We had more good company this week. On Thursday, we met up with Deb and Jeff Spencer at Fat Willy’s for lunch on the patio. The last time we saw Deb and Jeff was in Kanab, Utah in September. We’ve met up with them several times over the years in various places – that’s how it often works with fellow full-timers.
Fat Willy’s is a pub/restaurant and also has the pro shop for the golf courses at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. As I mentioned, we took a table on the back patio overlooking part of the 18-hole course. I shot a photo of the view, but neglected to get a people photo.
The photo above illustrates Arizona winter grass. The grassy areas surrounding the course appear to be Bermuda grass, which goes dormant over the winter. Bermuda grass goes dormant and doesn’t produce chlorophyll when the soil temperature drops into the 50s. It will recover in the spring with an application of fertilizer. The fairway is green – presumably it was overseeded for the winter with a rye grass variety. I don’t know what type of grass is used on the greens.
After a couple of hours of pickleball in the morning, I took care of a small project on Friday. Our new-to-us Nissan Frontier had some deterioration of the acrylic headlight covers. This has been a common problem for cars built with this type of headlight over the last 20 years – especially in areas with abundant sunshine. The acrylic covers are coated with a UV inhibitor, but over time, it breaks down – especially here in the desert.
Our Nissan Frontier was originally sold by Peoria Nissan on the west side of Phoenix and has been in the valley of the sun ever since. Our headlights weren’t in really bad shape, but once they start to degrade, it doesn’t get better.
When this happened on our Alpine Coach, I polished the lens covers with a product from Meguiar’s. The problem was, the Meguiar’s polished out the haze, but it also removed any remaining UV inhibitor and within a year, the headlight covers were in worse shape than ever.
After looking around a bit, I found a product made by Sylvania that not only polishes out the imperfections, it includes a new clear lens coating with UV inhibitor! I ordered a kit from Amazon – it was only $19.99 – to give it a try.
The kit included detailed instructions – it’s broken down into three steps. First you clean the cover and spritz it with a liquid etching solution. Then you wet sand progressively with 400 grit, then 1000 grit and finally 2000 grit sand paper. I used a spray bottle to keep plenty of water on the acrylic cover while sanding with fairly light pressure. You sand until the surface is smooth with each grit. At this point, the headlights look really bad – they are completely clouded from sanding. After rinsing and drying, you apply the etch again, rinse and dry again, then apply the clear coat with the UV inhibitor. The results were amazing.
The whole process took about an hour. I’m pleased with the result. Now we’ll have to see how it holds up to exposure to sunlight.
Speaking of sunshine, we have plenty in the forecast. After having daily highs in the mid-60s all week, the forecast calls for 75 degrees today – and we’re well on our way there – and mid to upper 70s for the week ahead with clear skies.
*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!