Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Fix or Repair Daily

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It’s not always easy having stuff.

I have too much stuff. That’s not under question. But I’ve learned that one of the problems with having too much stuff — besides finding places to store it all — is keeping it all working and in good repair.

Vehicular Responsibilities

Take, for example, my two motorcycles. Bought brand new in 1992 and 1996, I rarely ride them. I simply don’t have the time. So they sit in storage, gathering dust while the gasoline in their tanks turns to varnish and their batteries die. I’ve tried battery tenders and gasoline stabilizers, but every time I want to take one of them out, I have a heck of a time getting it started. The solution, of course, is to sell at least one of them and I’ve made the decision to do just that. But I still have to get it running and bring it over to the motorcycle guy who said he’d sell it for me.

My new old redneck truck — nicknamed the “Brokeback Mountain Truck” because of the way its 14-year-old pearlized red paint looks pink in strong sunlight — required a bunch of small repairs to get it up to operating standards for the long trip it’ll take me on in May. That bunch of repairs, which I thought would cost about $500 to $700 cost a whopping $1,500. Ouch! The mechanic, who I trust, says it’ll run a good, long time. It better. It’s my first Ford. Some of us know what F-O-R-D stands for. (If you don’t check the title for this post.)

To be fair, we drove it this weekend to Howard Mesa and Flagstaff (so far) and it’s running okay. Sure, its 8-cylinder engine is a dog and the Ford steering is about as loose as you can get, but get it up to highway speed and turn on the cruise control and everything is satisfactory. I’ll have accurate fuel burn numbers when I fill up in Chino Valley on our way home.

Mummies in the Attic

But the ongoing source of our repair efforts is our little vacation cabin. Its exterior was built by people who know how to use the necessary tools and materials and they did a reasonably good job. The place is sturdy, anyway. But after adding plumbing, electrical, fixtures, appliances, and furniture to make it a home way from home, the problems began.

First it was the mice, who seemed to invade the premises every time we left. That means a thorough cleaning and disinfecting each time we arrived. I don’t know about you, but after a 3-1/2 hour drive, the last thing in the world I want to do is spend four hours vacuuming and washing floors and countertops, and furniture. The mouse moved into the walls, so we’d often hear them scurrying around at night. It took a long time to find and seal up all the holes where they were coming in. When I got sick of dealing with the humane mouse traps, I resorted to rat poison. The worst night we ever at the place was the night after Mike threw rat poison into the roof rafters and sealed up the holes on either end with steel wool. All night long, the doomed rodents were running back and forth over the ceiling.

And yes, there are now mouse bodies in our ceiling. But thanks to the dry Arizona air, they mummify quickly.

Split Pipes

We were still battling the mouse problem when the plumbing problem began. We’d used PVC piping which, due to our low water usage needs, should have been fine. Trouble is, if you don’t drain the pipes properly, the water in them freezes up in the winter. That causes the pipes to expand until they break.

Our first Christmas at the cabin gave us our first plumbing repair job. We brought everything inside, turned on the water, and turn on the pump. Within seconds, water was gushing out of the wall.

Mike spent most of the next day repairing the broken pipe. When he was done and everything was closed back up, we turned on the pump again. Another pipe was broken. He fixed that one the next day, on Christmas Eve. So yes, on that trip, we didn’t have running water for more than 48 hours.

Despite our best efforts to drain the pipes on departure, this happened again, to a lesser extent, on our next visit. Mike got very good at repairing pipes.

The following Christmas, Mike came prepared. He replaced all the PVC pipes with copper. Unfortunately, there had been water in the toilet valve and that had split. (We had installed an RV toilet to conserve water.) So we had to manually flush with a bucket of water.

On our most recent trip, we discovered a crack in the pump. We bought a replacement and hope to repair the old one as a spare. But when he went to fix the toilet — after replacing the pump — he discovered that the replacement part he’d bought for that didn’t have the piece he needed. So we continue to bucket flush.

