Shopping in Scottsdale

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Mike and I make a day trip down to Kierland Commons.

It was Sunday morning and Mike was looking for an interesting way to spend the day. We briefly seen the shops at Kierland Commons, just east of the Scottsdale Airport, and he wanted to explore them more fully. (Yes, I have a man who likes to shop.) He was also interested in having a “good lunch” (his words).

I wanted to hit the Organized Living shop on the west side of Scottsdale Airport (right near the loop 101’s Frank Lloyd Wright exit) and the Apple Store down at the Biltmore shopping center (Camelback and 24th Street). I was shopping for a color laser printer, tired of sending small print jobs out and having to wait for the print shop guy to get around to printing them.

So we hopped in Mike’s Honda Accord, which has far more trunk and storage space than my Honda S2000, and drove out of town.

Traffic was light. We got off the Loop 101 at Scottsdale Road less than an hour after leaving the house. We both commented on the development that had been going on over the years. When I was just finishing up my helicopter training in Scottsdale, the entire stretch of Scottsdale Road from where the Loop 101 would be (it didn’t exist there yet) to Bell Road was pretty much empty. The only landmarks were the entrance to the Scottsdale Princess Resort and Chauncey’s Ranch, a really fancy horse facility. Now the same stretch is lined with shopping centers, car dealers, and condos. Chauncy’s Ranch is gone — although it’s still referred to as a check point by pilots flying into Scottsdale Airport — and there’s no empty frontage on Scottsdale Road at all. This is all in a matter of less than five years.

We turned into Kierland Commons, drove down its main street, and were fortunate enough to find a parking spot right in front of one of the shops. The place was bustling with people. Mike’s first order of business was lunch and we quickly found a suitable place: a restaurant called North. The sign said it was “Modern Italian Cuisine” and after a quick glance at the menu, we decided to get a table. There was seating both indoors and outdoors, but we took an inside table. A cold front is moving through the area (again) and neither of us wanted to eat with our jackets on.

Mike ordered an “antipasti of seasonal Italian specialties” and some seared ahi tuna with a salad and I ordered a pizza with figs, prosciutto (an Italian ham), and goat cheese. We shared everything and everything was very good. It’s always great to eat fresh ingredients prepared simply but in interesting combinations.

Once Mike’s stomach (and mine) had been satisfied, we took a walk around the shopping center. It had been designed to resemble a downtown shopping area, with a few streets just wide enough for two-way traffic and diagonal parking on both sides. Shops with various exterior designs lined both sides of the streets. There were tall trees, vine-covered awnings, and a real small town feel. Remarkable, when you think that we were deep in the city of Scottsdale. Although there were a lot of people around and all the parking spots were taken, I couldn’t say it was crowded. Most folks were in the shops and restaurants and in a small parklike area where Santa was waiting to get his picture taken with kids.

The shops were of the designer variety you’d fully expect to find in a place like Scottsdale. I don’t remember many of the shop names — I know little about designer clothes — but some that I do recall include Bebe, Clearwater Creek, Tommy Bahama, Restoration Hardware, Crate and Barrel, and Orvis. We went into very few of the shops, preferring to stroll along the sidewalk and just take in the sights. Mike may be a shopper, but I’m not.

The highlight for Mike was seeing a Bentley Continental GT parked in front of one of the shops. Although I asked him not to drool as he went over to check it out, I’m afraid he might have.

My friends Jim and Judith have been making occasional trips out this way in Jim’s helicopter. Jim parks at the airport and they walk over. It’s not a long walk — maybe 1/4 mile — and although the walk isn’t exactly pleasant, the atmosphere once you get to Kierland Commons certainly is. I have to make a trip for business down to Scottsdale in a few weeks and have saved two seats on the helicopter for anyone interested in joining me for the flight and spending a few hours at Kierland Commons while I take care of business. I’m offering the seats as a special deal through Flying M Air, but if it works out well, I might offer it as a shopping expedition day trip. Although most Wickenburg residents would find the $395 round trip charter price tag a bit tough to swallow, some of the bigger guest ranches in town attract the kind of clientele that would see it as the bargain it really is.

