Snowbirding 2020: The Big Plan

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I prepare for my annual migration south, this time with a mission.

Posts in this series:
– The Big Plan
– The Drive Plan

This week I’m busy packing for my annual 3-month journey to points south. That means not only packing my truck and camper for the 1200-mile drive to central Arizona, but prepping my new used 12-foot cargo trailer to haul gear and work as my mobile jewelry shop. If I do everything right — and can fit everything I need into my limited storage space — I’ll have a comfortable and productive trip where I can enjoy warm weather and abundant sunshine and get to see a lot of old friends.

Trailer Inside
Here’s the inside of my trailer as I pack it. The drawers will hold materials and tools for making jewelry. The shelves in back are for my display tables, solar panels, and other necessities.

This year is different from other years, though. This year I have a mission — I plan on seeing if I can do well enough selling my jewelry at art shows to continue doing art shows. It’s a sort of make-or-break run at what could be my fourth career.

And no — despite the rumors being spread around by one of my friends (who I really do need to talk to) — I have no intention of giving up flying any time soon. But let’s be real: I can’t fly forever. It would be nice to have another career to fall back on when the time comes that I can’t make a living as a pilot anymore. If you look back, you’ll realize that I set up my flying career long before my writing career faded — and that was a very fortunate thing for me. And I didn’t exactly dive into my writing career before setting the stage during my finance career.

The Shows

So my goal this winter is to see how many shows I can do and how much money I can net doing them.

That said, I applied for ten shows covering a total of 31 days from late November through February. I was accepted to eight of them covering a total of 28 days. Of those, I accepted seven for the same 28 days. (It’s pretty common to apply to multiple shows at the same time in case you don’t get into one; I actually got accepted to two on the same weekend.) Although most of the shows are on weekends, two of them are 10 days each; for one of those shows, I’ll actually be spending 3 days at another show. Sounds confusing? It is. You can see my schedule here.

I also applied for another show in February and two more in March; I haven’t heard whether I’m in or out of any of them. I’m hoping I get the two March shows, which are both in California. It’ll give me an excuse to visit some folks I know there on my way home. If I don’t get them, I’ll apply for another show in Washington, much closer to home.

My two long January shows are weird. They’re in Quartzsite at a venue where vendors camp with their booths. I have a tiny space there to keep my costs low and I’m not quite sure that everything will fit. But the benefit is that I won’t have to move for nearly four weeks and I’ll have a full hookup for my RV that whole time. I don’t expect to sell much there — did I mention that it was a weird venue? — but I’ll be staying near friends and close to where I can stock up on stones and other supplies. Oddly, I like Quartzsite in January.

Tyson Wells and RV Show
Here’s a 2018 drone shot of Tyson Wells and the RV show across the street. I’ll be one of the vendors camped out this year for about four weeks.

Some R&R

Of course, the first half of the trip will have lots of leisure time. Although I may start with a short show in Wickenburg, I’ll be heading out to the River after that. My friend Janet and I camp out there every December and it seems that we’re getting an earlier start every year. I’m hoping to get a good site where we can camp right on the river. My kayak and fishing pole are already packed.

Campsite
This is the campsite Janet and I shared in 2017 — the year I brought my boat with me. We were there just two weeks.

I do have a mid-December show in Phoenix to attend; I’m planning on leaving my rig at the campsite with Janet and spend the weekend at a friend’s place in Gilbert. I might even coax him out to the river for a few days. We’ll see.

And I have to admit that I’m not a 9 to 5 vendor in Quartzsite, either. Although I’m open on weekends, I tend to goof off during the week, going out on photo or shopping trips in the morning and opening my booth around lunchtime. I’m sure Janet and I will play hooky at least once for a trip out to the river, too.

The Tucson Trip

After January in Quartzsite — and another show in Gilbert that I might or might not get into — I’ll go down to Tucson for about a week. I’ve signed up for four jewelry making courses with Vivi Magoo. I’m very interested in learning new things that can expand my capabilities. The classes I signed up for should do that.