Other Problems

We’ve had other problems with the place over the years. There was the mouse nest in the furnace that prevented it from staying lighted until the nest was removed. Before fixing that, the cabin actually got down to the low 40s at night.

And then there was the poorly set windows and doors. I spent a whole day with a caulk gun filling cracks with clear caulk to stop the cold wind from finding its way into the building.

Otherwise, everything has been fine. But now I know why Mike doesn’t like going up to the vacation cabin. Every time we go, there’s something that needs to be fixed.

At Home

Our house is just over 10 years old now, at that age when little things start needing attention.

Original light bulbs all over the house have been dying lately. The guy who built our house probably had stock in the local utility company. Every single light fixture in the house has either 3 or 4 bulbs in it. The master bathroom, which has a long countertop with two sinks and a vanity, is lighted by a row of 16 bulbs. When we moved in, there was a 150-watt bulb in each one. That’s 2400 watts of lighting with the flick of one switch. We replaced all those bulbs with 40s and put a dimmer switch on it. I don’t need to get a tan in my own bathroom.

We’ve had a few minor leaks in the past few years. We’ve needed some paint touchups inside and out. A few of the ceramic tiles between the kitchen and front door are cracking but not loosening up. The appliances are still all working fine, although I know that when they start dying, I’ll replace them with better rated equipment and leave the foo-foo brand names for another sucker. (I’ll take my old Kenmore dishwasher over the JennAire I have now any day.)

So I’m waiting patiently. Something else will break shortly — I can feel it in my bones — and I need to be ready to take care of the repair.

Greetings, Blog Readers!

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I’ve been meeting blog readers…in person.

I’ve been blogging pretty regularly since 2003, writing about the things that go on in my life, the things I’m thinking, the flights I’ve been making. I’ve been sharing photos and videos and stories. All the time I do this, I don’t really think about the people who read what I write. They’re a nameless, faceless group, scattered all over the globe.

At least they were. Lately, some of their faces have been coming into full focus. How? I’m meeting them in person.

I met three of them up here in Alaska over the past two days: Keith, Deb, and Marcus. Keith didn’t say much about the blog, but Deb and I discussed some of the things I’ve written in a bit more detail than I’d expect. And Marcus laughed with me about misused apostrophes, including the one on a local restaurant’s take-out menu, which lists Pizza’s. (You may recall that I linked to Apostrophe Atrophy on March 15.)

This is odd. I’m over 2,500 miles from home and meeting people who already know me more than I expect. And they still want to talk to me, if you can believe that!

Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment to say hello to the blog readers I haven’t met yet in person. Maybe I’ll meet some of you one day, too.

Morning Flight to Alaska

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It’s nice when travel goes smoothly.

Last June, Mike and I went to Alaska for vacation. Our travel plans, which were made by a real travel agent, were completely screwed up, as I detailed in “Trouble on the Tundra” in this blog.

While I think the travel agent was to blame for our screwed up hotel arrangements on that trip, I can’t blame her for airline delays. I blame the airline — Alaska Airlines — for that. Unfortunately, I had to fly with the same airline again yesterday. Fortunately, when they get it right, they do a good job. And they got it right yesterday.

But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

I want to fly in Alaska this summer. Last week, I lined up a job interview with a company based in Girdwood, AK, which is just south of Anchorage. Here’s a quick summary of yesterday’s flight to Alaska from Phoenix.

Before the Crack of Dawn

My flight was scheduled to leave Phoenix at 6 AM, so I was up and getting ready to go at 3 AM. I was out the door in the cool, predawn morning at 3:30 and, after a quick stop for gas in my Honda, was on the road heading out of Wickenburg at 3:45 AM.

The thought of this would send many late risers into cardiac arrest. But I’m an early riser and typically start my day around 5 AM anyway. Getting up two hours earlier wasn’t a big deal, although it did require the use of an alarm clock. Well, that’s not really true, because I woke up about 5 minutes before the alarm would have buzzed and turned it off before it woke Mike.

