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Royalty Statements

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What my quarterly royalty statement tells me.

I make my living as a writer. Sure, I do other stuff and bring in money doing it, but when it all gets down to dollars and cents, the money I receive from writing is what pays the mortgage and puts food on the table.

With a new royalty statement in my hands, I thought I’d take a few moments to explain to folks interested in writing how the royalty part of writing works and what can be learned from a royalty statement.

How a Typical Writer Receives Income

Money from my writing work comes in three ways:

  • Payments for articles. When I write an article for publication, I normally get a check within 2 to 4 weeks of publication. The amount is agreed upon in advance, so I know what to expect but not exactly when to expect it.
  • Advances for work in progress on books. When I sign a book contract, it includes a payment schedule for advances. I like my advance paid in three or four installments that are due when certain parts of the book are submitted to my editor(s) — in other words, when I achieve completion milestones. A typical arrangement might be 1/3 on signing, 1/3 on 1/2 completion, and 1/3 on completion. Depending on the publisher, the checks usually arrive within 2 to 4 weeks of the milestone. Again, I know how much to expect but not exactly when to expect it.
  • Royalty payments. When I sign a book contract, it also includes a royalty percentage. The percentage is applied to the wholesale price of the book. So, for example, if the royalty is 12% and the book retails for $20 (about average for my books), the 12% is applied to the amount the publisher sold the book to retailers (or book clubs or direct order customers) for. A good rule of thumb is about 50% off the cover price. So I’d get 12% of about $10 or $1.20 per book. This royalty rate is applied to all sales of a title to come up with a royalty due. The amount of advance is then subtracted — remember, that was an advance on royalties — and if the result is a positive number, the book has “earned out” and I get a royalty check. My publishers pay royalties quarterly, although not on the same schedule. I know exactly when a royalty check will come — well, within 3 days of an exact date — but I never know how much I’ll get.

After doing this for 15 years, I’ve come to think of advances as my “bread and butter,” payment for articles as “fun money,” and royalties earned as “icing on the cake.” I won’t write a book unless the advance is enough to cover the amount of time and effort I put into writing the book. (I turned down two low-advance projects just last year.) This way, if the book doesn’t earn out, I’ll still make enough to keep paying the bills. If it does earn out, great. And since I don’t do a lot of work on articles — it’s just too much effort to get the work lined up — I don’t rely on that income for anything. That’s kind of unfortunate, because I can usually bang out one or two articles in day, so the income would really be great if I’d get get more of that kind of work.

As you can imagine, royalty statement time is a big event at my house — especially when Peachpit royalties are due. The statement comes in a big fat envelope. The reason: there are lots of pages. But one of the first pages of the package is the royalty check. And a quick peek tells me just how much icing I’ll have to spread around for the next three months.

How Many Books are on the Books?

The reason my Peachpit royalty statement comes in a big fat envelope is because there are lots of pages. The statement sitting in front of me right now is 61 pages long. I can’t even get a staple through it for filing.

The first few pages — 4, this time around — is a summary of the ISBNs covered by the statement. This list of ISBNs — 34 of them this quarter — are the books the publisher still has in its accounting system.

I need to make a distinction here between titles and ISBNs. A good example is right on the first page. My 2004 title, Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Excel: Visual QuickProject Guide, is listed three times: the original title, the German translation, and the French translation. Sometimes translations get their own ISBN and sometimes revenue for a translation is listed for the main title. It depends on how the translation rights were sold. Also, since Peachpit is now selling PDF versions of some of my books, those versions appear on a separate line.

Still, a quick count of titles on this quarter’s statement shows 28 titles listed. Whew! Even I think that’s a lot.

In my case, the vast majority of my work these days is in revisions. So each statement might show multiple versions of the same book. This is especially true for titles that are still “alive.” For example, my America Online: Visual QuickStart Guides (a 2-part — Macintosh and Windows — nightmare completed for version 3.0 years ago) are “dead” titles. They came out, sold poorly, and were not revised. These book are dead and buried and the only reminder that I ever did them are the author copies of each book on my author copy shelf. But my Excel for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide is alive and kicking — in fact, I just finished the revision for Excel 2007 this week. Three editions appear on my royalty statement: 2000, 2002, and 2003. (2007 will appear on the next statement.) And my Mac OS: Visual QuickStart Guide takes up the most lines: seven editions going back as far as the edition covering Mac OS 9.

