Space Coast and Beyond

Ocala and

Onwards.

Saturday the 1st May 2010

Rocinante, Beepa and I head down to Lady lake to pick up some mail and to touch base with the Ovens at Harbour Hills. Numerous yard sales on the way and a little bit of spontaneous retail therapy!! Bill had some mail for me; my Florida Licence and my Progressive Vehicle Insurance Policy!! Very important documents! Raided Bill’s scrap wood box in his Joinery Workshop!! Very handy for the odd mounting and repairs jobs in Rocinante.

On 441 then onto 42 and east through Sanford towards Osteen on 415. The Fox Head Bar here is famous for its music and cold beer. Found it also had a large parking lot and Rocinante was parked there with about 150 Harleys!! It also has WiFi, a bonus. The Kentucky Derby runs at 6pm on a very wet track. A spontaneous winner takes all sweep is held with no horse names, just the numbers 1 through 20. I had 3 horses for my $15 and did not even rate a place!! But the winner did shout all the losing sweep holder a drink of their choice before he left with his booty! A great bunch of people. Bill is the Owner and fusses over everyone. Tattoos and pony tails proliferate!! The 2 pool tables are never unused and the live band is very good. They are inside tonight, but tomorrow they will be on the stage in the car park!!

Find a quiet spot to park and next day I am back at the Fox Head for the afternoon entertainment. Parked under a tree at the Baptist Church, the services are done for today!

Nascar Ute Racing is on TV in the Bar is popular and someone puts a couple of kilos of cooked Crawdads on the bar!! Smallish yabbies.. Very tasty bar snacks, thanks Bill.

Monday dawned promising to be warm; sure was 39 deg at midday. Had some help and Paddy took me to Sanford to do some electronics shopping.

HHGreigs are the Big Guys of Florida. A 19” and a 22” HD LCD TV are on the list as well as a DVD player. A couple of wall mounts as well! Not a lot of bargaining here, but I did get 7% off! Back to Rocinante and the air-conditioning!!

A little bit of exploring the district a a spot to work in the shade was found and the old the old 15” TVs were removed from their recesses. Adapters were made from Bill’s wood scraps and the new TVs were mounted. The recesses behind are now potential storage areas!! BUT, the signal from my very good!!!! Antenna on the roof is negligible!! A exploration of the roof, shows that the coax is very much degraded; so much so, that the shielding has disintegrated and no 12 volt power can get to the amplifier inside the flying saucer shape antenna. I removed it and dismantled it to find that my activity was indeed the best move!! A lot of delicate cleaning with a toothbrush and 20+ years of corrosion was removed and with a lot of doubt re its serviceability, was reassembled, a temporary repair to the coax and the TVs both worked well, not A1 but working. A shopping list for antenna cable, sealant for the roof and antenna connectors for the hardware shop later on!!

Wednesday is another warm one and a drive up north to De Land and to find the Southern RV Service Centre. Rick is the suspension specialist and Tom; the owner, is the Electrical Specialist. I will be back here next month to have some irregularities in the mains power switching attended to.

The radio in Rocinante is genuine 1986 vintage with cassette player. So it was into Wal-Mart and bought a DUAL unit that has CD, MP3 and Bluetooth for my cell phone for $106!! But it needs a larger hole in the instrument panel. To ACE Hardware and a coping saw is added to the ever increasing tool kit of Rocinante. One hour of delicate cutting of the 2 layers of acrylic sheet that make up the panel and the new entertainment centre fits in; except when the hinged top panel is lowered and there is interference! A little bit of “adjustment” by the wood saw and all fits well. The sound is very good. I bought 12 MP3 CDs from home for my entertainment for the next 3 months!

The New Smyrna Speedway is about 20 kays down the road and a big night is advertised for Saturday night. On to Daytona Beach and the many kilometres of beach were normal car access is available for $5 for the day. 15 mph speed limit applies. 1000’s of people here. Very poor surf, but still a good swim. Back towards the Daytona Speedway and a check-in to the KOA RV Campground. Connection to power is good, but my first opportunity to do some housekeeping! Empty my Black water and Grey water!! Also to top up my 400 litre water tank. A very comfortable night with aircon without the Kubota rumbling away providing my 110 AC power!~~

Back to Ocala for an evening out on the town at Katie Belle's at The Villages. Great music from a 60’s rock band and Karaoke afterwards. Also great hosts. Back to my home in the Wal-Mart in Ocala. Saturday it was down to do a mail pickup at Harbour Hills and then across to New Smyrna Speedway. A lot of yard sales on the way!!!~

Speedway owners gave me the OK to park overnight in the car park. The nights racing was Mothers Day eve and Mums were free entry and received a carnation. Not a large turn up of cars, but about 40 race cars gave some very good racing. It is a half mile oval with 22 deg end banking and fully sealed. Speeds of 240km in the straights were being done!!~

Next morning was a relaxed start; again!!, and I heaed for Kissimmee, south of Orlando. The Mill RV Resort is near the Disney stuff and I have booked in here for a couple of nights.

Midweek and I am now located on the Space Coast and looking for a campsite to view the Shuttle Launch on Friday. Went to most northern park to view the launch. Jetty Park at Port Canaveral is just 12 Km south of the Launch pad. Managed to get 5 nights here, water and power and dump site, so need nothing else. Headed off to the Kennedy Space centre for a return visit and to get the atmosphere for the launch the next day. 20,000 others had the same idea and a 1 and a half hour queue for the Bus to the NASA launch sight tour was a fact. I took the more expensive tour last time and bypassed the queue. But I had forgotten that small fact!!

The big day; 14^th, arrived and perfect weather was in order. The local TV station had an outside broadcast unit about 100 M. from where Rocinante was parked. About 10,000 spectators started lining the shoreline just outside the RV Park from first light. The traffic jam from Orlando to the Titusville area was at a standstill for 3 hours for 80 km!!!! It was estimated 200,000 people flocked into the area for the 20 seconds of viewing! My plan was to get the photo at the start of this blog!! Plan came together!!