The drive down to Phoenix was a pleasure. There were few cars on the road on Grand Avenue and Carefree Highway. I set my cruise control at a reasonable speed — that’s one that was unlikely to get me jail time — and zipped on down the road. I had my iPod connected, and listened to last week’s episode of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” from NPR. The top was up because it was quite cool outside.

Traffic on I-17 was light, which you’d expect at 4:30 in the morning. But what you might not expect was getting an excellent parking spot in the West Long Term Economy lot at Sky Harbor. This is the long-term parking lot on the west side of the airport, adjacent to Terminal 2. I got a parking spot about 100 feet from the crosswalk to the terminal, so I was able to park, get my luggage, and simply walk to the terminal where my plane would depart. No need to take a shuttle bus or to remember if I needed the “Roadrunner” or “Gecko” or whatever shuttle on the way home. This probably saved me about 20 minutes of travel time.

I already had my boarding pass printed out, thanks to the miracle of the Internet. And I only had one piece of luggage, which, although not exactly small, would easily fit in the overhead bin of most airliners. So I didn’t have to wait on line at the counter. That saved me another 20 minutes.

A Brief Security-Related Rant

I did, however, have wait on line at security. And although I don’t usually pull out my liquids and gels and stick them in a plastic bag for the world to see, I had a feeling that that morning I might get grief about it. So I grabbed one of their baggies and dumped my entire toiletries bag into it. I’ll use the baggie from now on.

For the record, I have real gripe with this whole liquids and gels thing. First of all, if you don’t pull them out of the bag, they usually don’t bother you about it. In fact, I’ve never been bothered about it. That makes me wonder if (1) they can see it at all and (2) if they really care. Rules like 3-3-1 (or whatever bullshit name they’ve applied to this particular invasion of privacy) are not designed to keep us safe. They’re designed to inconvenience us just enough to make us think they’re keeping us safe. If I’ve taken liquids and gels through in my luggage a dozen times without getting searched, how many others have? Doesn’t their equipment sense the naughty stuff even if it’s inside the luggage? (Jeez, I hope so!) And just because my plastic baggy clearly displays a tube of Neutrogena face cream, does that mean there’s Neutrogena face cream in it? Come on, TSA! Do you think we’re all a bunch of morons? And how about it if you stop playing head games with us and just do a good job getting us through security?

But in some cases, it’s best to just go with the flow. So I used a baggie and put it in a bin with my shoes, cell phone, purse, loose change, jacket, scarf, and boarding pass. The other bin was for my computer, which I also had to pull out, completely remove from its protective case, and lay in a separate bin with nothing above or below it. (Again, who’s to say that there’s really a computer in there if TSA’s equipment can’t see that it’s a computer with its expensive x-ray equipment? Why does it have to be out of the case? Are they trying to profile us based on our choice of laptop make and model?)

Of course, sending the boarding pass through in a bin was a bad idea. Even though they never said to keep it in my possession as I went through the metal detector, I had to retrieve it to show the metal detector guy before he’d let anyone else through. This held up the line. But I wasn’t the only one who made this error. The guy in front of me did the same thing — but it was too late to retrieve my boarding pass at that point because he’d held up the line and my stuff had already gone through the x-ray machine.

The only good thing about all this security is that if your valuables go through the x-ray machine before you get through the metal detector, there’s a reduced chance of your valuables being stolen before you can get to them. In the “old days,” I never let my things go down the belt unless I knew I’d beat them to the other side of the x-ray machine.

Ah, the good old days. The memory of going through security fully dressed, without half unpacking my luggage, is sweet indeed.

The Flight

Although Terminal 2 is not one of the nicest at Sky Harbor, they’d fixed it up quite a bit since my last pass through there a few months ago. There was a nice coffee stand where I bought a latte, a muffin, and a piece of pumpkin pound cake for the flight.

