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What’s That Sound?

We escaped the blazing hot temperatures in Mesa, Arizona. On Thursday morning, we finished packing up with a goal of hitting the road by 10am. I secured Midget-San in the trailer at 9:59am and we were on our way. It was already 92 degrees on a day that was forecast reach 105 degrees. I had the generator running so we could keep the roof mounted air conditioner on while we drove.

Our route took us over Usery Pass to Bush Highway, then up the Beeline Highway to Payson. Payson is at an elevation of 5,000 feet above sea level. The Beeline has several long, steep grades followed by steep downgrades. The net result is a gain of almost 4,000 feet in elevation over the 75-mile drive. With the high ambient temperature, I kept a close eye on our engine coolant temperature. On the hardest grades, I manually shifted down to third gear to keep the engine revs up around 1,900-2,100 rpm. The higher revs keep the radiator fan turning fast and the coolant circulating quickly. I usually cruise at 1,500-1,550 rpm. It was slow going at around 40 mph, but the coolant temperature remained around 200 degrees.

From Payson, we traveled east on AZ260 90 miles to Show Low, gaining another 1,500 feet or so in elevation. From Show Low, we hit US60 for the final leg of about 50 miles to Springerville. We’re at Springerville RV Park about a mile east of town on US60 – 12 miles or so from the New Mexico border and about 80 miles south of I-40. We’re at an elevation of about 7,080 feet above sea level.

Springerville RV Park is a small, clean park without any frills or amenities – other than a good free wifi signal! The park is just over two years old and is owned by the the people that own a sister park in Cortez, Colorado. We have a long, level pull-through site, so I didn’t have to drop the trailer. The site isn’t paved, it’s covered in crushed volcanic rock and a bit dusty.

Our site in Springerville – Midget-San under cover

On Friday morning, Donna and I took a drive to have a look around the area. We went south on US191 and drove past Nelson Reservoir. We saw people fishing and kayaking there. We think we might want to take our Sea Eagle inflatable kayak up there at some point.

We drove over the Alpine Divide at 8,550 feet above sea level and dropped into the Alpine Valley and checked out the little town of Alpine. On our return trip, we made a slight detour and drove through the small town of Nutrioso. We came back through Eagar – Eagar connects to Springerville and is the larger town of the two. We found the Bashas and Safeway grocery stores there.

Later, Donna went for walk into town. Walking down South Gutierrez Street and she found an interesting sight. It was a number of sculptures in an otherwise empty lot, all made from old car parts. She learned later that the sculptures were made by John Welhelm – his ranch is right across the street. She took several photos of the art.

John Welhelm’s art work – note snow on Escudilla Mountain in the background – nearly 11,000 feet high

Great use of old license plates for color

It just goes to show you – you can find points of interest almost anywhere in this great country.

On Friday afternoon, a pair of motorhomes entered the park and set up in the two empty sites on the driver’s side of our coach. We hoped this would give us a wind break as the wind has been gusting from the southwest. It did.

When we set up here, our water pressure regulator blew out and was leaking from the diaphragm housing. I’ve been using a mini-Watts regulator made for RVs by Valterra. I haven’t used the household Watts regulator I built for our coach for a while because the hose adapter fitting was leaking where it’s swaged together. So I set up without a regulator on our fresh water supply. I found the water pressure here is quite high. I wrote about water pressure and regulators in this post.

Friday night I got up for a bathroom break at 4:30am. I unintentionally woke Donna up. Donna said, “What’s that sound?” I don’t have the best hearing – I have tinnitus from years of working in workshops, motorcycling racing, playing guitar and shooting guns. I said, “What sound?” She told me she could hear water running. She got up and checked our faucets, then told me it was coming from outside. I grabbed a flashlight and went out to investigate. I found our neighbor’s water supply was leaking at his regulator. I went back to bed – it could wait until later.

It turned out he had two leaks – one at the regulator and another one at the coach hose connection. I decided I needed to fix our Watts regulator pronto. Donna went out for a bike ride in the morning. After she returned, I drove into town to the Ace Hardware store. The store was fairly busy and all of the employees and almost all of the customers had face masks on – including me. I found the hose adapter I needed and repaired our regulator and installed it on our water supply bib.

Donna checked out Becker Lake on her bike ride and took a couple of pictures.

Kayakers who were fishing got off the lake due to high winds

I set up our Traeger wood pellet-fired smoker-grill and proceeded to spatchcock a 5 1/2-pound whole chicken Donna bought at Winco in Mesa. If you wonder what spatchcock means, see this post. I dry-rubbed it and had it on the Traeger while Donna was on her weekly Zoom call with members of her family. I cooked it breast side down for about 50 minutes. It was very windy out with wind gusts in excess of 30 mph. This affected the cooking time. Then I flipped it breast side up and set the Traeger to high – 450 degrees to crisp the skin. It cooked for another 18 minutes before the thigh meat registered 165 degrees.

