Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Return of the Toyota

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My 1987 Toyota MR-2 returns to Wickenburg for an oil change.

“The oil pan is damaged,” the oil change guy in Prescott said. “I can’t change the oil.”

“Can I see?” I replied.

He escorted me to the secret underground chamber where the oil change guys who do the under-the-car stuff perform their magic. Everything was covered with a thin coat of oil that slicked up the bottoms of my Keds. I looked up at the underside of my 1987 Toyota MR-2 and marveled at how old, rusty, and dirty it looked.

“There,” the oil change guy said, pointing.

Pointing was not necessary. The oil pan was clearly bashed in. The bash was at least six inches across and four inches wide and probably reduced my total oil capacity by a pint. I was lucky it hadn’t bashed about two inches farther back, where it would have bashed off the drain bolt. Or that the rock that had done the damage hadn’t bashed right through the metal.

I pulled out my digital camera and tried to take a picture, but the battery was dead. Figures. How often do I get a chance to photograph the underside of one of my cars?

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to get the plug back in,” the oil change guy explained. “Sorry.”

We climbed up into the garage and he pulled the car back out into the Prescott sunshine. He took out the paper floor mat and plastic seat cover and left the car there for me to take away.

I went for a second opinion, pretending I didn’t know anything about the bashed in oil pan. A few minutes after they pulled the car into the garage, the shop manager came out looking upset. “I hate to break this to you,” he started.

“My oil pan is bashed in,” I told him.

“You know?”

“Sure.”

“Well, we can’t change the oil.”

“Because you’re afraid you won’t be able to get the plug back in,” I finished for him.

He looked stunned. I was a mind reader.

I drove off, now just about out of time. I’d gone up to Prescott to drop off my helicopter for service and had spent the day shopping, filling the Toyota’s passenger seat with all kinds of things. The oil change was my last task of the day. It had been over a year and 1,000 miles since I last had the oil changed and I didn’t want the car to feel as if I was totally neglecting it. (I got it washed last time I drove it, two months ago.) But no one would change the oil and now it was time to go back to get Zero-Mike-Lima.

I’d have to get the oil pan fixed. I wasn’t about to do that in Prescott. I’d bring it back to Wickenburg to the only mechanic the MR-2 loves: Dan.

But not that day.

I offloaded my purchases at the airport and stuffed them into Zero-Mike-Lima, then flew home.

This past weekend, Mike and I drove up to Howard Mesa to drop off our camper. We were supposed to have our shed delivered (again) but the holiday weekend made that impossible, so it was postponed (again). But on the way home, we had to drive right past Prescott Airport, where the MR-2 lives. Mike dropped me off and I hopped into the MR-2.

“Surprise!” I told it, as I removed the sunshades.

As usual, it started right up. I love that car.

We had dinner at a new Asian fusion restaurant in Prescott that I can’t recommend. The scores, based on a scale of 1 to 10, are as follows: Atmosphere/Decor: 8; Service: 3; Food Quality: 4; Value for Dollar: 5. We can cross that one off our list.

Then we drove home.

Now there are two ways to get from Prescott to Wickenburg. We call them the curvy way (White Spar Road – route 89) and the straighter way (Iron Springs Road). Mike wanted to go the straighter way, but we were in town, closer to get to the curvy way. It would have taken 15-20 minutes just to get to the other side of town. So I voted for the curvy way, presented my logic, and won. I led the way.

Now the Toyota may be 18-1/2 years old and it may have 132,000 miles on it and it may also have its original clutch, but it was born a sports car and it hasn’t forgotten how sports cars are supposed to perform on curvy roads. And I certainly haven’t forgotten how to make that baby perform. We took off on White Spar Road, settled into second gear, and screamed around every one of the curves. Fortunately, there was no one in front of me — I hate passing on double yellows (just kidding, officer!) — so there was no real reason to use the brakes. Just keep those RPMs up and let the engine do all the work. I had a blast. And I beat Mike to Wilhoit — fifteen miles down that curvy road — by about three minutes.