When I got to the gate, they were boarding. I stopped long enough to pull my iPod, headphones, and laptop out of my luggage and put my down jacket (borrowed from Mike) in. A short while later, I was seated in 7F with the wheelie bag in the bin over my head and a tiny airplane pillow behind my lower back, belted in and sipping latte.

The plane left on time.

We took off to the east, then banked left to the north. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was bright enough to see the Salt River, Chandler and Falcon Field Airports, and Fountain Hills. Our flight path took us up the west side of the Verde River, past Bartlett and Horseshoe Lakes (which both appeared full), Sedona, and Flagstaff. We probably flew over the top of Howard Mesa, although it could have been on the other side of the plane.

Just before we reached the Grand Canyon, the sun appeared as a bright orange dash of light at the horizon. It grew slowly out of the east, rising almost imperceptibly until it was an orange ball. As it brightened, it cast long shadows over the rugged terrain.

That’s when I started noticing the thin, long clouds at right about our altitude. It took me a moment to realize they were contrails from other jets criss-crossing the sky. We flew parallel to one for a while, cutting across another. Although I’ve seen many contrails from the ground — we all have! — this is the first time I’d ever noticed them from the air. It was very cool.

We flew over the Little Colorado River and Colorado River, now heading north-northwest over terrain that wasn’t as familiar to me. It clouded up, obscuring my view for a while. Later, the clouds broke up again and I could see more unfamiliar ground. Much later, I saw the Columbia River, where it makes its big turn in western Washington state. Then more clouds as we turned to the west and began our descent. It wasn’t until we were below the clouds, making our final approach to Seattle Tacoma Airport that I realized how windy it was. Large flags blew straight out. I got a postcard-view of downtown Seattle before we touched down on the wet runway of the airport.

Once in the terminal, I had to find my gate for the next flight. I was in Terminal N, which appeared to be an island terminal in the middle of the ramp, and had to get to Terminal C. I asked an airport employee and was directed to an underground train system. One stop and I was at my terminal, with 40 minutes to kill before boarding my next flight.

I went for a short walk. The terminal was quite nice, with a big open food court area and lots of nice shopping. (I tell you, there’s better dining and shopping at many airport terminals than I can find in my own town.) I wanted to get a shoe shine, but the shoe shine girl was at her alternate location in Terminal D (according to the guys in the Bose booth beside her shoe shine chairs.) So I bought some sushi and carrot sticks to go at little restaurant not far from my gate.

I spent a short time waiting in the gate area. Planes took off down the runway right outside the window. A few very small clouds floated up the runway about 100 feet off the ground. Clouds were broken in layers around us, with blue sky and sunshine making occasional appearances. Although the weather wasn’t great, it was a pretty day.

Before long, I was on my Seattle to Anchorage plane, seated in 16F. (I’m a window seat person, in case you haven’t noticed.) There was an empty seat between me and the man on the aisle and, as the incoming crowd thinned out, we marveled at our luck on the otherwise full flight. But just before closing the doors, they let two more passengers on board: a heavyset man and his much thinner wife. We got the wife.

She was a very pleasant person, but a talker. (Yeah, I know; I’m a talker, too. But I know how to shut it off. She didn’t.) She lived in Fairbanks and spent her summers in a motorhome in Yuma, AZ where her sister lived. (I can tell you more about her entire life, including her kids and grandkids, but I’ll spare you.) They were going back to Fairbanks to surprise a friend of theirs for her birthday. In a month or two, they’d drive back to Fairbanks from Yuma in their motorhome.

It was nice chatting with an Alaskan about Alaska, although I can’t seem to come up with many points worth sharing. We did talk a bit about fishing and about how the tour companies tend to do as little as possible to satisfy the tourists, who generally have no clue what they’re missing. We also talked about cruise ship passengers being more interested in shopping than actually seeing and learning about the port cities they stop at.

The whole time we flew — and it was a 3-1/2 hour flight — it was cloudy beneath us. Until we got about 45 minutes outside of Anchorage. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t looking down at clouds. I was looking down at snow covered mountains.

