Rainy Day

This is our first week back to work, after being off visiting family. The park is a few miles from Mocksville, NC and the area overall has been hit hard with loss of jobs and a high unemployment rate. One gentleman told me that there had been 11-12 factories here at one time but they’ve all closed up or left. Ingersoll Rand, an employer here, had 6-700 employees at one time. Now there are around 100 employees. Really sad to see  the affect on jobs and industry as we tour various towns across the country. Likewise, sales for me have been a little on the rough side. We’re swinging a lot of doors but I’ve only had a few sales so far. We keep on swinging the doors….it’s a numbers game till you get a “yes”. Monday night we met up with Jackie & Eric, another sales team who are in the area taking a break from work. They are our company’s #1 sales team and will be working a couple parks in the area, right after Thanksgiving. It was nice chatting with them and hearing tips on selling and how they’ve overcome some tough jobs and built their sales over seven years to being #1 in our company. They are very helpful and a wonderful resource to us.
Today we had a 4:00 meeting with the resort manager to work on the design of his guide, since it’s a new park for our company. At 3:15, we discovered that one of our tires was soft so we went to a gas station to get some air in it. Upon closer inspection, we discovered a screw in the tire and I couldn’t find my plug kit in the car to fix it. Linda was able to buy one in the convenience store of the station but it was pretty chintzy and I wasn’t able to push the plug into the tire. Linda went into the store and asked the two state troopers, taking a break in there, if we could use their muscles to help push the plug into the tire. They weren’t successful either..guess they didn’t eat their Wheaties this morning. So I proceeded to try to lower the spare tire and change the tire. I have never had to use the spare in the ten years I’ve owned my car (lucky, eh?). Needless to say, the lug nut holes were packed with dirt, the rim was rusty and a little nasty. The crank down mechanism was really rusty but finally we were able to crank the tire down. THEN, after removing all of the lug nuts we couldn’t get the tire OFF the car. UUGHHHHH !!!! Now I’m a self sufficient cuss and in the past I actually changed a flat on my truck, in about ten minutes, on my way to a wedding. This day was not going as smoothly as that day in the past went. The cops gave up and left. We called Good Sam and they were able to contact a local tow service to come and help. Mike arrived in about twenty minutes and he was very nice. When I told him that most of the work was done and I just couldn’t get the tire off the car, what do you suppose he said to me? He said, “You weren’t trying to change this tire all by yourself, were you ?” I said “Yes, I like to do things myself if I can. He told me to leave things like this to the professionals, in  a nice way, but I’m not convinced. He had a 3” x 3” piece of wood that he whacked the tire with to loosen up the oxidation (the culprit so it wouldn’t come off). Note to self: need to pack my rubber mallet, my other plug kit, pliers, small air compressor and pair of gloves for future emergencies and get rid of that big box of Christmas decorations riding around in the truck of the car. We knew that we’re getting close to needing four new tires for the Xterra. If it ever stops raining, I’ll use my other plug kit and see if I can fix the flat tire and put it back on the car till we figure out where we’ll get some new tires. I’ll get out the WD-40 and lube up the spare crank and see if it loosens things up. Made for an interesting evening. We had to reschedule our meeting for in the morning…No harm, no foul ! Hope your day was more uneventful than ours was. Days like this one make you appreciate it when nothing bad happens and you leave for work and you come home without incident. Here’s wishing for only trouble free days for you all !

Little Culprit....

This little devil is the reason that my driver side rear tire, in the Xterra, has been losing air for a little while. I've been constantly watching it and adding air but couldn't find the leak. Took some soapy water today and had Linda back the car up slowly until "shazaam"......bubbles.....and there was the head of the screw peeking out from between the tread on the inner side of the tire. Grabbed the plug kit and pliers but the little bugger would only come out if I took a Philips head screwdriver and backed it out. Got the plug in and all seems Ok.... We're constantly finding nails and screws on the ground here in the facility. They must jiggle out of boxes and such when people are moving. It's like a mine field around here some days....constantly picking them up.

Really quiet around work this week. End of month is coming up so should pick up. Weather is a little freaky. Calling for rain overnight turning into snow showers with cold temps (in the 40's)for tomorrow. Chilly for a few days but then warming up again. Waiting for a stretch of really warm days so I can tackle a project here of filling the cracks in the asphalt around the property. When the President of the company was here he said he wanted it done. There are a gazillion cracks....big and little to be done. Need at least 65 degree days to apply the filler. We bought (4)- 5 gallon buckets of filler/sealer and some open topped watering jugs that should work perfectly to run over the cracks with the "goo" to get the job done. We'll see how that goes.....