Hiking High

Not in elevation. But I do get a "high" when I am hiking. Alone. Time moves quickly.

Today my hike in the Coachella Preserve was no different. Perfect weather with a lot of elevation changes. Soon my mind was resolving very complex issues. As issues came to mind, I thought about how some would be good blog posts. The words and ideas flowed as each subject came to mind; the intro words; the text; the points to be made; the clever sentences. There were also some very clever post titles.

Sitting at the keyboard this evening, I have no recollection of those great thoughts -- or the wisdom. Would have been great to share.

However, the hike was a good workout. Even required an afternoon nap. Okay. So there is an afternoon nap many days. However, today I had an excuse.

Strike Two

That "super committee" made up of Federal legislators is doomed to fail. Everyone knows that they will not be able to agree -- let alone make some possible suggestions. Previous non partisan recommendations have failed.

No doubt there are big expenditures to be addressed. However, there are some small expenses that could be addressed. One of the suggestions by the committee was to stop the printing of dollar bills and use dollar coins. The life of a dollar bill is about 40 months. The coins will outlive the legislators.

Guess what. Follow the money. When the commitee made the recommendation for dollar coins instead of paper, immediately a Senate bill was introduced by Senators Kerry and Brown of Massachusetts to block the abandonment of paper dollars. Turns out that the cotton paper supply for paper money is provided by a Massachusetts company.

In a previous Speaking Of Budget post I had recommended getting the penny out of circulation to eliminate some needless spending. That won't happen either because the zinc miners appear to have a strong lobby.

If the legislators are serious about reducing government expenses, these are just two very minor items where some savings could be had. It's not going to happen. Not even one of the two.

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My lonely promotion to get the penny out of circulation seems to be going no where.

Thanks to a recommendation from friend Phil of Tucson, there now are dollar coins in my pocket at all times instead of pennies. The dollar coins are great tip money. The bad part is finding banks who have rolls of dollar coins. When I happen across a bank with rolls, I buy several to keep me going until I run low once again.

Close Call

Whew. That was close. Got out of Colorado just in time. Snowing in Denver this morning. Six inches in some Front Range cities north of Denver.

No snow here in Palm Springs. Nor is snow visible on nearby Mt. San Jacinto. Like it that way. Another day of shorts and Hawaiian shirts weather. However, the temps did cool down to the seventies for a few days.

Okay. So my last stay in Colorado was in early September. I managed to leave early to avoid getting caught in the first snow of the season. That happened in 2009. There is no desire to repeat that cold and miserable experience.

A Man Thing

Sure looked like a "man thing" when wandering the car show in Lake Havasu City last weekend. There were hundreds of cars on the rough of the golf course where the event was held. Polishing and dusting the cars was a fulltime job for these owners on the dusty course. With tent gazebos set up and a cooler of liquid refreshment (that would be beer), the owners and their wives were watching the wanderers such as my self. Don't touch. Just admire.

Just as the owners were much older (my age plus or minus a decade), the wanderers were of a similar age bracket. The wanderers were 95% male with an occasion female wanderer. Did she really care about the cars -- or was the couple still in the dating stage. Did this cynic just write that.

No doubt there are ladies that restore cars, but it wasn't obvious from my exploring. When I did read the name of the owner, it was a man's name or a couple. Never did see one with just a lady's name. Autos and engines appears to be another of those traditional compartmentizing of males and females. Could this change in the 21st century.

There were cars of all vintages from the 1920s to the muscle cars of the 1960s -- including restored stock cars, art pieces, restored trucks, a Metropolitan, a 1965 RV on a Dodge chassis, some low rider art pieces, etc. The hoods were open on those where the engine wasn't stock or was chromed or painted some day glow color. Some times there were several males of the species standing around the engine getting the details about the engine from the owner.

Restorers of cars appear to be another of those subcultures of the USA population -- like the RVing subculture. In my strolling, I overheard conversations that were sharing information with others about the car restoring process, where to get the parts -- and one conversation was about his current 1956 project and he didn't know whether it was going to be stock or not.

Want a restored car. Many were for sale. Want to create your own. Rusting hulks were also for sale.

With lots of time and lots of money, soon you can have a restored car -- or an art piece. Blue is a good color. All chrome parts were stripped and everthing is blue on what appears to have been a late 1940s coupe. A low rider without a door handle.

Yup. Baby blue is a man thing.

