The Next Phase Just Became Real

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I watched the Tractor Unload video.
For some reason the words “Florida Man“ kept flashing in my mind.

I’ve performed that same maneuver many times with my dad’s tractor.
Looking better every day.

Kevin
 
It all started when a Florida Man drove his backhoe off a trailer.

After driving off the trailer a Florida Man continued backing up, perhaps a little too far, bumping into a Dodge Ram pickup that was parked a little too close. The bump caused the pickup to roll backwards, across the street and through the chicken wire fence and knocking down Mrs. Blankenship's chicken coop.

The chickens, with their new found freedom soon got loose on the road. Mr. Peterson was just coming home when he happened upon the chickens in the road, startling the chickens which scattered in every direction, including one that landed in Mr. Peterson's lap when it flew through the open window. This so startled Mr. Peterson that his 1975 Oldsmobile 98 left the road and struck a pine tree that got pushed over in the soft ground, pulling power lines with it.

The pulled power lines snapped poles for nearly a 1000 feet shutting down the electricity to nearly a third of Pasco County. One of the poles came to rest close enough to the Norfolk Southern railway line that when the train came along the pole scraped along the side of all three engines tearing out fuel lines and snagged electrical wires, bringing the entire train to a halt. The train, over a mile long pulling around 220 rail cars down the coast bringing supplies to southern Florida, blocked 4 major highways in Pasco County and at least a dozen smaller roads and one draw bridge. It took two days to clean up the mess and for Pasco County to return to normal.

And it all started when a Florida Man drove his backhoe off a trailer...


I obviously have way too much time on my hands today.


Kevin
 
Yeah - the unload was a bit of a fuster cluck. We got to the site and I had left the tractor key in the RV causing us to unhook the tractor trailer so I could drive back and get it. The tongue weight of the trailer is more than I can lift so we decided not to re-attach to the tow vehicle.

That would have been a good start to things - LOL... To get the trailer off the Jeep I pulled the draw bar pin, drove away and let it drop - very FloriDan...

The best videos start with one bad decision followed by another and another - LOL...

The number one rule of driving a TLB is to know where the backhoe is at all times - I almost forgot that... Poor Dodge Ram.
 
I once transported a '74 Sportster rolling frame(wheels, frame front end only)in a trailer. It was raining when I arrived at the destination, so I un hooked the trailer and left it to unload another day.
Put the ramp on the trailer and started to roll the bike back. Front of trailer lifted and it rolled away as the bike rolled down the ramp. I just followed the bike back and ended up standing on the ground with the bike, and the trailer 4 feet away.
My kids thought I'd planned it that way. Not really.
 
Well it's been a crazy 4 weeks!

After getting back from Arizona we did a turn around and I headed to Dayton and my "roomie" headed back to PA.

The final week of work was fairly uneventful with the biggest activities being a good turn over to my replacement. I was pretty pleased with their choice. A great engineer that was in our department a couple years ago. During that time I was his mentor and basically trained him in the Jedi way... My customer knew him from that time so the account is in good hands.

Huge kerfuffle with porting my phone number out of the company. Verizon did a really poor job with this and ultimately I spent about 6 hours on the phone with them just to get accounts set up and so on. I understand technical issues but I repeatedly asked for a supervisor and the agent was stubborn. This was Friday night the 28th and not getting it done I had to buy a burner phone at Wally's and then finish on Monday - grrr....

I could rant more about how Apple is the evil empire and my new laptop needed a lot of setup etc. etc...

The biggest issue was that every important website basically said, "We see you've logged in from a new device. We are sending a security code to..." You guessed it, the phone that was out of play. It was quite stressful.

But I retired! With the remaining stuff it didn't seem real as I still had to close out the house and get back "home."

The close out of the house was another challenge. The first part was getting my brother relocated. He decided to buy a TT and stay in a park long term. Here's a video of us settling him in.


