Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Wrath of the Hassayampa

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Our normally invisible river shows its ugly side.

“A house hit the bridge.”I heard this unusual comment while visiting a friend’s booth at the art fair at the library yesterday. It seemed that the Hassayampa River, which has been running for about two months now, had reached flood stage. And as usually happens to flooded rivers, it had altered its course a bit. As a result, its muddy waters had attacked Jack Burden Road, which runs along the east side of the river. A trailer park there was in serious trouble.

Mike and I walked to the bridge to have a look. There were already hundreds of people there. Although the bridge had been closed for a while so the police could determine whether the bridge had been damaged when the house hit it, it was now fully open. Cars moved slowly in both directions and people crowded the upstream side, waiting for the next house to float by.

There was no next house — at least not while we were there. But there was a lot of activity on the far side of the bridge, where Jack Burden Road was. I didn’t remember the houses being so close to the water. And I could swear there had been more trees in the area.

We ran into Ray, who was watching the festivities with his wife. Ray had been flying earlier in the day. For that matter, so had I. I’d gotten a call from a woman named Kathy who told me she needed a helicopter to “rescue” Marshall Trimble, the Arizona State Historian. Mr. Trimble was stranded at the Kay El Bar Ranch, which was cut off from the world by the Hassayampa on one side and Martinez Wash on the other. He was supposed to be the Grand Marshall of the Gold Rush Days parade they had in town that day, but when I got the call, the parade was just about over. (You’d think someone in town would have suggested me a bit sooner.) I told Kathy that Ray was already in the air and that she should call the airport and have them use the radio to talk to him. I was downtown and it would take at least 45 minutes to get back to the airport and launch.

I called her back ten minutes later to make sure she’d reached Ray. She hadn’t. And she seemed very concerned. Mr. Trimble had an engagement in Phoenix that evening and would miss it. So I arranged to have her drive me to the airport — Mike had wandered off on horseback with a friend and his truck keys. She took me in her Miata, which was even dirtier inside than my Jeep, and accompanied me while I pulled Zero-Mike-Lima out of its hangar and onto the ramp. Then she climbed aboard and I started up. While the engine warmed up, she told me stories about her days as a helicopter news reporter. Then we launched and headed northeast for the 2-minute flight to Kay El Bar.

She told me that there was a helipad a half mile west of the ranch. I’ve been flying around Wickenburg for more than four years now and I didn’t remember seeing any helipad near Kay El Bar. She also told me that Mr. Trimble would be riding a horse to the helipad. Okay. We reached the ranch and looked around. There were some people gathered near one side of a house pad — a cleared and level piece of land that is being prepared for construction. Grantham Ranch is a housing development that’s just starting to be built in that area. This particular house pad overlooked the ranch and the river. And, as we began to circle, I saw two horses heading up what would someday be a driveway. I began my descent. A few moments later, I was on the ground and two men — one of them wearing chaps — were coming toward me.

I instructed Kathy to tell them not to walk behind the helicopter. She got out while I sat at the controls with the engine idling. They loaded an overnight bag, soft briefcase, and guitar into the back of the helicopter. Then Mr. Trimble — the man without the chaps — got in and buckled up. The cowboy moved away, I spun up, and after a quick look around, took off.

Hassayampa FloodI could have hurried right back the airport, but since none of us were in any rush, I figured I’d take the opportunity to check out the river. We flew past Kay El Bar, which had water right up to its front lawn, and headed up the river. A number of ranches had some water flowing through their low spots. I watched some cattle cross a stream. But the most dramatic scene was at the narrow slow canyon north of town — the water was squeezing through the slot and had reached a depth of at least 20 feet. There would be no driving through the slot anytime soon.

I turned and headed back down the river. We swung out over where the carnival was, then headed back to the airport. I landed and shut down. I let my two passengers go back to town in the Miata, figuring I’d get a ride back with Mike. I think they had trouble getting the guitar in there. A while later, I was back at the art fair with Mike and Zero-Mike-Lima was in its hangar.