Of course, I’d had much the same view on our flight to Anchorage in June. This time, however, the air seemed cleaner and crisper and the view seemed more spectacular. The mountains came right down to the ocean, with snow almost all the way to the bottom. There was no beach, no rocky shoreline for a stroll. Just ocean and then those tall peaks.

I don’t know how tall those mountains were, but I’m sure most were at least 5,000 feet. They were rugged and rocky and looked as if they were made of granite. There were pine trees along the lower elevations of many of them. And, looking to the east, that’s all I could see: rocky, snow-covered mountains.

The woman beside me took an interest in the view and leaned over for a better look. She pointed out a few glaciers — there were dozens of them! — and places where she and her husband went fishing from their boat, which they keep in Valdez. Then the clouds moved in again, hiding the ground from view. I looked out on the horizon and saw the top of Denali (Mount McKinley), way off in the distance.

Then we descended through the clouds, The next time I saw the ground, we were approaching Anchorage and I could see the airport from our downwind leg. We came in from the north, over the mud flats, which were littered with large blocks of ice that hadn’t been there in June. I reminded myself that it was still winter, a fact that was confirmed when I felt the cool breeze on the jetway as I walked out into the terminal.

Only the day before, I’d been wearing a t-shirt as I walked around Las Vegas.

The End of a Smooth Flight

I was in a rental car, on my way to Girdwood, within 30 minutes of landing at Anchorage. The only reason it took me that long was (1) I stopped to look at the historic photos of the airport on the way to the Rental Car counter and (2) I couldn’t remember which rental car company I used, so I had to ask at five of the eight rental car desks before I found my reservation. (I never claimed to have all the answers. And besides, isn’t it impossible for everything to be perfect on a trip?)

There’s a lot to be said about packing light. Because I only had one piece of luggage and because that piece of luggage was small enough to carry on board with me, I saved a ton of time by not having to check it and then retrieve it. (I also didn’t have to worry about the airline losing it.) Because the luggage had wheels, transporting it was easy. I think that my choice of luggage and the way I packed is a big part of what made my trip so smooth.

I’m just hoping my return trip will go as smoothly.

Composed at a B&B in Girdwood, AK with ecto.

Too Busy!

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Will write more soon. Promise.

Just a quick note to let regular readers know that I’m absolutely slammed with travel stuff right now. Mike and I took his mom on an overnight trip to Las Vegas. We just got back. Tomorrow I board a 6 AM flight to Anchorage, AK for a pilot job interview. I’ll be up there until Friday morning, when I return home.

If I get internet access while I’m away, look for a blog post on Wednesday. Otherwise, it’ll have to wait until my return.

Sorry!

And I managed to get some great video landing at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas (LAS) yesterday. Hope to get a bit of that on Viddler soon.

Tires, Horses, Lost Dogs, Used Trucks, and a Garage Project

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Or, how I tired myself out on a Saturday.

Yesterday was one of those days when you’re just so darn busy doing things that time goes by in a blur, ending in exhaustion and a good night’s sleep.

I woke as usual before 6 AM. I made coffee for me and a scrambled egg for Alex the Bird. Then I settled down at the kitchen table with a laptop to write up my “Feels So Good” blog entry. Mike and Jack the dog came down and had breakfast. Later, I cleaned the remains of the previous day from Alex’s cage, set him up with food and water for the day, and locked him in.

A typical morning.

Taking Out the Tires

Mike had gotten new tires for his new used car. He bought the car a month or so ago and it came with fancy rims and low-profile tires. Those rims and tires really aren’t practical for life on the edge of nowhere, especially when the last mile of road to the house is unpaved. So he bought new rims and tires on eBay. They’d arrived the day before and he had a Saturday morning appointment to get them put on his car. Since he couldn’t take them in his car, I had to drive them over to Big O in his pickup. We did that at about 8:30 AM.

