ....

So, an RV guy comes over and asks me to help with his organ....
Sounds like a perfect beginning to a dirty RV joke, doesn't it.
Nope.  Happened to me on our last day in Moore Haven.  Right after we got to the campground, another Teton, just like ours but 4 years newer, pulled in and set up a few sites away.  Val and I went over and spent some time talking to a nice gentleman who has been full-timing for 34 years.  That's a record for people we've met.  Many of those years he was working, but he still lived and traveled in his RV.
Anyway, he showed us his rig and we noticed that he had a nice electronic organ (I can just hear Jeff and Mark laughing right now...) with three rows of keys and lots of foot pedals.  So today there's a knock on our door and he asks me if I'll come over and help him with his organ.  He wants to move it into his truck so that he can try to find someone to repair it.  The main power rocker-switch is broken.  He had the switch with him, so I was studying it as we went back to his RV.  Being the McGyver type as Val likes to say (Wikipedia it if you're confused), I told him that with a little luck I might be able to get his organ up and working again (sorry, couldn't resist).  I was able to get the switch apart and realized that the rocker itself was not seating correctly which had allowed the metal contacts to slip.  I suggested a fix which included disassembling the switch, drilling into the rocker and then filing and shaping a small nail to hold it in place.  About two hours later, we had the switch back together, tested with a multimeter and installed back in the organ. And lo and behold, it fired right up and he started playing with his organ again.  Sorry, I mean playing his organ again.  And he's a good player.  Turns out that he used to work on generators and power stations and was hit with 21 thousand volts a few years back.  It burned him badly and left him with no feeling in his arms and hands.  Despite his doctor telling him that he would never get real use back in his hands, he found a therapist who said that trying to play the organ again would be good for him.  And he credits his work trying to regain his playing abilities with proving that his first doctor was wrong.  Pretty cool.
Now Val has suggested that I hang a sign on the RV saying something like "Something wrong with your organ?  Stop here.  We can help!".
Nope, she didn't really say that.
Enough of that.  Here are a few more Everglades pics.

Here is the bark of the Jumbo Limbo tree.  We'd never seen anything like it.  It looked more like rock.

  Osprey

Anhinga sunning itself.  I also have a picture of an Anhinga sunning itself while standing on a turtle, but it's slightly fuzzy unfortunately.

A White Ibis juvenile and a Tri-colored Heron.                               

                           Green Heron

And of course...