We’d had lunch there and had been walking around for at least an hour when I heard the comment about the house and we went to the bridge to check it out. I hadn’t noticed anything during my flight, but I admit that I don’t exactly study the ground while I’m flying. When we ran into Ray, I told him that we should go up and see if we could find that house. I was joking at the time, but after a while, it sounded like a good idea. A bit more interesting than the art show and carnival, anyway. So Mike and I went home to get a camera, then headed back to the airport. We pulled Zero-Mike-Lima out again and parked it on the ramp, facing into the wind. The wind was coming from the southwest and was blowing pretty good. The sky was filled with an amazing variety of clouds, from rain-dumping clouds out to the north to big, puffy clouds to the west and southwest. The ceilings were still high enough for safe flight, so I started up, warmed up, and took off.

Don from LifeNet made a radio call when he was six miles out. He was returning from the valley to Wickenburg Airport, where he’d refuel before parking at the hospital. I made a call so he’d know where I was.

“I didn’t know you could fly those in the rain,” he teased me.

“Sure I can,” I replied. “How do you think I get the bugs off the windscreen?”

“Well, I told you what’ll happen if you keep watering it.” His joke was that my R22 had turned into an R44 (which is bigger) because I’d watered it.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I figure that if I fly it in the rain enough, I might be able to turn it into a Sikorsky S92.” An S92 is a very big helicopter.

“There you go!” he laughed.

Missing HouseWe flew over town and circled the area around the bridge. Mike got some excellent photos of the damage on Jack Burden Road — which you really couldn’t see from the ground — and the carnival right across the river. Then we headed up the river so I could show Mike how full the slot canyon was. It was raining up there, so I turned around and headed back down the river, in search of what was left of the house that had gone downstream. We hit a pretty nasty downdraft just past the bridge and since neither of us liked that, I climbed an extra 200 feet. It was a good thing I did, because when we got to the Morristown area, a helicopter flew under us, going up river. I don’t even know if he saw us. I turned around and followed him upriver, keeping some distance between us. At about that time, Don from LifeNet made a call for his departure from the airport. A moment later, I heard him on the radio again, asking the helicopter over town if it was on frequency. Although I expected the helicopter ahead of me to answer, it was Ray who replied. That meant there were four helicopters operating over town at the same time.

It turned out that the helicopter who’d passed me was from Channel 5 TV. Ray told me as I neared downtown and he was heading down the river. Channel 5 wasn’t on the local airport frequency (123.0), but I found them on the helicopter air-to-air frequency (123.025). They were in a high hover just north of the bridge when I flew past to the west. We headed up Martinez Wash, past Scenic Loop and over Ray’s quarry. Then back down the river. Mike took lots of pictures. Ray moved out toward Constellation Road, Channel 5 went back to Phoenix, and we flew south to Morristown again, then west. I flew over the top of Vulture Peak, then down to Vulture Mine, where a lot of dirt bike riders were gathered for some kind of event. Finally, we headed back to the airport.

We hadn’t found the house. Chances are, it had broken into a million pieces when it hit the bridge.

After seeing the river’s fury today, I’m amazed that the Arizona Department of Transportation would even consider adding another bridge and/or a roadway on its banks. Jack Burden Road may not have been built with today’s technology, but it certainly provides a good example of how the power of water can destroy what man builds.

Waterfront Property

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This morning, I wake up to find a river running through my property.

It really came as no surprise. After all, Cemetery Wash, one of the five big drainages that feed the Hassayampa River near Wickenburg, runs right through our 2-1/2 acre lot. In fact, about half our land is actually in the wash. But the wash is wide and sandy and it takes a heck of a lot of rain to get it flowing.

Yesterday, we had a heck of a lot of rain. I don’t know the local numbers but I think it reached an inch down in Phoenix. According to the Weather Channel, one inch of rain in Phoenix is like 8 inches of rain in New Orleans or 5 inches of rain in New York. (I’m not quite sure what they mean by that, but it does sound impressive.)

So after a good soak throughout the day, Cemetery Wash was primed for flowing. All it took was the heavy downpour we had overnight. This morning, when I woke up, there was a brown river flowing through the yard. A river running so swiftly, that I could hear it from the house, even with the windows closed.

Trailer in SandOf course, now that the rain has let up to a drizzle, the water’s flow is receding. An hour has gone by since I woke up and the flow is now no more than a narrow stream of brown water. An hour ago, it would have been impossible to leave the house; my driveway was under two feet of running water in some places. Now, I could drive — or even walk — across. A few years ago, I was home alone when a big storm hit. The wash filled with water, all the way across, to a depth of at least four feet. We had some trailers parked in the wash and one of them — a 12-foot flatbed — was washed a mile downstream (see photo). It took a back-hoe to get it out of the ground. The other trailer, a 3500-lb 2-horse horse trailer, was slowly washed about 150 yards downstream. Thank heaven it didn’t get washed over on its side. As it was, we had to replace all wheel bearings in both trailers before we could use them again.

