Feb 14th, 2006
Greetings from:
Plomosa Road Camp 2 (Plm Rd 2) N33 49.633 W114 03.145
Entrance from Highway (Plm Rd 2 Ent) N33 49.486 W114 03.490
On Jan 31st, I moved NE up Plomosa Road a few miles to this new campsite area and rejoined Ted Webber and Connie) who are camped about 150 metres away. For those trying to track me down, or locate me on Google-Earth, this camp is east off Plomosa Road (AKA the Bouse Quartzsite Highway) at a point half way between the 11 and 12 mile markers. Cell phone service here seems to switch between an analog signal and a digital one, both fairly strong. I don’t know what’s up with that but it works, so that’s all that matters. Since arriving, I have been to Bouse to visit the new library and check e-mail there (no wireless yet discovered in Bouse); also the Bouse Community Park for water and dumping ($7.00), been to Parker to the library there (good wireless signal), checked out the Arch Creek Camp (N34 10.504 W114 22.629), north of Highway 62, on the California side of the river (OK but a little exposed on a high ridge, so not that attractive) and watched the Parker 450 Desert Road Race as the circuit came within about two miles of Bouse A pall of dust hung over much of South-West Arizona following this exercise; it was noisy but reasonably exciting as high powered cars and trucks bounced their way along the track. On the way home from the race, I dropped in to see the Bouse Community art show where, surprisingly, some fairly well-known (according to the lady in the library) artists were displaying their work.
To the best of my knowledge, Bouse is known for little (or, perhaps, nothing) other than the fact that General George Patton had a tank division training camp in the area sometime prior to, and during, WW II. Interestingly enough, Patton’s presence may have cleared up one small mystery that has been concerning me. On the maps that I download into the GPS are shown some parallel dotted lines resembling a septic field but marked as trails. I have ridden this area and found few passable trails but rather, evidence of heavy machinery clearing patches of desert. It turns out that George’s tanks practiced boulder clearing here as an exercise – presumably helpful once they arrived in the ETO and had to clear rubble from the streets in bombed-out towns.
On one bike trip, I was 3.5 miles from camp when a loud bang alerted me to the fact that the rear tire on the bike had blown out its sidewall. Since I carry a spare tube but not a tire, I had to push the casualty back to the trailer, yellow anti-puncture slime squishing all the way. Luckily, enough daylight remained to see the trail. I’m not exactly sure how best to carry a spare tire with me on the bike but may have to consider this in the future. I have since replaced the tire with a new one from Herb’s Hardware In Quartzsite.
A couple of trips to the market in Q and the hip is rebelling. Walking around the exhibits in this giant flea market for hours is far harder on it than riding the bike. On my second foray into town, I picked up a shade screen to go on the front of the main awning. This will cool things down during hot weather but is too shady for now. With all the traffic and pedestrians, driving and parking in Q is very uncomfortable. Line-ups at the sewer and water stations (i.e The Pit Stop) have been enormous. At the wash (dry river bed) on the west side of the RV Show area, people, attempting to park as closely as possible to the action (mostly ex-Lake Louise skiers, I would imagine), were getting stuck in the loose sand and gravel, so I eased the truck along and managed to stay on top. With RV and Craft shows now over, the desert around Q has thinned out a little. There are plenty of people still around to see the gem and rock shows, plus various other exhibitions that keep the place busy until mid-March but the zoo atmosphere of late January has moderated.
A couple of days ago, new tire shining brightly, I set off on an expedition to the area near Mt Ibex, at 2750’ the highest peak in the area. Near its base, there are quite a few trails leading off to various mines, and, for that matter, to dead ends. At one point near the Southern Cross Mine, I met some men who were rappelling down into the nearly-vertical shaft (approx. 12’ diameter and 80° pitch). They told me that this particular pit went down about 300 – 400 feet. They had run out of rope and were planning their next move. Part of the afternoon had, apparently, been spent in clearing a crawl hole through a pile of debris that was obstructing the shaft at the 40’ level down from the surface. After making the gap, down they went, at least until the rope ran out, after which Prusiks (rope climbing knots, or in this case, mechanical devices made by Petzl) were used to climb back up. Falling objects (rocks, timbers etc) from 250 feet or more was of huge concern to these guys but did not deter them from enjoying their fun.
