Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

There’s Hope for Wickenburg

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Prop 421 does not pass. And life goes on.

Proposition 421 was on this year’s ballot in Wickenburg. It was strongly supported by a number of the town’s “heavy hitters,” including the mayor (who didn’t identify himself as mayor on promotional material), newspaper publisher, chamber of commerce, and a hodgepodge of the town’s politicians. Their yellow “Vote Yes” signs were all over town. And mysteriously, for a few weeks, all the “Vote No” signs disappeared on a nightly basis. As a result, the Prop 421 supporters looked strong and gave the illusion that their side of the argument was right. I suspected that the majority of Wickenburg voters would not look deeply into the issue and would vote based on the number of signs they saw. In that case, Prop 421 would pass.

If you’re wondering what Prop 421 is (or was), it basically gave a developer the right to build high-density housing in an area that wasn’t zoned for it. The houses/condos would be “clustered” together in an area suitable for building and the unsuitable areas would be left as open land, like a park. Of course, those unsuitable areas were mostly in a wash, so building there wasn’t possible and any parklike features that were added — bike paths, benches, lighting, etc. — could be washed away in a flood. The carrot that was being dangled (to borrow the appropriate phrase from a friend of mine) was an additional nine holes added to the Country Club’s nine-hole golf course.

Prop 421’s supporters included:
1) Anyone who stood to make money on the additional housing. Think about it a bit and you might be able to figure out who (other than the developer) that might be, especially when you consider how much “under-the-table”‘ dealings go on in a small town.
2) Country club residents whose land did not border the land to be developed. These people were hypnotized by the artist’s renderings provided by the developer and saw themselves living on a Scottsdale-like development.
3) Business owners who think that adding more homes means adding more potential customers.

The sad part of all this is that the kinds of homes they were proposing would not be the kinds of homes occupied year-round by people who support Wickenburg’s economy. I’m talking about the people who live and work here, who run businesses, shop locally, and have a stake in the community. Instead, these condos (like most other condos/apartments in town) would appeal to the same seasonal residents that flood the town every winter for four months out of the year. These are the same people who make weekly trips to the Wal-Mart store in Surprise and, while they’re down there, buy gas, groceries, and anything else they need to make themselves more comfortable in their winter homes. In April, they disappear, leaving Wickenburg a virtual ghost town for the summer months. Some businesses that started up in the autumn, hoping to bring in enough revenue to get them through the summer months, dry up and blow away by July.

My views on the seasonal economy of Wickenburg are stated in many places, so I won’t go into it any further here.

Prop 421’s opposition included:
1) The people who live in the Country Club area whose views would be spoiled by the “cluster housing” planned for their backyards.
2) The people who realized that additional “affordable housing” in a town that’s growth is already almost out of control would only bring their own property values down. I admit that I’m one of these people. I think Wickenburg has enough housing, evidenced by the number of “for sale” signs in front of homes all over town.
3) The people who like Wickenburg the way it is and don’t want to see a huge influx of residents, all at once. That’s me, too. I’ve lived in a tightly packed community most of my life and it isn’t something I want ever again. That’s why I moved to Wickenburg.

“You can’t stop progress,” is something I heard at a Bypass meeting a long time ago. That might be true, but I think you can slow it down. Wickenburg is having growing pains; it might be best to slow the residential growth until the commercial growth catches up.

Of course, the town can’t be too happy about Prop 421’s failure. They were looking forward to the impact fees and additional property taxes from the new homes. But perhaps the town’s governing body and management can now get down to what they really need to do: help encourage business growth in Wickenburg. It’ll take some work, but isn’t that what they’re supposed to be doing?

Wickenburg has a nice little industrial park near the airport with a few businesses based there. How about getting a few more of those businesses in there? The kind of business a man (or woman) can build a career at, and can earn enough money to support a family. Think of all the year-round residents Wickenburg could attract if it had some good employers in town! The Meadows and Remuda Ranch make up a huge part of the town’s year-round economy, providing jobs for many people. But why can’t there be other employers like them? Why should jobs be limited to low-paying retail jobs and seasonal positions that can’t provide a year-round income? Why can’t Wickenburg attract more employers that offer professional jobs and careers? Why isn’t the town’s government doing something to get quality businesses in here? Why do they insist on trying to build revenues by adding homes and low-class businesses (like the newest discount store under construction on 93) that pay low-income wages? The town wouldn’t need so much cheap housing if it had more better-paying jobs.