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It was a long walk a couple of times around to make sure I didn't miss anything. Fortunately, I had "sole protection" for my feet. Note these goat heads on the soles of my sandals.

Lake Havasu

Build it and they will come.

Lake Havasu was created when the Parker Dam was built in the late 1930s. That brought the fishermen to the lake that was created. That created a fishing camp at the current location of Lake Havasu City. In 1964 it was incorporated.

The centerpiece and the tourist draw is the London Bridge built in 1971. The bridge was dismantled and moved across the Atlantic Ocean rock by rock from London and now spans a channel in Lake Havasu. Not that I have ever been to London, but I doubt this desert terrain in any way resembles London. More likely, fog would have been a usual feature.

People have been coming and building a life (or vacation home) at Lake Havasu City for the past 40 years. Recreation is the draw. On the water with jet skis and high powered jet boats. On the nearby desert hills can be found the four wheelers and the ATVs. Lots of those.

With large open expanses of water, warnings are required to mark the land forms that may prove hazardous to boats. Time to build a lighthouse. This one third size replica of the Split Rock lighthouse at Two Harbors Minnesota was built by the Lake Havasu Lighthouse Club.

The warm days and clear skies have been a daily occurrence with the exception of one day. Time to capture the sunset. Not a great sunset. So with Topaz plugins and Photoshop, this is an artist's (that would be me) representation of the end of the day on the east shore of Lake Havasu.

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From the curmudgeon... When did Halloween turn into a major holiday. Halloween cards. Candy by the bushel. Pumpkins by the ton. Ready made costumes. Deserted retail space becomes a Halloween shopping bonanza for one month. Then there was the pumpkin carving kit. Huh.

A Dog Story

When browsing Amazon looking for free books, the title of one caught my eye: Alaska Days With John Muir. The author was S. Hall Young. That name sounded familiar. Checked my "recommended to read" lists and there was the name. The note said to also read Stickeen by John Muir.

The recommendation ended on the list several years ago. Happened when I was waiting for a water tour of the Wisconsin Dells, I was in a conversation with the couple next to me. How the conversation got to her relative S. Hall Young in Alaska I don't recall. Young had a dog in Alaska name of Stickeen; the reason for the Muir book recommendation.

Alaska Days With John Muir by Young is about the Alaskan inside passage journeys Muir and he shared. Muir was exploring and observing the flora and fauna and mapping the area and its glaciers. On these same journeys, Young was bringing the white man's religion to the Indian tribes. Muir gets top billing in the book. However, not far behind is Stickeen playing a best supporting role.

Stickeen is a short story of one day in 1880 when Stickeen joined Muir on a cold and snowy day to traverse and explore a nearby glacier. With little fear, Muir challenges forbidding weather and a glacial terrain when most would have stayed in camp. The journey and including the hazardous return across glacial crevasses provide Muir with observations about the very unusual Stickeen.

Both books can be found as free eBooks on several internet sites.

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Over the years, I've read several dog stories. The stories about Stickeen remind me of the book Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote. My mini review.

Leather Aroma

From the North Ranch SKP park, Wickenburg is down the road a few miles. Wickenburg is the home to the Desert Caballeros Western Museum. Pretty hard for me to pass up a museum about the west. However, I had visited the museum in my previous visit to Wickenburg.

So I continued my walk along the mostly western themed downtown.

Walking by Ben's Saddle Shop, the distinctive aroma of leather was in the air. Couldn't resist the fragrance of that smell. Had to get a closer whiff.

Soon I was in a conversation with Hawaiian shirt attired owner. Seems a bit out of place in a saddlery store. No. He doesn't wear Hawaiian when a horse.

Boots, hats, saddles, riding gear are among other items in the small store. Saddles were plain to ornately tooled leather.

Yeah. He could make saddles, and decorate them. However, there is better return on his time making repairs for shoes, boots, saddles and other leather goods.

Also less expensive to repair the old. New saddles are expensive. Hay is expensive. Beef cattle prices are high. Leather prices are high as a result. Asking the question of the guy why hay was expensive. He said that the hay was being exported to Saudi Arabia. Really!

Checked the internet and found that hay was being exported from the U.S. to many other countries in addition to Saudi Arabia. Southeast Asia is the largest importer of hay from the US. Much of it is shipped from southern California.