I was in Tucson for just three days last year and wound up parking with my camper in casino parking lots at night. This time, I booked a week in a campground in town. I’m looking forward to being able to drop my camper while I take my classes, check out the rock shows that will be all over the city, and maybe do one or two day trips to Saguaro National Monument and the Pima Air Museum.

This is the second vacation portion of my trip, but I plan to keep pretty darn busy.

Finishing Up

The second half of February has me in two weekend-long shows in the Phoenix area. I’ve done both shows before and they were both worthwhile for me.

And that’s all I’ve got booked.

I did apply for two California shows — one in Palm Springs and the other in Borrego Springs. I applied kind of late for the Borrego Spring show last year and didn’t get in. My friend Janet did, however, and since I’d promised her I’d go there with her, we spent a few days before the show hiking among the flowers in a truly amazing superbloom. This year, with luck, we’ll both participate in the show and then I’ll head home up California’s Central Valley.

If I don’t get into either of the California shows, I might make my way home by way of Salt Lake City where I have friends I’d like to visit. Or Reno where I have other friends to visit. I can always find someplace to go or someone to see on my way home.

Prepping for the Trip

So now I’m home with just a few days left to finish packing up for my long trip. I’ll be selling jewelry locally at Pybus Public Market this weekend, so I can’t pack everything yet. But I can pack what I don’t need for that show, which is quite a few things.

Meanwhile, I’m also cleaning my house. My house sitter will be here on Monday and I like to start him off with a sparkling clean place so he rewards me with a sparkling clean place on my return. Whether I return in the beginning of March or the middle of the month depends on whether I get into those two California shows and how much I goof off on my way home. He’s prepared to stay until March month-end if necessary.

And I think that’s what I like most about my life these days. With the exception of about three months in the summer when I’m stuck at home for cherry season, I can make up the rest of the year as I go along. What’s not to like about that?

Digging Deep: Using Old Stones

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My stone collecting obsession and how I’m trying to move forward.

Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go: I like rocks and always have. I’ve collected interesting rocks since I was a kid. You know — like when you’re out on a walk and you see one on the ground that catches your eye and it winds up in your pocket and later on your dresser.

Or when you’re on the beach with your family and you wind up picking up more rocks than shells and you keep them in a jar of water at home so they stay wet and shiny but become an algae-filled science experiment that disappears one day while you’re at school.

Or even in the school playground one afternoon in the 1970s when Steven Gaydos claims to have a moon rock and sells it to you for $2. (Yes, I was one of his suckers.)

Buy my jewelry!
After being encouraged (or nagged?) by too many other artist friends, I finally opened an Etsy shop to make it easy for folks to buy and for me to sell my finished pendants. It’s called MLGemstones. What I like about selling on Etsy is that it’s relatively easy to keep up-to-date — I can add pendants as I make them and remove them as I sell them — and Etsy does all the work to create for receipts and postage labels and calculate and pay sales tax.

Even when I got older and into a relationship, I collected pretty rocks. My future wasband did, too, which I always thought was natural. We’d go out in the desert and come back with a bunch of rocks. One day, while Jeeping out near Congress, AZ, we came upon a really nice, almost perfectly cubed piece of white quartz. It took three of us to get it in the back of the Jeep and it wound up in the front yard of our home. (It later disappeared; I don’t know if my wasband took it or someone looking at the house during the years it was for sale took it. I certainly had no use for it.)

Quartzsite Makes it Serious

Every year, when I lived in Arizona, I’d take at least one trip out to Quartzsite during the January rock shows. I exercised a lot of self-control in those days, but I did come home with rocks now and then. I had, by that time, seen the pattern of my rock acquisitions: find, bring home, set aside, lose, repeat. It made no sense to pay money for something I’d too quickly lose interest in.

After I moved to Washington state, I’d still go down to Quartzsite as part of my winter migration. And one year, I caught the rock bug bad.

Bacon Agate Pendant
It’s almost embarrassing to share this photo of my second pendant, but sometimes you need to look behind you to see how far you’ve come. I recently found this pendant (after misplacing it for a year) and plan to reframe it and wear it as a reminder of the rock that started it all.