I’m doing my part. Last month, I began expanding wickenburg-az.com to provide more coverage of local businesses, in an attempt to get people to come to and shop in Wickenburg. The site gets about 1,000 page hits a day, which really isn’t much, but it’s something. My recent article about Buckshot Babe’s got a ton of positive responses via e-mail from Wickenburg residents and visitors, so I must be on the right track.

Yesterday, I met with a new organization called Women Entrepreneurs (WE). These women, who mostly run home-based businesses, are networking to support each other and provide low-cost marketing opportunities. There was a lot of Chamber-bashing at the meeting yesterday (which isn’t anything new in this town) and plenty of good ideas for getting the word out about our businesses. I’m going to help these folks any way I can because they’re the people that keep Wickenburg alive — the people who live here year-round and keep the dollars flowing in town.

But when is the town’s government going to see it that way?

A Beautiful Day for Flying…or a Horseback Ride

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We did the ride.

We were supposed to go flying. Mike had clearly stated the day before that he was going flying on Sunday. We debated about where to go. I’m always interested in the $100 hamburger (or egg sandwich) — you know, flying into an airport with a restaurant (or nearby restaurant) and getting a bite to eat before flying home.

“How about Sedona?” I suggested.

“On a Sunday?” he said. “That place is a zoo on Sundays.”

“How about Winslow? We can go to that historic hotel.” I couldn’t remember the name of the place, but he knew what I was talking about.

He wasn’t interested. I think it was farther away than he’d wanted to go.

“Prescott? We have a car there.” My ancient but loyal Toyota is back at Prescott Airport, waiting to serve me the next time I fly in.

“Yeah,” he said as he tried to think of an excuse not to go to Prescott.

I got the idea and stopped making suggestions. If I were flying, I’d have no trouble coming up with a destination. Heck, who needs a destination anyway? Just hop in the helicopter and follow the birds. Or the cows. Or whatever you feel like following. Be surprised where you end up. But I couldn’t fly. The helicopter, although still technically mine, had been sold and paid for. I’d be flying it on Monday to its new owner. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t really mine anymore and I shouldn’t fly it unless I had to.

That was yesterday. Today, the day we were supposed to go flying, we didn’t even talk about flying. I think he’d changed his mind about it. He claimed he felt lazy, like just taking it easy. (We all know how much hard work flying an airplane 30 minutes to another airport can be.) “Let’s go for a horseback ride,” he said not long after our 10:00 AM lunch.

An hour later, we were saddled up and riding out. We rode down the wash (Cemetery Wash, which runs past our house — when it runs) and turned right into the slot canyon near Ocotillo. We passed some women out on their horses with three red dogs and kept going.

It was a nice ride. The air was cool but the sun was strong. The combination made for comfortable riding conditions. I was fine in my light cotton pants and long-sleeved cotton henley. I didn’t bother with a hat.

My horse even behaved for most of the ride. He walked fast, which is quite unusual for him on the way out. He didn’t get spooked by anything and didn’t try to turn around more than four or five times. But when we reached the first gate and he realized we were going through it, he started getting cranky.

My horses can count gates. They know that every time we go through a gate on the way out, it means the ride will be at least 30 minutes longer. A one-gate ride can be about an hour. But add a gate and you add 30-60 minutes.

We only went through one gate on the way out. And we didn’t take the longest trail we could have. But we were still out over 2 hours.

We rode in the state or BLM land out behind my home, following the same trails the wranglers at Rancho de los Caballeros use. The trails wind through the Sonoran desert, past saguaro, cholla, barrel, and prickly pear cactus, around mesquite and palo verde trees and creosote bushes, and over all kinds of rocks. There are numerous intersections and several gates. The trails climb high over peaks and along ridges and sink low into washes and canyons.