It was a beautiful morning. It had rained steadily most of the day before, so everything was wet. The sky was mostly clear and the sun shined down on all the water droplets hanging from the trees, making everything sparkle. But what was even more interesting was that as the sun heated the moist ground, it was creating thin trails of mist in the washes and wispy low clouds in the low mountains around town. Wow.

Horseback Riding

I dropped the tires off and took the truck back home. My friend Janet called along the way. She’s visiting the area from Colorado, where she now lives. She used to live in Wickenburg and then in Congress, which is one town north of Wickenburg, but like so many of our friends, she moved away in search of a place better matched to her lifestyle. She’s an artist who paints original artwork on turkey feathers. While that might sound tacky, it really isn’t. You can see some of her work on her Web site and in a number of galleries and gift shops throughout the southwest.

Janet has three horses. Although they were in Wickenburg for a few weeks, her husband took them home when he returned a week or so ago. Janet’s here for some more business and to help out a friend before she heads home. She’s got one of their two dogs with them, Maggie, a part hound dog who looks a lot like the dog from The Simpson’s, but brownish red. Janet and I planned to go horseback riding the day before, but weather had cancelled that plan. With nothing else scheduled that morning, we figured we’d try again.

I’d been home less than a half hour when she showed up with Maggie. I showed her my baby chicks — she raises turkeys — and we went down to fetch the horses. We had them both saddled up and ready to go a while later. She’d be riding Jake, Mike’s horse. I’d be riding Cherokee.

By this time, we’d attracted the attention of our neighbor’s dogs, Trixie and the 6-month-old Charlotte. Charlotte had gone for her first ever ride with us about two weeks before and other than getting lost once for about 10 minutes, she did fine. Trixie always follows us. Jack, of course, lives to go out on the trail. And we had Maggie, too. So that was four dogs with two horseback riders.

The hills around our home were green with new grass and really pretty. We don’t get much rain in the desert so we don’t have much green anything. When it does rain, the grass grows quickly, seizing life to produce seed for the next generation in record time. The green stuff out there was mostly about four inches long and looked like a carpet. It would be nice to ride through all that green.

We headed out up the hill to our house and down the trail beside my neighbor’s property into the state land. Cherokee started acting up right away and we had to do a little rodeo routine before he agreed to follow Jake down the trail. Cherokee is lazy and, for some reason, he thinks he can get away with crap like that with me. He tries half heartedly to throw me off but I hang on, give him a good slap on the side of his neck, and we get back to the business at hand. Cherokee is not the kind of horse you put a “dude” on.

We took a trail that headed out toward the golf course at Rancho de los Caballeros, then way back out into the desert. The dogs ran around, chasing rabbits and each other, but always coming back within sight within a few minutes. Janet and I chatted about various things, moving along at a moderate pace along the trails. Janet was leading and each time she came to an intersection, I’d call out “left” or “right” to guide us along the way.

We were at the base of the trail that climbed to the top of a mountain ridge — we call it the “Ridge Trail” — when we realized that Maggie was missing. Janet said she often catches the scent of another animal and takes off after it but she’s usually back within fifteen minutes or so. We climbed the trail and stopped at the top to admire the view (which is spectacular), give the horses a rest and a chance to nibble at the grass, and do a dog head count. Maggie was still missing.

Janet was sure she’d catch up to us, so after about ten minutes, we continued on our way. We took a trail down the back side of the ridge that wound through a wide canyon — we call that one “Deer Valley” because we often see deer there. That dumped us out at a big trail intersection and I chose another trail that would bring us home. Our total ride was only about 4 miles, but I thought that was enough for Charlotte.

Maggie was still missing.

Search for the Missing Dog

She was also missing when we got back to my house. By that time, Janet was worried. I told he we’d take the Jeep out to Los Caballeros, as close as we could get to the point we’d last seen Maggie. I gave her every indication of confidence that we’d find Maggie. I felt confident, but I don’t know why. There were thousands of acres of empty desert out there.

