Another video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.
After another deep dive into my raw footage archives, I found this short video I shot after fueling at the airport. It has in-cockpit narration, but there’s no helicopter sound because it was shot with just one camera. I left the airport but instead of flying straight back to base, I made a detour to overfly a friend’s house, so it’s a bit longer than the normal 3-4 minute flight.
Another video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.
A while back, I published a video I shot with my iPhone from the inside of a Hiller flown by my friend Mike. Here’s the GoPro footage for part of that flight. Mike is at the controls in the single, centered front seat. I’m sitting in back on the left side, just taking in the view and shooting video with my phone. Sometimes it’s nice to be a passenger.
In this video, we lift off from Mike’s home at a residential airpark in Arizona and head north and west, eventually starting to circle South Mountain. True to form, one of my GoPros died, so the video ends quite unexpectedly, right after Mike makes a profound observation.
The video has angled black borders because I set up the camera on an angle and everything was slanted. Rather than drive you nuts with a crooked view, I adjusted the video to level the horizon. I didn’t crop the image because I wanted to keep the full view of the instrument panel and as much of the area in front of us as I could.
Many thanks again to Mike for taking me on this ride.
Another video blog entry from my trip.
I’ll let the video say it all. Here it is, followed by the script I was so obviously reading. (Sorry! I’ll work on eye contact.)
Greetings! Maria here with Lily and Rosie the dogs and Turtleback 2, my trusty truck camper, reporting in from the BLM Holtville Hot Springs near Holtville, California.
We got here nearly a week ago, looking for a warm place to spend a few days. I’ve been coming here for the past six or so years — although I didn’t come last year — so I know the place pretty well. The hot springs is at a BLM Long Term camping area. That means you can pay $40 to camp for up to two weeks or $160 to camp for up to 7 months. I paid for the two-week pass, even though I only expected to stay a few days.
The campground is inhabited by mostly retired folks in all kinds of rigs. Most of them are decked out with solar panels for power. There are also some full-time RVers who either live here a few months or pass through like I do. The campsites are nicely spread out and relatively private. The place is quiet because most folks don’t use generators and it’s not the kind of place that would appeal to rowdy folks.
The main feature here is the hot springs, which is just outside the camping area unfortunately close to Interstate 8. The soaking area consists of three tubs. The large one is very deep — I’m 5 foot 8 and it goes to my shoulders — and usually the hottest one. That one’s overflow goes into a smaller tub that’s shallow and is usually the coolest of the bunch. Those two are both concrete. The third one, which is new to me, is a standard stock tank that can comfortably seat three people; its temperature varies on how recently it was filled.
The hot water comes into the tanks from a Frankenstein’s monster of pipes, valves, and hoses. Below the surface of the largest tub is the valve with the hottest water because it’s closest to the source. From there, the water also goes up a vertical pipe to feed another valve with cooler water (because it’s going through the air before it hits the tub) and finally a rotating shower head. Along the way, there’s a valve and a hose to feed the stock tank.
The whole setup is cleaned weekly on Tuesday mornings by a team of volunteers from the campground using a truckload of equipment. They drain all tanks and use a power washer to clean their surfaces. In the old days, they used to put spa chemicals into it, but they don’t do that anymore. Now they just refill the tanks and they’re good to go for another week. Because fresh water can always be added, the water flushes through nicely and doesn’t really get too gross.
All of the area’s overflow drains into a beautiful pond surrounded by palm trees. I used to see ducks in here, but I haven’t seen any so far this year.
I recommend this place if you don’t mind a more rugged hot springs experience. The tubs are nice but they are shared. Clothing is required — if you strip down, you will be asked to dress. You’re also expected to shower before entering any of the tubs. Common courtesy prevails.
There are a number of hot springs sources in the area. Nearby, there’s a geothermal plant that I can sometimes hear humming if I go out at night and there’s supposed to be another hot spring about 10 or so miles north of here that isn’t quite as nice as this.
My pups and I will be here a day or two longer. This has been my most pleasant stop so far, with great weather, lots of sun, two hot tub soaks a day, and plenty of biking and walking. And the Internet access on my mobile devices is wicked fast. I’m not looking forward to moving on.
Let me know what you think about this video in the comments. If you’d like to see more — including livestream video from Quartzsite, AZ during the big rock shows — please subscribe! And check out my blog for more details about my winter travels this year.
See you!
Nothing like a man who is proud of his livelihood. Or is there?
I’m still at the hot springs near Holtville. My second week started today. I’m working on a video about it — really! — but will likely blog a bit more about it, too.