People think its crazy that we live in a house that can be cut off from the rest of town by floodwaters. What they don’t understand, however, is that the flood seldom lasts more than a few hours. Even the big flood I witnessed lasted less than 4 hours. When it was over, I drove the Suburban out into the wet sand, hooked up the horse trailer, and pulled it out to higher ground, just in case it started flowing again. Our driveway is concrete — even across the wash — and although we occasionally lose bits and pieces of it, it usually remains passable after the waters recede. And our house is at least 50 feet above wash level, on a rocky outcropping. So we’re not worried at all about losing the house.

Today, if the ceilings rise a bit (the clouds are still quite low), I’ll take Zero-Mike-Lima up for a flight over town. I’m sure plenty of washes are still flowing and the river must be quite a site to see. I love watching water flow from the helicopter. I love tracing the streams up to their sources or down to the Hassayampa. In weather like this, I can often see waterfalls from the air — waterfalls in the desert!

Rain on the Parade

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It looks like Gold Rush Days will be washed out (again).

From the national weather service:

THE FLASH FLOOD WATCH WILL BE IN EFFECT FOR MARICOPA… SOUTHERN GILA… NORTHERN PINAL… YUMA AND LA PAZ COUNTIES IN ARIZONA FROM 5 AM MST TODAY THROUGH 5 AM SATURDAY. CITIES… TOWNS… AND LOCATIONS IN THE WATCH INCLUDE THE GREATER PHOENIX METROPOLITAN AREA… WICKENBURG… SALT RIVER RECREATIONAL LAKES… GLOBE… MIAMI… YUMA… PARKER… QUARTZSITE… WENDEN… GILA BEND… AND CASA GRANDE.

(Okay, so I made Wickenburg bold. We wouldn’t get that much attention from the NWS.)

Of course, the weather forecast calls for rain all day Saturday, too.

The town seems to have terrible luck when it comes to Gold Rush Days. More often than not, the weather is foul — either rainy or cold. I don’t remember last year being bad, but then again, I didn’t join in on the Gold Rush Days activities last year. (Many locals don’t.)

The good thing about the rain is that we need it. Arizona always needs rain. Even when there are flash flood warnings, we need rain. There just isn’t enough water in Arizona and, with the explosive growth of the southwest, there never will be. Every time we get a weather report that suggests an inch or more of rain — like we have today — I’m thrilled. It adds more time to the clock. I’m talking, of course, about the clock that’s ticking down the hours until Arizona doesn’t have enough water for its people and golf courses.

Another good thing — for Wickenburg — is that the river will keep flowing. It’s been at it for about two months now and I’m enjoying every minute of it. I usually see it from the air as I do tours in my helicopter. The other day, I took a couple up to photograph their land alongside the Hassayampa. After about 10 minutes of circling at 500 feet, we headed up river. Not only is the desert beautifully green, but many of the side canyons were still flowing with tiny streams of water. And it hadn’t rained in days! I can’t wait to fly again on Sunday to see what this storm does to the canyons.

Top Down in the Rain

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I discover that at certain speeds, it doesn’t really matter if it’s raining and the top is down.

I spent the day in Scottsdale today. I had an FAA course to take at the Scottsdale FSDO. The FSDO isn’t at the airport and doesn’t have a helipad. (How inconsiderate!) So I had to drive.

I drove my Honda. If you’ve been following these blogs, you may know that last year I bought a Honda S2000. It’s the last sports car I’ll ever buy, so I don’t drive it often. It has to last. At 18 months old, it still has less than 9,000 miles on it. I’d like to average 5,000 miles a year.

I normally drive my Jeep around town. It’s starting to become a bit of a beater. The roof needs replacing — too much time in the sun! — and the plastic side and back windows were so scratched up that the other day, I just unzipped them and threw them away. Now at least I can see what’s going on behind me. That’s especially useful when I’m in a parking lot, backing up, and the drivers around me aren’t 100% aware of what’s going on around them. (Sadly they can’t use bad windows as an excuse.)