On my way back to camp, I decided to take a faint trail not recognized by the GPS, since it appeared to lead me in the right direction. With my customary navigational aptitude, the trail disappeared after I was far enough along not to want to retrace my steps and I ended up with a significant cross-country trek (always a mistake in this terrain) to get back to my original trail. Riding across one small draw, I ran into a large stone with the front tire and catapulted off the bike into a pile of rocks. The helmet saved my noggin and nothing else seemed too badly damaged, so I carried on, thankful that I had dodged another bullet. A couple of days later, as I was about to go for a short ride, I had to fix three punctures in my front tire, evidently just another message from the desert that travel anywhere off the beaten path can be perilous.
I have been spending some time lately, attempting to figure out the electrical loads in the trailer – this with a view to calculating the amperage draw of each individual appliance, adding them up and comparing them to the amount of input that I get from the solar panels. As a test subject, I was using my portable radio and somehow managed to blow something, with the result that it no longer works on the 12 volt system but does still operate on AC. I can find no fuse for the DC, so may have fried a diode or some equally critical component. I can use the inverter to power AC but that seems a wasteful way, meaning the use of more power than necessary with which to listen to Radio Free Quartzsite. I am going to seek advice from the solar shop in Q and see if there is an economical method of hooking up a meter to do the job. One recently noted and interesting phenomenon is that my meter reads the main trailer inverter as outputting 76 volts, the small inverter in the truck gives 98 volts. Ted Webber’s motorhome and inverter reads 109 volts – all with the same voltmeter, so something is awry. I am aware that the modified sine wave current produced by inverters can misrepresent actual voltages (because of the wave shape) so am not prepared to panic – yet! This is another reason to get some advice from the solar/battery guy. Since writing the above, I have made my trip to Q and, after hunting around, bought a small inverter (150 watts) at Discount Solar- this for use with the radio while I am restricted to AC power. It makes the radio hum on weak signals, which means that my favourite oldies station in Q is unavailable from the present location. Otherwise, it seems to work OK and uses only a fraction of an amp in power (alone), more with the radio on. I preferred the system with direct 12 V connection (better signal and less power usage) and hope, someday, to get that resolved. The kid at the local Radio Shack sounded knowledgeable as he speculated that I probably blew a diode ( I think that my radio contains about a billion) – almost impossible to track down with a meter, so I may be stuck with the situation as is or until I get another radio.
Dave and Lori Watkins, former Lake Louisers who now farm in southern Saskatchewan, are coming by on the 15th with their motorhome en route back home. I have given them the coordinates both for the camp site and entry off Plomosa Road, so they should have no trouble getting here. Ted Webber and Connie are still across the wash and their friend, Cline, who I met at Plomosa Road Camp 1, arrived from where he had been boondocking on Ogilvy Road west of Yuma. He has since departed for greener pastures. He said that they had suffered high winds down there whereas, here, it has been relatively calm. Ted Webber may move over to the Pegleg BLM camp area at Borrego Springs in about a week. It is in the wrong direction for me and certainly out of my path if I decide to return home via Moab next month but, I’ll think on it before making up my mind. Another option for returning home would be to go back up the Oregon Coast, a trip that I did several years ago. If that were the case, then Borrego would make a good staging point.
The following may only appeal to those of you who have GPS’s but, since I know that there are many of you out there who do navigate with help from above, I’ll just include a little section on my latest thoughts about transposing information from the GPS to the computer and vice versa. For a while after getting my GPS, I was saving and storing all the bits of information (Waypoints, Routes and Tracks) in a haphazard manner in the computer. Recognizing that this level of disorganization would soon exceed my ability to make sense of it, I decided to delete most of the individual files and have now concentrated all information in three Mapsets (more to come as I travel further afield). When the GPS downloads, it does so into an “untitled” file. From there, I copy Waypoints and tracks to the relevant mapset. All Waypoints also get copied to the master Waypoint file in Garmin Western North America Maps, so that I have one list of all Waypoints and can look up anything if required. One of the problems is that all Waypoints have to have different names, since the file will only accept one of each name. In addition, Waypoint names have to be short enough to fit into the GPS. If the program thinks a name is too long, it simply assigns a number, regardless of what name I might have typed in. I can see how, with time, I am going to lose track of the various Waypoint names and will have to streamline the filing methodology somehow. To add a new element to the GPS saga, I am going to go Geocaching – that is, searching for objects that people have hidden in various places and have then listed on the Internet. The plan is to find such a “cache” by going to the position co-ordinates that have been issued, enter one’s name in the log, exchange some article put in the cache by a previous searcher with something else and limp home.
