Settling in at the Condo, Car Fix(es)

Two years ago we come home and very quickly a sinkhole develops very close to our condos.  This picture, shared back then, shows the red arrow where the sinkhole was, and the green arrow which points to the condos.  Of course, all the road work and sewer work has been finished for a good 18 months now.

Our condo is way at the other end of the condos where this green arrow is at.  Well, when we got home and did our initial unpacking, I took the RV over to the RV/Mobile Home park for two nights before I put it into storage.  I made the comment, “So, any sinkholes open up while we were gone?”  Surprised when he said yes, just that week a very small, possible sinkhole opened up.  Well, our first Monday home and I hear the helicopter overhead again, and yes, the news had broke about the small sinkhole close to the where the large one swallowed up a car two years ago!  So far, nothing else has happened with this one, and it seems to be a non-issue.  Bad news though…assessment on our Condo went down by $10,000…good news, Property Taxes went down by nearly $200.  With no plans to sell it, not much of an issue UNLESS a sinkhole opens up on Condo property.

When it comes to unloading the motorhome, I sometimes wish we just had a toy motorhome and our journeys are in our mind.  It is a lot of work, for both of us.  I bring things in, Marcia unpacks most of the bags and boxes.  We (she) runs everything from the kitchen that she can through the dishwasher, and if it is to go back into the motorhome, then to the spare room it goes until loaded before we leave.  All bedding, towels, etc. get washed.  There is always a lot of laundry to do too.  And then there is the huge shopping trip to restock the shelves and the fridge and freezer.  And the number one thing to get done fast when it goes into storage is  that I take the motorhome fridge apart and clean it very well, and prop the doors open so that mold won’t pop up.  All the fridge shelves are brought to the condo and washed in the dishwasher, and stored in the spare room.

This is a section of the HHR exhaust which includes not one, but two Catalytic Converters.  There are also two o2 Sensors hooked into the pipe.

This area here (left) is where it connects to the exhaust manifold.  There is a flexible area which allows the pipe to move with the vibration of the road.  It is this area which broke, and our HHR sounded much more like a motor speedboat, or a kids street race car. We have a good repair shop near us, and I took it there last Tuesday just for them to look at, and they ordered the parts, including both o2 sensors, and did the work this past Friday.  There goes another $700.

Joe’s Auto Repair and Curtis Transmission are all one business.  Joe retired a little over a month ago, and now Jim is the owner…but he has kept all of the staff, has made some improvements in the office, including a new computer system and the hiring of another girl, Nichole, to work alongside her older sister Misty.  Misty is something else…she is very knowledgeable about cars, is very friendly, has a good rapport with the service staff, with the new owner, with the customers, and with the various parts house staff that she is constantly calling to line up parts.  She stands at around 5' 2", and can sure handle herself...told me today that she had a Black Belt when she was like 14 years old.  I can not say enough about how good this place is.  And it is nice to be able to start up the car without thinking that we have awaken all of our neighbors...however I have already ran over three older ladies who couldn't hear me coming as I drive through the condo complex!

When I was at Joe’s Auto Repair and Curtis Transmission on Friday Jim, the new owner, mentioned that at 130K, I should have the Transmission Fluids changed, unless I has already done that recently.  We bought the HHR back in 2011 from a Pine Bluff Arkansas Chevy dealer as a used car…it had been a rental car.  The salesman told me that they had changed all fluids, filters, hoses and belts…and I can hear you all saying, “Ya, but salesmen lie nearly as much as politicians lie.”  Well, in this case the salesman was named Gary, and was my youngest son’s baseball coach, and I knew that Gary was an honest person.  He told me that he had seen the work order and was confident it was done.  Above is a 2009 HHR transmission outside of the engine.  Along the bottom you can see the flat area…that is what they take off to get to the transmission filter.  The tech who worked on it today told me that the fluid looked real good…had color, had no sludge, and no shavings.  THAT folks is GREAT news.  It means that the Chevy place in Pine Bluff really did change the fluid and filter as promised, and also that our transmission “should” be in fine shape…good to go for another 50-75K miles.  All I have left now is to replace a tire (front right, the front left blew out last year…will put these on the back and move the back to the front and replace them next year.)  It seems that there is always something…

Next…update on Bubba and Skruffy.

