Now I Want To Drive Off A Cliff

We had a great weekend away, it was fun watching Andrew play football.

And it was heartwarming to see him taking praise from his dad, Brian for a game well played.

Marti’s Friday eye surgery went well, she needed a quick laser touch up on her lens from her cataract surgery last March.  It is a normal thing for about 95% of people our age to have done.  Now she is good to go. 

Funny, my Monday eye checkup from my cataract surgery showed everything is looking good and I should schedule a laser touch up for about next May. 

The touch up is because when the cataract and lens are removed from the eye, there is usually a few cataract cells left behind that are not apparent during the operation.  About six months later, these remaining cells have multiplied and put a slight coating on the new implanted lens.  A one minute or so zapping by a laser clears and permanently removes these cells from the lens.

We made it back to our workamping”home” and tried to see if the on line driver safety course was up and running after the government shutdown.  It was and we both spent an hour of the six hour course last night and then spent five hours today to finish it.

At the end of each of the six sections is a quiz,

and then a final exam.  You need to pass with an 80%.  I got an 80%, Marti got an 84%.  I told her since she is the better defensive driver, she now can do all the driving of the Journey.

She gave me the old “Stink Eye” for that comment.

After suffering through that six hour course, I feel the need to drive off a cliff if I ever have to take it again.  I printed off two copies of my proof of completion certificate.  One to turn in and one to keep for myself in case I have to prove I took it in the future.

So we now are able to drive the government vehicles here at Strom Thurmond COE.  That is a good thing and a bad thing.  I hear there are a couple of rangers looking for us to go out and do some more pin hunting! 

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Workamping Intermission

We picked our workamping position at J. Strom Thurmond COE for three reasons, the first was we were going to work and live next to Mike and Terri, our long time RV friends and the second was we were going to be pretty close (hour and a half) to our daughter Heather’s house.  Thirdly it put us close to Marti’s eye doctor and me to the Veteran’s Administration (VA) hospital.

We finished our first two full weeks of “work” and we are already 14 hours over our required 40 hours (20/week).  It was amazing how fast the time went and how much fun we had (except for the pin hunting failure).

We left in our car and headed to Heather’s house, first stopping in Columbia at the eye surgeon who did Marti’s cataract surgery.  She needed a quick laser touch up on her lens, a very common thing that only takes a minute to do, but requires a couple hours of waiting for the eye to dilate and numb from the drops put in.

The procedure went without a hitch and we arrived at Heather’s  in plenty of time for the boy’s piano lessons.  Both Andrew and Owie are doing extremely well and enjoying the piano.  It is nice to see kids learning an instrument, giving them something that will give them a lifetime of enjoyment.

Since I have follow up check from my cataract surgery at the VA on Monday, we’ve been invited to stay the weekend at Heather’s.  Oh boy, don’t twist our arms! 

This gave us a chance to see Andrew play another football game Saturday.  His team won handily and their undefeated season continues with just one game left to play.  Pretty exciting stuff, who needs the NFL.  ;c)

After my appointment on Monday, we’ll head back to Thurmond COE.  Hopefully we can access the required online government defensive driving course, it’s been down due to the furlough and until we take and pass it, we can’t drive any government owned vehicles.  We’d be a danger to everyone on the road!  :cD

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Gatehouse Cleanouts

At every campground at J.Strom Thurmond Lake is a gatehouse where campers check in and pay for their sites. 

Because there is low demand for campsites this late in the season, most of the campgrounds are closed, leaving just one open all year.

Most of the closed campgrounds are in outlying areas, quite a way from towns.  To prevent vandalism and theft of the electronic equipment in each gatehouse, it must be inventoried and removed to safe storage.

We drove way out to a couple of campgrounds with a COE ranger to inventory the equipment.  The ranger called out the numbers to Marti to check off on an inventory sheet.

After all the equipment was accounted for, we wrapped up all the cords,

packed up the small equipment,

and loaded it in the truck.

Now the gatehouse is almost ready to be closed for the winter.

One final item had to be removed, the pass return box.

Even these have been known to disappear over the winter.  :cO

Once we removed all the equipment, we drove over to the Strom Thurmond Dam.

Inside the dam, the COE has a climate controlled storage room where we unloaded all the equipment.  It was amazing to be inside the dam, it is huge.  Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures, so here is one I found on the Internet of the turbine room with one turbine being overhauled.  All the turbines were in working condition today.

We ended our work day and work week with actually accomplishing something.  Next week, it might be back to pin hunting, so we’ll have to be happy with today’s results.  ;c)

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