I soak twice a day in the tubs. I usually go in the morning around 8 or 9 AM and then again after lunch. It’s been remarkably empty on this visit. Maybe everyone is stuck in their camper with Covid. I don’t know, but I’m sure enjoying it.
But a little less this morning.
When I arrived for my soak, there were only three other people there: a man in a cowboy hat with a thick southern accent who wasn’t soaking, a woman in a bathing suit in the large tub, and a man in shorts in the large tub. The shorts weren’t unusual; I’d say only two thirds of the people in the tubs are prepared with bathing suits. The others wear whatever they have to wear.
They were deep in conversation when I arrived and from the bits and pieces I heard, it didn’t sound like anything interesting. I stripped down to my bathing suit and got under the shower to rinse off. Then, since the smallest tub was vacant and full of water, I climbed in to keep my distance from the others.
I heard their conversation now and, like I said, it wasn’t terribly interesting. None of them seemed very bright. And then I caught something that got me interested. Shorts man said, “I was going to take a few hours off today, but I have to get back to work.”
“What do you do?” cowboy hat asked.
“I’m a bum,” shorts man said.
There was a moment of silence as the other two tried to figure out what he meant.
But they didn’t have to wait long because shorts man spoke up pretty quickly. “I ask for money at the side of the road.”
The other two acknowledged his words without making judgement. I was very glad I was not among them because I doubt I could have kept my mouth shut.
“Yeah, I go to a corner and I put up a sign that says ‘Hungry’ and people give me money. It’s great! My gas and my food — it’s all free.”
There was a sick sort of pride in his voice. He was bragging about his success as a panhandler.
He went on to give them details about some of the corners he’d worked recently. As he spoke, the woman edged over to the ladder and climbed out. The other guy listened politely for a while and made appropriate polite noises.
The woman came to the shower, which was near me, and I must have made a face at her. (I have a tendency to roll my eyes, sometimes at inappropriate times. Drove my wasband nuts, but hell, he shouldn’t have given me so many reasons to roll my eyes.) She nodded at me — I think in agreement — as she began rinsing off.
Shorts man, the proud bum, was still talking to cowboy hat, although I think the subject had changed. When the woman finished with the shower and went back to where her towel hung on the fence, cowboy hat joined her. The bum was still talking to them as they said goodbye and slipped out the gate.
That left me alone with the bum. I wasn’t afraid of him or anything like that. I was just worried he’d come talk to me and that I’d say something that I shouldn’t. I was royally pissed off. I hate panhandlers with a passion, especially the ones who so obviously could get work if they wanted it. This guy didn’t even look like a bum.
So I climbed out of my tub and began showering off. But by the time I’d gone for my towel, he’d left the area, probably to ask cowboy hat and the woman for lunch money or something.
Who the fuck knows.
Anyway, another couple came and since I’d already soaked for a while and had gotten my towel soaked by drying off, I decided to go back to my camp. They had the tub area to themselves.
Later in the day, when I went back for my afternoon soak at around 1:30 PM, he was back in the big tub, smoking and chatting away with someone else while two other people in the tub were clearly trying to ignore them. I guess he’d taken the rest of the day off. Again, the smaller tub was available and that’s where I went. I only stayed about 30 minutes and was gone before he left.
So the next time you see a man at an intersection with a crude cardboard sign reading “Hungry” or “Anything Helps” or “God Bless,” I want you to remember this story. How many of those people take their cars filled with gas that gullible fools — like you, maybe? — paid for on trips out to the hot springs or local bar or other hangout when they’re “off” from “work”? How many of them brag to strangers about how they’re living on someone else’s dime? How many of them really need your help?
Every time you give one of them money, you’re just perpetuating the problem.
It can be deeper than you might think.
When I was a kid, I glazed over the comic book phase a lot of kids go through. I don’t think I read more than 10 of them. They just weren’t interesting to me. I preferred regular books.
I read The Watchmen at least 15 years ago.
So it’s understandable that I wouldn’t be too interested in graphic novels. In fact, I didn’t know much at all about the genre until years and years ago when I read The Watchmen. This is before it was made into a TV show on HBO (which I still haven’t seen; I’m not an HBO subscriber). It struck me as interesting, but I didn’t really get much out of it. Maybe because I was reading it the way I read books? Fast to get through the story?
I’m older now and I’m more interested in expanding my horizons. That includes what I read. I generally don’t enjoy the latest bestselling literary fiction; I find it dull: too many long, meandering stories that have no satisfying end. The Goldfinch, although beautifully written, was like that. I read a lot of action fiction (think Jack Reacher and Jack Ryan) and mystery fiction (think Dorothy Sayers, Raymond Chandler, and yes, even some Agatha Christie). I’ll read one book by an author and, if I like it, read five more. (That’s what ruined Robert Ludlum’s work for me: his plots are so totally formulaic, which is obvious when you read five of his books in a row.) I also read Star Wars fiction beyond the movies and television shows. I didn’t realize until a few years ago that there are scores of books in the canon and many more that were written before there was a canon.