Yesterday, we (Ted, Connie and I) went Geocaching. They had downloaded some sites off the Internet (which they access through their cell phone) and had all the positions marked. The two nearest positions to our camp were across the road and about .6 of a mile away. We attacked G07 first. It was up at the top of a climb of maybe 250 vertical feet and rated 4-2 (don’t know what the numbers stand for, except that, in some way, they relate to the degree of difficulty of the “trail” and, perhaps, the amount of ingenuity used in hiding the cache). The 4-2 rating gave me a strenuous climb up rock and scree to a ridge where I found the cache, a cookie tin hidden under some rocks. Inside, were small, miscellaneous items and a logbook with pencil for recording one’s “find”. In theory, one leaves an item in the tin and takes an item out – this to be traded at the next Geocache. The second Geocache (G08) was up at the top of an even bigger hill (rated 4-4) and I never did find it. At the location indicated by my GPS, I found a can of Bud wedged into a crack in the rock but nothing else. Either vandals got to it first or I had the wrong site. One of the problems with searching for GPS coordinates is that, without an accurate elevation listing, the bottom of a vertical cliff will read much the same position as the top. In all, there are about a dozen Geocaches within biking/walking distance of where I am camped, so I can see myself adding a hunt component to the bike rides from now on.
On Friday, the Little Cactus Restaurant, also known as the Wagonwheel Café, in Bouse, offered a menu special of all the fish one could eat for $6.95. Only one serving of chips and slaw was included in the deal so it was necessary to ration the latter items or beg leftovers from someone else’s plate. Despite being a one-horse town (though the highway is quite busy), the place was filling up by 5.00 in the afternoon. Where all the people came from I don’t know but they must have crawled out from under rocks all over the desert.
The skies are still clear and temps, most days, are in the mid-70s. Night time lows get down into the 40s so, it’s a very pleasant climate at this time of the year. There hasn’t been a drop of moisture since I arrived in early December and, if it remains dry, I expect that the desert flower show will fail to materialize as it did last year when we experienced several storms with plenty of rain showers.
The Olympics are now on TV but the focus in papers here seems more concentrated on speculation as to whether Wayne Gretzky will coach the Canadian hockey team, since wife Janet has become embroiled in the sports gambling scandal – with mafia overtones, yet! If nothing else, Canada gets a little extra recognition. Since Gretzky coaches the Phoenix Coyote team, Arizonans (the few that pay any attention to hockey) are at least familiar with the Great One. It was with some pride that I watched my old friend, Alberto Tomba, carry the Olympic torch in Turin. To think that, by tossing him off the ski hill years ago, we at Lake Louise may have played some role in his personal development, is highly gratifying. Evidently, he still has icon status in Italy, though there was no mention on TV as to whether he had received early parole to attend the ceremonies – just joking, of course.
JW
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
January 26th 2006
From Plomosa Road – Quartzsite
N 33° 46.023’ W 114° 10.339’
From the remote, calm, and pristine desert setting of Mica Mine Road, in the hills west of Ajo, to the sardine-like proximity of a half million or so RVers visiting Quartzsite for the annual RV show comes as quite a culture shock. Anyway, that’s where I am, having eluded smugglers, fended off “illegales” and played scrabble with locals back at my last location on Mica Mine Road. Actually, I saw no smugglers or illegales during my stay there but did play scrabble.