We know the trails very well, and have our own names for them. For example, today we rode down the wash to the Slot Canyon Trail then took that through the gate at the end to Deer Valley Trail (named because we used to see deer there all the time). I made a wrong turn at a fork in Deer Valley and that brought us prematurely to the Ridge Ride Trail. (Shortened the ride by about 15 minutes.) We went a short distance on the Ridge Ride and stopped at a high point to admire the view. From up there, you can clearly see Los Cab and its golf course, as well as the entire town of Wickenburg spread out to the northeast. We gave our horses a scare when we started back the way we’d come, then took the Red Rock Trail back down to Cemetery Wash. We followed a trail through the wash through a gate near Los Cab to the Golf Course Trail, which goes past the golf course before heading back toward our house. We came through another gate near our neighbor’s house and rode the remaining 1/4 mile home.

Of course these are just OUR names for the trails. The Los Cab wranglers have different names for them, but since the trails aren’t mapped, they don’t really have names.

Why two gates on the way back and only one on the way out? There’s no gate in the slot canyon. The fence that was there was washed away long ago.

It was a nice ride, a nice time out. It was good to get my fat horse some exercise.

And since I won’t have anything to fly for the next month or so, I’ll probably be doing a lot of horseback riding again.

I Stand Corrected

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He wasn’t wasting my time after all.

On Saturday, I showed my helicopter to someone who’d flown up from Mesa to see it. He spent 90 minutes looking at it, taking pictures of it, and asking me questions about it. Then he said he wasn’t sure if buying a helicopter with only five years left on the main rotor blades was a good idea. And he left.

I thought he’d just wasted 90 minutes of my day.

But on Monday morning, he called. He made me a low offer, which I turned down. I told him what I’d take and he said okay. So I guess it wasn’t a waste of time after all.

I asked him for a $2,000 earnest deposit and he said he’d take care of it on Wednesday. He was going to Vegas on Tuesday. I worried that he’d gamble away the money he had for the helicopter. We settled on a closing date on or before November 8.

On Wednesday, he called again. He wanted to know what else had to be done for the sale to be finished. I told him I thought the escrow agent had everything he needed. He said, “Then why don’t I just send you all the money? It saves me $20 on wire transfer fees.”

Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

So he sent all the money yesterday and I FedExed my official, signed bill of sale to the escrow agent. Today, Thursday, the money should be transferred to my lender to pay off my loan and to my bank account, where it’ll sit for five to six weeks, waiting for more money to join it. I just hope that other money shows up.

I’ll deliver Three-Niner-Lima to its new owner sometime soon — probably this coming weekend.

I’m sad. I’ll miss Three-Niner-Lima. We had some great times together. But I keep reminding myself that a better ship is on its way. And we’ll be good friends, too.

Sleep Cycles

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The importance of an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

Early Saturday morning, around 1:30 AM, a car came down the road that leads to my house and two others. I know this because my dog decided it was worth waking me up about. He started with a low growl and wound up to full barking mode. It took a short while to calm him down, but by that time, I was wide awake.

The car went to my neighbor’s house.

I lay in bed, wide awake, for about an hour while Mike snoozed peacefully beside me. Even the dog had gone back to sleep at the foot of the bed. I got up, went into the next room, and spent about an hour reading. Feeling sufficiently bored with that (believe it or not, I’m reading a writing style guide called Lapsing into a Comma: A Crumudgeon’s Guide to the Many Things That can Go Wrong in Print and how to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh; it’s about as entertaining as a grammar book can get), I tried to go back to sleep. After about another hour lying awake in bed, I finally dozed off. That was shortly after 4 AM. By 5:30 AM, I was awake again, ready to start my day.

With a total of about five hours of sleep.

I had a lot of things to do. After feeding the horses with Mike, we gathered up all the trimmings our landscaping guy had left in front of the house and dumped them in our landscape trimmings dumping area in a corner of the property. Its the same place we occasionally dump horse manure, so it turns into a nice compost pile. After a few years, the wash flows big and takes away all that nice soil we created, usually a month or two before we’re ready to use it in the garden. That job took two trips in the pickup. It wouldn’t have been so difficult if the trimmings didn’t include agave leaves and cactus pads.