For a title to appear on the royalty statement, it must be either earning money or losing money (by returns) with a more recent edition to suck up the losses. This is an important clause in book contracts — one that’s important enough to discuss in a little more detail here. Commonly known as cross-accounting or cross-deductions, it means that returns on one title can be applied to net revenue on another. So, for example, if my share of returns on an old edition of my Excel book was $43.54, that amount could be deducted from or charged to royalties on a more recent edition. That’s normally why books stay on royalty statements for so long — there’s still accounting for them.

It was kind of a good thing that my AOL books didn’t have more recent editions. Neither title earned out, so the money I was overpaid for those books could be deducted from future editions, had they existed. Instead, the publisher cut their losses by not doing new editions (a wise move) and simply stopped accounting for the existing books when the numbers stopped coming through. The books “fell off” my royalty statement.

(If you’re ever given the opportunity to negotiate a book contract, do not sign a contract with a clause that says all of your books can be pooled together for cross-accounting. (I don’t know the exact wording of a clause like that because I’ve had it removed from every single draft contract it appeared in.) Agreeing to this may prevent you from ever getting a royalty check if you write multiple titles for the same publisher and any or them are dogs. If you’re really lucky, you won’t even have cross-accounting for the same edition of a book — I was lucky to have that situation with one of my Quicken titles years ago. But I think it’s fair to do cross-accounting with different editions of the same book, so I don’t mind signing for it. I just brace myself for the returns every time a new edition comes out.

And returns, in case you’re wondering, are returns from retailers/wholesalers, not consumers. If Barnes & Nobel buys 1000 copies of a book and sells 200 of them in the time they allotted to give the title shelf space, 800 copies come back. That’s a bad thing for the author.

What the Summary Numbers Mean

Still with me? Here’s a bit more that the summary pages tell me.

For each ISBN, the summary page has 6 numbers:

  • Previous Balance is the amount owed to me (positive number) or the publisher (negative number) for the ISBN. There usually aren’t any positive numbers; if the publisher owned me money, they paid me last quarter. So books that are earned out show zero in this column. If I owe the publisher money — for example, the book hasn’t earned out or subsequent returns have put the ISBN in the red — that number appears as a negative value. Zero is good, negative is bad.
  • Earnings/Subsidiary Rights Earnings is what the book earned me during the quarter. That’s the royalty calculation applied to net sales. Positive numbers means they sold more books than they received in returns. Negative numbers mean they got more in returns than they sold. Positive is good, negative is bad.
  • Credits/(Deductions) is the amount paid out during the quarter for advances or, if the author is paying for indexing, the amount paid to the indexer. I’ve never seen a positive number in this column.
  • Cross Deductions is where they take returns from one title and apply them to royalties earned on another title. So, for example, if the net earnings on my Word X book were -$53.47, that amount would appear as a positive value in this column for that ISBN and a negative value in that column for a later edition — perhaps my Word 2004 book. If you add up the cross-deductions column, the net amount should be zero.
  • Payment Due is the net amount owed to me for the ISBN. This number is either zero or a positive number.
  • Balance Forward is the amount that needs to be earned out to get more royalties on the ISBN. It’ll be zero if there was a payment in the previous column or a negative number if zero was in the previous column. That value is carried forward to the Previous Balance column in the next statement.

Of course, this is the format Peachpit uses. Other publishers may use other formats.

So when I get a royalty statement, the second thing I look at is the summary. (The first is the amount of the check, of course.) The summary tells me which books are earning money for me. That’s usually current editions of books. This is where I can see at a glance whether a new title has earned out. I can also see which books are earning me the most money — the titles with bright and happy futures. The bigger the payment due on a title, the more likely that title will be revised in the future. (Unless the software publisher decides to kill the software, as Adobe did to PageMill years ago. That book was doing very well when it was killed.)

Sometimes I get pleasant surprises. For example, my Excel 2002 book is still selling. That book was published five years ago and it earned $262 for me this quarter. Okay, so that isn’t enough to host a big party, but it’s a nice thing, a good thing. After all, the average life of a computer book is 18 months. So to have one that’s still bringing in a few bucks for me after five years is great.

The summary statement also tells me which titles are dead. These are the titles with previous balances that are negative numbers and no revised editions to earn more revenue. Sometimes these titles have ugly negative numbers in the Earnings column, indicating returns. My QuickBooks Pro for Mac book is in this situation. Although it’s the only title covering that software, there simply aren’t enough users interested in buying a book to make the book earn out. So when my editor says the publisher is not going to revise the title, I can look at this royalty statement and understand why. The book is dead.

Want more detail? The summary pages are also a table of contents for the 57 pages that follow them. That’s where I can find information about units sold, subsidiary rights (like translation rights), and where the books were sold: U.S., Canada, Export, etc. To be honest, I don’t look at these pages for every title. Heck, I have enough to do in a day.