Sniff Sniff, Cough Cough, general update

   

We have all been there before … head is stuffed up and your mind is foggy, your ears feel like they are going burst, throat is sore, the cough, the sneeze, the sweating, the hot feeling, the cold feeling.   Started hitting me Tuesday and by Tuesday night I was down and out.  The waves of feeling good followed by feeling bad, followed by feeling good … you wonder if you are ocean beach with so many high and low tides.  Friday night is the first night without medicine, and things are calming down, but then a large wave hits and, well, we have all been there before.

Remember the sinkhole swallowing the car about 8 weeks ago? (800 feet from our front door, by-the-way).  Well, she was able to move back into her house this past week…..AND….

...Hyundai of New Port Richey replaced her car for her as a "gift" for all the "national publicity" that Hyundai got when her old Hyundai was pulled out of the hole.   Well, that’s not what they said, but I am sure that Hyundai Inc. chipped in on this too.  She sure was a happy, happy lady…out of the motel room and back home with a new car to boot.  Where did she park it?  In the exact place her old one was parked.  Oh, and he County is going to start work on the sewer project again starting Monday …. they promise not to pump as much water out this time .... and they still don't agree that the work and massive pumping of water had anything to do with the sinkholes.

Before I got sick I did have a chance to use the new camera a little bit.  Here is a picture of the Anclote River in Tarpon Springs, no photoshop enhancements at all.  Below is a close up of the boat and birds in the center of the picture with minor photoshop to adjust the brightness, and no tripod used either.

Yep, going to like this new camera a lot.  You might also notice the new header picture which is similar to this view, but it is a panoramic view of the area using the panoramic feature.  I really like this camera!

Here is a shot of the motorhome with the solar panel sitting inside the windshield.  It is enough to keep the batteries charged, as long as I don’t have lights on all night like I did a week ago.  Had picked up Bubba and took him there to give him his topical flea, tick & heart-worm medicine and then let it dry before I took him back.  I accidentally left the bathroom lights on …. the only lights that are not LED or florescent …. and there are four or five bulbs.  Well, I caught it early, but the battery did fall below 50% for around 24 hours.  Ran the generator for a few hours and got it back up to near 100%, checked it twice since then and all is fine.

Last Sunday night I took Skruffy to an area she like to frequent not too far from where we live and we saw this terrible situation going on.  Found out there was a wreck with a fatality on the nightly news, which turned into an even more tragic news on Monday morning.  First, there was a DUI wreck, the intoxicated driver was driving the wrong way along Highway 19 causing a three car wreck, the emergency vehicles responded.  As they were cleaning it up, a motorcyclist got into a wreck going the other way on the other side of the highway.  The wife of the tow truck driver, who was riding with him, got out to help the motorcyclist and walked right into the path of a SUV as she was crossing highway 19, and she was the fatality.  We did not hang around very long, and I “think” this picture was taken after the lady was hit crossing highway 19.

   

Friday night we had some good clouds for sunsets…I just wasn’t up to going out to where the view would be better …. just glad I was feeling good enough at that moment to go out and get what I got.

Turkey Day Gone To The Cows, Football Gone To The ….

While most people are feeling stuffed from turkey….

Some of us are stuffed from beef.  

There it is….Loin Roast (cooked perfect just like we like it, medium rare, even the end piece was medium rare that you see on my plate), Greek Potatoes, Asparagus, Beats and Sweets (Sweet Potato, Beats, Onions and Parsnips), Cranberry Conserve and a Marshmallow Salad that my family named after me, David’s Salad.

Marcia’s dish on the left, my dish on the right…..now you know WHY they named it after me.  Not after Patti, my sister, after ME!  (With me not living in Sacramento Area anymore, Patti has tried, unsuccessfully, to hijack the name of MY SALAD.)

The BEARS lost….didn’t make Marcia very happy.

The NINERS lost….didn’t make me very happy.

And remember that Garbage Disposal I put in…well, I missed one little step.  Forgot to knock out the Dishwasher Plug to allow for the dishwasher to drain.  At leas I was able to knock it out and pull out the plug that got knocked out without taking it apart.  Dishwasher did not drain, dishwasher had a small leak which we are hoping won’t show up again….if it does I’ll just have to hunt it down and fix it.  At least the disposal and the pipes under the sink are drip free.       

I almost forgot…..a fourth sinkhole has opened up, right in the area they thought one was going to open up at, near the first sinkhole.  So far this has been much smaller than the first, about the size of the second one, and they expect a few more to open, unless they open them first to fill them in.