Then I had to rush over to the airport to wash my helicopter. Someone was coming to see it at 9:30 and I wanted to make sure it looked clean. I got wet while I was doing it — that happens when you wash things over your head — but it looked great when I was done. Come to think of it, it really didn’t look bad before I started, either. Then I blew 90 minutes with the potential buyer, answering his questions and keeping him company while he filled a 128 MB smart card with photographs of every inch of my ship. Jeepers. When I left, he was trying to figure out how to get gas in his homebuilt helicopter (now THAT’S a brave man!) without moving it to the fuel island.

Alex the BirdBy that time, Mike was gone on a four-day trip to New Jersey. Alex the Bird had been picking his feathers lately and I decided to take him down to the bird stores to get him out of the house and to pick up some new toys and food for him. Sadly (but not surprisingly), Wickenburg doesn’t offer much in the way of caged bird supplies. Alex is an African Grey parrot and he eats Harrison’s bird food, which isn’t even sold in Petco/Petsmart. So a drive down to Surprise wasn’t going to do it. Instead, I went to BirdWorld on Greenway and 39th(?) Ave and JD Birds, etc. on Bell near I-17. These places have everything a bird owner could want or need. I went to both because I hadn’t been to BirdWorld for a while and because JD Birds has a great collection of cheap, chewable toys. Alex came in with me and I let him stand on my shoulder for much of the time in BirdWorld. He didn’t really like shopping; he was very nervous and wouldn’t talk to anyone in the store. I spent about $150, which should last about 6 months. Among my purchases were some long pieces of hardwood, which I’ll use to build a tabletop stand for Alex. The one he has is stupid and I wasn’t about to dish out $169 for one that was marginally less stupid.

I hopped on the 101 westbound and made stops at Petco (for fish food) and A.J.’s Fine Food (for Maria food). If you’ve never been to A.J.’s and you like to eat, you owe it to yourself to stop in. I went because they have a sushi bar and will make sushi for you and pack it to go. While the sushi chef did his thing, I swept around the store, picking up fresh mozzarella balls, gourmet frozen tamales (not anything like the lady who sells them in front of the Wickenburg post office makes), and eggs (okay, so I could have gotten them in Wickenburg, but why make two stops?). I also stopped by the butcher counter, which is A.J.’s best feature. That’s where I bought freshly made Thai peanut yakitori skewers and some barbeque pork. The butcher only charged me for one of the skewers because I had to wait more than three minutes for him to see me (he thought I was with someone else standing there). I told him that was a good thing, because I probably could only afford one of them anyway. (A.J.’s ain’t cheap.) I admired the fresh meat and beautiful fresh seafood on my way back to the sushi bar to pick up my order. After leaving a small fortune at the checkout counter, I actually made it out the door before the magnetic pull of the bakery counter pulled me right back in. The bakery counter is A.J.’s best feature. (Oh, did I already say that about the butcher counter? Well, one of them is.) I took it easy (and cheap) by ordering a cream cheese brownie and a pecan pie square. Their cakes, however, are beautiful. They also cost about $50 each. Probably worth it, but I’m not supposed to be eating any of this stuff anyway.

From there, Alex and I went home. I had a wonderful sushi dinner and chardonnay (sadly, a Trader Joe’s purchase from another journey south, although I do buy most of my wine in Wickenburg) while surfing the Web on my laptop. I spent quite a bit of time at Michael Moore’s site. A lot of interesting reading there this political season. Then I fed the horses and went upstairs to read.

Right around this time — 7 PM or so — the lack of sleep from the night before was starting to get to me. I literally could not stay awake. (Okay, so maybe that grammar book has something to do with it.) So I put out the light at 7:30 or so and immediately passed out.

And woke up at 3:30 AM, refreshed and ready to start my day.

This has happened to me before and it’s not fun. First of all, there’s not much you can do at 3:30 in the morning. Sure, you can have coffee and breakfast. But you can’t call anyone and you can’t do anything outside because it’s still dark. If you live with someone else, you can’t even make noise in the house because you might wake him up. (Or, in my case, wake the bird up.) So what’s left? Take out the laptop and do some blogging — hence this entry. Hop in the car and go to the office — heck, I can get three hours worth of work done there before I have to come back home to feed the horses.