God, I love that car.

I waited at the side of the road in Wilhoit for him, then let him pull out in front of me to set the pace for the straight part of the drive. He set a quick pace: about 75 mph. The MR-2 handled it nicely. I’m glad he kept it below 80, because I’ve noticed a serious increase in fuel consumption when the speedometer needle moves past that 12:00 position on the dial. (Yes, 80 mph is straight up on that car’s dash.) The stereo, which had been tuned into a classic rock station based in Prescott, stopped picking up a signal, but the Scan feature locked in on a Dewey/Humbolt-based station that was playing late 1970s disco. I’m talking about We Are Family, Kung-Fu Fighting, Copacabana, and other big AM-radio hits from my early college days, when my tastes in music were somewhat confused by the Top-40 thing and my job at a retail clothing store. Although the stereo’s two back speakers are dead and I have them turned off, I still cranked up the volume so I could reminisce while driving 75 mph into a high desert sunset.

For the record: I don’t like disco. But listening to it for short lengths of time does bring me back to a simpler time of life, when I only had one car to worry about (a 1970 Volkswagen Beetle that would never be reliable) and having $20 in my pocket made me feel rich.

I started smelling something weird at Kirkland Junction. Engine smell. Now the MR-2’s engine is behind the passenger cabin — it’s a mid-engine car — so I don’t usually smell the car’s engine problems. I figured it was the car in front of me, which was Mike’s truck. I got a little worried about it, but there didn’t seem to be a problem because he was keeping up his pace, probably listening to some blues music as loudly as I was listening to disco on crummy speakers.

On one of my glances in the rearview mirror, I noticed some brown splashed on my back window. Shit. My MR-2 was bleeding.

I checked my gauges. Everything was fine. But the smell was still there and there was definitely some kind of fluid splashing up from the engine compartment’s vent onto my back window.

I flashed my lights at Mike’s tail end. He was grooving with the blues band and didn’t see me. I slowed down. I wondered if my cell phone would work up there. Then I came around a bend and saw that Mike had also slowed down. He started to speed up, but I flashed him again and pulled over. I came to a stop behind him on the shoulder and turned on my 4-ways.

“My car is bleeding,” I told him, stepping out. “I’m afraid that if I shut off the engine it won’t start.”

“Pop the engine lid.”

I did as he instructed.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Turn it off.”

I turned it off. “What is it?”

“It looks like those guys who were going to do the oil change didn’t screw the cap on tight,” he told me.

The engine had been spitting oil out the filler cap, probably for the past five or ten miles. There was oil all over the top of the engine.

Fortunately, the cap had wedged itself on top of the engine. He got a paper towel from his truck and came back to the car, then pulled out the cap and screwed it on tight. Then he closed the lid.

“Start it up.”

I started it.

“How’s your oil pressure?”

“Low, I told him. “But it wasn’t low when I was driving.”

“Rev it up.”

I revved. The pressure needle climbed.

“It should be okay,” he said. “Keep an eye on it. And keep your RPMs down.”

We continued on our way. He kept his speed down to just around the speed limit. My oil pressure looked good. The radio station switched from disco to 50s rock. Ick.

I left the Toyota in the parking lot next to Dan’s place. Dan has a gate at his place that he locks at night.

Let me tell you about Dan.

Dan used to run a car fix-it place in Wickenburg called Dan’s Automotive. Mike and I took all our cars to him. He’s always been able to fix them and he doesn’t charge an arm and a leg. More than once I went to him with a stupid little problem when Mike was away — the kind of thing where someone knowledgeable about cars will just look at or listen to, adjust one thing, and the problem goes away — and he worked his magic on it without charging me a dime. He’s a laid back kind of guy, the kind of guy that Mike and I can deal with.

Then Dan sold the place to someone else.