What I Learned this Quarter

Looking at the royalty statement is like peering into a crystal ball. I learned that there are certain topics I probably won’t be writing again and other topics I’ll be writing about for years to come. I learned which of my books is doing best for me (still Tiger, after two years!) and which ones I might want to promote a bit more to liven up.

But with 61 pages to review, that’s about all.

Hopi Tea

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A soothing beverage from the Rez.

My first visit to the Hopi reservation was about 6 years ago. I was traveling in my Jeep with two friends. Our main destination was the annual Navajo Nation Fair in Window Rock, AZ, but my friend Shorty wanted to drive through the Hopi Reservation and visit Old Orabi, which is the oldest continually occupied village in North America. Shorty wanted to mail a letter to a friend with the Old Orabi (or possibly Hotevilla) postmark.

The Book of the HopiThe Hopi tribe, unlike many other Native American tribes in the Southwest, is working hard to hold onto its culture and heritage and keep it from being commercialized by outsiders. This is probably why so few people know anything about the Hopi people. Their ceremonies are usually closed to the public — as are entire villages sometimes — and photography is not allowed. The reservation is completely surrounded by the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona and only a few paved roads go through it. There aren’t many shops or restaurants and there are no casinos. The place isn’t very tourist-friendly because they don’t want tourists around. (This may be changing as the Hopi tribe realizes the importance of tourist dollars for the tribe’s economy. I just hope they don’t lose their identity in the process.) You can read more about the Hopi people on the Tribe’s Web site or in The Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters.

With all this in mind, we drove into the reservation and found Old Orabi. I don’t remember much about it. The Hopi tribe are pueblo indians and they built their homes on the edge of the three Hopi mesas: First, Second, and Third Mesa. I remember walking around one of the villages, past ancient stone homes, some of which were still occupied.

Eventually, we got to the post office, which I think was in Hotevilla. I remember this a bit better. It was a standard tiny-town post office with a bulletin board in the outer vestibule, where all the mailboxes were. Shorty spotted an “ad” for blue corn meal. We made a call from a pay phone and were soon on our way to a Hopi home.

It was a more modern home than the stone structures in the old villages. We were invited inside and I remember being surprised at how remarkably “normal” it was. (I don’t know what I was expecting.) We sat on a sofa while kittens played around us. The Hopi woman we’d met there had a big galvanized metal trash can that was absolutely filled with finely ground corn meal. She measured out quantities of the stuff with a round, flat pan not unlike a cake pan and stuffed it into a Blue Bird Flour bag. She told us how the cornmeal had been ground as part of a wedding ceremony. This was the leftover cornmeal from that celebration. When the bag was full, Shorty handed over some money and took the bag. (I wound up buying about half of the cornmeal from Shorty and still have some in stock.)

The conversation turned to dance shawls. A friend of the woman’s made them and had some for sale. Were we interested in seeing them? Shorty was. So we hopped into the Jeep and followed the woman to her friend’s house. The shawls were pretty — square or rectangular with really long fringe — but the colors were too bright and gaudy for my taste. Shorty bought one or two, possibly to be polite. And then we got on our way.

This whole experience really made the visit to the Hopi reservation special to me.

From there, we stopped at the Hopi Cultural Center for a bite to eat. Unlike my companions, I had a traditional Hopi dish that included lamb. This was before the vendors started setting up stalls outside, so after lunch we continued on our way.

As we were leaving Second Mesa, we passed a shop on the left called Tsakurshovi. (Don’t ask me to say that.) We stopped in. It was a small shop that caters primarily to the Hopi people, offering the materials they need to conduct their ceremonies. There were dozens of traditional-style Hopi kachinas — figures carved to represent Hopi religious and ceremonial people — furs, herbs, and more. The shop had two small rooms and a friendly young Hopi man behind the counter.

Turns out, this shop is owned by the Days — Janice and Joe. Janice is Hopi, Joe is not Native American. And it was mentioned in a recent story on NPR, which interviewed Joe’s son, Jonathan. Jonathan grew up spending his summers on the Reservation and the rest of the year in Boston with his mother. He now lives in Flagstaff where he runs a shop that I suspect is very similar to his father’s.

Traditional Hopi Kachinas: A New Generation of CarversI don’t remember why I bought the hopi tea. Perhaps Shorty bought some. Perhaps I asked the guy behind the counter what the bundles of sticks in a Ziplok bag were all about. In any case, I bought a bag of three bundles of sticks for $4.

I also bought a copy of Jonathan Day’s book, Traditional Hopi Kachinas: A New Generation of Carvers, which I had autographed on the spot by the guy behind the counter, Wallace Hyeoma, who happened to be one of the featured artists (page 47). (A year later, I would return to the shop and buy several traditional style Kachinas, one of which was carved by Wallace’s uncle.)