The bigger issue was my son who continues to get smacked by covid shut downs and didn't make the income he needed to get first/last and so on to move into an apartment. He was supposed to take all the furniture and we agreed it wasn't worth it to store it. He tried to sell it on marketplace with no luck and I was close to dropping an entire house of furniture in the dump. At the last hour I got hooked up with a group called Planting Seeds. They are a charity and do a lot of work with moms escaping abusive situations. As it turned out they were working with a mom of 3 kids and the only furniture she had was a mattress.

I fell really good that she got a whole house of furniture. I was raised on hand-me-downs, St. Vincent DePaul and Goodwill so this really made me feel good.

However that left a ton of his personal gear and some other stuff (household goods) that I chose to try and add to my trailer load. I had always planned to bring the washer/dryer, BBQ, a couple of outdoor furniture pieces, two desks and two beds. I had a 6X12 and it's amazing how gear expands to fill capacity - LOL... I literally had no inches of space left when I closed the doors and headed out.

I had planned a turn over on Sunday but my brother got his second (moderna) shot and was dropped for 36 hours and couldn't help. Real bad side effects. Here is where I was at around 4PM Sunday. I ultimately finished shampooing carpets at 5am, slept for 2 hours, finished up the kitchen and handed over at around 11am Monday.


With the phone issue I again spent Tuesday morning on the phone with Verizon and got the SIM card around 10am. The phone was not able to send text or make calls but was visible on the network. I got on the horn again with tech support and we did literally "everything" - reboots, resets etc. etc. They finally agreed with my diagnosis of a bad sim card and at 7pm I finally got a second card and the phone finally came to life.

Bad SIM out of the box... Who knew...

I then took my brother to dinner spent another night in the hotel and finally launched at around 2pm on Wednesday, arriving on Thursday at around 9am at the storage unit after a stop south of Atlanta to sleep. Unfortunately I had loaded the trailer a little light on the tongue and it was squirrelly above like 65mph if knocked by wind or an off camber bump.


So finally Friday was a vegging day. I ran a couple of errands and tried to absorb the fact that I am done. I spent a lot of time working on my tech - phone apps, laptop organizing etc. I had a great surprise Friday in that the separation check hit my bank - The government took over 30% (dammit) but it's still a big number and in the expectation range. I then linked up all my bank accounts to Fidelity and started transferring the "nest egg."

Today I am switching the phone to AT&T's 100gb plan as their coverage appears better here and both V and AT&T have better coverage maps than T-Mobil. I am not a happy camper with Verizon - LOL...

Then I am gonna continue the veg for the weekend, make a trip today to Cocoa Beach to see my niece and then get back on the property Monday.
 
Wow, busy few days Dan. Great feeling to escape work life but I bet you have a few mixed feelings too.

Congratulations on the start of your new adventures!
 
It's been a while since I updated this thread.

Here is a 22 minute video showing the contrast on the land from when I bought it until now.

Land Developing

I have bagged the log cabin idea for a couple of reasons and am now thinking to put a replacement smaller MH on the site. 2 B/R of about 900 or so square feet.

Imperial1.JPG
Imperial2.JPG
Interior.JPG
 
Wow, that's awesome Dan! You've obviously been working hard. I'm sure your wife will be very happy with it. Well done!
 
Yeah the idea right now is a replacement mobile home. One thing I did not like about mobile homes was they look like sausages - long and skinny - and can feel like a submarine inside.

I saw a "short" double wide and that got me turned around. 24 X 36 or so looks a lot better proportionally ad in retirement we don't need the space of a 60 footer.

Also the deal on a log home is that you have to buy the whole "kit" for like $60k in cash. Then you pay a builder to assemble it and my plan was to finish it myself. Of course that's a long time line as well as the fact I am not too happy about dropping that much capital all at once in these uncertain times.

A mobile home can be 100% financed if you own the land. I would not mortgage the property and would put 20-30% down and have a small 15 year mortgage.
 
Well it's been a crazy 3 weeks or so. Finally finished up the property and got Marvin relocated.

My wife finally was able to travel to the US, we adopted a couple of dogs and selected a Mobkle home and got it under contract.

Finished up with 2 days in Cedar Keys.

Lots of videos to watch... Hope you enjoy...

Paola Arrives

Then we finished the property...