I won’t mention names because I don’t have anything nice to say about the buyer. I continued to bring my cars to him. The Toyota was first. I had a nasty vibration at around 55 miles per hour that couldn’t be fixed with a tire balancing. He did something to it, and it seemed to be better. Then he asked if I’d ever had the timing belt replaced. The car had over 120,000 miles on it and I had to say no. He told me that the belt could go at any time and then it would be a costly repair. Changing it now could save money down the road. I bit and told him to change it. I also asked him to fix my air conditioner, which hadn’t worked right in about eight years. Four hundred plus dollars later, I got the car back. The air conditioning worked. But the car didn’t drive right. It had no power at all until I got to about 4800 RPM. Then the power kicked in. It was very noticeable in the lower gears. I brought the car back to him and told him about the problem. He had it for a few days and claimed to have fixed it. But he didn’t. The car now drove like shit and I was heartbroken.

I took it back up to Prescott. Every time I flew up to Prescott and drove the car, my heart ached. It had always been a sporty thing, one that was such a pleasure to drive. Now it drove worse than the VW Bug I’d had in college. And when I had a passenger on board, the added weight made things even worse.

To further add insult to injury, the air conditioner didn’t work very well, either.

Then we discovered that Dan had taken over the car fix-it place across the street from his old place. The guy he’d sold Dan’s to was not only a poor mechanic, but he was a poor businessman. He didn’t include a Covenant Not to Compete in the purchase agreement for Dan’s. Now Dan was back in business.

I brought the Toyota back down from Prescott to Dan at his new place and told him my sad story. “It’s breaking my heart every time I drive it,” I told him. “Please, please look at it and see what you can do.”

He did better than that. He fixed it. It appears that the timing belt was off by two notches. He set it the way it should be and the car was back to its fun-loving, tire-screeching, curve-blasting self. Woo-hoo!

So it was to this wrench-wielding hero that I brought the Toyota. I stopped in this morning to tell him why it was there.

“You know my Toyota loves you, don’t you?” I began.

He just smiled at me, probably wondering how such a wacko could be left roaming the streets.

“I tried to get the oil changed,” I said, “But they told me the oil pan was bashed in.”

“It’s been bashed in for a few years,” he told me. “You just have to work a little with the plug to get it back in.”

“Well, then can you just change the oil? And give it a look-over to make sure there’s nothing else wrong with it?”

“Sure.”

We talked a little about “restoring” it. It’s a kind of dream I have. Fixing it up so it looks like new. After all, it’ll be a classic car in just another six years. He was very non-commital, probably because he was wondering how such a wacko could be left roaming the streets.

“No rush,” I told him. “I’d like to have it back by Friday. It’s spending the summer in Williams.”

He promised to have it finished by then.

Now I’m thinking about the family photo I want to take: all my red cars and my red helicopter, together on the ramp at Wickenburg.

I’d better call the detailers. The Toyota and Jeep can really use a good cleaning.

As for the Toyota’s air conditioning, it doesn’t work at all anymore and probably never will.

June 3 Update: Apparently, the oil pan’s condition is worse than Dan thought. (I guess I bashed it a few more times since Dan last saw it.) He had to order a new oil pan from Toyota. Special order — can you imagine? So the Toyota will have at least one shiny part this summer. And this will be a costly oil change. Guess I won’t be driving it to my place on Howard Mesa anymore.

Where Would YOU Rather Be?

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A quick comparison of temperatures.

I’m a Mac OS X 10.4 user. Dashboard, a new feature of the operating system, enables me to display, with a push of a key, “widgets” that look up information on the ‘Net. I’m a weather nut, so I have the Weather widgets set up to display when I press the F12 key to display Dashboard.

Here’s what two of my Weather widgets look like right now: Now can you see why I prefer to spend my summer at Howard Mesa, just 35 miles south of the Grand Canyon, than in Wickenburg?

Weather

It’s 103°F. In the shade.

