Hello Mark,
Well it looks like you took on old mother-nature and kind of lost. That was pretty ball Z to go out and fly both in the wind and with the impending rain band so close. I’ll bet when you and George ran back to the car your were laughing your heads off, what a great day to share with your son! Mark, it doesn’t get better than that!
I cannot imagine how tough it must be to have the other house so far away and have to deal with it. We have had several rental properties and still maintain one but it’s close, 12 miles. And it’s exactly like you said, you have to be there to see that everybody is doing what you’re paying them to do before you pay them. Otherwise you’re going to get shorted no doubt. Most importantly, I hope that Bank of America will meet you halfway and be civilized about the situation. I can see the Insurance Companies position not wanting to Insure an empty house where you could get squatters who could do a lot of damage let alone the guys that come in and steal all copper! Hopefully you can work that out with them.
After reading your story I too have been dealing with insurance companies. The policies on my Polaris Razor, Cargo Trailer and my 40 foot fifth wheel that I leave in Arizona are ready to expire. I was with Progressive insurance and one of my neighbors in Arizona told me to try Farmers. The reason why is that Progressive will only ensure the fifth wheel as a movable ready to go RV trailer, where farmers insurance company will put it as a Park In Place Model and ensure it as a home. The short of it is I saved $250 over what I was paying for all three vehicles.
I’m going to try and make this is short as possible so bear with me, when we came home a few weeks ago from Arizona where we only stayed three weeks and we brought home the fifth wheel cover as it had approximately 10 holes in it. Some were rubbed holes, and some were tears from the wind. Once the cover was here Judy and I tried to come up with a solution to patch the holes with something that was durable but yet wasn't so rough textured that it would do damage to the outside of the trailer. LOL Judy came up with a good idea, we used old Levi’s as the fabric for the inside of the cover. I sprayed it with 3M 77 spray adhesive on the inside of the cover and then the Levi material and then rolled them together for good adhesion with a wallpaper hard long rubber roller. The cover came with some of the matching fabric with peel and sticky on the back but not enough to do all of the tears we had. Once I ran out of the “matching” patching material provided we cut up the bag that the cover came in made of the same fabric and I sprayed that and the cover with the spray adhesive and rolled that tight. This took about four days because the cover is 20 feet wide and 40 feet long. Every time I would repair as many holes and tears as I could I would have to let them dry overnight before I could slide the cover around so I didn’t wind up with the cover sticking to itself while I went on to new holes to repair. So Monday of this week I drove to Palm Springs which is the halfway point ( 273 miles each way to az ) stayed overnight at my buddy’s house. We got up in the morning at 4 AM had coffee and hit the road and where there in two hours. It took us two hours to finish putting on the cover because first……everywhere there was a protrusion had to be covered. The last time I used pool noodle material which in the end was too soft in didn’t like the heat and fell apart allowing the protrusions to tear up cover. So this time I brought a bunch of Styrofoam large material from TVs and VCR packing and cut it up and laminated it with the 77 spray to make it fit around these protrusions and then used HVAC aluminum sticky tape to make it adhere to the side of the trailer. Once we were all done with two hours work on the trailer we stopped and got some breakfast and then I turned around and hightailed it back to Palm Springs. We stayed at his house for an hour while I rested and then I hit the road alone and drove back home. I covered 568 miles from Monday noon to Tuesday 4 PM, can you say ouch! Running at 75 and 80 mph my big new diesel was getting 20 miles to the gallon. When I ran the truck at 65 – 70 miles per when I was in Arizona last time just going up to the next town and driving very sanely I got 23 miles to the gallon on that 6.6 Duramax Diesel, Ford…. Eat your heart out! I’ll give you a couple of photographs so you can see what we did. The first one shows me on the roof PRAYING I don't fall off and the other just shows two of the many Styrofoam protectors we put on.
Were sitting in gray dismal supposed to rain weather which was why I was trying to get home from down there. Monday is should be 80° through the whole week so I hope to get some flying in.
Good luck on getting to SC and get your work done and selling off your house.
Nick, I hope you’re enjoying your internship and it’s everything you thought it would be. Remember what they said…………. if you’re enjoying what your doing you’ll never have to work a day in your life!
JPEE
