First snow - Day 567 (Yr 2, Day 186)

Asheville, NC

Ok, I guess based on NJ standards, you really can't call it a real snow, but it has been flurrying all day.  To me, if it's little and white and falls from the sky, it's still that four letter word!!!  Grateful it's not sticking, although the temps are in the high 20s today (forecast for 60 degrees on Saturday).  I really want to leave here!!

Mitch, meanwhile, is having his nice long "vacation" extended.  He was off for New Year's (New Years Eve day, New Years day and the weekend).  Unfortunately, there is NO WORK at the moment so he was off today and most likely for the next few days.  There's no new work in the rest of the country either, so there's more of a chance for work if we stay here.  Boss promises no more than a few more days.  We shall see.

A bit more of a background:  the company he works for contracts with many regional utility companies nationwide and sends contractors out to do surveys - checking for gas or water leaks and the condition of the equipment.  Residential areas need to be done annually, and businesses every 3 years (I may have that reversed).  Either way, it needs to be completed by the end of each year or the company gets fined, thus the rush and mandatory overtime.  When January rolls around, either contracts need to be renegotiated or renewed, or they just need to re-establish the maps and then assign them.  So although there's no work today, hopefully everything will be rolled out again by next week.

Disappointing New Years Eve - Day 565 (Yr 2, Day 184)

Asheville, NC

So much for the NYE party.  We invited everyone we met at the campground (pretty much everyone who's here - total of 11 people).  All said they would come.  We brought lots of wine and beer and snacks (including veggies so I could indulge).  7:30, 8:00 came and went.  9:30, still no one showed up.  So it turned out to be our usual celebration of just watching recorded movies (no Scrabble this year).  We did, however, manage to make it until midnight, so we turned on the tv to watch the ball drop, and then went to bed.  At least the rig got a deep cleaning again!

New Year's day (Friday) was a somewhat stressful day.  There were a few things needing fixing, with the most urgent one being the pipe connecting the shower to the gray tank having broken off.  Mitch had to make a trip to Lowes to buy parts (note: still not fixed - he has to work on it more tomorrow-Sunday).  The plastic part of the door that slides to open has also been getting stuck, and Mitch had to remove it and sand it down so it would open more smoothly.  One of my clients also called with an urgent, time critical project of proofreading and editing a 50 page document.  I figured no big deal- just a couple of hours.  No - didn't turn out that way.  This client (despite my having created a video tutorial for him last year) refuses to learn how to use a word processor and types as if he's using a typewriter, which means every place he indents a paragraph (in this case, LOTS), there is a "carriage return" at the end of the line, and lots of spaces at the beginning.  Of course, any changes I need to make throws all the spacing off, which means I had a ton of formatting to do.  What I anticipated being 2-3 hours turned out to be about 8.  This on top of having to prepare for Shabbat, which still starts early (I made it within about 15 minutes).  Thankfully Mitch helped with some (ok, most) of the cooking.

Today, fortunately, was very restful except for waking up freezing.  The heat pump always turns over to the furnace when it gets below 40 degrees.  We heard it turn on during the night, but this morning it was off.  We figured we must have run out of propane, so Mitch switched to the alternate tank.  Still no furnace, so we ate breakfast while seeing our breaths.  Fortunately, by the time we returned from shul, it was a little warmer so the heat pump was on again.  After Shabbat, we manually turned the furnace on, and it seemed to be working fine.  So no clue what that was all about.  Hopefully it was just a fluke, as the winter weather has finally decided to stay (can't believe it was over 70 degrees just this time last week!) and it's getting down into the 20s overnight.

Not many plans tomorrow except for finishing fixing the shower; maybe getting a haircut.  Such an exciting life (not)!

Camaraderie - Day 562 (Yr 2, Day 181)

Asheville, NC

It always amazes me how catastrophes or any kind of event brings folks together.  Besides how everyone pitched in to help each other out during the river flood on Monday (I never did mention how Mitch lent his truck to help another fifth wheel get out of their spot as they didn't have a tow vehicle -- someone else had to drive it though!), it forms new friendships.