We continued on our way, leaving the Hopi Reservation. Our next stop was at the Hubbell Trading Post, where I wound up buying a Navajo rug. But that’s another story.

Much later, when I returned home, I found the bundles of sticks in my luggage. I boiled some water, broke off a few sticks and leaves, and dropped them in. In minutes, I had a hot cup of some of the most soothing tea I’d ever tasted. Clean, fresh, and simply delicious. No need for sugar or milk or lemon. This tea, like green or jasmine tea, is perfect straight. Now I commonly drink it on cold, lazy afternoons, when I feel a cold coming on, or when I’m feeling blue. To me, it’s like a comfort food beverage.

Those three bundles of sticks lasted a long time. A few years ago, I was back on the Hopi reservation and bought more. But today, waking up with a head cold, I decided to forego my usual morning coffee in favor of the clean flavor of Hopi tea. As I brewed up a cup, I realized two things: (1) the long story of how I’d discovered Hopi tea might be interesting to at least a few blog readers and (2) I was running low again.

I did some research for this blog entry. I discovered that Hopi tea is from a plant commonly known as greenthread and scientifically known as Thelesperma filifolium. You can see some photos of it as a plant and stick bundles, learn how to brew it, and read about its medicinal values on the New Mexico State University’s Medicinal plant Web site. I learned that it grows in abundance in the Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni reservations of the Four Corners area. I also found an online source for purchasing Hopi tea online, High Desert Farmers. High Desert is a small scale grower which sells Hopi tea as traditional bundles (they call it “bulk”), loose, and as tea bags. Since the bundles weren’t available, I bought bags and loose. It cost me $14.50 (including shipping), but saved me a 200+ mile trip to the Hopi reservation.

If you like plain, soothing hot teas like green tea, you’ll probably like Hopi tea. If you ever see some in your travels, I recommend it. And I hope you story of first acquisition is as memorable to you as mine is to me.

A Helicopter Repair Story

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Including a happy ending.

On Tuesday, I flew out to Robson’s Mining World in Aguila, AZ. I was scheduled to appear there on Saturday for their anniversary celebration and I wanted to make sure my usual landing zone was in good shape.

It was a windy day and I was tossed around a bit on the 8-minute flight from Wickenburg (vs. a 30-minute drive). But the winds were calmer closer to the ground. I circled Robson’s once, then set down on what I thought was a spot closer to the road. Turned out, it was the same spot I’d occupied the year before. It just looked closer to the road from the air. The quartz rocks Mike and John had laid out in a line for me were still there. The idea was to land with the helicopter’s cockpit over the line. That would keep my tail rotor away from the bushes behind us. But since the bushes looked bigger than they had the year before, I positioned the helicopter a little bit closer to the road.

I cooled down the helicopter and shut down the engine. Then I went out to assess the landing zone on foot. I discovered that the quartz line was still quite workable for me. The bushes were farther back than I’d thought on landing. (I always estimate the helicopter’s tail longer than it really is.) So the landing zone was fine. No trimming would be required. That’s good because I don’t like the idea of cutting any desert vegetation unless absolutely necessary.

I put on my jacket — it was still quite cool at 9 AM — and walked through Robson’s front gates. The place looked deserted. I headed toward the restaurant, planning on having a piece of pie for breakfast. The door was locked but as I was starting to turn away, Rosa, who works in the restaurant, hurried out from the kitchen and opened the door. I settled down at a table and she talked me into having a real breakfast of bacon and eggs. She set me up with a small pot of hot tea and went back into the kitchen to prepare my food.

I had a few awkward moments when the teapot’s lid fell into my cup and became stuck there. If I’d been with someone, we would have been laughing hard. But I was alone and laughed at myself more quietly. I had to pour all the tea back into the pot and wait for the lid in the cup to cool and contract a tiny bit before I could get it out.

Rosa brought me a plate of fresh fruit — grapefruit, pineapple, grapes, and oranges — then disappeared back into the kitchen. I busied myself by reading the history of Robson’s and some information about the equipment and vehicles on display. When she brought out my breakfast a while later, I gobbled down the two eggs over medium, three slices of bacon, and two slices of wheat toast with real butter. (Don’t you hate when restaurants use mystery spread on toast?)

The person I was hoping to see there, Rebecca, wasn’t in yet. She lives in Wickenburg and drives out five days a week to manage the place. I saw her drive in just as I was starting the engine for the helicopter at about 9:45. Since the engine was already running and the blades were already turning, I didn’t shut down. I had another stop to make.
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Wine Tasting at Bacchus

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A nice night out in Scottsdale.