Finally Ready for the Driller

Then we picked out a mobile home...

Our New Mobile Home

Then we picked out a couple of dogs. Blue is a blue heeler and smart as heck. He'll be a good farm dog. We also decided to rescue Beatrice. She's old and tired with little chance for adoption so we decided to let her retire with us. Both travel really well so they will also be great RV dogs.

A Dog's Life

And finally we rewarded ourselves with a couple of nights at Cedar Key in Florida.

Two Days in Cedar Key

I will still probably be a bit scarce around here for a bit. We also rented a house for 6 months while the Mobile Home is delivered and installed. We are getting the lot model and it should go in around Mid-Feb. My son Josh is coming down to Florida as well so he will likely inherit the rental house.

Rental House

All the Best
Danno
 
Glad you are still alive and kicking!

Good luck to you and your family!
 
Oh... And among all this activity I bought a new truck. It's a 2019 Ram Classic crew cab with 2WD. It's a great machine. It's got 24k miles on it and the only way I could have gotten it cheaper was to actually steal it - LOL... According to KBB I have about $8000 in equity in it. The first owner was a salesperson from the dealer and traded up to a Ford F250.

I haven't sussed out the actual numbers yet but it reportedly will tow 11,000 pounds.

Then I've been looking for a popup trailer for casual camping and this showed up on Craigslist. It's a 1947 Mistique teardrop trailer. Guess what all the Rosie the riveters did after making a gajillion airplanes? Yup, they made trailers. It's all original hand bucked aluminum. The fenders and a bucnh of parts are inside. It includes an original Coleman(?) stove. The thing is like cast iron and weighs a ton. The rear pops open and a kitchen is inside the back.

I am gonna refinish it to match my MG-GT and the MG will be able to tow it. The previous owner extended the tongue and added a tray for Propane and batteries. I will end up putting flexible solar on top and wire it with a 7 pin plug so the truck can charge the batteries as well.

There are a bunch of youtube videos on fixing these up and they make a unidirectional plywood that bends easily for the interior. This will be a fun project when I get to it...
 

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Sorry, I envy your MGB-GT more than the teardrop trailer. That's going to be an eye catching combination. I'm sure they'll be a conversation starter. I looked at a few back in the 60's-70's but being so rare and with a family of 5 a decent one was beyond my means. Back then I was a member of the SCCA and had a half dozen English sports cars but my unbeatable road rally car was a Volvo PV544. Had it for 20 years but had to sell it in 1988 because I couldn't find brake parts. Today with the internet I could get all the parts I needed then :(
 
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Sorry, I envy your MGB-GT more than the teardrop trailer. That's going to be an eye catching combination. I'm sure they'll be a conversation starter. I looked at a few back in the 60's-70's but being so rare and with a family of 5 a decent one was beyond my means. Back then I was a member of the SCCA and had a half dozen English sports cars but my unbeatable road rally car was a Volvo PV544. Had it for 20 years but had to sell it in 1988 because I couldn't find brake parts. Today with the internet I could get all the parts I needed then :(
My dad raced Peugot 504s in SoCal SCCA. He was a real gearhead.

Here's a shot of my dad (seated) buting together a 32 Ford for the El Mirage dry lake...

Pretty sure this was just before the war.
 

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Just finally took a look at this thread, didn't read every word but looked at the interesting parts. You are smart to stay away from the log cabin. I live in a log home. They are not what they are cracked up to be and can be a tremendous amount of maintenance. If I ever have to build a home, its going to be poured concrete!, no rot, no termites, no real issues. Steel stud walls inside and a air entrained concrete gable roof. All electrical in conduit, nothing the critters can eat and short out.

Charles
 
Well (sic) Day 3 of the drilling yesterday. They got to 120 feet and were still pumping up mud, clay and sand. I sensed a lot of frustration and he asked me for an alternate spot which I pointed out. I beat feet and left them to it.

They expected water at 120 feet...

Unfortunately I wasn't thinking too clear on the alternate spot. It's gonna make my power run about 60 feet farther. I should have moved closer in...

Might have to drop by today and see how things are going along.
 

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