After our walk, we got back into the car and went over to Organized Living. We stopped at the Toyota dealer along the way; I’m thinking about buying a small pickup truck and wanted to check out the Tacomas. Sadly the smallest model that I can add the features I want — 6 cylinder engine, 6-speed manual, tow package, 4×4 off road package — is still a bit larger than I want. We already have one big pickup; I can’t see having two. And I’m accustomed to small vehicles. The sales guy who intercepted us in the lot had to be the worst sales guy I’d ever met. A complete loser who knew less about the trucks and their options than I did. He had no clue how to handle us and quickly retreated back into the building to get help. The sales manager he came out with wasn’t much better.

At Organized Living, we discovered that they’d soon be changing their name to Storables. Okay. The place was in the middle of being reorganized and the item I wanted to buy — a laundry sorter with a clothes rack for hanging finished laundry — wasn’t there. Odd, because I was pretty sure I’d seen it in one of their mailings. We bought something else to do the job and headed out for the Biltmore.

My main goal at the Apple Store was to see the print quality offered by some of the color laser printers I’d been researching. I’m an HP printer person; I’ve owned 2 HP laser printers and both of them continue to work faithfully. Mike has the old one, which is at least 10 years old. I passed it on to him when I realized that my print jobs were just too complex for its limited RAM. That was a LaserJet 4MP. I replaced it with a LaserJet 2100TN, a network printer with 3 paper trays. It continues to work well, but it does make a kind of clanking sound as it spits out each sheet of paper. I think some lubrication in the right places would help. But the printer is 5 years old and would cost more to service than replace. So I’ll continue to use it until it dies.

The idea behind the color laser printer is to be able to produce my own marketing materials for Flying M Air without having to send out small color print jobs. Each page on one of those small jobs costs about $1 at the local print shop and I can’t always get them done as quickly as I’d like. This was beginning to become a nuisance. So I’d get my own color printer and continue to use the old printer for my B&W work. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. In fact, if I could keep it under $500, I’d be very happy.

Unfortunately, Apple didn’t have a single color laser printer on display at the Apple Store at the Biltmore. They had “all-in-one” devices (fax, scanner, copier, printer) and plenty of photo printers, but no color lasers.

The place was absolutely mobbed, with dozens of people milling about the iPod side of the store and the rest sprinkled around other cool toys. I found a guy to ask about the printers and he confirmed what I’d seen: no color laser printers on display. I asked him some other questions I had about printers. Like can I get a non-network printer if I hook the printer up to a computer and use printer sharing to share it. Yes, was the answer, as long as I left that computer on. How about if the computer was running Mac OS X server? He told me he’d tried it without luck. Server seems to work okay if you use a generic printer driver, but if you try the printer driver that comes with the printer, no luck. That means you can’t access printer-specific features. This confirmed a rumor I had already heard. But it didn’t matter. 99% of the printing I do is from my Dual G5, so I’d just hook up to that.

We left the Apple Store and wandered into Macy’s. Mike was looking for a pair of brown pants. (Ick.) I needed to buy something to wear to Mike’s office Christmas party on Friday. None of my party clothes would fit. I looked at what was available at Macy’s and decided that clothing had gotten just plain ugly. Even the mannequins didn’t look good wearing it. What was wrong with simple clothing with simple lines, the kind of thing that relies on the woman inside them to complete the picture? Not that I’d do a good job completing that picture these days. (I’m feeling quite fat and very ugly.)

Mike, of course, found a pair of slacks and two shirts to buy.

We started on our way home with one more stop to make: a pet store just off I-17 at Happy Valley Road. It’s in a new shopping center that’s probably the closest to Wickenburg without stopping at a traffic light. (How’s that for a weird statistic?) There was a PetCo in there and I went in to buy some feeder fish for a very large carnivorous fish I have in one of my tanks. I wound up with some live plants and other fish for my other tank, too. Meanwhile, Mike had gone into Staples next door. He reported that they had 3 HP color laser printers on display. So after stowing the fish stuff in the car, we went for a look. Oddly enough, they had the same three models I’d been considering. I got a chance to look at them in detail. I was hesitant to buy the one I wanted — a LaserJet 2600n priced at only $319 — because the onboard memory seemed low. But the sales guy, who was extremely helpful and knowledgeable, told me that I had two weeks to try it out and make sure it met my needs. Sold! I bought the printer but passed on the extra consumables ($82 per cartridge and I’d need 4 of them!). This week, I’ll give it a good testing by throwing all kinds of complex documents at it. If it passes this week’s test, I’ll keep it. Otherwise, it’ll go back to Staples and I’ll go back to researching printers.

