Tucumcari and beyond..

Tucumcari was kind of an interesting experience this time....  Renting the room was from the same gal that had the bad cold at Christmas time when I went thru town...

She was still full on with a head cold...   She even left her snotty kleenex laying on the counter between us....   And handed me a room key card with the kleenex in her hand...

I went immediately to the room and washed my hands and the key card in scalding hot soap and water....   Then I went to the store and bought a jug of Purell...  I brought it back and went over the room by squirting it in a washcloth and wiping everything..

I stopped at the pizza hut in town and had a small personal pan pizza, and while I was waiting a fellow pulled in with a 53 lime green Pontiac....  A straight eight two door with the lighted indian chief hood ornament....  He first got my attention while he was waiting for his take out pizza...  He was wearing bright green shorts with a pinkish red shirt, and penny loafers.....  Without socks...

Remember Tucumcari is on the mother road Route 66... and many of the motels and attractions are themed from the 1950s...  So this fellow was dressed to play the role...  And his car that started and ran like it was only 10 years old, not 60, fit that role as well....  Its just that you don't see folks driving old cars like that for a daily driver....

Back in the room after stressing over the cold germs, I was settled into watching the Canonization of the former Popes...  It was about 11 PM by then and the wind had picked up even more from earlier...  My door faced the outside and West...

The wind was rattling it in its frame...  It was blowing in hard enough to swing the curtains on the inside of the window....  The concrete block building fairly shook with the gusts....  I wondered how I would sleep...

Well in about 30 minutes, that wonder had a new element, as somewhere the power lines must have been blown together and things went slowly out.. First with low voltage like a brown out and then totally gone....

Looking out the window confirmed that the entire street as far as I could see was dark....  My laptop was on batteries, but the internet connection was gone and so was my mifi...

After a long while, the power did come back on so the lights were back..   But then the desk phone began to ring, and ring, and ring.....   Answering it didn't stop it ringing...  Still no cell phone or wifi or mifi...  And the TV would run but the programming on their cable system was gone...  No TV either...

None of these things rectified themselves for the rest of the night...  I pulled the phone wire out of the wall, and the alarm clock was one of those that flash a bright light on the ceiling to wake you up...  And I couldn't get it to stop or reset either...  So its plug was pulled as well...  So I and the 50 mph wind spent the night as it rattled the door on my room.....

Sunday

The lady with the cold was gone from the office the next morning, but a 30 something fellow had replaced her...  He looked as though he was up all night when I was checking out at 7 AM...  He told one fellow that when the electric went out and all the communications, it was time he went to bed anyway..... Nice..!

I grabbed some breakfast items from the coffee bar and hit the road...

I didn't see much of Texas...  Just a brown out dust storm....  At times I had to pull over and wait along the shoulder of the road because the visibility went down to zero...  The tumbleweeds were whipped up into a frenzy along with the dust... Some of them were small trees that had been broken free..  When they are so large, I try and dodge them as well...  Hitting them a 65 will leave scratches in the paint...

If I thought the wind was bad on Saturday, the wind on Sunday was much worse..    I arrived at the Wichita airport at 3 PM to haul the Honda home with the Jeep...  That will be the next post.

Retired Rod

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

Headed to the desert..

Its completely dark outside the airplane window as we descend thru the clouds over the Arizona desert...  I can see small patches of lights clustered in the distance, but mostly the desert is vast and uninhabited...

This surreal peaceful arrival is broken up by the loud screams of the young child in the seat behind me........  WAaaah, WAAAAahhh.   And the the 18 month old in the seat in front of me is standing on his dads lap sucking away frantically on his binky...  He was wailing away a few minutes ago, but now is amazed to find me in the seat behind him....

And then there are the two kids in the seat across the aisle...  The three year old was watching Dora the Explorer on her mom's Ipad, but had a total fit when the captain said over the intercom that all electronics had to be turned off and stowed for landing....  Her one year old sister has wailed off and on throughout the trip as well...  I now know why children are awarded to the young folks...

