What are Friends For Anyway?

It's getting hot early this year - Tucson is in the 100's most of this week, and we're running very close to that in Benson. It's early May, guys! Those temperatures are 10 to 15 degrees higher than normal. We know why that's happening, of course: it's because this is our first summer to stay in Benson!

So, we are learning how to deal with the heat. We open all the motorhome windows and turn on the exhaust fan in the ceiling. That at least sucks air inside and keeps it moving. We even do that at night. When it still gets too hot in the motorhome, then we close all the windows and turn on the air conditioner, set at about 80 degrees.

In the casita we leave doors and windows open too and turn on the ceiling fan. Then when it gets even hotter, we use the through-the-wall air conditioner. By the way, the casita came with an A/C and it worked, but it was very noisy, so we bought a new one a couple of weeks ago. With my recent knee surgery I was waiting a while to install it. Now that the temps are getting up there, I reached out to some very nice people, Ken and Debbie Toth next door, and Emerson and Carol Dayton across the road.

The two guys came over yesterday and helped me take out the old A/C and install the new one, and their wives came along to kibitz!
First you take out the old one.
Easy now!

Set it down carefully!
Here's the new one going in.


A screw or two to hold it in place.




Ken is caulking around the outside.




Emerson, Jerry and Ken, satisfied after a couple of hours of work.

That 's what friends are for! And that's part of the Escapees Club program, people helping people. We will repay the two couples by taking them to a dinner at the Apple Farm some day soon. Ken and Debbie are about to leave on a trip to Alaska next week, so we'll have to hurry!

How do we repay all of our neighbors in the Co-Op park? We work on the Propane Committee and the Architectural Committee. We help out with the Club House Committee. We pull weeds where we see them. Other people work on the Landscape Committee, the Facilities Committee, the Budget Committee, or just set up the morning coffee in the club house. Everybody is expected to do something.

Back to our casita -- the new A/C is so quiet, and so effective! Of course the casita is small and doesn't need a whole lot to cool it, so we were able to get a very inexpensive unit that exactly fit the wall opening the old one sat in.

Now we expect to be almost alone in our neck of the woods. Ken and Debbie will be on the road to Alaska, the Aults at the end of the row are almost never here, and take their lot off the rental pool most of the time; the lot on the other side of us is vacant much of the time, and a whole bunch of people are out of here for the summer.

But you know what? We love our home, both the motorhome and the casita, as well as the Co-Op and it's people and facilities. We like our little town of Benson, and we still like each other very much, even in tight quarters. The wheels are not rolling right now, but we keep on living ... Our Life on Wheels.