One or two of you have noted (with some relish) what you considered might be a discrepancy in my method of describing GPS positions. Sorry to disappoint the gloaters but, as there is more than one way to skin a cat, so too are there several options for writing GPS positions. To clarify:
One could write down the degrees, minutes and seconds (to the closest tenth of a second)
i.e 32°19’ 49.7”
I think that this equates to accuracy within one thirty six-thousandth of a degree (approx. 10 feet)
One could write down the degrees and percentage of degrees to the nearest hundred-thousandth of a degree (most accurate to within 3.7 feet)
i.e. 32.33050°
Or one could do what I do and that is to write the degrees, followed by minutes to the nearest thousandth (3 decimals).
i.e. 32°19.835’
This method gives good accuracy to within a little over 6 feet and is equivalent to one sixty-thousandth of a degree. Since the GPS itself is accurate only within 15 feet or so, any closer really doesn’t matter.
Thanks go out to Neil McKendrick for pointing out that there appeared to be a discrepancy between the system that I was using and the one utilized by Google Earth. This latter, one can look up on the Internet, input co-ordinates and come up with a picture of where I am. I’m not sure if the Golden Falcon itself can be spotted but Neil advises that he can see his house in Calgary. In any case, the lay of the land is out there for anyone with a computer and Internet access to view.
On Jan 6th, I went to Ajo and visited the Museum, since my new friends (man with shotgun, lady with oranges) were on volunteer duty. They (Gayle and Don Weyers from Wisconsin and now Ajo) were about to have a tuna sandwich lunch but lacked a can opener. Prepared, as always, I hauled out one of my several Swiss-army knives and got to work. For this, I received a complimentary lunch with my free museum visit so a good deal was had by all. The Weyers threatened to come out and camp in my area some night, scrabble board in hand, a plan that has since materialized. I played a couple of losing games (who would have known that “Aa” was a word for lava?) in the sun one morning in front of their tent, not too far from my campsite and then went off on the bike to inspect a seemingly bottomless hole in the ground (an old mine site that Don had told me about).
For some time, the bicycle had been showing signs of age, abuse, or a combination of the two. When I put strain on the chain while in middle gear of the front sprocket, the chain would roll off with a clatter leaving the opposite knee to whack the handlebars with a thud. Other than being an excellent test for the reflexes to see if I could anticipate the separation in time to stop pedalling, this scenario courted almost certain disaster since, with only one foot remaining on its pedal, I tended to topple off to the other side. A close examination of the components in question revealed that said sprocket was severely worn and needed replacement.
I finished my stay at Mica Mine on Jan 17th and headed for Quartzsite, via Yuma to visit Mr. B’s bike shop. A day or two previously, I had run into the Percys, now back from Canada, at the Internet Deli in Ajo. They told me about Mr B’s having a Foothill’s Road store, not far from the east end of town. By the time Mr. B finished, the bike was running smoothly again with new front sprocket and new (used) rear cassette, along with a new chain. Unfortunately, the knee (in line behind the hip) isn’t up for replacement yet, so will have to heal itself.
In Yuma, or rather, outside Yuma, I checked into various campsites that had been suggested by Gerry Percy. Following his instructions to Fortuna Pond, I managed to locate the pond itself but all sites along the edge were full of fishermen, on the hunt for elusive crappie and other species that are stocked by the AZ Fish and Wildlife Department. Someone I met told me that all fish die in the summer because it is so hot (average daily temps in July and August reach 105° - 110°). The first of Gerry’s sites that I had marked on the map was in the middle of a broccoli field (GPS error, no doubt) – a healthy environment, I am sure, but one in which the farmer might have been a little upset to have my truck and trailer stuck up to the axles in his irrigation ditches. Yuma is the US hub for winter vegetable growing and crops of lettuce, broccoli and other greenery are everywhere. The farms employ masses of Mexican labourers, some of whom may have walked by my trailer in the middle of the night. In the end, I managed to find my way to Yuma Lakes (aka Redonda Lake) and settled in the moondust of the 14 day BLM there – N 32° 44.564’ W 114° 28.850’. Moondust is a category of dust that is very light and slowly billows upwards when anything disturbs it. It is so named from the pictures of Neil Armstrong jumping on the moon’s surface many moons ago. Unlike the moon, rain changes the billowing moondust to wallowing mud, so camper beware – this could be a real trailer trap. No rain on my horizons, however (not a cloud to date for most of my stay in the south this winter), so I encamped in the dust for a couple of days. Yuma Lake is not a very attractive spot unless one obtains a place on the upper deck, overlooking the lake itself. There are only a few spaces there, so chances are low that one would be available. For two days, however, it was a place to stay within range of the city, so I didn’t really care. With bicycle purring, I moved north to Plomosa Road (BLM signpost 815), found Ted Webber and Connie, along with a billion (slight exaggeration) other people, including their friend Cline who hosts at an RV camp area in Eastern Utah during the summer months and spends winters in Arizona. I have been for a couple of bike rides in both directions from the camp, mounted the new bike computer that I bought from Mr. B (the old one succumbed to a malaise consisting of multiple fractures and an uprooted electrical connection), to check it out against the GPS – the GPS reads less mileage (today’s trip 7.04 v:s 7.20 miles) than on the computer. I have checked and double checked the tire size and computer setting for that size but have no answer for this anomaly. It may be something to do with the tire doing some extra spinning without forward motion, though that sounds slightly incredible, since it is a front tire - will have to work on this one.