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The “indoor season” begins in Wickenburg.

In most places, winter is the “indoor season,” the time of year when you want to spend most of your time indoors. But not in Arizona’s Sonoran desert.

I remember my first New Year’s Day in Arizona, back in 1997. I’d gone “down the hill” from Wickenburg to a K-Mart in Glendale to buy a pair of cheap bar stools for the apartment I was living in. I wore a T-shirt that day without a jacket and wasn’t the least bit cold. This is great, I remember thinking, conjuring images of the folks back home.

Cold winters were the reason I left New Jersey all those years ago.

Will hot summers be the reason I leave Arizona?

It’s a dry heat. Sure. But it’s still heat. 103.8°F (that’s about 40°C for you metric folks out there) at 2:35 in the afternoon is killer, no matter how dry it is.

And — for Pete’s sake! — it’s still only May.

I don’t remember the heat affecting me this badly years ago. Back in 1997, in May, we were just starting our house hunt. We’d finally sold our home in New Jersey early in the month and Mike and Spot (now deceased) had joined me in Wickenburg. The other half of our belonging arrived by moving van and we rented a second apartment in the Palm Drive complex to store it and set up our offices. Then we started making the rounds with Connie, our Realtor, who spent the entire summer showing us every home available for sale, no matter how poorly it matched our list of requirements.

I still remember walking up driveways and walkways and around houses in the summer heat, getting more and more depressed with every outing, but not really feeling the heat. Was that a mild summer? Or had my thin blood welcomed the warmth after so many fickle East Coast summers?

To give you an idea of the mindset of people where we’d come from, when we told people back home that we’d bought a new house, their first question was, “Does it have air conditioning?”

What the hell do you think? I felt like replying. Do you think we’re idiots? That we’d buy a brand new house without air conditioning in a town where summer temperatures routinely get into the triple digits?

Phoenix temperatures make big news in New York. New Yorkers love to hear about how hot it is in the summer here, the same way people in Arizona love to hear about how cold and miserable it is in New York in January. Of course, I’ll take a 103.8°F on a May day in Wickenburg long before I take an 80/80 day in New York. (That’s 80°F with 80% humidity.) A typical forecast on a summer day in New York would be the “3 H’s” — that’s hazy, hot, and humid. Ick.

But if that first summer wasn’t bad, things changed. It seemed as if every summer became hotter than the one before it. We bought blinds for the three big 8 x 4 windows on our second floor and they stayed closed every morning (and most of the afternoon) from equinox to equinox, just to give our air conditioning units a fair chance at keeping up. I made the fatal error of leaving my purse on the dashboard of my car one day while it was parked in the driveway. My credit cards, slipped into their individual slots in my wallet, melted flat and would no longer make an impression at the store. Thank heaven the magnetic stripe still worked.

Two years ago, it was unbearable to me. That’s when I realized that any outdoor activity had to be completed by 8 AM (at the latest) and the rest of the day had to be spent in air-conditioned comfort. Air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned office to air conditioned car to air conditioned store to air conditioned car to air conditioned house. Get the idea? The windows go back on the Jeep in mid May and it’s sealed up tight, just so the air conditioning worked better. Better yet, don’t go out at all. After all, it takes at least ten minutes for the air conditioning to cool down a hot vehicle. And heaven help you if you have black leather seats or fail to shade the steering wheel when you run into the grocery store.

Last summer, I had some relief. I worked as a pilot up at the Grand Canyon. My schedule was 7 days on and 7 days off, although I normally worked a 6 on/8 off schedule. I lived at our Howard Mesa property while working. It’s about 15 miles north of Williams (as the helicopter flies) at an elevation of 6700 feet. The heliport at the Canyon was at 6300 feet. High altitudes make a big difference. I don’t think I experienced a day above 95°F while I was up there. And when I came home for my week off, I spent every day in my office, cranking out the books that pay the bills. The summer seemed to fly by (no pun intended).