Asking if saddles were imported. Yup. It's all about cheap. They are imported by the container load from China and India. Do they fit the horse. Maybe. Hope I never find myself in a saddle with the imprint "Made In China". For me, it just hurts the mythical image of the American western cowboy.

American made saddles are expensive by comparison. In addition to the high price of beef, there are few leather tanning operations left in the US. My interviewee said there was only one U.S. operation that tanned leather for saddles. Today with chemicals hazardous to the enviroment and humans, US regs make it a difficult business. Other countries with fewer environmental and worker safety regs now tan and prepare leather for usage in leather products. Of course the product is also created before import to the US.

Nothing like the aromatic odor of leather to invite me in for the learning experience about exporting hay and importing saddles.

Reading Chinese

...or is it Japanese. One of my Hawaiian shirts has characters as part of the pattern. Are these Chinese or Japanese? The tag on the shirt says, "Made in Bangladesh". However, those characters are not Bangladesh writing.

A couple of years ago -- wearing that shirt -- I was standing in line. As we waited, I started a conversation with the guy behind me. Surprise that I would do that. :) As we chatted, he commented that he liked my my shirt. I said that I had always wondered what it said. Without missing a beat he said, "Made in China".

This is detail of the three sets of characters that repeat throughout the shirt.

Didn't know what those characters say. One day without anything better to do, I Googled "common Chinese characters" and "common Japanese characters". The characters looked more Chinese to this uneducated eye. Looking at the Chinese characters and reading the meaning, it appeared that there was some possibility that those characters did say something to the effect, "Made in China".


In case you are wondering, the wrinkles are part of my wardrobe.

Still Hot Here

South So Soon? was a post by Boonie. That would be me. Describes my recent journeys from southwestern Colorado to the shores of the Colorado River.

Arrived today on the east shore of the Colorado River at Lake Havasu City. Bit warm. Some would say hot. The thermometer (in the shade) on Wandrin Wagon shows 95 degrees at 2:00p.m. Yeah. That's warm. Sorry. Hot.

The temperatures will be around 90 degrees for the next ten days and then cooler temps are predicted with 80 degree days. Not too many days ago I was at 5000 feet at Prescott Arizona where the night time temps were in the 30s and the day times struggled to get into the 50s. Compared to that, I prefer the heat. Also a lot more comfortable in my usual shorts and Hawaiian shirts.

If it weren't for air conditioning, I wouldn't be here. Without air conditioning, Lake Havasu City would not be here -- strung out along the Colorado River.

Pretty quiet here since the Snowbirds have yet to arrive. Early Snowbird arrivals are few. From past observations, the first wave of Snowbirds arrive about the first of December -- right after Thanksgiving. The next wave (much larger) begins just a few days after Christmas and continues into the first week of January. January and February are peak occupancy. On March 1st, the Snowbirds begin their northward migration. By April first, the RV parks are quiet once again.

Whatever. Glad to be here and enjoy life -- the hot times and the cool times. Not the cold times! That is why there are tires under Wandrin Wagon.

Testing Wilson Sleek

The Wilson Sleek was reviewed in a previous post. That test was done in trees with times where there was no signal. Testing the Sleek under those compromised conditions may not have been fair. Since that test, I have been trying to find remote (poor signal) locations to repeat the test.

Today was the lucky day as I traveled the remote sections of highway 10 between Prescott and Skull Valley. Pulled off the road atop a ridge with not a tree or hill to block the Verizon cell tower digital signal -- where ever it may be coming from.

For this test, I used the four inch high antenna supplied with the Sleek. The antenna was placed on the roof of Silver Slug and attached to the Sleek. The Sleek was plugged into 12 volt power and the test began.

The cell phone.... The cell phone showed it had a 1X signal, but no bars. Put the cell phone in the Sleek. Still 1X, but one bar appeared. No phone call was made.

The Verizon MiFi card.... The MiFi display showed signal strength of no bars. Placed the MiFi card into the Sleek. One bar appeared. To continue the test, I turned on the iPad connected to the MiFi. Pointed the Safari browser to my Google Reader page. At 1X speeds it takes a while, but eventually the page was displayed.

As I wrote that, I realized I should have tested the MIFi and iPad without the Sleek. Oh well. What did you expect from a retired software guy.

If there was a Verizon EVDO signal, no doubt the testing results would have been similar -- except for faster loading of the page from the internet. When I find a situation with poor EVDO signal, more tests will be run.