My friend Tom, who is a wine lover like me, has a home in the Scottsdale, AZ area, where he lives during the week. (You may recall the article I wrote about dinner at Tom’s Wickenburg home.) On Wednesday nights, he goes to a wine shop named Bacchus, for wine tastings. It’s mostly a social event, but it also gives him an opportunity to try a wide variety of wines, many of which he purchases for his wine “cellar.” He’s urged us to join him, but since Scottsdale is a 60-mile drive from Wickenburg, it isn’t exactly convenient.

Yesterday, however, I had some other plans that included a trip to Scottsdale. I needed to drop off my “airport car” at a friend’s hangar near Scottsdale Airport, where it would wait patiently for my next trip down there. About half of Flying M Air’s business is out of Scottsdale these days and since the old Toyota wasn’t doing anything worthwhile in Wickenburg, I thought I’d leave it in Scottsdale for ground transportation when I flew down for business. So I drove it down there yesterday afternoon. The poor car rides terribly at slow speeds in city stop-and-go situations, but is like a magic carpet at highway speeds. The speedometer must be wrong because it said we were doing almost 80 all the way down there but it sure didn’t feel like it and there were still a few cars passing us on the highway. The radio’s speakers are all broken too now — must be the dry air — so I had to listen to my iPod with ear buds. That was okay because the car is also pretty loud (the engine is right behind me and it rides low to the ground) and the plug-style buds I wear blwocked out most of the road noise. I tried to catch up with NPR podcasts and managed to hear at least 15 of them during the ride.

Along the way, I stopped at Tom’s business in the Deer Valley area, AeroPhoenix. Tom’s a distributor for aviation/pilot supplies and he occasionally lets me wander through his warehouse to look at all the great books (he must have the largest selection of aviation books anywhere), gadgets, and other pilot aids he sells. (This is the business I’d hoped he’d bring to Wickenburg, but he’s pretty settled down in Deer Valley and doesn’t want to move.) I wanted to pick up two pilot shirts — you know, the kind with the do-dads on the shoulder so I could wear my captain’s bars. Although most flights are too casual for such attire, I occasionally do VIP transportation for a Wickenburg-based business owner and I think wearing a captain’s “uniform” would help impress my client’s clients. He had these great helicopter ties, too, but I even thought that particular width is in style, I like a narrower tie. (I’ve never been accused of being stylish.) I invited Tom to join Mike and I for dinner at Deseo for some ceviche. But Tom was busy with work and said he’d have a hard enough time getting to the wine tasting by 6:30.

I met Mike at Scottsdale Airport after parking the Toyota at its new home away from home. We went to the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa, a relatively new hotel just west of the Kierland Commons shopping center near Scottsdale Airport. It’s a nice place — I certainly wouldn’t mind staying there! We found Deseo on the lower level. Unfortunately, since it was only 5:30, the restaurant was still closed. But the bar was open and they were serving mojitos and a limited menu for appetizers. We ordered a pair of the smoothest mojitos I’ve ever had and five different ceviche dishes. As we waited for the food, the small bar filled with people. A bowl game was just starting on the big television above the bar. Our food came from the kitchen in two batches: five incredible collections of ingredients and flavors. We argued over which dish was best and decided that we’d have to come back for dinner in the restaurant and try again.

We asked the concierge for directions to Bacchus. It was in Kierland Commons, about a half mile from the hotel. We took the car so we could park it nearby and save a walk after the tasting. We wound up having to valet park it; there were no spaces near the shops.

Bacchus is a wine shop with a limited selection of wines and a very knowledgeable, service-oriented staff. If you want something they don’t have, they can order it for you, Tom assured us later in the evening. The tasting was $15 per person. After establishing where Tom usually sits (he wasn’t there yet), we took our tasting glasses and notes to the table and introduced ourselves to the folks already there. Among them was Stan, another Bacchus regular. Our table filled up quickly, although I was able to hold a seat for Tom. He arrived right before the tasting, looking a little disheveled, and took the seat I’d saved beside me.

I’ll be honest — I was a bit disappointed with the tasting. It wasn’t the wine so much — I liked two of them and didn’t care much for the other two. It was the accompanying lecture. The session was supposed to be Wine Tasting 101, a beginner’s guide to tasting wine. But rather than step us through the wine tasting process — swirl, examine the legs, sniff, sip, roll around on the palette, etc. — the lecturer gave us tidbits of tasting information as we tried the four wines over a 90-minute period. I was hoping for a more step-by-step approach, with the lecturer telling us, with each wine, what we should be smelling and tasting. It always bothered me that wines could be described as having vanilla or almond or blackberry flavors and I could never taste it. I was hoping to learn how to taste it. I guess the point is, I was hoping to learn. The lecture, however, didn’t cover anything more than I could get from a few winery visits in Napa or Sonoma county.