Temps have lowered considerably since leaving the Ajo area. Nights are close to freezing again with daytime highs in the 60s – pleasant for bike riding and, for energy conservation, staying under bedcovers in the mornings until the sun hits my skylight and begins to heat the trailer interior. Many motor home groups are out here in the desert. ½ million dollar buses camping for free may seem a bit odd but there is room for these groups to congregate and enjoy activities which might not be possible in a regular RV park setting. Our nearest collective is the Alpine Coach Association, a gathering of about a hundred coaches. They hold seminars and conduct group activities of various kinds. Yesterday (Jan 22nd), I went in to Q to take a look at the big RV show tent and displays. The numbers of people and lack of parking are good reasons to seek out remote areas as I do and avoid better known boondocking haunts like Quartzsite. In any event, the show itself was interesting with lots of good stuff on display. I managed to resist the impulse to buy anything other than a hot dog that took ½ hour to manufacture. The only memory to remind me of the day in town is a sore hip from all the walking The Internet Café is still operating on Main Street (actually, there are now two), so I was able to check e-mails from the parking lot across the street. There are quite a few Internet dishes on motor homes out at Plomosa Road but, to this point, I have been unable to connect to one of them. With a little driving around, I’m sure that I could find someone with an open signal.
My new neighbours, Ted and Connie, moved off today to another location further along Plomosa Road on the Bouse side of the pass. I shall join them in a few days, once the allure of Quartzsite has worn thin. The new site ought to be at approximately (within 6’) N33 49.634 W114 03.368.
Efforts to vote in our Canadian election proved fruitless. I had been told that there was a way to download forms from the Internet, get them verified at a consulate and send them in. All this seemed very time consuming so, for the first time, I didn’t vote. As it happens, the mayor of Salmon Arm got voted in as a Conservative MP. I have met him and think that I would have voted for him anyway – my conscience is now clear.
On the general interest front, there are two items that have caught my eye. Both are from USA Today.
Zhao Ziyang was a Chinese reformer who died in the 1980s. The other day, some people were arrested and jailed for observing the anniversary of his death. It struck me that having the Olympics in Beijing opens the door to opportunities for scandal, possibly in excess of those that plagued Salt Lake City, with involvement from the French judge, our Canadian Pairs skaters, Salé and Pelletier along with the corrupt management of the International Skating Federation. In China, it would be simple for the Chinese to savour gold while foreign athletes languish in jail – or is that too harsh?
American “dry foot laws” were put to test last week when several Cubans landed on an abandoned bridge piling somewhere in the Florida Keys. They were returned to Cuba after officials determined that the piling did not constitute dry land under US policy. Cubans who reach “land” are allowed to stay and apply for refugee status; those caught off-shore get returned to Cuba. Maybe, installation of a whole lot of pilings off the coast of BC would alleviate our Chinese refugee problems?
JW
From Plomosa Road – Quartzsite
N 33° 46.023’ W 114° 10.339’
From the remote, calm, and pristine desert setting of Mica Mine Road, in the hills west of Ajo, to the sardine-like proximity of a half million or so RVers visiting Quartzsite for the annual RV show comes as quite a culture shock. Anyway, that’s where I am, having eluded smugglers, fended off “illegales” and played scrabble with locals back at my last location on Mica Mine Road. Actually, I saw no smugglers or illegales during my stay there but did play scrabble.