It started with a rock seller giving me a nice, polished bacon agate cabochon. I had to do something with it. That’s when I started playing around with jewelry making. I was awful back then and never realized that I would get better. All I thought about then was that now that I had something useful to do with the rocks, it made sense to buy a few.

A few hundred, is more like it.

The Growing Collection

Kingman Turquoise
Kingman Turquoise with bronze is one of my best selling stones these days. I get these from a lapidary in Pennsylvania.

Since then — which was only two years ago this coming January — I’ve not only added to my collection, but I’ve begun displaying the stones in Riker boxes with felt inserts. Each box has a type of stone: jasper, agate, moss agate, jade/opal, turquoise/chrysocolla/azurite, etc. Each stone is meticulously inventoried with a tiny sticker on the back with its name, inventory number, and selling price. Yes, I now sell cabochons, too. I have become a rock dealer.

I get about half my stones in Quartzsite or Tucson every year. Honestly, I get better deals in Quartzsite so that’s where I mostly shop, starting as early as December.

I get another 45% of my stones from lapidaries — people who polish stones into the cabochons I use for my jewelry.

CabKing6
I bought one of these so I could polish local stones.

The final 5% are made in my shop. When I got rock fever bad enough, I bought a CabKing 6 cab making machine. I have a very large supply of local petrified wood and obsidian that I got in trade from a client. They both make very nice cabochons — when I have the time to polish them. Of course, once I got the machine, I started acquiring slabs of rock from all over the world so I could make my own cabochons. Unfortunately, I’ve been having trouble finding time to do that.

Selling Stones

My cabochons range in acquisition price from $1 to $20. I obviously sell them for more than that. I have them on display at venues where I sell my jewelry. I get a lot of rock lovers stopping by to look — some of them can spend 15 minutes or more at my booth looking and chatting with me. I enjoy sharing my knowledge and learning from some of them. And I love hearing their stories! I don’t even mind when they take up a bunch of my time and don’t buy anything. (The only thing I do mind is kids with dirty hands touching the tops of the display boxes. 🤯)

Fallon NV Wonderstone
This Fallon Nevada Wonderstone was one of the first “expensive” rocks I bought. I think I paid $15 for it. The pendant sold for $79 the other day.

Picasso Stone
This was the first Picasso stone cabochon I bought and I think it was the nicest. It sold last weekend.

Indian Blanket Jasper
This was one of the first 100 stones in my collection. I’ve since learned that square stones are a tough sell, but I suspect this one will eventually find a home.

Petrified Wood
I obtained this petrified wood cabochon long before I got about 100 pounds of local petrified wood in trade with one of my clients.

Ocean Jasper
I remember the day I bought this Ocean jasper cabochon and another very much like it in a Sacramento, CA bead shop. I paid too much (as I now know) but got my investment back (and more) when it sold last weekend.

Although the main reason I have the stones on display is to entice shoppers to have a custom pendant made from one of them — I can do it while they shop or have lunch — I also wind up selling a lot of stones. Just last February, I sold 20 stones over two days to a woman in Wickenburg, AZ — she came to my booth twice — and one day this past summer I sold 18 stones to a woman in Leavenworth, WA. These sales are good and bad. They’re good because I’m making money on inventory that requires no work other than cataloging and transporting. They’re bad because these folks often pick my best stones, leaving me with ones that aren’t quite as interesting or impressive. (Of course, that gives me an excuse to buy more.)

And then there are the folks who buy out my entire stock of one particular stone. I’ll see these folks at rock shows, like the one I do in Mesa, AZ every January. I discount all my cabochons by 20% to stay competitive with other rock sellers at the event. One day, a guy bought all of my K2 granite stones and the next day another guy bought all my bumblebee jasper stones. Fortunately, I went right back to Quartzsite the day after the show and was able to replenish my supplies.

Digging Deep

My stone inventory is listed by date and I still have a bunch of stones from my early days of collecting them. I’ve begun making a conscious effort to get these stones out of my inventory by making them into jewelry. And that’s what I’m showing off here: photos of stones I’ve had in my collection for over a year that I’ve finally made into jewelry.

