Friday becomes Saturday.....

Once out in the driveway of Mesa Gateway airport, another scramble began to ensue....    Folks were finding their people and rides....  I just sat down on a bench and watched for a while...  I didn't have anyone meeting me...

Cabbies grabbed the available passengers as they walked across the street to the cab stand...  This seemed to be a competition... I expected elbows to be thrown and pushing and shoving to ensue any minute...

But as I sat there one of the cabbies came over to me and asked if I needed to go somewhere....  Perhaps I had that look about me...  I explained that I only had a short trip, but he had just the fellow...

Well it turned out that his fellow couldn't understand English...  And didn't know where it was, that his hustler had told him to go...  He was fumbling with his GPS looking for Elliott street.....

I said I would direct him but he didn't understand that....  He wanted to go West on Ray Road, but I told him NO!  Go East...  Finally I said turn Right!!!  He understood that...  So the trip was made with turn right or left commands...  $25 later, I was at my house..  He grumbled about such a short trip...  Or the small tip, or perhaps both...

As I fumbled with the locks on the front door, I realized that I was back in the realm of familiarity....  A big sigh of relief came over me.....

Nothing had changed since I left here almost 4 weeks ago, except for the 4 weeks of dust on the furniture...  And this wasn't a cleaning trip, so I immediately began to get the Jeep back in action....

I had left a battery tender connected to the wall socket of the garage, so once it was removed, the Jeep came right to life....  I was out into the night driving the Jeep for gas and a hamburger....  But that was when it hit me..........

I really miss being here in Mesa.....  I seem to have a tranquility here in the desert...  I don't know how to put it into words...  Perhaps the demands of society and the town around me are much more......   relaxed.......!

After the gas station and the burger, I thought that I could destroy that relaxed feeling by going to Wal Mart for some traveling supplies and an ice chest...  But even there, no one was around...

That Wal Mart in the winter time is an absolute zoo with limited parking, but tonight there seemed to be so few patrons, that I parked only a few spaces from the door...  The winter Arizonans have gone back home!!  That made me want to stay all the more...

Saturday.

My inner clock is now well adjusted to the central time zone, so I awakened at 5 AM Arizona time....  But since that was 7 AM in Kansas, I just went with it...

As daylight came over the yard, I realized that I had a big crop of weeds, so I spent the next two hours mixing weed spray...  I soaked everything in ground clear....  Loading the Jeep with a few forgotten belongings in the process...

So by 8 AM, I was ready to leave...  I only spent about 12 hours total at the house...

As I climbed Usery Pass, on Elliot Road I could see that the weather in the mountains wasn't good....  Dark heavy clouds covered the mountain tops in the distance..  Well before I reached Payson, sprinkling rain gave way to torrents of falling precipitation....  People sped past me on the highway like it was sunny and 80.

As I topped the ridge East of Heber at 7600 feet, the temperature was 35 degrees and the rain was splatting on my windshield as snow and sleet....  At least today I had the presence of mind to wear long pants....

The Az Highway Patrol were up along the highway at several places checking speeds, and generally allowing their presence to slow folks down.. I think the weather being so close to snow brought on their presence...  A good thing.

Once I made Holbrook, it was interstate driving from then on...  But the wind began to pick up in speed...  It was from the South West and mostly behind me, but I battled it for the rest of the day..  Gusts in the 40s..

Once in New Mexico I lost one of those hours that I had gained in Arizona...  So now my watch was only one hour ahead, stopping at the Casino West of Albuquerque, I pondered how far to go...  I was glad I was only driving the Jeep as the wind was blowing me all over the road...  With the motor home I would have been waiting for another day...

With nothing else on my agenda, I drove on to Tucumcari....  Which I will take up in the next installment...

Retired Rod