We rolled into Wickenburg at about 6:30 PM, after spending most of the day shopping down in the valley. It had been good to get out of town and see some new things. And although I’d expected to encounter traffic, congestion, and crowds, there had been none of that. Not bad for three weeks before Christmas.

A Ride in the Desert

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We spend three hours on horseback, enjoying perfect weather.

Mike and I have two quarter horses. Jake, a retired ranch horse, is now about 24 years old and is starting to show his age. He’s sorrel (that’s brown) with some white on his feet. He’s also swayback — that means that the place you put his saddle is way lower than it should be on a normal horse —  and has very high withers. Mike bought a special saddle pad for him and then had his saddle custom made to fit the horse. I got Jake for a good price and I think I know why. He’s an alpha male and likes to boss around the other horses he lives with. He’ll bite them and chase them and generally annoy them. That must have really been a nuisance for his previous owners, so they sold him off. But he’s an excellent horse, serious about work, and can be ridden by almost anyone at all. As far as I’m concerned, he was a bargain.

Cherokee, is another story. Cherokee’s main problem is that he’s beautiful. He’s a paint horse, brown and white, and his face is just so pretty, with big gentle eyes and a forelock that’s just the right length. He was 11 when I bought him six or so years ago, and he’d already had at least three previous owners. They evidently spoiled the hell out of him because when I got him, he was lazy, poorly trained, and extremely spooky. That horse taught me more about staying in the saddle during a Cherokee-style rodeo than any other horse I’ve ridden (or fallen off of). To add insult to injury, he cost more than I should have paid. But like his previous owners, I was suckered in by his good looks.

Jake and Cherokee have completely opposite personalities. Jake was always very standoffish — he didn’t really want anything to do with people on his time off. His definition of time off was any time there wasn’t a lead rope or saddle on him. Cherokee is incredibly friendly and curious and loves to be petted. When Jake is ready for work, he works. He’ll do anything you tell him to. When Cherokee is saddled up and ready for work, he’ll do everything he can to get out of doing it. While they both like to be fed treats, Cherokee will actually beg for them. At least that’s what it looks like to me. And if you’ve been reading these blogs for a while, you’ve probably seen the photo of him eating dropped bird food out of the bottom of Alex’s cage.

Cherokee is a big eater and it shows. He’s fat. Jake’s thin. Now if you recall what I said about Jake being the alpha male and consider that they both share the same space, you might wonder how it is that Jake can’t scare Cherokee away from the food. It isn’t like he doesn’t try. He puts his ears back (a horse’s way of saying “f*ck off”) and chases Cherokee. He even bites Cherokee once in a while, putting three or four rows of parallel teeth marks on that beautiful coat. But Cherokee is accustomed to his place at the bottom of the pecking order and is very stubborn. He also eats very fast. So as Jake ages and seems to get thinner and thinner, we’ve taken to separating them at dinner time and overnight, giving Jake more food than he can eat and plenty of time to eat it. Cherokee, of course, doesn’t like this, and after he gobbles up his food, spends the rest of the night pacing around outside the gate to Jake’s enclosure. Over the years, they’ve both changed a bit. Jake is now more friendly. Although his previous owners probably hit him in the face (he was very hand shy when we first got him), he now lets us pet him, even around his head. Cherokee has calmed down and isn’t afraid of rabbits anymore, so I haven’t had any rodeo practice lately. He’s also been trained to walk when I tell him to — without the use of a riding crop! — and to let me position him so I can open and close gates while on horseback. And a few years back, they both posed for a Christmas photo, wearing antlers on their heads.