This summer, I’m going back to Howard Mesa. I have one more book to write and it’s due on June 15. With luck, by June 20, I’ll be up there with my camper and my horses and my bird and my helicopter. I have a big project to work on this summer — converting a 12 x 20 shed to a cabin with a bathroom and kitchen — and a book project to work on in the evenings. I think this is going to be a killer summer and there’s no air conditioning at Howard Mesa, but I think (and hope) I’ll be able to deal with it for the two and half months I plan to be away.

I’ll cheat Wickenburg’s indoor season the right way this year, using the same cop-out the snowbirds use: I’ll just leave town.

The Coyotes are Howling

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And other items of interest.

It’s just after 6 AM on a Tuesday morning. This time of year, we wake up when it gets light. Alex is like an alarm clock and he starts singing and whistling when the room gets light enough to see. I know I could just throw a blanket over his cage and keep him quiet until we’re ready to wake up, but these days, we still wake up before him at least two or three days a week.

Off in the near distance — perhaps over by Rancho de los Caballeros — a bunch of coyotes are singing their coyote songs. I once tried to research why coyotes howl. A few articles on the Web addressed the subject, but none were conclusive. The coyote song is one of the things I like about living in the desert.

Took a break to go down and feed the horses. It’s getting hot these days — in the 90s every day — and the fly situation down there is getting bad. This year, I’m trying a new fly control system. Called Fly Predators, they’re tiny little “non-nuisance” flies that eat “nuisance” fly larvae. The idea is that you spread these little flies around where the annoying flies lay their eggs — primarily on horse manure — and they eat the eggs. Supposedly, if you have enough of the little buggers, they’ll eat just about all the fly eggs, thus killing the fly population before it grows.

I’m not sure if its working. In fact, I suspect that it isn’t. Maybe I started too late. Or maybe it’s all a lot of bull. I asked a few people about their experiences with this solution and they all had good things to say. It’s costly — about $120 per season — but that’s the same amount we’d spend if we had to spray down the horses every day. Anyway, I spread my monthly batch of fly predators this morning. If I don’t see results within a few weeks, I’m going to assume it just doesn’t work. The horses like it a lot better at Howard Mesa. The flies haven’t taken hold there yet and, with luck, they won’t. No need for fly masks and the boys have 40 acres to roam around and graze. Last weekend we took them to Groom Creek Horse Camp in the Prescott National Forest. What a wonderful place. Nice, drive-thru campsites designed for people with horses. Two of the sites even had corrals (rather than rope ties) and we were lucky enough to get one of them. We did a 9-mile loop ride to the top of Spruce Mountain on Saturday and a 7-mile loop ride on the Wolf Creek Trail on Sunday. We were part of a group of perhaps 30 people/horses, although we didn’t all ride together each day.

Prescott is a nice place. At an elevation of about 5000 feet, it gets pretty cold in the winter and stays cool in the summer. Lots of recreation, parks, and shopping. Sun and shade. The other day, Vicki, the woman who’d organized the Groom Creek trip asked me where we lived.

“Wickenburg,” I told her.

“Wickenburg?” she repeated, obviously surprised. “But you’re too young to live in Wickenburg.”

“Exactly.”

I could go into detail here about how much this little conversation bugged me, especially since my Georgetown trip two weeks ago convinced me that I was living in the wrong place. But I’ll save that for another blog entry.

About a year ago, Mike and I spent some time with a Realtor, looking at homes in the Prescott area. It’s tough for us because our house is nearly paid for and neither of us wanted to walk into a big new mortgage. I couldn’t believe the dumps this woman was showing us — all above our price range. (Do Realtors ever listen?) What a waste of time. Then Mike got a job in Phoenix and we decided that the drive from Prescott would just be too darn long for him.