(Okay, so not everyone in the Scottsdale area has the inclination to go for wine tastings in California’s wine country. But we’ve been there four times, most recently this past June, so there wasn’t much new to us. I never thought of myself as a wine “expert” — and still don’t — but we’re apparently better educated about wine than most people.)

I liked the chardonnay (Le Snoot, 2005) and cabernet sauvignon (Edge, 2004) that we tasted. After the last wine, Tom ordered a bottle of one of his favorites for the table: Giacomo Vico Barbera d’ Alba 2001. It’s a nice, smooth red wine. When that was gone, he ordered an Ada Nada Barbaresco Elisa 2000. Even better.

Now if you’re wondering how I remembered the exact names of the wines, I didn’t. I bought a total of six bottles (two each of the chardonnay and cabernet and one each of the Barbera and Barbaresco and just read the names off the labels. I don’t go to wine tastings just to taste wine. I go to find wines I can buy and bring home and drink. The purchase stood me back over $100 — this ain’t Two-Buck Chuck — but now I know I have good wines on hand for good meals and special occasions.

The last bottle was only halfway finished when Mike and I rose to leave. Tom was going to be moving on to a place called the Ocean Club, where he sometimes went after tastings to meet friends. Evidently, there’s a piano bar there and people gather around and sing. (I don’t think he’s talking about karaoke, either.)

Unfortunately, Mike and I had horses to feed and a dog to let out. Wickenburg was 60 miles away. Although we’d each had a fair helping of wine, it had been spread out over a long enough period that neither of us were anywhere near drunk. We retrieved the car from the valet and Mike drove us home. We stepped in the door at 9:30 PM.

Tom’s left us with an open invitation to join him at Bacchus any Wednesday evening. He has a guest room in his Scottsdale area condo where we can spend the night if we need to. I might take him up on that offer now that I have a car in Scottsdale. The next time I fly into Scottsdale on a Wednesday, when I’m finished with business, I’ll park the helicopter for the night. Then I’ll drive on over to Bacchus for some wine, hit the Ocean Club to check out the scene there, and crash at Tom’s place. In the morning, I can fly back to Wickenburg. Sounds like a plan, huh?

Now all I need is a Wednesday charter down in Scottsdale.

Christmas at Howard Mesa – Part I

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I was dreaming of a white Christmas.

On the Friday before Christmas, Mike and I loaded up the truck with a bunch of things, including some furniture, food, tools, Jack the Dog, and Alex the Bird. At about 9 AM, we headed north, to our property at Howard Mesa.

In Wickenburg, it was raining. It was the first time there had been enough rain there to actually get your skin wet for at least a month. Part of me wanted to stay behind and enjoy the weather. But the other part of me knew that it was likely to clear up in an hour or two and I’d just be disappointed. We don’t get many good rainy days in the desert and Friday was not going to be one of them.

Our path took us up Route 93 to Route 89, through Congress and up Yarnell Hill. We stopped at the Cornerstone Bakery for some fresh baked goods to munch on in the car and enjoy on Saturday morning for breakfast. It was a freezing rain there, but nice and toasty in the bakery, which was filled with the usual collection of locals.

Back on the road, we took 89 through Peeples Valley, turned toward Kirkland at Kirkland Junction, got on Iron Springs Road in Kirkland, and followed that to the first traffic light in Prescott. Then Williamson Valley Road to the Pioneer Parkway to Willow Springs Road to 89A. In Chino Valley, we stopped at Safeway, where Mike filled the truck with diesel and I hurried through the store to get veggies and a few last-minute food items. By this time it was snowing pretty hard, with just enough wind to blow the flakes at about a 30° angle to the ground.

Back in the truck, we followed 89A to Ash Fork, where we got on I-40 eastbound. The snow was sticking up there, coating the road with a thin layer of snowy ice. Trucks and cars were taking it easy, preferring a self-mandated speed limit of 35 or 45 MPH rather than the legal 75 MPH limit. It was slow going, but I’m sure it was better that way. Alongside the road, a light dusting of snow covered fields and trees. It looked more like Christmas than it has in a long while for me.

At the exit for the Grand Canyon (the third exit, the one that’s really for the Grand Canyon), we got off and followed Route 64 northbound. There was a lot of snow on the ground there but very few vehicles. Still, we both felt relieved when we reached the turn for Howard Mesa and began our last five miles of the trip. 20 minutes later, we were pulling through our gate while the snow swirled around us.