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Christmas Horses

Anyway, yesterday Mike and I went for a long horseback ride out in the desert. The horses seemed very pleased about going. Of course, when we got to the top of the hill, Cherokee thought we were going to Uncle Pete’s house. That’s where they stay while we’re away and I think he spoils them. When he realized we were turning left instead of right, heading down the trail instead of down the road, he did some Cherokee dancing. In the end, he just followed Jake, like I knew he would.

We live on the edge of town, about two lots from state land. So we normally saddle up and ride out from our house. We have two choices for a ride in the desert: turn down Cemetery Wash, which runs through our property, and take that or any of the trails that go into it or ride up the easement road from our house just past our neighbor’s house on 328th Avenue to a trail that goes right into the state land. We usually follow the second route, since there are far more trails closer to our house when we go that way. That’s also the same trails that the wranglers at Rancho de los Caballeros use for rides, so most of the trails are well worn in — perhaps too worn in in some cases — and easy to follow.

Jack the Dog came with us, of course. Jack likes to go horseback riding. He doesn’t ride a horse. He just runs along on the trail in front of us, chasing rabbits and birds. We realized that he liked horseback riding more than us when we sent two of our friends out for a ride on our horses and he went with them instead of coming back up to the house with us.

We went through the gate in the fence that separates state land from private property. The fence is there more to keep cattle out of people’s back yards than to prevent people from coming in or out of the state land. It also helps keep quads off the horse trails, although it doesn’t help enough. Every once in a while, a couple of quads will get in there and tear up the narrow trails with their wide wheels. There are so many places the quad riders can ride in town — hell, the hills are just criss-crossed with old mining roads and surrounded by sandy washes. Why do they insist on ruining the horse trails and going through people’s private property?We took the “golf course trail” west along the edge of the state land to Los Cab’s golf course, then we turned south to go around Los Cab’s property. We passed through another gate and followed a trail we’d followed a hundred times toward the west again. Spotting a new trail, we took that toward the east, climbing a small ridge that offered nice views of Los Cab. Then back down onto familiar trails, heading west again.

We spent three hours mixing old trails that we knew well with new trails. More than once, we were on trails I’d never been on before. And we wound up going a lot further southwest than we thought we were. I won’t say we were lost — that’s too strong a word — but at one point we were definitely not where we thought we were.

The ride was wonderful. Cherokee had settled down into a good pace and wasn’t the least bit jumpy. Jack chased rabbits and even a few deer. The temperature was perfect: warm enough that a long-sleeved shirt was fine without a jacket. There was some wind on the hills, but the air was quite still near the ground. We found one trail that took us high up onto a mountain, with incredible views of the town far below us, to the northeast. And we didn’t pass another soul.

It was the first time I’d been out for a good, long ride in a while. I’ve been so busy lately with work on my books, building up the helicopter business, and doing flights that I just haven’t had time to ride. And I seem too good at making excuses: it’s too hot, too cold, too windy, too early, too late. Sheesh. I’m an excuse machine when it comes to riding. I think that the truth of the matter is that I’m just too lazy to saddle up. But the reality is that it really isn’t that much work and it’s worth every minute once you get out into the desert on a nice trail.

I’d like to find a riding partner here in town who’d be willing to ride one day a week for about 2 hours. Sometime around noon or early afternoon. But it seems that few of the new people coming into town have horses and many of the ones who do prefer riding with big groups, so they can show off their riding clothes, saddles, and horse’s grooming. I like to ride in small groups, with people who don’t fuss about the terrain being too steep or rocky, with people who know how to control their horses, with people who have enough sense to wear the right clothes and bring enough water for the ride.

Anyway, there are two things about yesterday’s ride that I regret: 1) I didn’t bring my camera. How stupid is that? There were lots of photo ops and I think this entry would have been a lot more interesting with photos. 2) I didn’t bring my GPS. A few years back, I’d started a trail mapping project. Now I’m determined to finish it. And with 3 hours worth of riding yesterday, I could have mapped a lot of trails.

Anyone out there want to go riding on Wednesday afternoons? Get in touch. Experienced riders only, please. And don’t worry; I have a spare horse if you need one.

Visitors from Around the World

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I check the map and discover some European visitors.