Sadly, there’s no chance of him ever getting a decent paying job in Wickenburg. Fortunately, I can work anywhere and still make the same living. But I do wish I lived somewhere where my helicopter tour and charter business would do better. It’s tough doing business in a town where so few people want to spend money. I guess that’s why so many of the businesses that start in Wickenburg fail within the first year. And why there are so many empty storefronts in town.

Other items of interest include the irony of a humane mouse trap. If you’ve been reading these blogs, you know that I use a humane mouse trap to catch mice and set them free far away from where I caught them. Last summer, I even took two mice for helicopter rides — you can find the blog entry about that somewhere on this site. Well, last week I noticed that a mouse was building a nest in the trunk of my Honda S2000. I love that car — it’s the last sports car I’ll ever buy — and I’m doing my best to make sure it lasts 20 or 30 years. Having a mouse use insulation beyond the trunk compartment to build himself a cozy home in the trunk was not desirable. So before we went away to Groom Creek, I set up the trap with a bit of peanut butter and closed it in the trunk. When I got home on Sunday, a tiny mouse was trapped inside, waiting to be set free.

I decided to drive him up the road and let him out at some bushes away from all the neighbor’s homes (and my garage). I parked alongside of the road, opened my door, opened the trap, and shook the little bugger out. He landed on the ground, but instead of running into the bushes, he ran under my Jeep. I figured: how stupid can the mouse be? He must have run across the road. He couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to hide behind one of my tires. Right? Wrong. I pulled back very slowly, giving him every opportunity to run away. But he must have been really dumb, because when I’d backed up about 10 feet, I saw his crushed body on the road.

Damn.

But you can’t say I didn’t try. Next time, I’ll get out of the car and drop the mouse in a clump of bushes.

Mike’s cousin Rick said I probably did the mouse a favor anyway. He’s right. It’s also snake season — there was a good sized rattler on my driveway on Sunday afternoon — and snakes eat mice. At least this mouse’s death was quick and painless.

We don’t kill the snakes unless they become a nuisance around the house. Don’t want the dog getting bitten. The snakes keep the mice away. One year, we had a bad mouse problem in the shed. Droppings really did a number on one of Mike’s old saddles and I had a saddle blanket ruined. The next year, a rattlesnake moved in under the shed. I’d see him in the corner of the chicken yard in the morning, coiled up, resting. The chickens didn’t bother him and he didn’t bother them. But there were no mice that year, either.

It’s almost 7 AM. Time to get dressed and take Alex to work. He’s chattering away as I type this. “Howdy partner!” That’s his latest vocabulary phrase and he really likes to say it. “Come on Jack, go outside.” I think he orders the dog around more than we do. The dog, of course, ignores him.

Wickenburg Enters the Information Age and Alex the Bird Gets a Job

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I enjoy wireless Internet access while sipping chai latte at an outdoor cafe. And yes, I am in Wickenburg.

Can you believe it?

Alex at WorkThe folks at the Old Nursery Coffee Company here in Wickenburg have added free wireless Internet access. So now I’m sitting at a table in the shade, watching the world go by and sniffing the wonderful aroma of orange blossoms while I type this blog. Today is also the day I brought Alex to start his “day job.” Alex’s old cage has been sitting out on our back patio, getting ruined by the afternoon sun, for about a year. The coffee shop here has a nice roof overhang by the front door that’s perfect for Alex’s cage. So I asked Heather if Alex could spend the day here. She liked the idea. Today’s the first day that I’m not working hard on a book (I finished my Tiger book on Friday) so I decided to bring Alex and his cage today. It took me about a half hour to get his cage out of Mike’s pickup and set up on the patio. Now he’s climbing around in there, talking now and then (“Hi Goober”). He wasn’t happy to go into the old cage, but I think he’ll be okay. He seems to be settling in. I’ve been here with him for about an hour, but when I finish typing this and uploading it to its site, I’ll go do some errands and check back in a while.

But it’ll be hard to finish up. It’s quite pleasant here in the shade. Can’t think of a nicer place to read my e-mail.