Only My Ego

After reading yesterday’s blog, titled Stuck On A Sandbar, a couple of readers wanted to know how our muscles felt after not kayaking for so long, especially after getting our second round of vaccine shots a week ago today. Someone also asked if I hurt myself falling on my butt a couple of times trying to get back in my kayak.

We were both aware of the fact that we had been using some muscles we had not used in a while, but as they say, it was a good hurt. Neither of us felt any difference in our arms at the injection sites. In fact, except for just a slight redness on my shoulder, I can’t even tell where mine was. As far as hurting myself falling on my rear end, the only thing I bruised was my ego. But that happens on a regular basis anyway, so it was no big deal.

In that blog post, I mentioned the fact that I’m not very good at backing up short trailers, although I do seem to be getting a little bit better at it. A couple of people have suggested mounting a trailer hitch on the front of the pickup, saying it’s much easier to launch and retrieve a boat that way. It’s something to consider. Then again, I could just practice and learn how to back up a trailer properly.

My 1999 Ford F-150 is a good truck, but it’s showing its age, and lately it feels like the transmission is beginning to slip just a bit. I need to take it down to Leon’s Automotive and have them go through it and see what issues it has.

Both the truck and our 2005 Ford Explorer (our daily driver) have served us well, and the Explorer has a lot more miles on it than the pickup, both in being driven and towed behind our motorhome. With both vehicles, we have asked ourselves several times when will we reached the point where they are not worth repairing? Replacing a transmission or something like that would probably cost as much as the vehicle is worth. I do have my Mustang, which after two and half years still has just 1,150 miles on, and we have Terry’s Pacifica, which is what we take on road trips.

We have talked about trading the two older vehicles in on a new pickup and making that our daily driver. My accountant keeps telling me I need to spend some money or else give it to the government in the form of taxes. So Saturday, I went to Mullinax Ford to look at F-150 pickups with the automatic backup assist Tow Technology package. That would sure make backing up a boat easier. Do any of you have that feature on one of your vehicles? If so, what do you think of it?

Mullinax didn’t have anything that met all my needs in stock or available anywhere in a four state region, and if I am going to buy anything new, I won’t compromise and take “almost” what I want, just like I wouldn’t on the Mustang. So if I want one, I’m going to have to order it.

But wait, there’s more! Terry and I both like the Ford Expeditions, and we have talked about replacing the Pacifica with one of them, and it seems that the Expeditions also have the same Tow Technology program. That’s something to think about, too. We haven’t made any decisions yet, and until I have Leon’s look at my F-150 and tell me what’s going on with it, we won’t. I guess only time will tell.

Congratulations Yvonne Rising, winner of our drawing for an RV camping journal donated by Barbara House. Barbara makes several variations of these, and they all have pages where you can list the date, weather, where you traveled to and from that day, beginning and ending mileage, campground information including amenities at RV sites, a place for campground reviews, room to record activities, people met along the way, reminders of places to see and things to do the next time you’re in the area, and a page for notes for each day. We had 42 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with U.S. addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – I made a huge To Do list for today. I just can’t figure out who’s going to do it.