The Jeep is terrible on the highway, even with the windows on. It’s loud and rides like a truck. It has a tape deck that’s so full of dust that it just spits the tapes out without bothering to play them. Not that you could hear the tapes anyway. The darn thing is so loud you can’t even hear yourself think. And you have to downshift to third gear to pass on the highway.

Of course, it does tackle the roads at Howard Mesa very well. And I’ve driven up the river more than a few times in it. So it does have its uses. Highway driving, unfortunately, is not one of them.

Anyway, the Honda is a convertible and I rarely drive it with the top up. But since I had to be in Scottsdale by 8 AM, that means I had to leave Wickenburg at 6:30 AM. And at 6:30 AM in January, it’s still quite dark and very cold. It was a top up drive.

I forgot my iPod at the office. I recently bought a kit that hardwires the iPod into the car’s stereo system so you can control it with the dashboard stereo controls. At the same time, it keeps the iPod charged. This works with the new iPod (iPod Photo, in my case) only. It won’t work with my old, original iPod. (That’s another argument for keeping the old iPod in the helicopter, as I discussed in another blog entry.) The car has a CD player and I had a few CDs, so the iPod wasn’t really missed. I like to listen to NPR, anyway. I listened to that until I was sick of hearing about the Iraqi election’s consequences for the rest of the Middle East, then popped in a CD and listened to old (70s) Elton John for a while. Then I hit traffic on the Loop 101 and decided it might be good to listen to NPR for a traffic report. Evidently, stop-and-go traffic on the Loop 101 between I-17 and Scottsdale Road is a normal occurrence, because they didn’t say a word about it in two traffic reports.

I got off at Princess Road. There were lots of signs about needing a permit to travel on certain roads. I later discovered that the Phoenix Open was somewhere in the area. As if traffic wasn’t screwed up enough, there was this huge, week-long event to completely destroy it.

I pulled into the FSDO’s parking lot without problems and got a good space out front. I stepped inside at 7:58 AM. Sheesh. Imagine doing that commute every day? Sadly, I have to do it again on Wednesday and then again next Wednesday.

I sat through the first half of course. It really has no bearing on this story.

I put the top down when I went to lunch. It was a beautiful day, although still a bit cool. I had a very nice turkey and melted brie on herb bread sandwich at a bakery. I think it’s called the Wildflower Bakery. Something like that. It was a sandwich you can’t buy in Wickenburg because 1) there is no bakery in town and 2) no one there is creative enough to suggest brie with turkey. (Wickenburg used to have a sandwich shop that had interesting sandwiches, but it went out of business.) I enjoyed the sandwich very much, primarily because I’d had a bad stomach problem on Friday night and the sandwich was only the second bit of solid food I’d had since then. I walked over to Organized Living to look for a file rack for my desk and stepped out empty-handed. Then I made my way back through the traffic to the FSDO office for the afternoon session.

At 3:30 PM, when class was over, I stepped outside and was quite surprised to see dark clouds. But the forecast hadn’t said anything about rain. So I put the top down and heading back to the highway for the drive home.

The rain started falling when I was northbound on I-17. First a bit of a drizzle, then enough rain to turn the wipers on. There was traffic, but it wasn’t bad. I was able to keep a speed of 40 to 50 MPH. I felt a few drops on my head, but not many. I had to make a decision: stop now and put up the top or keep driving with the top down?

Ahead, there was sunshine. And I really didn’t want to stop. So I kept going.

I almost regretted my decision when traffic got a bit worse and my speed dropped to about 30. I was getting a little wet. But then traffic cleared up and I sped up. Soon, I was cruising at 65 MPH. And even though the rain was getting heavier, not a drop was falling inside the car!

Top down in the rain, not getting wet. How cool is that? I kept imagining a wind tunnel with the smoke going right over the top of the car. The rain was like the smoke.

I passed a bunch of cars, my windshield wipers working steadily, wondering what the other drivers were thinking of me. They probably thought I was nuts. But I wasn’t the least bit wet! Then I caught up with and passed another convertible with its top down. There were two women inside and they were laughing hard. I waved to them, sticking my hand out into the rain. They waved back. We all laughed. I wondered if only women were crazy enough to drive a convertible with the top down in the rain. Then I sped on.