The entire drive, including the two short stops, had taken about 4 hours.

Inside our camping shed, the temperature was hovering around 35°F — which was pretty much the same temperature as outside. Mike turned on the gas and I struggled a bit to get the heater turned on. He unloaded the car while I turned on the fridge and started putting things away. Jack the Dog immediately got to work terrorizing whatever small rodents had made homes in the fire pit outside. Alex hung out in the truck where it was warmer. He didn’t come in until the temperature had risen to nearly 50°.

My first main task was to clean up after our unwanted lodgers — the mice. The shed has a mouse problem that we’ve tried everything to solve. The last time we were there, we’d gotten desperate enough to leave poison around. I had to scoop up what remained of it (only one of four pieces) before Jack came in. Then I had to uncover the furniture and get the vacuum going to suck up the mouse droppings that seemed to be just about everywhere. I used a lot of disinfectant cleaner on the floor and countertops. I took my time about it — there really wasn’t any reason to rush; I had all day. I had my iPod sitting in the iHome base, playing Christmas songs. Within two hours, I was pretty much done.

In the meantime, Mike was working in the bathroom on the plumbing. On our last brief visit (by helicopter during snow showers), we had discovered that most of the pipes had frozen and cracked. Mike had brought along pipes and connectors and tools to replace the broken pipes with new ones. The job required that he cut away one wall to access the pipes and do a lot of disconnecting. There was no running water in the shed and wouldn’t be until the pipes were repaired. Even the 5-gallon water cooler jug was mostly frozen; I had to light a candle under its spigot to get the water to flow.

I made us a hot lunch of canned chili with scallions and cheese, then washed up using water I boiled on the stovetop. It reminded me of the old days at Howard Mesa, when we’d camped out in our pop-up camper. That camper was wonderful on warm summer nights, but it lacked basic conveniences, such as a refrigerator or toilet. We’d use the tiny two-burner stove to heat water in the morning for coffee and washing up. During the day, we’d use those solar shower bags to heat water for showering and washing dishes. (They really do work in Arizona; we once had the temperature of the water in one of those bags up to 110°F — too hot to shower in!)

After lunch, I went on mouse cleanup duty on the shed’s little loft, which is where we sleep when we camp there. I discovered a place where they might be getting in; I’ll work on closing it up this weekend. Outside, the snow was still falling lightly. Everything was covered with a dusting of it. Jack the Dog was still hard at work at the fire pit, with the fur on the lower half of his body soaking wet. Oddly enough, it wasn’t windy, even though the weather forecast had called for wind gusts up to 28 MPH. A low cloud hung over the mesa, cutting our view to only a few miles.

Before the end of the day, Mike had finished replacing all the cold water lines. He connected the hose from one of our water tanks to the shed’s water line, turned on the pump, and pressurized the system. That’s when he saw the cracks in the hot water lines. We turned off the pump and disconnected the hose, then let any water in the lines run out.

The sun went down and it got dark. We brought Jack in. I made leftovers from home for dinner. The heater, which had been set to 85°F, had gotten the temperature in the shed up to a high of 64°. It didn’t seem that cold. We settled down on the sofa with my 15″ MacBook Pro on a folding table in front of us. I popped in a DVD from the first season of 24. We watched two episodes. We’d heard a lot about the show but had never actually seen it. So I’d added it to my Netflix queue (along with the second season of Boston Legal) and we were checking it out for the first time. Not bad. I can’t imagine watching it with commercials, though.

I slept badly. It’s the stupid hot/cold/hot/cold middle-aged woman thing, combined with the sounds of sleeping someplace different. It was pretty quiet when we first got to sleep, but at about 3 AM, the wind finally kicked up, blowing from the west right at the loft’s only window. I’d left the window open a crack — I’m always worried about asphyxiation in a closed space with a gas appliance running — and Mike had to close it. Sometime during the early morning hours, the wind shifted around to the northeast, which is the back side of the shed. It wasn’t blowing hard enough to shake the building, as it sometimes does. Just loud enough to hear it rushing past in the piñon and juniper pines scattered over our 40 acres. The sky had cleared and there were billions of stars out.

In the morning, the temperature in the shed was 43&degF with the outside temperature 28&deg. This was a problem. The heater was turned up, still set on 85°. As we moved around, making coffee and tea, washing up with water heated on the stove, we started finding drafty places. Around each window. Where the water heater sits against the outside wall. Around the edges of the door. I got my assignment for the day: caulk.