As an old guy, my patients isn't up to par.....   We land..........  The loud rumbling of the wheels on the concrete runway scares, and starts a symphony.....  A symphony of loud wailing from all three of these youngsters.....

As we parked at the gate, the flight steward tosses open the giant door and the night desert air rushes into the overheated plane...  Its dry as a bone, but wonderfully cool...  I escape the confines of the center aisle, as the mothers are packing up belongings for the kiddies...

Out into the night with my one small carry on bag...... Freedom..!

It was only a few hours ago that I was driving the Honda from KC to the airport in Wichita....  I had looked up the locations of the long term storage parking and the ramp from which we would depart..

The Honda had its precious cargo of my RV towing bar and safety cables in the back...  And I was early.... way early...  But I stopped at the McDonalds for a soda and time to collect my thoughts.

You see I was quite anxious because of the TSA screening that I was about to endure.....  After the cancer surgery a couple of years ago, I am now reliant on Medical supplies...  Supplies that aren't within the guidelines of stuff that can be carried onto the airplane....  The bottles of liquid are too big...  Scissors and the like....

Once in line, I had to explain that I needed a special screening for medical needs...   I had to explain in front of several other nosy  people to a less than accommodating officer....  But he took me aside and went thru all of the offending medical things..  And my whole carry on..  Shoes off, belt off, watch and phone in the bucket... Laptop out and turned on... And I passed the metal detector...

So after what seemed forever, we finally were called for boarding... But even that seemed to be in doubt, as the plane coming in was late from Mesa... They had several folks on board that were wheel chair bound...  It had taken a long time to get them all boarded in Arizona...  It took just as long to get them back off again once they were in Wichita.....

And one of our passengers, a young twenties something fellow had arrived at our gate noticeably drunk...  Or possessed, if that is possible....  He was making loud statements to all that would listen, about what he planned to do to someone..  Talking in the third person about himself...  Airport security was called....

They took him aside and I thought a fight was about to ensue..  Several more uniformed officers came from doors all around the situation.. They seemed to just appear...  Up from the ramp... down the concourse...  The fellow was seriously outnumbered....  He capitulated...

Once seated again with most of the officers gone, he began to make loud and intolerant remarks.... I wondered if he was under the influence of drugs...

At that time a rather small lady ticket agent, made an announcement that Allegiant Airlines reserves the right to refuse service to anyone they deemed to be to drunk to comply with flight requirements...  The announcement rang out over the PA system.........  The officers were back within a moment and the fellow was led away in handcuffs..   How can we be having so much fun!!!?

This is getting too long, I'll take up some more in the next post.....

Retired Rod

Windmills and motor cycle riding

This was a long day for a very sunny Tuesday..   We left KC at about 8:30 and  rode about 55 miles to Dearborn, Missouri.  That is around the West side of the city on 435 and then North on I 29 almost to St Joseph...

We stop at the Cooks Corner Cafe...

We were here by 9:30 and enjoyed breakfast....  Then as the time slipped away, we all gathered in the street and went on a group ride up thru the country side about 50 miles farther to the North...

We were lost a couple of times, and finally took about a mile of gravel that was looser than I really like to ride in, but we got there....

There was King City, Mo...  Where many of the farms have wind generators on their property...

There was a visitors center with long wind turbine blades in the driveway where you could get right up close to them.

From there a group of the riders went out on a personal farm to look at the four generators that were installed there....  It was a couple of miles of gravel each way, so Al and I opted not to take that part of the tour...  They even rode out into the soft dirt field, but that is beyond my riding skills...

From there the remaining riders went for Fried Chicken and mashed potato dinner....  Al and I were still stuffed from the breakfast, so we opted for the return ride back down the highway...

Of course we stopped in Platt City at the Mc Donalds like we always do on the ride home..    I had a small burger and small fry...  That is a lot more friendly to me than the massive plate the other riders were served in King City....

They ate everything in that restaurant, running them completely out of the fried chicken..  I understand that the lady felt bad about it.... But I'm not certain why... They often time eat everything a small town cafe can put out....

We got back home about 4:30 having ridden about 250 miles......

There are numerous pictures taken out on the generator farm and during the day, so go look at the Romeo site for a much better write up of the activities....

Romeo Wind Farm Ride

I was tired just from the ride we took part in, with a lot of it at 70 mph on the interstates...  And I never had one driver attempt to run over me all day, which is much better than some days we go out...

Retired Rod

Why Wichita and various other tidbits..........

I'm sitting here wondering where the last couple of days has gone..........  But first I didn't make the Wichita thing very clear....  Shadowmoss asked why I would leave from there....

This would be a good question since it is 185 miles down to that airport....  That is almost three hours of driving....   And the answer is easy...  That is one of the small towns were Allegiant Air flies from...   Their fare is less than one third the cheapest price from KC International....  And it is 50 miles to the North to get to that airport..  At least Wichita is in the right direction...  So to save $200 I am flying from Wichita...

Also the long term parking is a bit cheaper and it is right on the highway where I will normally return....   The campground that I stayed at on the way home is only a couple of miles from the airport as well...

I was up early and went to the early church service here at the local neighborhood Presbyterian on Sunday...  They were worried about having too many cars for their parking lot, so I walked down there...  It isn't far to their driveway, but the church is out in a massive grassy field of about 40 acres, and I was a bit late to boot, so I had to pick up the pace..

I spent the rest of the afternoon with my sons and daughters in law and the 5 grands...  Chris had smoked a ham and I made the potatoes...   I used the Canadian recipe for Schwartzie's potatoes, rather than the Cheesy potatoes made by most of us US counterparts..  Must have been OK because there were very few left overs.... I like mushrooms..........

And then today I was out in the garage changing the oil on the Honda Goldwing motor cycle..  I didn't have any particular trouble, but it is harder for me to get up and down onto the concrete floor to work on stuff in my old age...   I always grumble about the metric hex allen screws on the Japanese bikes...   But then Harley uses allen screws too, only they are measured in inches...  No leaks!

And all of that is because tomorrow, we are going on a big ride with the Romeo's that is over 100 miles each way...  We will be stopping at two restaurants for both breakfast and lunch...  I'll have to write up a blog on that in the next couple of days...   So off to bed as I have to be up by 7 AM which is revolting in itself....

Retired Rod

Jeepster....

As you know, I had to leave the Jeep in Arizona...  Not by choice, but because the motorhome isn't supposed to tow over 5,000 pounds...  Also in Kansas, you are supposed to have a CDL to double tow...

Either way I was done... The trailer and the goldwing are around 2K in weight and the Jeep is about 4K...  So its too much to pull double with the little diesel and I didn't have a license either...

But I would like to sell a vehicle or more this spring as I can't drive all of these units...  Also licenses and insurance is getting a tad pricey to just have things sitting around...

But first I have to get everything back here..  So I purchased a cheap ticket back to Arizona...  Airline ticket..... Allegiant airlines...  They hop small airports at really nice prices...  And they fly into Mesa Gateway which is about 3 miles from my Az house...

Cab rides from Skyharbor all the way to Apache Junction are more pricey than the airline ticket from Wichita.. And no I wouldn't think of asking someone to meet me at the airport....  Gas back and forth would be an imposition, not to mention the time involved...

So I cooked up the plan to drive one of the cars to Wichita...   One that has a tow bar base plate on it...  Fly to Az and retrieve the Jeep...  Drive it back to Wichita and connect both cars together, towing one back to KC...  Seems like a lot of things to go thru, but it really saves the bucks..  And I am retired after all so time means very little....

In other news, they caught the interstate shooter...  They said it was a metallic green car..  And they caught a fellow in  a pearlescent green Dodge Neon...  Seems he lived about 5 miles from the  triangle intersection that he was terrorizing... Of course no word about his motive, but they found a bag of bullets with his fingerprints on them.. Again we don't have word of where they found those..

They had been watching him for several days, but didn't actually catch him in the act...  Of course he says it wasn't him.. And now yesterday he concocted that he had been a victim of the shootings not the fellow doing it....

If he gets a good lawyer, he'll probably get off somehow...  But we mysteriously haven't had any new instances since he was apprehended...  Imagine that.........

In the motorcycles are as expensive as airplanes category, I rode up to our Kansas Honda dealer today and purchased 4 quarts of Honda oil and a filter to do a spring oil change...  $65 dollars in a plastic sack...  The oil is 50/50 synthetic and conventional which is recommended to use one time before going totally synthetic...  So I asked, and the price isn't any different than the completely synthetic stuff... I thought about asking why, but knew instinctively it  was a waste of my time...

So that's another project facing me too....  But I'm keeping busy this way...LOL

Happy Easter!!!!  The Lord is Resurrected !

Retired Rod

Moon Eclipse

I found this on Facebook and swiped it of the Blood Moon Monday night...

I went back to get the fellows name, and couldn't find it again.....  So if its yours, I'm sorry I lost your name....

Retired Rod

Happy Tax Day!

I caught a massive cold and sinus infection on my Friday motorcycle ride all over Western Missouri... It wasn't cold that day at all, and in the afternoon it was in the mid 70s, so the temperatures didn't do it...

But somewhere I got into the bad germs...

So with my head stopped up and my eyes burning, I tackled the first shot thru my income taxes....  That turned out to be more of a job of settling Loyce's estate that income taxes...

So with call after call to the insurance companies, and learning that one of them had a 1099 all messed up, I couldn't do a final tax return anyway....

Yesterday I gave up and filed extensions........  You can't really file a Kansas extension...  You just send them a copy of your Federal extension...  But if you end up owing money, its penalty and interest...  That's a catch 22 if I ever saw one...

So it behooves you to have your return as complete as you can possibly make it and calculate the Kansas tax..  Then even send in some extra just for good measure...

But I did learn that our Kansas Governor Sam Brownback had strongly supported a measure that passed last summer reducing the Kansas Income Tax rate to 4.9%  It had been 6.45% which is considerably higher...

He also thinks that Kansas should reduce its rate to Zero....  Which would put us in the economic running for RVer friendly states like Florida and South Dakota..  Oh and lets not forget Texas..  Our motorhome licenses here in Kansas are calculated on gross vehicle weight and not purchase price or value...    I think my 08 MH was under $300 last year...  That kills the property tax on a big value concept that many states charge.

I was actually pondering whether to move my home state to Arizona because their Income Tax rate is somewhere around 4.5%..  But licenses for the MH would kill that savings in a heartbeat....

Arizona also had higher insurance charges for motor vehicles as well..  Licensing the Jeep and the Goldwing back in Kansas would save money as well...  But again, where will these vehicles spend most of their time?   I have always licensed them where they were purchased and not worried about it...  But, some day that will more than likely get me..

We had snow over the weekend, so I wasn't missing anything staying inside with my cold.....   I should have stayed in Arizona.....  For sure!

Retired Rod

Shooters and lunches in small towns...

Back in the routine....  Well going on motorcycle lunch rides anyway....

Last Tuesday we went over to Pleasant Hill, Missouri...  The trip was only 31 miles from the house here in Overland Park..

We went to the old downtown area of the town....   Most of the businesses are out on the highway, but there is a nice restaurant on old main street called Glory B's.........

As I came downstairs to get ready to leave the house, I noticed it was dark outside.....    Rain........  I had just looked out and it was sunny a few minutes ago..   We had a squall line go thru, and I had to wait a while...

I followed that all the way over to Missouri getting into the back side of it as I arrived.....  It was barely 50 degrees so that makes rain kinda cold....

Then yesterday my friend Al and I along with his wife Sharon headed off on one of the Friday runs that the Romeos sometimes make...  But we were alone for that...   A place called Fubbler's Cove in Orrick, Missouri...

They have a fish fry as all you can eat on Fridays...    I didn't get a picture of that place...  But I ordered the cat fish and had a plate that I couldn't finish... Wow what a feast...  Al and Sharon shared their plate of Walleye......  I should have known by that ...

We had to take a detour around the Grandview Triangle corner over in Missouri..  This is where Interstates 435 and 470 meet with I 49 and US 50...  Its a massive corner with all kinds of over and underpasses...

Seems that in the last 30 days there have been a bunch of shootings where folks have had their cars shot at...  The aggressors then take an exit quickly, so as to escape...

Some of the people find the bullet holes in their car once they get home, and three others have been wounded in their legs and such...  No one has been seriously injured yet...  The news today reports up to 20 folks have been shot at....   Some have lost windows in their cars, and one lady had the window shot next to her 3 year old child....  News Story here

So we made a wide berth around that area of town when going to the fish place yesterday....   That isn't the best part of KC, Mo over there, but the highway is new and seems OK to drive thru...  But obviously not!

Retired Rod

More W8.1...?

I open up Rick's blog this morning and suddenly realize that he is updating Windows 8 yet again..... Say What?  I just downloaded W8.1 five days ago and it said it was all up to date.....   Well, not exactly...

Seems that yesterday they released the new updated version of W8.1  and its almost a gig long....  I would have been mad if I had paid for the 4 gig it took to update last week...  So I called up "Control Panel" and then "Windows Updater"..

On the left hand side of that screen up towards the top is a clickable blue line that says "check for updates"....  And low and behold I had six new ones on the Dell laptop....   They were all marked important...  So I put a check in each box to get them all....

In a mere hours time, it had been thru a couple of reboots and Yea.... It booted up and had the latest tile screen....   Complete with the on and off button at the top of the Tiled Start screen that most folks dislike.....

The other thing I liked, is the return of the stripe at the top of a program app that was started in W8 mode... It has the little red X over in the corner to close the app.... You have to hover your mouse on the top of the screen and swipe downward to make it show up..    In today's computers, we have so much RAM that we really don't need to close the program before starting something else....  But, old habits are hard to break.....

If you haven't read Rick's blog about this new version please go and read it...  I won't attempt to re write what he has done a good job of explaining....

Oh, you don't have to go do this update manually, as eventually they will install it for you, if you have 8.1 running already.... But some of us have to go play around early you know....

Retired Rod

Finally............... W8.1 and a fixed tire.

I just spent the last 2 hours downloading and installing windows 8.1 on my Dell laptop.....   Now that I am here in Kansas City where I have the cable connection, I am not limited to how many gigs I download...

They advertise that W8.1 is 3.5 gig for the update from W8.0...  I only have 4 gigs for all month on my verizon account when I'm away..  Sometimes I set the account up to 6 gigs when I am in Arizona, but even that wouldn't have let me do the update..

So using this computer and its new operating system to update the blog is a beginning test...  I haven't rebooted it yet, but the system reboots several times as it sets up, so I don't anticipate any problems....

Reading Ricks blog this morning, I see that he was fixing a tire so I need to report my experience...

Last fall when we were going to Des Moines for Loyce's arrangements, the last thing I needed was a flat tire.... But that was what I had... Not completely flat but down enough to turn on the yellow low tire light....  This is on the Ford that is here in Kansas...

I aired the tire and went on with the rest of the situation...  But about two weeks later....  The darned light was back on.....    I left the car when I left for Arizona, but found the tire flat when I got back at Christmas....  I have an air compressor here, so I pumped it up again....

And, when I got here again Saturday, you guessed it, it was way low again....  Of course it had been three months, so I aired it again...  Then on Tuesday when it was below freezing, I went to lunch with the Romeos...  But not with the motorcycle.... with the car...

And as I was coming home the yellow light came on ..............again............

That was it, enough of this...   I went straight to my tire shop..    Should have done that months ago...  Where they immediately found a nail right in the middle of the tread...

They disassembled it and patched the hole inside...  Amazing, for only a few bucks and more importantly   it didn't take more than about an hour waiting...

That is the most difficult thing about this new situation...  We went together and dropped off problems and left with the second car...  Now I have to wait while things are fixed...  That's a big change...

So the rest of the week here turned off rainy and then today cold....    I went out for the tax software to put on this computer today and even in the afternoon it was only 43 f...   It wasn't that cold in Arizona except in the middle of the night in January...   I have my coat on here inside the house and the heat is running...

For only about 2 cents, I would go back to the desert.....

Retired Rod