We had a very enjoyable evening around the campfire with 6 new folks who we met during the flood.  Interesting that these people have been here for quite a while and we've never had the chance to meet them before.

I look forward to inviting them to a New Year's eve party tomorrow night!  Hopefully I'll remember to take a few photos for posterity.

Exciting night - Day 561 (Yr 2, Day 180)

Asheville, NC

It all started at almost 1:00 am, when we received a call from Mitch's sister Jane.  The only time anyone in the family ever calls at odd hours is when (G-d forbid!) there is an emergency.  So seeing her name pop up on caller ID gave us both a big scare.  Turns out she is in CA visiting her kids and accidentally pocket (or butt) dialed us.  Big, big relief.

We fell back to sleep and were awakened again around 3:00 am by loud voices and a truck engine.  We looked out the window to see one of the RVs trying to find a spot to park in.  Upon further investigation, we realized that the river had overflowed its banks (if you refer to my previous post, we heard about the flood watches on Friday and decided to move to the other side of the campground then - a decision we're very happy we made.  Even though it remained safe through the weekend, there was even more heavy rain, with more on the way over the next few days).

We went outside to discover that everybody else on the river side had evacuated, either to this side or left the campground.  I'm sure there must have been a lot of commotion, and I have no clue how both of us managed to sleep through it.   In front of our site, the water was a little past the halfway point between the river side and our side (about 10 more feet to go to reach us), but it was up against the pads a few sites down.  The weather reports were warning that the river would continue to rise until about 5:15 am before it would start to recede.  So we had a dilemma: stay put or evacuate?  The owner, as well as 2 permanent residents here (who have a lot of experience with this) said that although it was a gamble, chances were very slim that we would get flooded on our side.  They felt the worst that would happen is the water would reach the front of our site, but even if it did go beyond that (to the very back), it was only standing water, not a raging river, and we were high enough off the ground and the water level would never rise that high.  So we took the chance and decided to stay.

By 8:30 this morning the water had receded back to a few inches below the bank, and now (at noon) it is a few feet below.  The campground staff is busy cleaning up all the debris that the water brought along with it.

Still a lot to be grateful for besides having the foresight to move earlier rather than once the water rose and in the dark and when everyone else was moving, but also this week has brought many, many tornadoes in the southern states (hardest hit: TX and MS) with as many as 25 deaths from those very severe storms.  The rain we've had is part of that storm system, but we only had to deal with the flooding.

Update to previous post - Day 557 (Yr 2, Day 176)

Asheville, NC

Did I mention in my last post about the sun and blue sky peeking thru and the end to the rain?  Well, that lasted all of 5 minutes.  Not only did the rain resume, but now, the warnings we were waiting and watching for came -- that the additional rain was going to affect the part of the river where we are.  In fact, someone from a neighboring campground came by to make sure everyone here was aware of the threat and took appropriate precautions.

So, in the middle of doing my Shabbat cooking, we had to hustle to get everything disconnected and put away, to move 20 feet across the way.

As always, fellow RVers are very friendly and helpful folks, and many have way more experience in doing this stuff than we do.  The folks who live across the way from where we were (Matt & Laurie) - Matt drives a truck for a living and helped us hitch and back into the spot in about 10 minutes (of course, this was after Mitch tried to hitch himself for about 1/2 hr and I finally convinced him to give up; now was not the time to be stubborn and get practice).  Good thing, as the rain resumed just as we finished parking.

Now I have a nice view of the river from my dining room / office table instead of the back window.  But that's ok.  We are NOT moving again until it's time to leave!

Back home - Day 557 (Yr 2, Day 176)

Asheville, NC

I confess I've been a little lazy in getting to write this post.

Tuesday was another busy work day, although not as bad as Monday.  I was able to take a little break at noon and decided to go swimming and in the hot tub again.  One of my clients wants me to give a training session to his reps, so I had to be prepared by 5:00.  Tuesday evening, we met with 2 of Mitch's colleagues (Mike and Kandi), who are also RV full-timers working with Southern Cross and also located in Asheville (a different campground) who were asked to go to Durham for the week as well.  Very lovely couple!  I hope we get to spend more time with them.