Mike decided he needed something from the hardware store to keep working, so we made a trip down to Williams, AZ. The town was remarkably busy for the time of year. I think it’s because the Grand Canyon Rail Road is doing a special “Polar Express” to the Grand Canyon each day and that’s attracting a lot of families. The town also sets up a real Christmas tree on side street off Route 66 and blocks off the street so visitors can walk around it. Nice.

We took care of business in the True Value hardware store, buying about $90 worth of stuff that included a new front door mat and weather stripping. Then we hit Safeway for a few things, stopping at the Starbucks counter on the way out for mocha lattes.

By the time we got back to the mesa, before lunchtime, a lot of the snow had melted. Mike got back to work and Jack continued his vigil at the fire pit. Sometime during the day, he started barking at something — we looked out the window in time to see an antelope hopping away across the road. One of the open range cows also came by, but since we’d kept the gate closed, she didn’t get into our property. (Cows have done a lot of damage at our friends’ place on the other side of the mesa, making us very glad we fenced in our entire lot years ago.)

Soup and sandwiches for lunch. The shed temperature was in the low 60s while it remained in the 30s outside.

I went through a whole tube of caulk on the windows. The shed was built with window frames that they’d stuck standard sized windows into. Unfortunately, the frames were about 1/2 inch too wide and tall for the windows, leaving a gap on at least two sides. They’d finished the outside of the windows with trim, closing up the gaps a bit, but they were still drafty. And one window leaked. I’d fixed the leaky window during the summer but had never thought that the gaps might cause drafts in the window. So I went to work with the caulk gun, which I’m actually pretty good at using. I ran out of caulk before I’d finished all of the windows, but I’d closed up the worst of the gaps.

Mike, as part of his pipe insulation procedure, had sealed up around the water heater with Fiberglas and foam insulation. I used garage door weather striping around the front door. The door was made to fit the shed and it doesn’t fit quite right. You can see light through the cracks around the door. Even with the thick rubbery weather striping, you can still see light in a few places. But it’s a lot better than it was.

Mike finished up all the piping by sunset. Hooked up the water again, ran the pump, and pressurized the system. No leaks. He turned on the water heater. I washed dishes from lunch. He cleaned up. Then he was ready for a shower.

Unfortunately, he’d waited too long. The outside temperature had dropped and the hose, which had never fully defrosted from the night before, had thickened up with ice. The pump was unable to bring in enough water. His shower was very short-lived. He stepped out, cranky and miserable. I was just glad I’d let him go first.

Getting water from the tanks to our camping equipment had always been a problem in cold weather. In the spring of 2004, I’d moved up to Howard Mesa in our horse trailer with living quarters, which also had a pump to get water from the tanks to the inside plumbing. Unfortunately, during the night the hose would freeze and the pump would try in vain to get the water out. That would run down the trailer’s battery and burn up the pump. So I had to turn off the pump each night and use the trailer’s internal water storage system for water. Not a big deal. Once every few days, I’d fill the internal tank so there was always water there when I needed it.

But here at the shed, we don’t have internal water storage. All the water has to come from one of the big tanks. The closest one is about 40 feet away. Because this is not a permanent setup, we didn’t dig a trench and put in a pipe. We use a hose. And the hose freezes every night, even though we do our best to drain the water out of it.

At least it hasn’t cracked yet.

Anyway, we spent Saturday night much the same way as Friday night. A nice hot dinner and two episodes of 24 on my MacBook Pro’s wide screen. The shed was much warmer — it had gotten up to 71°F by late afternoon. I slept well, waking about an hour before dawn. Outside, the moonless sky was bright with stars.

This morning, the inside temperature was 57°; outside it was 31°. I like to think it was my excellent caulking and weather striping that kept the shed reasonably warm overnight.

Today, Christmas Eve, I’ll finish cleaning up the shed — didn’t get much done in the bathroom with Mike making such a mess in there. Then we’ll put up the Christmas lights. Later, when it gets warmer, we’ll go for a walk around our fence line, making repairs and looking for castoff elk antlers as we go. It’s beautifully clear outside — I can see for at least 50 miles in every direction — and, as I write this at 10 AM, its already nearly 40°. It’ll be nice to get out. And I’m sure Jack the Dog is looking forward to a good run. He’s been going nuts every time the coyotes start howling nearby.

This afternoon, after a nice hot shower (got my fingers crossed), we’re going up to the Grand Canyon to meet some friends for dinner at El Tovar. Then dessert at our friends’ house on the other side of the mesa.

I’m looking forward to driving back to our place tonight, to seeing those red Christmas lights all alone in the middle of nowhere.

[composed on top of a mesa in the middle of nowhere with ecto]