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Lebanon, Oregon, United States
We are Terry & Cathye Kinkelaar. If you've followed my blog in the past, you know that Lydia, my beautiful wife of 52 years, and I made the lifestyle choice to move to Oregon in 2017. You've seen my posts about losing her in May 2020 to cancer. Although I was left alone, I am pleased to say that I have found happiness again. In April 2021, I met Cathye, who also lost her longtime husband in 2020. Well, we fell in love and were married in April 2022. So, if folks are still interested, I will continue to post here as we move forward with our lives and adventures!

Friday, November 22, 2019

Oregon Living 2019 – Blog #108 – An Expensive Lesson and a Free Turkey Dinner!


 

Tuesday, Nov 19th, 2019……  Rains came last night. We don’t get much, just enough to make everything wet. I had an appointment for service for the motorhome. Since I couldn’t move it, I was sure that the brakes were locked for some reason. Plus, I have a sway on the passenger side so there is an air leak somewhere that I needed to have looked at. The tech, TJ, got here about 1:30 and went to work.  We tried everything from the top, including shifting back from drive to reverse and couldn’t get the brakes to release so he crawled under to try to disconnect and work them loose. Long story short – the wheels have to come off so they can get to the hubs and work them loose from the outside. He said that since the coach hasn’t moved in months (remember – I start the motor up each week and run the systems but didn’t think about moving it at all) that would cause them to rust over even when stored inside. He ran out of time so he will be coming back tomorrow with some more equipment to jack up the wheels and pull the tires. 


Hopefully, that will be that. We’ll see…
After he left, I came in and moved clothes from the dryer for Lydia so she didn’t have to get up on her bad heel. She had already gotten fish out so she fixed that for dinner. We settled in and folded clothes and watched tv until we got tired and went to bed.  

Wednesday, Nov 20th, 2019…...  I was up early and had everything done before TJ showed up. I was his first call but he didn’t get here until 9:30am. It took all of the morning and into the afternoon before he had the wheels and the drums off. 


As he predicted, we discovered that because it had been sitting so long, the shoes had been encrusted onto the drums.  He actually had to chisel off the stuff on the drum. He got everything operational and put back together and I moved the coach forward and back to double check. I will need new brakes immediately and will set that up for next week. Unfortunately, for now, because I had what they call emergency road service (which is over twice the shop rate, plus mileage), I had to shell out over $1800. for something I could have prevented all along.  I go out to the garage every week and start the coach and run the systems but I never thought about moving it at all, which would have prevented all of this. With new brakes coming, it will be a pretty expensive lesson!  While I was doing all of this, Lydia headed off to play bingo. She didn’t win but she said the lady sitting in my chair did. Dam!  They told her they missed me. But we will be heading back tomorrow for their pre-thanksgiving (free) turkey dinner.
Later, I helped her fix tacos for dinner and, while we ate, we got caught up on some Guys Grocery games before later watching The Masked Singer and Survivor. They revealed one more identity - The Flower was Patti Labelle, which we had guessed/figured out a few weeks ago.      
  
Thursday, Nov 21st, 2019……  The weather turned again today! No rain, but the chill is back! Yesterday, it was in the 40s in the morning but today it was 29º at 4:45am when I let Rylee out to pee/poop! There was frost on my trash cans and the grass is all white from frost. It is supposed to get to 54º today but we have to see if the grass dries out before we can mow.
Today was Turkey day at the senior center. We had picked up our free tickets a couple of weeks ago. Lydia said that when she was at bingo yesterday, she could smell the roasters going throughout the center as they were pre-cooking the turkeys for today. They started serving at noon, seating was 11:30am. We stopped by at 11:00am and picked up Janice because my sister was going to meet us there after her morning Drs. appointment. We got in line and got in and seated. There were over 250 people there for the meal. Sis joined us and we had a nice meal. Lois. One of our bingo gals, joined us at our table. They served the full shebang - turkey, with mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, corn, and a roll. Plus, pumpkin pie for dessert. They had the Albany High School Choir there to serve everyone. We only had to leave our seats for coffee and/or apple cider. Afterward, they performed a few songs acapella. Pretty good. All in all, it was a fun day!





Once we got back home, we didn’t want to do too much the rest of the day. I guess it was the tryptophan! We did go out later to Walmart and did our grocery shopping. We also added cold cuts from their deli for submarine sandwiches for dinner. I tried to stay awake after dinner but I had an ache in my ankle and took a couple of Tylenol pm around 8:30pm so I went to bed super early and didn’t even hear Lydia come in later.     

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