It’s interesting to note that I started writing this blog post earlier this month when I began making these pendants. Since then, three of the five have sold. That tells me that even back when I first started collecting I had pretty good taste in stones.

Over time, I’ve learned what sells quickly and, when I get to Arizona, I’ll be stocking up on those stones. But I’ll also be on the lookout for some other beauties that I won’t be able to resist. When I find a stone I really like, I price it so high that no one wants to buy it so I can keep it as long as possible. But everyone seems to have their own idea of how much is too much and I often sell them to collectors anyway. That’s okay; it funds my future collections.

As for my current status, after buying and selling stones and pendants made from stones for nearly two years, I have 370 cabochons in my collection. Is it any wonder that rock lovers stop and stare when I have them laid out in my booth for everyone to see?

Booth Shot
My stones get their own table when I set up my jewelry booth at shows, like this Holiday Artisan Fair in Wenatchee last weekend.

Gyroplane Flight: Pattern Work at Watts-Woodland

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A video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

SIT ON THE MAST OF AN OPEN COCKPIT GYROPLANE as I take it around the traffic pattern three times in Woodland, CA.

I dug deep into my archives for this video from April 2014, which first appeared, in part, on my personal YouTube channel. In it, I’m flying a Magni M-16 gyroplane with a GoPro camera mounted on the mast. There is a bunch of vibration in this video; removing it with stabilization software reduced the video resolution without significantly improving the video quality, so I let it stay as is.

I learned to fly a gyro back in 2014 and got as far as my first solo before calling it quits. (No reason to go on since there’s no gyro in my future and it would be nearly impossible to keep current.) My flight instructor was an anesthesiologist friend who has three planes, including this one, and flies on his days off. He said I was the most difficult pilot to teach and we realized it was because was a helicopter pilot and not an airplane pilot — the idea of touching down when you’re still speeding along at 60 knots or more scared the heck out of me so I kept trying to slow down on final. You can learn more about my lessons here: https://aneclecticmind.com/2014/04/24/learning-to-fly-gyros/

About Me, the Flight Instructor, and the Gyroplane

  • I have been flying since 1998. My nearly 4,000 hours of flight time (as of 2019) is in Robinson R44, Robinson R22, and Bell 206L (Long Ranger) helicopters.
  • My flight instructor, who sat behind me in this video, is George, who makes his living as an anesthesiologist. He also owns and flies two other planes and is rated to fly helicopters. The last time I saw him was the day we flew together from Malaga to Woodland in 2016. (Long story there.)
  • The gyroplane is a Magni M-16 that belonged to George. I don’t know anything about it other than it has a flashy Angry Birds theme paint job that seemed a lot more relevant in 2014 than it does now. It was in perfect condition and well maintained by George, who was its second owner. You can see a photo of the gyroplane in the title screen of this video; that’s me after my first (and only, I think) solo flight.

About the Video

  • The video and sound was recorded with a GoPro Hero 3 camera mounted with an adhesive mount to the gyroplane’s mast. This is obviously not the best setup given the vibrations you see in the video.
  • The video was edited on a Macintosh using Screenflow software. Learn more about it here: https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm
  • The intro music is by Bob Levitus, famed “Dr. Mac.” You can find him here: http://www.boblevitus.com/

I try to drop cockpit POV videos every Sunday morning and “extras” with more info about owning and operating a helicopter midweek. (Some channel members and patrons get early access to some of these videos.) I also host occasional livestreams with Q&A chats. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything new! And tell your friends. The more subscribers I have, the more motivated I am to keep producing videos like this one.

Any Amazon links on my channel are affiliate links (https://amzn.to/32PLHTD). If you click one of them and buy something, Amazon sends me a few pennies. Enough pennies make a dollar. Enough dollars buy new equipment. It doesn’t cost you anything so I hope you’ll shop with one of those links. Thanks.

Want to support the FlyingMAir channel? Here are four suggestions:

Helicopter Commute: Airport to Home

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Another video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.