Yep, Another B-Day, Sinkhole Cover-up

Another step closer to Social Security and Medicare….YIKES!

  

As for the sinkholes …. the two sinkholes in the trailer park were filled in, or covered up depending upon how you look on it, on Friday and Saturday.  That’s good news as long as they don't collapse again.  The largest sinkhole was 17 feet deep … only eight feet deep when it first opened.  And the bad news, “There's more sinkholes here ….. there are three potential problematic sub-surface areas in the vicinity of the sinkhole.”  That according to the engineers working on the project.  YIKES!!!!!!  The other sinkhole, the one in the front yard of a house just east of us, has not been touched yet, and has not grown in size.  Still no word on when work will start again on the sewer upgrade along our main entry road.

Made it back to the condo Saturday around 2:30, got the motorhome unloaded and tucked neatly back in its parking place at the storage area, and I made it back to the condo by 4:00.  We attempted to grab a bite to eat at a Chili’s in Port Richey, but that did not work out so we came home ….. stopping at the local Publix Grocery Store and picking up some Ribs (already cooked), some Taters and Veggies and I cooked us up a nice quick meal.  No need it going into what was wrong, we just won’t go to that Chili’s again for a long time.

After church we ate at “The Lucky Dill”, one of our two Sunday morning favorite restaurants.  We always have a nice meal, the staff is very friendly, and we don’t have to wait for a table….at least not this time of the year.  As more and more snowbirds come down south, and as more and more of them find Lucky Dill, business will build to where in January we will have a short wait. Now though, it is very comfortable.

   

We find the interior atmosphere is real comfortable, except when they are real busy in which case it can be loud if you are in the main eating area….quieter if you are in one of the back rooms. They also have outside seating…..and I almost forgot….a bakery which will put pounds on your hips just walking by it.  I did walk by it today, but decided not to partake…now I need to walk off them pounds for just looking at them.  YUM YUM YUM

Third Sinkhole Nearby, Heavy Rain, Quick Trip on Tap

Over the weekend a third sinkhole opened up around 1,000 feet to our east.  This red car was park where these people always seem to have a car parked, they heard a “whoosh” and went outside to find their car in a hole.  The called a tow truck which quickly got it out.  

By the evening, the hole grew a bit, and stick was lowered into it, broke through the upper crust and went down six feet.  No water, a dry hole which may or may not collapse all the way through before being fixed.  This is about 1,100 feet from where they were pumping water, and is between the pumping site and a large pond which sometimes has water in it, and sometimes does not.   Are they all connected?   I think so, the county still insists that the pumping is unrelated to all this.  Ya, right.

On Monday we got hit by the huge storm which swept across much of the nation the past few days.  Around 2 pm the heavens opened, the water fell for 30-45 minutes as hard as I have ever seen (which means I have seen this before, even driven through it more than once in a car.)  Then it let up and just rained for another few hours, then off and on through the night.  Awoke to a very large KaBOOM this morning and then it was over.

 

Now it is cold, and will be for another day or two.   I say that while wearing short pants, sleeveless shirt, and no socks on.  This is one of those days when I see people in jackets, sweaters, even winter coats while I run around in shorts.  Sometimes I stop and ask myself, “Is t cold?”  The majority of the time the answer is “NO”.  Mom says, and frankly I remember, that after church on Sunday during the winter time in Sacramento they would come out to the car finding us kids waiting for them and she would be lucky if I still had a shirt on.  (Hated button up shirts then, and now.)

We are headed over to the east coast for a couple of days to spend some time with Marcia’s brother Dean and wife Carol.  We always enjoy our visits there, hook the motorhome up to their 20 amp outlet and that gives us all we need since we are typically in the motorhome only for sleeping while there.  We were going to head out on Wednesday after church and stop at our favorite rest area, but with temps expected in the low 40’s at night we figured leaving Thursday and fighting the morning traffic was going to have to do.

Tow Car Anyone??? Bet it’s a Real Bargain!

Yep, they got the car out of the sinkhole!  

Car pulled from Sinkhole, wtsp.com News 10

So if anyone wants a car which has been towed before, here you go…..doubt it will run, and it has only been towed “into the air”, but I’ll bet it is real, real cheep.  