We unsaddled, brushed out the horses, and dropped them off in their lower corral. We watched them do some synchronized rolling in the sand, then walked back up to the house to check with Mike about Maggie. No, she hadn’t shown up. I called Los Cab and left a message at the wrangler’s office. We thought there was a possibility that Maggie might have hooked up with other horseback riders out there and followed them back to the ranch.

We climbed into the Jeep and headed out. The ranch was our first stop. Two people had just come in for a ride and were brushing off their mules. No, they hadn’t seen a dog out there. We headed out to the skeet shooting range, which is one of the points accessible by car that was close to the trail we’d been on. Not that close, obviously, but within a half mile. There was no one there, so I parked and we got out. We called and whistled.

Janet caught sight of two riders out in the distance. For some reason, they kept stopping on the trail. Janet thought that maybe Maggie was with them, but we couldn’t see that far (or low) and they were well out of earshot.

We got back into the Jeep and after a few wrong turns, made our way to a little junkyard I’ve seen from the air a few times. I’d actually ridden through it years ago on my first horse and I knew it was pretty darn close to the bottom of the Ridge Trail’s climb. I drove through it, as far as I could before the two-track road ended. Then we parked and got out. We climbed a nearby hill and saw the trail we’d been on right on the other side of a fence. The barbed wire was hanging low in one spot and I gingerly stepped over it to get a better view out toward the wash.

We called and whistled and called. At this point, I started realizing the futility of the situation. If the dog was out there and she heard us, our voices and whistles would be echoing off all the hills around her. How would she know which way to go?

I was on my cell phone, calling the local police to see if the dog catcher had picked up a dog when I caught sight of something moving in the distance. The color was right. It was Maggie, running toward us. I told Janet I saw her, then told the policeman who’d answered the phone why I’d called and that the dog had been found. By the time I hung up, Maggie was with us.

We walked back to the Jeep where I had a dog dish and some water. Maggie seemed glad to have it. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned that she’d been away from us for close to two hours. We loaded her into the Jeep and went home.

The Garage Project, Part I

Mike was already working on the project we were supposed to be doing that day: cleaning out half the garage and putting in shelves to neatly store our accumulated crap. (Who’s law is it that says your collection of junk will always expand to fill the available space to store it?) He was very surprised to see us return with Maggie. He stopped what he was doing — pulling junk out of the garage and piling it on the driveway — and kept us company while we ate lunch. Then Janet and Maggie left and we had no excuse not to get back to work.

Well, we actually did have an excuse. Mike had called the owner of a pickup truck for sale in town. The truck, a 1994 Ford with 4WD and an extended cab, was exactly what we wanted to get as a spare truck we can leave at Howard Mesa. The price was within range. Just as we’d pulled all our junk out of the garage, the owner called, ready to meet with us. So we climbed in Mike’s pickup and headed into town. We drove the truck, agreed that it needed a new transmission, and told the owner we’d have our mechanic call him later in the week. Then, after two quick stops at the local Alco store, we went home and got back to work.

Mike had the idea of setting up a camera to do a timelapse movie of our setup. This was a great idea and easy enough. I brought my MacBook Pro out, set up EvoCam software to take a shot every minute and turn it into a movie, and pointed the camera at the blank wall where the shelves would go. Then we got to work.

The shelves were an Ikea product with a typically cryptic name. We’d used them before, in our house in New Jersey, and Mike had bought some new pieces so we’d have enough to cover the wall. What we discovered is that Ikea doesn’t make these things as heavy-duty as they used to. The wood was thinner throughout. Even the bolts were smaller. But they were still sturdy, and went up quickly, despite interruptions by my neighbor’s kids and numerous dogs.

Here’s the video:

Day’s End

It was pretty much dark by the time we finished. Since the forecast didn’t call for any rain, we just left most everything outside, closed the garage door, and came in for supper.

Mike grilled up some elk hamburgers, which tasted excellent with American cheese on them. With that, we had the ratatouille he’d cooked up earlier in the day. We stowed the dishes in the dishwasher and headed upstairs.

I was dead asleep by 8 PM.