Anyway, I was reading a book of Neil Gaiman’s essays, The View from the Cheap Seats, and was enjoying the way it made me stop and think about things I’d never really thought about before. I’d read some of Gaiman’s fiction — Coraline, The Graveyard Book, American Gods, The Ocean at the End of the Lane — heck, I didn’t realize I’d read so much of his work until I drew up this little list — but had little knowledge of his graphic novels. But the Sandman series, which is apparently his magnum opus in that genre, was mentioned in one of the essays and I decided to check it out.
I’ll be the first to admit that I avoid buying books these days. It’s embarrassing for a writer to admit, but there it is. I simply read too fast to invest in a book I’m likely to read just once. I’m. not saying I don’t buy books at all — unfortunately, I do. I buy too many books. I have hundreds of books at home, some of which I never even bothered to unpack after my 2013 move from Arizona to Washington. This year, 2022, is the year that I will begin to liquidate my library. (I need to downsize for an upcoming lifestyle change anyway.)
Instead, I use the library where I get books in two formats: ebooks and audio books. I read ebooks in the morning with my coffee and sometimes in the evening before I go to bed. I read audio books while I’m driving or working on jewelry projects in my shop. It’s not unusual for me to be reading two very different kinds of books at the same time. (I’m extremely fond of Random House productions of Star Wars books. Great narrators who voice each character individually and sound effects/music that really dramatize the work.)
I tracked down The Sandman Volume 1 at my library using the Overdrive app and put it on hold. A week later, it was available and I was able to read it on my iPad using a web browser.
I absolutely loved the art that started each chapter in the edition I was reading (which may differ from the edition I linked to above), but really did not like the actual art within the book. But I looked past that and read the story. Or at least tried to. My brain was not accustomed to reading the graphic novel format. I often read things in the wrong order. I found myself missing things because I was too focused on words and not focused enough on the story told in the images that went with them. I got the main gist of the story and enough details to enjoy it — despite the gruesome violence in some parts. But, at the same time, I wasn’t much interested in trying Volume 2 (which my library does not have anyway), especially if the same artists illustrated it in the same style.
The last story in Volume 1 introduced the Sandman’s sister, Death. On a whim, I decided to give Death: The High Cost of Living a try. It was available in my library in a Kindle-compatible format, which turned out to be great for me. This format didn’t show a page at a time unless that’s what you wanted to see. Instead, it used a zoomed in technique to show one or more frames at a time. I’d swipe to expose more frames or zoom to the next frame. It made it impossible for me to read text in the wrong order and it magnified the content so that it was easier for my old eyes to read and enjoy.
Death is portrayed as an attractive goth chick.
I’ll start off by saying that the book is dark. The main character, Death, is portrayed as a friendly, attractive goth girl/woman. (Older than a girl but somehow younger than what you might think as a woman.) The people she meets with in most stories are people who are contemplating suicide or will die shortly or have died or are facing the death of someone else. So the main theme that is explored in various ways is death itself.
As I read, I worried over and over about young people who are contemplating suicide reading this book and thinking its okay. But that’s not the message that comes from it at all.
The book is really about life. That life isn’t always easy. That we make our own lives. That we have to take the bad with the good because the bad helps us see how good the good really is.
The first piece of dialog that really hit me hard is something that I’ve always believed and try so hard to tell other people — especially young people:
… Let me tell you what you get. You get life and breath, a world to walk and a path through the world — and the free will to wander the world as you choose.
Death and Destiny share some good advice with a suicidal teen.
This was said by Death’s brother — I think it was Destiny, although his name was never mentioned — to a teenage boy who had climbed to the top of a Ferris wheel one night to kill himself. He’s depressed because his mom died at the World Trade Center and he blames God for letting it happen. He wants to die so he can ask God why he let it happen. Destiny tells him that God doesn’t answer questions. Later, Death joins them in the panels shown here.
This book is full of stuff like this.
Anyway, I’m enjoying this book a lot more than The Sandman. Part of it is the artwork. Another part is the clear messages it’s sending about life and death.
It’s a quick read for me, especially since I don’t linger much over the artwork. I’m nearly done. But it was on my mind this morning so I thought I’d blog about it.
My Twitter friend Juliana mentioned today how re-reading books at different times of her life bring out different aspects of the books. (I’m paraphrasing a conversation here.) I think she’s right.
I think it’s time to read The Watchmen again, just to see what I missed the first time around.