One or two of you have noted (with some relish) what you considered might be a discrepancy in my method of describing GPS positions. Sorry to disappoint the gloaters but, as there is more than one way to skin a cat, so too are there several options for writing GPS positions. To clarify:
One could write down the degrees, minutes and seconds (to the closest tenth of a second)
i.e 32°19’ 49.7”
I think that this equates to accuracy within one thirty six-thousandth of a degree (approx. 10 feet)
One could write down the degrees and percentage of degrees to the nearest hundred-thousandth of a degree (most accurate to within 3.7 feet)
i.e. 32.33050°
Or one could do what I do and that is to write the degrees, followed by minutes to the nearest thousandth (3 decimals).
i.e. 32°19.835’
This method gives good accuracy to within a little over 6 feet and is equivalent to one sixty-thousandth of a degree. Since the GPS itself is accurate only within 15 feet or so, any closer really doesn’t matter.
Thanks go out to Neil McKendrick for pointing out that there appeared to be a discrepancy between the system that I was using and the one utilized by Google Earth. This latter, one can look up on the Internet, input co-ordinates and come up with a picture of where I am. I’m not sure if the Golden Falcon itself can be spotted but Neil advises that he can see his house in Calgary. In any case, the lay of the land is out there for anyone with a computer and Internet access to view.
On Jan 6th, I went to Ajo and visited the Museum, since my new friends (man with shotgun, lady with oranges) were on volunteer duty. They (Gayle and Don Weyers from Wisconsin and now Ajo) were about to have a tuna sandwich lunch but lacked a can opener. Prepared, as always, I hauled out one of my several Swiss-army knives and got to work. For this, I received a complimentary lunch with my free museum visit so a good deal was had by all. The Weyers threatened to come out and camp in my area some night, scrabble board in hand, a plan that has since materialized. I played a couple of losing games (who would have known that “Aa” was a word for lava?) in the sun one morning in front of their tent, not too far from my campsite and then went off on the bike to inspect a seemingly bottomless hole in the ground (an old mine site that Don had told me about).
For some time, the bicycle had been showing signs of age, abuse, or a combination of the two. When I put strain on the chain while in middle gear of the front sprocket, the chain would roll off with a clatter leaving the opposite knee to whack the handlebars with a thud. Other than being an excellent test for the reflexes to see if I could anticipate the separation in time to stop pedalling, this scenario courted almost certain disaster since, with only one foot remaining on its pedal, I tended to topple off to the other side. A close examination of the components in question revealed that said sprocket was severely worn and needed replacement.
I finished my stay at Mica Mine on Jan 17th and headed for Quartzsite, via Yuma to visit Mr. B’s bike shop. A day or two previously, I had run into the Percys, now back from Canada, at the Internet Deli in Ajo. They told me about Mr B’s having a Foothill’s Road store, not far from the east end of town. By the time Mr. B finished, the bike was running smoothly again with new front sprocket and new (used) rear cassette, along with a new chain. Unfortunately, the knee (in line behind the hip) isn’t up for replacement yet, so will have to heal itself.