A while back, I added a counter feature to Maria’s WebLog. It keeps track of site visitors and can display a map of where the visitors are from.

Although it’s pretty easy to get caught up in this feature, I don’t check the map very often. But I did this morning. And what I found was that within the past few hours, I had visits from people in Romania, the Netherlands, Croatia, and Italy.

And that makes me wonder 1) how these people found my bLog and 2) what they read while they were visiting.

Would any of you people from Europe want to comment on that? Use the comment link or form for this post. I’m really curious.

Thanks!

ING

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Real online banking.

One of the things a Robinson helicopter owner has to consider is the big bill that comes after 2200 hours or 12 years of flight (whichever comes first). Robinson made helicopter ownership and maintenance easy by having most limited-life parts end their lives at the same time. When that time comes, the entire helicopter goes in to the factory or an authorized overhaul center for a complete overhaul. When it emerges, it’s like a brand new helicopter.

The only drawback is that this overhaul currently costs $184,000 for a Robinson R44, which is what I own. And that amount goes up by a few thousand dollars every year.

So although my normal maintenance throughout the year is quite low (for a helicopter, anyway), I have to remember that big bill. Every hour I fly, I put aside about $85 in a “reserve” account. Right now, that’s a money market account at my local bank.

The helicopter currently has about 184 hours on its Hobbs meter. Do the math and you’ll see that I already have a pretty good chunk set aside.

The goal, of course, is to keep building up the balance in this account so when the big bill comes along, the money’s there to cover it. Lots of people go the other route — they take out a loan to refinance when the big bill comes. But I hate debt and would rather save up and be prepared.

The problem is that it’s very tempting to spend that money when it’s just sitting around, doing nothing. Especially when it’s only earning 1.25% a year. I was thinking of rolling it into CDs, which are less liquid than a money market account that comes with checks. But the rates are equally dismal at my local bank.

In New Jersey the other day, I got into a conversation about this with Mike’s ex-roommate, Greg. He suggested ING, an online bank. I checked it out last night and learned that I can get 3.5% on a savings account and 4.1% to 4.85% (depending on term) for a CD. Holy cow!

ING can offer such good rates because they have low overhead. They don’t have branches, they don’t offer checking accounts. They have very few banking products. Everything is simple and to the point. Even their Web site is simple.

The last time I had a CD was when my grandfather passed away and my little inheritance — about $15,000 — was tucked away in a CD until I turned 25. My father was the executor of the will and he put the money in a 6 month CD. At the time, inflation was running rampant and CD rates were up around 18%. My father thought the rates would keep going up, so he wanted the money to roll over at a higher rate. But the bottom dropped out and rates descended from the stratosphere. Disappointing, but not a big deal, because I wound up putting most of the money toward the down payment on my first house. But every time I think of CDs, I think about those rates in the late 70s. Today’s rates look pretty bad in comparison.

But 3.5% on a savings account is way better than the .5% my bank offers for savings or the 1.25% I’m getting on my “risky” money market. So last night I opened a savings account for my personal money at ING.

It’s an interesting process. You fill out an online form that asks for the usual information. You also provide information about your checking account, which is linked to your ING savings. ING makes two tiny deposits into your checking account and you tell ING how much those deposits were for. This is so ING can confirm that this is indeed your account. You can then initiate transfers between your ING and checking accounts via ING’s Web site or telephone. There are no fees for your ING account and no minimum balance requirements. Transfers probably take 24-48 hours, so there is a bit of a lag. But if you have a relatively large sum of money, it’s nice to have it sitting someplace where it’ll earn a decent return.

My personal savings fluctuate wildly. Most of my income comes in quarterly, so at the beginning of a quarter, I’ll have a nice, healthy bank balance but, by the end of the quarter, I may be scratching around for loose change. The ING account will work out nicely.

I’ll create a savings account and a CD account for my helicopter overhaul reserve. The CD will be short term — probably six months — and every time it’s ready to roll over, I’ll add a little to it. That’ll keep it intact and growing over the next 11 years or 2016 hours (whichever comes first).

Anyway, if you have a bit of money stashed away and you’d like an FDIC-insured way to earn a decent return on it, you should definitely check out ING.