Neighborhood Watch...

I've joked about this before.  When we bought a lot in this community, we were the youngest ones in our neighborhood.  Fifteen years later, not much has changed in that regard.  We are in a gated community, with 24 hour security... even better than that is our unofficial "Neighborhood Watch."  Everyone looks out for each other here.  If someone out of the neighborhood is poking around here, it will be obvious.

There was the time that we were gone on some business, and I had made arrangements for the local canvas shop to come to the sailboat we had at the time to measure for a binnacle cover.  My neighbors stopped the woman from getting on our boat.  Yes, really.

Oh, and there was the time that we were out on our sailboat and a thick fog rolled in.  We put out an anchor and settled in for the night.  As we were coming in from the Gulf the next day, we heard the Coast Guard calling our boat name.  When we responded, the CG officer on the radio asked, "Is everything OK with you folks?"

"Yeah, we're fine.  How 'bout you?"  I knew something was up, 'cause we've never gotten a call from the Coast Guard to ask how we are.  They asked me to call them on our cell phone.  When I did, I found out one of our neighbors had reported that we were "out in that fog..."  Yes, really.  (Hi, Mary)  ;-)

Then the time I was asked by our neighbor across the canal, "Are you feeling OK?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks for asking.  Oh, and why are you asking?"

"We heard you sneeze when you were out on your deck last night - hope you aren't coming down with a cold."

Understand that this is not a bad thing; we really like our neighbors.  But, in a small community like this, you better not have any secrets.

Yesterday, one of our neighbors said, "Well, you must be heading out again.  You haven't been home that long."

"Yeah, we're going to get the RV out and go play for a while."

"Well, I knew something was up.  I can always tell when you're going to head out when you take that cover off your truck and scurry around," she said.

The woman has a point.  It's nice to know that the neighbors are looking out for you.

We took the truck bed cover off so we could get the 5th wheel out of storage.  Here, Joan is letting me know when I'm back far enough on the site...

This is the longest the "Love Shack" has been in storage since we got it.  Other than being dirty, it handled the storage fine.  It is a lot of work to pull that out - more than I want to do for a quick overnight.  We sure do enjoy being out in the RV, though.

Joan marveled at how tight the RV is - no dust inside, after 7 months being stored.  Can't say that about the exterior, though - I spent a couple hours getting her scrubbed up and looking nice again.

We'll put some food onboard, some clothes, Izzy's stuff, and head out.