By the time I got off at the Carefree Highway exit, the rain had stopped. But a look to the west told me that it was likely to start again. And it might rain harder. Was it worth keeping the top down? I was already stopped, waiting behind other cars to make the left turn. It would be easy enough to put the top back up.

Oh, heck. I pulled up the parking break and pushed the roof button. 10 seconds later, I was snapping the two latches closed. I’d keep the top up for the rest of the ride.

It didn’t rain until I got near Wickenburg, and even then it wasn’t much of a rain. I could have left the top down after all. Just keep the speed up and remember the wind tunnel.

It Goes!

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I get a new set of wheels.

It’s a 1979 Marketeer. And it goes.

What?

I bought a golf cart today. No, I don’t play golf. But I needed a vehicle to leave in the hangar to tow the helicopter around the airport. I was using my Jeep, but I don’t always have the Jeep with me at the airport.

We found this golf course classic in the Arizona Republic classified ads. It was the cheapest golf cart listed, at a whopping $800 OBO. Mike called the seller and got a very talkative woman on the phone. A woman who talked so much she made me seem like a mute. After a lot of listening, Mike got to ask the right questions. When he hung up, he had directions to her trailer park off Union Hills in Phoenix. We hooked up the flat bed trailer and went to take a look.

We made two wrong turns on our way to the owner’s trailer. Trailer parks in Arizona are maze-like in design, with short blocks and few straight streets. But we finally found it and parked out front. Her son Brian was waiting for us. Beside him was a hopped-up golf cart with ATV tires and a dark green paint job. Beyond them was what would soon become my very own Marketeer.

The first thing I noticed was that one of the front wheels was not positioned vertically to the ground. It was as if the steering wheel was turned all the way to the right. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the other front wheel was parallel to it. But it wasn’t.

It was a plain off-white golf cart. The kind you think about if you live in an area with few golf carts and think about golf carts. (Although why you’d think about golf carts if you didn’t have, need, or regularly see one is beyond me.) It was almost identical, in fact, to the one that my mechanic Ed, at Wickenburg Airport, has. No frills.

There were some signs of rust — I think that’s to be expected in any vehicle that’s nearly thirty years old. But the six batteries and their cables were in decent condition and, when we hopped in and went for a ride on those maze-like streets, it ran pretty smoothly. Despite the gimpy wheel.

We drove it back to Brian. Mike voiced his approval without sounding like he was in love with it. He wasn’t, of course. It was a pretty basic and somewhat awful golf cart, with just enough right about it to make it meet our needs.

“Your mom said she’d consider other offers,” Mike said. “Would you consider $500?”

Brian smiled. “No,” he said simply.

“How about $600?” Mike asked. (This is what we’d hoped to pay.)

“I’d feel better about $650,” Brian replied.

“We’ll, we’d feel more comfortable with $600,” Mike told him. “We have cash and can take it right now.”

“Cash is king,” I chimed in.

“Cash is king,” Brian repeated thoughtfully. “Okay.”

I pulled the six $100 bills I’d put in my left rear pocket out and counted them as if I wasn’t sure how much was there. I counted again to act surprised that it was just the right amount. Then I handed them over. Brian handed me the title, which had already been “signed over.” (There’s more to that, but it isn’t worth talking about here.)

Mike drove it up the ramp onto the trailer and Brian helped us tie it down with some straps we’d brought along. The whole time, he talked to us about hunting and doing other weird things with his hopped up golf cart. About the only thing he didn’t use it for was golf course transportation. It was street legal, which isn’t so unusual in Arizona, and had a stereo. On the way to our meeting, I’d asked Mike how a golf cart could be worth $4K or more used. Brian’s golf cart showed me the answer.

We drove home, making a few stops along the way. We went right to the airport where we unfastened the cart and drove it down the ramp. Rob, from Ed’s place, was there working on a plane. He pulled Ed’s cart out and parked it next to ours. They were virtually identical, although Ed’s had fringe along the roof and a bunch of welded-on pieces to hold various airplane tow bars.

Mike hopped into our Marketeer and he and Rob took off, racing down the ramp between the hangars. Mike was quicker off the line, but Rob quickly caught up and passed him. They disappeared around a corner. A minute or so later, Rob was back. Mike followed a bit later. Okay, so it wasn’t fast. Maybe it just needed a charge. Or maybe the gimpy wheel was holding it back.

But it is a classic. And it goes.