But waking up early isn’t the big problem. The big problem is how I’m going to feel again at 7:30 PM. Like I want to go to sleep. And if I do, what time will I be up? 3:30 AM. Or earlier.

It’s a vicious cycle, one I need to break out of today.

Two possible solutions. One is to take a nap in the middle of the day so I’m not ready for bed at 7:30 PM. The other is to force myself to stay up later, perhaps by watching a movie.

Maybe I’ll hit the video store in town for a copy of Fahrenheit 9/11.

Scams, Time-Wasters, and More

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I put my helicopter up for sale and learn that things don’t always go as smoothly as they should.

Sometime early in December, a brand-new, shiny red R44 Raven II helicopter is going to be wheeled off the assembly line at the Robinson factory in Torrance, CA. And my initials will be on its tailcone.

But before I can take delivery of this thing, I need to sell the R22 in my hangar, N7139L.

I put some ads online with Trade-A-Plane and AeroTrader on October 8. The calls and e-mails started immediately.

One of the first e-mails was from a man — we’ll call him by his initials, KG — based in the UK. According to KG, his company had discovered oil on some mountainous island and they needed a helicopter to get around. He didn’t know anything about helicopters, but mine was right at his budget. He didn’t waste any time asking typical questions. He went right into negotiation mode. We decided on a price and he said he’d be in touch when he’d arranged for shipping. For me, it was too good to be true. Way too good. But I arranged for a title/escrow agent anyway and had him get in touch with KG by fax. KG never responded. Meanwhile, other people were calling and they sounded interested. I sent KG an e-mail message and a fax, telling him that if he didn’t contact my escrow agent by noon Thursday, the deal was off. He e-mailed me before the deadline and said he’d made all his arrangements and was going to send me a certified check via DHL. The check would be for the purchase price PLUS $10,500 that I’d turn over to his shipping agent. The idea was that I’d cash the check and then make my own certified check for the $10.5K. I e-mailed him back, telling him to work through my escrow agent. I told him I would not accept delivery of a check. I didn’t give him my address.

I haven’t heard from him since and don’t expect to. It’s a scam, one that almost sucked in someone else I know for far less money. You cash the check and pay the shipping agent. Then the “certified” check you cashed bounces and you’re out the amount of money you paid to the agent.

As my friend Rod said, “I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.”

The calls asking for more info aren’t all that bad. They’re usually short and to the point. People probably dreaming about a helicopter, trying to convince themselves that this is the one. Or people who are serious buyers but want to pay about $15K less than I’m asking. They get pretty rude about that, too. “You’ll never get what you’re asking,” they say. Yeah, but I’ll get a lot more than what you’re willing to pay.

Today a time-waster came all the way up to Wickenburg to waste about 90 minutes of my time. That’s how long he spent looking at it and taking digital pictures. He now has more pictures of it than I do, and I’ve owned it for four years. At the end of his visit, he admitted that he didn’t think he should buy a helicopter with only 5 years left on the main rotor blades. Hell, he knew how much time was left before he came up to Wickenburg. Why waste half a day on the trip? I guess some people don’t have anything better to do with their time.

And then there’s the cheapskate. He makes me an offer over the phone and wants to close the deal when he comes to Wickenburg so he can fly it away. I tell him he needs to work with my escrow agent and that he’ll have to pay the escrow fee, since he’s offering $5K less than I’m asking. He tells me he doesn’t need a title search. That he’s already looked up the N-number online and knows there’s no lien. (Says it very smugly, too, like he’s so much smarter than me.) I tell him he’s wrong, there is a lien. (Silence on the other end of the phone. Seems he wasn’t as smart as he thought.) And that my escrow agent has all the payoff paperwork. And that I won’t do a deal without an escrow agent. Period. End of statement.

We’ll see if he shows up in Wickenburg anytime soon.

There are a few others in the running. One guy from Texas. Another from St. George, UT. And the flight school in Long Beach that made a low offer I already turned down.

I figure I have at least two more weeks before I have to start worrying. Near the end of November, my insurance runs out. And I need to have N7139L gone by then.