And yes, another sinkhole opened up today….but this one is three miles away, is only 5 feet wide, and maybe two feet in depth.  It is right along the gulf, and most feel that this one is a true “depression”, and not a true sinkhole.  In some places they would say, “Just a big pot hole”

Even the nightly news picked up on the fact that since the construction stopped on the sewer system which runs between the condos we live in and the trailer park, no more sinkholes have developed.  Now the question is, “how are they going to finish this sewer system upgrade without causing more sinkholes?”

Sinkhole Update

Car is gone….not removed, just gone.  Actually, you can barely see a small corner of it just to the left of that line in the concrete.  Also look at the tree which once stood tall, it may be swallowed up too.  (This is a follow-up on our last blog about a sinkhole which opened up within 800 feet of our Condo front door.)

  

Above left was the car Monday early afternoon.  Above right was the car Monday late afternoon.  Now, so little shows that essentially it is totally submerged.  “Why did they not hook up a tow truck while they had a chance?” you might ask.  Well, I have an answer to that….

Because now there are TWO sinkholes!  In fact, they were just hours away yesterday (Tuesday) from having a tow truck come in and try and pull the car out….and they said that the two truck was going to be located, yep, you guessed it, right on top of where the second sink hole broke through!  

But wait….this act is not over just yet.  They have determined that there is a third sinkhole, still totally underground, but on the verge of falling in also!  The second one was to the north of the first one, the third one is to the south of the first one.   So, what do you think caused this rash outbreak of sinkholes???

Yep, the construction along the street which has taken who knows how many thousands and thousands of gallons of water out of the ground.  Here is the official word…..

The geologist, Sandy Nettles of N.S. Nettles & Associates, said Tuesday his early test results show the hole appears to be stable and shouldn't grow substantially beyond its current size of 10 to 15 feet across and about 15 feet deep.  (wtsp.com)

While geologists examine the holes, the county has halted nearby construction work on a sewer lift station, which included pumping out groundwater. (tampabay.com/news)

Neighbors and the property manager of the Holiday Travel Park near Torch and Button Streets blame a sewage utility project next door. "To have this happen - it was a matter of time - you can't take water out you can't expect this not to happen."

But, why did it take so long to discontinue the work?
"What prompted us to suspend work was the further occurrence of another sinkhole," said Kennedy. During construction, water was being pumped from underground, which he says is pretty typical. He added, a deep foundation analysis isn't typical and wasn't done.  (wtsp.com)

Nettles said records show the land used to be part of wetlands. Those wetlands, he said, were likely created by sinkholes and later covered by development.  “They can be stable for hundreds of years, and sometimes once they start moving, you get more action," Nettles said.  It is still unclear what exactly triggered the holes. Nettles said he will review data from recent rainstorms and look for other possible causes. Because the county's work altered the water table in the area, Nettles said, it could have been a catalyst.

That theory is the favored one of property manager Larry Pickering. "It just seems like if you draw a lot of water out of one spot, one area, something's going to happen," he said.

The county initially said there was no indication that the work was tied to the holes, but Pasco spokesman Doug Tobin announced late Tuesday that work in the area has stopped until geologists determine the cause of the depressions.
"It's not our intention to create problems like this. I don't know that we've created the problem — that's for the experts to sort out," said Bruce Kennedy, the assistant county administrator for utilities.  On Wednesday, Kennedy said builders "need to get back on schedule" with the multimillion-dollar sanitation project because there are "cost consequences" that come with delays.  Kennedy said the construction crews working on the sewer system likely did some shallow ground tests before they began, but sinkholes are a fact of life in a state built on limestone that is susceptible to cracking.  "It's unfortunate that we live in a sinkhole-prone world here in Florida," he said.  (tampabay.com/news)

 

I do give a big “thumbs up” to the property owner of the mobile home park.  Six trailer owners have been ordered to evacuate from the their trailers.  The mobile home park is putting them up in a nearby Marriott Fairfield Inn.  Not sure that he “had to” do this, but it was the right thing to do.  As for the hotel, he could have put them in much junkier places than a Marriott Fairfield Inn.  They are two miles away from home, and Fairfield Inns are fairly comfortable, and include a light breakfast each morning.  

So far only the one trailer home has been condemned.  It is uncertain as to the status of insurance of those who are possibly affected…. although one report stated that at least two don’t have any insurance at all.  One guy was quoted as saying, “Most of us in here are dirt poor….living month to month on a small income.”   Many are in their ‘70’s and ‘80’s.