In Yuma, or rather, outside Yuma, I checked into various campsites that had been suggested by Gerry Percy. Following his instructions to Fortuna Pond, I managed to locate the pond itself but all sites along the edge were full of fishermen, on the hunt for elusive crappie and other species that are stocked by the AZ Fish and Wildlife Department. Someone I met told me that all fish die in the summer because it is so hot (average daily temps in July and August reach 105° - 110°). The first of Gerry’s sites that I had marked on the map was in the middle of a broccoli field (GPS error, no doubt) – a healthy environment, I am sure, but one in which the farmer might have been a little upset to have my truck and trailer stuck up to the axles in his irrigation ditches. Yuma is the US hub for winter vegetable growing and crops of lettuce, broccoli and other greenery are everywhere. The farms employ masses of Mexican labourers, some of whom may have walked by my trailer in the middle of the night. In the end, I managed to find my way to Yuma Lakes (aka Redonda Lake) and settled in the moondust of the 14 day BLM there – N 32° 44.564’ W 114° 28.850’. Moondust is a category of dust that is very light and slowly billows upwards when anything disturbs it. It is so named from the pictures of Neil Armstrong jumping on the moon’s surface many moons ago. Unlike the moon, rain changes the billowing moondust to wallowing mud, so camper beware – this could be a real trailer trap. No rain on my horizons, however (not a cloud to date for most of my stay in the south this winter), so I encamped in the dust for a couple of days. Yuma Lake is not a very attractive spot unless one obtains a place on the upper deck, overlooking the lake itself. There are only a few spaces there, so chances are low that one would be available. For two days, however, it was a place to stay within range of the city, so I didn’t really care. With bicycle purring, I moved north to Plomosa Road (BLM signpost 815), found Ted Webber and Connie, along with a billion (slight exaggeration) other people, including their friend Cline who hosts at an RV camp area in Eastern Utah during the summer months and spends winters in Arizona. I have been for a couple of bike rides in both directions from the camp, mounted the new bike computer that I bought from Mr. B (the old one succumbed to a malaise consisting of multiple fractures and an uprooted electrical connection), to check it out against the GPS – the GPS reads less mileage (today’s trip 7.04 v:s 7.20 miles) than on the computer. I have checked and double checked the tire size and computer setting for that size but have no answer for this anomaly. It may be something to do with the tire doing some extra spinning without forward motion, though that sounds slightly incredible, since it is a front tire - will have to work on this one.
Temps have lowered considerably since leaving the Ajo area. Nights are close to freezing again with daytime highs in the 60s – pleasant for bike riding and, for energy conservation, staying under bedcovers in the mornings until the sun hits my skylight and begins to heat the trailer interior. Many motor home groups are out here in the desert. ½ million dollar buses camping for free may seem a bit odd but there is room for these groups to congregate and enjoy activities which might not be possible in a regular RV park setting. Our nearest collective is the Alpine Coach Association, a gathering of about a hundred coaches. They hold seminars and conduct group activities of various kinds. Yesterday (Jan 22nd), I went in to Q to take a look at the big RV show tent and displays. The numbers of people and lack of parking are good reasons to seek out remote areas as I do and avoid better known boondocking haunts like Quartzsite. In any event, the show itself was interesting with lots of good stuff on display. I managed to resist the impulse to buy anything other than a hot dog that took ½ hour to manufacture. The only memory to remind me of the day in town is a sore hip from all the walking The Internet Café is still operating on Main Street (actually, there are now two), so I was able to check e-mails from the parking lot across the street. There are quite a few Internet dishes on motor homes out at Plomosa Road but, to this point, I have been unable to connect to one of them. With a little driving around, I’m sure that I could find someone with an open signal.
My new neighbours, Ted and Connie, moved off today to another location further along Plomosa Road on the Bouse side of the pass. I shall join them in a few days, once the allure of Quartzsite has worn thin. The new site ought to be at approximately (within 6’) N33 49.634 W114 03.368.
Efforts to vote in our Canadian election proved fruitless. I had been told that there was a way to download forms from the Internet, get them verified at a consulate and send them in. All this seemed very time consuming so, for the first time, I didn’t vote. As it happens, the mayor of Salmon Arm got voted in as a Conservative MP. I have met him and think that I would have voted for him anyway – my conscience is now clear.
On the general interest front, there are two items that have caught my eye. Both are from USA Today.
Zhao Ziyang was a Chinese reformer who died in the 1980s. The other day, some people were arrested and jailed for observing the anniversary of his death. It struck me that having the Olympics in Beijing opens the door to opportunities for scandal, possibly in excess of those that plagued Salt Lake City, with involvement from the French judge, our Canadian Pairs skaters, Salé and Pelletier along with the corrupt management of the International Skating Federation. In China, it would be simple for the Chinese to savour gold while foreign athletes languish in jail – or is that too harsh?
American “dry foot laws” were put to test last week when several Cubans landed on an abandoned bridge piling somewhere in the Florida Keys. They were returned to Cuba after officials determined that the piling did not constitute dry land under US policy. Cubans who reach “land” are allowed to stay and apply for refugee status; those caught off-shore get returned to Cuba. Maybe, installation of a whole lot of pilings off the coast of BC would alleviate our Chinese refugee problems?
JW
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