On Wednesday, I arranged for a late check-out (1:00 instead of noon) because I had another training session to do.  After that, I moved the party down to the lobby/cafe area until Mitch returned at 2:00.  It was pouring rain and despite his expensive rain suit, he was soaked to the skin and had to change before we could hit the road back to Asheville.  We left the hotel at 2:30 and finally arrived home around 9:00 pm.  The traffic wasn't too bad, but there were some severe storms coming in from the midwest, so we had quite a few bands of torrential downpours to drive through.  I did the first 3.5 hours of driving because I can't drive at night (night vision-where all I see is a blur of lights and I can't judge where those lights are).  Mitch did the last hour.  With all the flood warnings we were hearing about, we called the campground first to determine if we were under an evacuation warning again.  We were told that so far there had only been regular rain (the worst of the storms were expected to hit on Thursday), so everything was ok.  So now knowing we didn't have to rush back to prep to move, we allowed ourselves to stop off the highway for a real dinner out (we went to Chili's).

It's always a great relief to return home after being away for a few days (or longer) and discover that everything is exactly the way we left it (it was the same in our sticks & bricks house as well).  We brought everything inside and just left it there, to unpack the next day (another first for me!  I can never stand clutter and need to have everything in order at all times, but I guess I was just too tired to deal with it right then).  We watched some "tv," had some wine and then went to bed.

The rain started around 5:30 am and lasted pretty much until about 5pm; with several bands of very intense rain and thunderstorms.  Once again, we watched the river level come within inches of the top of the bank, and were on alert to close up and move to the other side.  We thought we were in the clear, but heard about more rain & flash flooding conditions for Friday morning.  There was some rain but not as intense, and it ended around 10am (when the sun and some blue sky peeked through for a few minutes).  Again, we thanked G-d for keeping us safe and for not having to move.

I should also mention that the country right now is seeing extremely unusual weather patterns.  Whereas it's supposed to be in the 30s-40s this time of year, we are having a 72 degree Christmas day.  I understand it hit 74 in NYC yesterday, and it's pretty much in the 60s and 70s all along the east coast.  Not that I'm complaining at all!!!  If only it were this warm and sunny though.

So yesterday (Thursday) and today (Friday) were like vacation days for me as my clients are all taking the time off.  I spent the morning doing household stuff and then convinced Mitch to join me and spend the rest of the day just vegging and watching movies.  Today, in between just playing around on the internet, I'm also doing some household stuff and preparing for Shabbat.  At the moment, Mitch is visiting one of our campground neighbors who is having some computer problems, so he's doing some tech support.  It would be awesome if he could make that his full time work, but I don't think there's enough need to pay the bills (it's good pocket change though, if he even charges.  Sometimes it's nice to just make friends and if they offer something, that's sweet).

Another enjoyable evening - Day 553 (Yr 2, Day 172)

Durham, NC

It was a pretty heavy work day, as expected, and I was working from about 7am until 5.  I did force myself to take a break for about a half hour and went to the fitness center and walked on the treadmill until my hip gave out (about 15 mins).  They also have very lovely grounds here, but the weather wasn't really nice enough to walk them.

Mitch arrived back to the room at around 6 (was on the road also at 7), and took about 1/2 hr to decompress.

We went out for a nice meal at Red Robin where I had a Boca burger wrapped in lettuce and a side of broccoli (I don't know if I mentioned that I've been back on Weight Watchers for the past 3 weeks now.  I don't own a scale so I don't know how much I've lost, but I can tell I am definitely having success).  It's really great that I don't need to go to meetings or even invest in an online membership, as everything I need to know (support groups, points calculators, points lists, even restaurant listings) can be found online.

Mitch also learned that an emergency situation has arisen in Asheville, so we will NOT be returning here next week.  That makes me very happy, and I guess it all worked out well that we didn't bring the rig with us after all.

We wore our bathing suits under our clothes because we wanted to go for a swim but knew that if we ended up back in the room, we'd be too lazy and tired to change.  It was a great idea because I really missed being in a pool and hot tub.  It was really delightful.