SIT ON THE NOSE OF MY OLD HELICOPTER as I from the airport in Wenatchee across the Columbia River to my home under construction in Malaga.

This “Throwback Thursday” video is the whole flight from June 2014. I’ve just refueled after cherry drying and have gone home to wait for the next call out. It’s a beautiful day with great reflections in the river. I tell you a little about the area and my home in a narration added in editing.

About Me and the Helicopter

  • I have been flying since 1998. My nearly 4,000 hours of flight time (as of 2019) is in Robinson R44, Robinson R22, and Bell 206L (Long Ranger) helicopters.
  • The helicopter is a 2005 Robinson R44 Raven II — the same one that appears in the photo at the beginning of the video. This was my first R44, which was lost in a crash back in 2018. You can learn more about R44s here: https://robinsonheli.com/r44-specifications/ I owned this helicopter and now own another one very much like it, but blue. I’ve owned a helicopter since 2000.

About the Video

  • This video was recorded in 2014 with a GoPro Hero 3 camera mounted on the nose of the helicopter. Audio comes from the camera’s built-in speaker and has been incorporated into this video at 25% normal volume.
  • Narration was added using a Røde Podcaster microphone (https://amzn.to/2IFnbNr) connected to a Macintosh. I recorded the narration while I was watching the video in the editing software.
  • The video was edited on a Macintosh using Screenflow software. Learn more about it here: https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm
  • The intro music is by Bob Levitus, famed “Dr. Mac.” You can find him here: http://www.boblevitus.com/

I try to drop cockpit POV videos every Sunday morning and “extras” with more info about owning and operating a helicopter midweek. (Some channel members and patrons get early access to some of these videos.) I also host occasional livestreams with Q&A chats. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything new! And tell your friends. The more subscribers I have, the more motivated I am to keep producing videos like this one.

Any Amazon links on my channel are affiliate links (https://amzn.to/32PLHTD). If you click one of them and buy something, Amazon sends me a few pennies. Enough pennies make a dollar. Enough dollars buy new equipment. It doesn’t cost you anything so I hope you’ll shop with one of those links. Thanks.

Want to support the FlyingMAir channel? Here are four suggestions:

Helicopter Flight: Nick Over the Rocks, Part 3

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Another video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.

COME FLY WITH ME as I take Central Washington University geology professor and star of “Nick on the Rocks” Nick Zentner on a helicopter tour of the eastern Malaga, Rock Island, and Lower Moses Coulee with a focus on geology. It was a beautiful day for this second flight together and we start off by laughing about the camera problems I had on our first flight. The Nosecam footage is amazing and Nick points out many geological features along the way. This is part 3 of a multi-part series and the longest so far; I’m trying to keep them short and sweet.

Places mentioned in this video:

About Me and the Helicopter

  • I have been flying since 1998. My nearly 4,000 hours of flight time (as of 2019) is in Robinson R44, Robinson R22, and Bell 206L (Long Ranger) helicopters.
  • My helicopter is a 2005 Robinson R44 Raven II — the same one that appears in the photo at the beginning of the video. You can learn more about them here: https://robinsonheli.com/r44-specifications/ I own this helicopter. It is the third helicopter I’ve owned since 2000.
  • My helicopter has ADS-B Out and is picked up by radar facilities. You can see my track for recent flights on Flightradar24: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n7534D This is a great site for tracking any almost any flight, including the airlines.

About Nick Zentner

About the Video

I try to drop cockpit POV videos every Sunday morning and “extras” with more info about owning and operating a helicopter midweek. (Some channel members and patrons get early access to some of these videos.) I also host occasional livestreams with Q&A chats. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything new! And tell your friends. The more subscribers I have, the more motivated I am to keep producing videos like this one.

Any Amazon links on my channel are affiliate links (https://amzn.to/32PLHTD). If you click one of them and buy something, Amazon sends me a few pennies. Enough pennies make a dollar. Enough dollars buy new equipment. It doesn’t cost you anything so I hope you’ll shop with one of those links. Thanks.

Want to support the FlyingMAir channel? Here are four suggestions: