Wow!

It got cold enough that I had to turn on the heat last night.....!   For the last two weeks it has been above 50 degrees in the early morning when it is its coldest....  Right at daylight, so the heat has been off...  It was in the 40s while I was at Quartzsite and I ran the heat in the motorhome every night...

That was the passive heater running on propane...   No fan...  I still had to have two comforters...!

Once home it was over 50 degrees almost immediately....  In the early mornings.... But we had a cold front go thru here on Monday that caused rain sprinkles...  The weather man calls that a rainy day... LOL...!

Anyway I looked a few minutes ago and its only 50 at 10 PM.....  Better turn that heat back on cause its going to be in the forties by morning.... LOL...      But my concern it the newly planted bushes.... It would be the  dumpers to freeze the newly planted bushes......

Retired Rod

Day by Day

I've been living life here on the desert day by day... Nothing unusual to report... But I have started digging and replacing the winter kill bushes in my back yard... The desert digs hard!

But, where there was a bush before, and the irrigation system spills a few drips of water each day it is better.... So I just dig up the old dead bush, dumping the earth out onto a tarp with a small shovel... The heat of the summer seems to be quite harsh on some of these so called sun bushes....

And then it seems to go below freezing around Christmas or after the first of January for a few nights.... That freezes the leaves and outer part of the branches of the tender bushes... I have Hyacinth along the East wall of the house and until coming here, I thought they were just house plants.......!

Anyway there are a few new bushes around here now... I haven't had any luck with bougainvillea... The stuff grows like a weed along the highways here, but let me go purchase some and put it in the ground, and its 100 percent favorite that it will be dead by fall....

So I put a couple of Privet bushes in their place.... It is shaded by the block wall fence for part of the day and only gets a few minutes of water, so we will see if they do any better... The other bushes are rosemary.. I wonder if they are the same as the spice we grow back home... They look the same, but I'm sure they are a different variety..

In other news, Shadowmoss and her neighbor invited me to go with them for a Valentines supper... We did Chinese in a small oil cloth diner on the South end of Chandler... Again I had never been there, so it was a new experience for me... But the restaurant had Kung Bao Chicken with peanuts and the hot peppers.. So I just had to order it...

I sorted out the big chili peppers, because you never want to bite into one of those, but the cook also had ground the peppers and added a liberal dose of those to the Wok as well... It took two Tsing Tao beers to wash it all down..... I was somewhat red in the face.... LOL Thank's girls for taking me along....  I don't think I got two obnoxious after the two beers, but maybe I'm not the best judge...

Oh, and as a wrap up on the Quartzsite get together, Sandie and Jim Dixon had a postmortem Happy Hour with some of the folks that had been in the BLM desert campground.... That was this past Tuesday and I managed to convince Shadowmoss to come with me... That two hours seemed to go by faster than possible... We all talked and talked.... I wonder who was listening........  Anyway thanks folks for inviting us...  It was fun......

And in a rare turn of events, the Goldwing folks were heading out to a Casino up in the White mountains East of Showlow, Az this morning...  And I chickened out...  It was 170 miles each way, and I have a conference later tonight, and I worried that I wouldn't get back in time...  Or that after 7 hours of bike riding that I wouldn't have the energy to go, once I got back....

So there will be no descriptions of long tiring rides or oodles of desert highway pictures...  Well, this week anyway....

Retired Rod

Returning to Marana

Happy Valentines Day

Marana translates as a thicket or a tangle or a mess....   But for what ever reason, we were back on the bikes on last Thursday heading back to Marana...  This is a small town West of the I 10 North of Tucson.  Its out in the Desert and no more of a thicket than anywhere else around here...

We went the  back way only driving on the interstate for about 10 miles...  A couple of weeks ago, we went to the airport South of Marana, but today it was the Stock yards...  The sale was on Wednesday, so it was quiet at the sale barn...  But the cafe was hoppin...

Pre Ride Meeting...

I'm the third bike back.....

At a traffic light in Coolidge

The days are becoming really nice here in Arizona, starting in the 60s at ride time and topping out in the early 80s...  I think it was about 84 when I got back home....

I was sitting next to the fellow with his arms crossed on the left side of the picture, but must have been hiding behind Ron with the big Z on the back of his shirt....  As you can see, this place was cowboy rustic...  But then you came here to buy Cows didn't you...?

Chet took over 60 photos of the bikes riding thru the desert, but I decided to spare you of all the pictures this week....  He emails them out, and short of reposting them all in an album by downloading them all, I have no way to easily include them..

There I am leaning on my left arm, listening intently to a story from the fellow across the table...

In front of the cattle pen where they auction off the critters.....

I guess we were into group photos...  I hid in the back...!

There were more of us than is in this picture, as some of the people bugged out when they heard that they wanted our picture...

We rode the longer way yet back to Mesa, going into the far end of Apache Junction, but I left the group down in Florence and came back on the Hunt Highway...  I didn't save any time that way, but after all day I just wanted to ride my own ride and not follow the group anymore...   Sometimes I just need my independence....

Retired Rod

Repairs Blur.......

Last week was a blur, and I didn't get much posting done...  But as Al calls it here goes blabber fingers.....!

When we were out in Quartzsite, the wind blew fairly hard on Wednesday...  The flags flew and many people had to take them down...  I was in at the big tent....  But while I was gone the wind re arranged the slide top awnings on the side of my rig....   I had replaced the big slide awning topper in 2011, but it was the first to rip...

It tore in from the edges on both ends.. The wind also ripped the fabric of the bedroom slide on the drivers rear slide too...  It was actually ripped with bare ends of the fabric fiber looking like they were yanked out of the track...  On the passenger side the topper was also torn in about 4 inches.... But I needed a ladder to see how the kitchen topper fared as it is under the big awning roll...  It was one of those  awe shoot moments when I got back home...

Once back in Mesa, I got the idea that this should be covered by insurance, so I called the Insurance Company and the East Valley RV Specialists, who are the endorsed Tiffin repair facility here in the East end of Mesa...  It was Friday and was raining cats and dogs, when I managed to get the rig over to the repair shop... That was the first available time for an appointment.

They took me back to the storage facility in the rain, so that I could retrieve the Jeep since I hadn't hooked it up...  Then I waited to hear from the insurance company or the EV RV folks.... By Tuesday still nothing....  So I had to loose my peace with some folks....  By Wednesday they had finally looked at the toppers and yes all four needed to be replaced....  I was bummed out...

But the insurance fellow dropped the bomb that I had $1k deductable on comprehensive losses for coverage....  And of course they had to take depreciation on the years that I had received service..... Yada Yada...

So by Friday, I  had new slide toppers.... and I needed to come pick up the rig....  The total bill was $1,500..  And the sun was now shinning so bring your jeep and tow bar along with the money...  Inferring that they wouldn't be taking me anywhere to jockey vehicles..

It took about 3 hours to go collect the vehicle, hook it up and drive to storage.. Then separate them and get back home....  The insurance fellow promised about $300 net of the deductables which is to be mailed sometime in the near future.... LOL Ouch..

In the middle of all of this the Can Am dealership called and wanted the trike back to do warranty work....  I was told to bring it in Thursday.....  That was the day we did the Roosevelt Lake Loop, so I informed them it would be after 4 PM...

Again the ticket writer had sympathy for me and brought me back to my house after 7 PM when he got off of work.....  They had the engine partly apart on Friday as there were leaks in a housing gasket on some of the bikes...  So all bikes got the new repair parts..  The cover was on the transmission side of the engine, and mine hadn't leaked.........yet!!  The dealer said that it was only a matter of time and that they had done this fix on all the newer 1330cc engines they had sold.....

Right after I arrived back home from parking the now fixed motorhome, they called to come get the Can Am...  Dam... I wish Biscuit could drive.......  The ticket writer informed me that he had to get right home that night and wouldn't be available to take me anywhere.....

So I left the Jeep over at the motorcycle shop....  Rode the Can Am home and gave up for the rest of the night....  I didn't want to call any of my friends on Friday night...  Hey come bail me out.... and right now....  Uh, nope not gonna do that...

So on Saturday morning, I rode back over to the dealership (8 miles)  to make sure the Jeep hadn't been bothered during the night.. and to get some breakfast while I thought this one thru...  I was considering who I could get to help me, but then it dawned on me how to straighten things out..

I drove the Can Am to the storage lot, and traded it for the motorhome....  Drove the motorhome to the motorcycle shop and hooked up the jeep on the back...  Drove both vehicles back to the house out here in South East Mesa....   Dropped the Jeep and put it in the driveway...  Drove the motorhome back to storage and parked it in its spot...  Then rode the Can Am back home....

It was 3 PM before I got all of this accomplished....  I think every thing is now back in its correct parking facility and the repairs are done...  Whew...!

Retired Rod

Pictures from the Desert

You’ve read so many of these, that I don’t need to explain other than that this was last Thursday the 5th of February and we again went on what they call the Roosevelt Lake Loop…  The Club photographer was along and took all of these pictures from his bike as he rode along behind us…

He doesn’t participate in the group ride, and over the years has their blessing to leave and not follow along..  Or stop and take a picture from a better vantage point…  I’m new and barely allowed to participate due to a non Goldwing bike, so I go with the flow and stay in line like a good fellow…

The mine in Globe..

 

Thanks to Chet Shupe for these nice pictures…

Retired Rod