Donna managed to prepare fresh green beans and rosemary-garlic roasted potatoes while on her call. It was a nutritious, delicious meal.

Chicken breast quarter, rosemary-garlic roasted potatoes and green beans with cotija cheese

The temperature here has been higher than usual for this time of year, but the upper 70s are quite bearable! The wind has been relentless and I’m hoping it’ll taper off soon. The forecast for the week ahead calls for near record heat with temperatures in the low to mid 80s. The historical average high temperature for this time of year is 71 degrees. The nights cool down to upper 40s to low 50s, making it comfortable to sleep.

We paid for a full month here. I’m sure we”l find more points of interest in the area.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

What’s That Smell?

We made it through another week of social distancing and mostly keeping to ourselves. I mentioned in my last post how Donna has been picking fruit here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. Just about all of the sites have a citrus tree – mostly orange but also lemon and grapefruit trees. So many people left the park earlier in the season than usual, the fruit would have gone to waste. Donna asked on the park’s Facebook group if anyone would like her to pick the fruit on their trees. About half a dozen people responded with site numbers and gave her permission to pick as much as she wanted.

Citrus fruit Donna picked Sunday in the park

She picks more than we can use, so we put some on a table in front of our site and invite people to help themselves. Donna also posted a notice on the Viewpoint Facebook group – the fruit disappears quickly.

More people pulled out in the last week. The park now has more open sites than I’ve ever seen here. The north side of the 5100 row is completely empty and only two or three RVs are on the north side of the 5200 row – our row.

At this time of year, sites on the south side with the rig facing north are more desirable so direct sun isn’t coming through the windshield.

I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting in the shade of the coach reading books. One day, while sitting outside, I noticed an odor of propane. This happened before when we were in Bishop, California. At that time, I thought the smell originated at the pressure relief valve on our propane tank. I did a search on the Internet and found that this can happen if the tank pressure rises. The pressure rise may be normal if it’s due to high ambient temperatures or atmospheric changes. We had both when we were in Bishop, so I didn’t worry about it.

I wondered about it here though, because our tank was less than half full. The temperature is higher than what we’ve experienced for a while, but I didn’t think it would cause enough thermal expansion in a half-full tank to vent gas. When I noticed it again a couple of days later, I checked the tank level and knew we had a problem. We were down to less than a quarter tank and we hadn’t used propane for anything since we arrived here over three months ago. We only use propane when we’re dry camping or driving to run the refrigerator or maybe the hot water heater. So there was a leak.

Working on propane systems really isn’t my thing. It requires some equipment for leak detection. Sure, you can try the soapy water approach by spraying fittings or suspected leak areas with soapy water and watching for bubbles to form wherever it’s leaking. But then you have to have a way to pressure check the system after repair. Actually you apply a vacuum to the empty system and use a manometer to see if it holds vacuum. I didn’t want to do this myself – I didn’t want to buy stuff for what is probably a one-time repair. Plus, I don’t like messing with propane – I had a bad experience with a propane fire that went quickly out of control in the past, but’s a story for another time.

So I ended up calling around for mobile propane service. A few operations were shut down due to the pandemic, but I was able to get an appointment with 4-Points Mobile RV Service. They sent a guy out on Tuesday and he was able to find a leak at the pressure regulator diaphragm.

Gas leak at the regulator diaphragm – discoloration is from the special fluid he used to detect the leak

They had to order a replacement part. On Wednesday, they told me they would be here at 11am on Thursday to finish the repair.

This morning, Donna went out for a bike ride. She called me around 10:45am and told me she had run over something and had a flat tire. She was at Two-Wheel Jones bike shop and thought she would need to have a new tire put on. She didn’t have enough cash with her or her credit card to pay for it if that’s what they had to do. She said she would let me know if she needed a credit card.

Right about then, the 4-Points Mobile RV Service truck pulled up. The guy got to work right away. I called Donna back and told her I would bring her credit card to her while the work was being done on the coach so I could be back before he finished. I wanted to see the system test and I also had to pay the bill. I drove to Two-Wheel Jones and gave Donna her card, then returned. I got back just before he ran the system test.

He connected the manometer to the gas line at the refrigerator. It held vacuum for three minutes and passed the system integrity test. We’re back in business as soon as I can get the tank refilled with propane.

I have one dinner plate photo to share this week. It’s a bone-in chicken thigh Donna marinated in a something called pretty chicken marinade. I smoked the thighs on the Traeger wood pellet-fired smoker grill. Donna served it with sweet potato mash and green beans with a pat of butter.

Our plan is to pull out of here one week from today. The temperature hit 90 degrees yesterday and is forecast to reach the mid-90s today. The coming week shows upper 90s and low 100s. It’s time to get out of Dodge. Barring any unforeseen event, we’ll be in Springerville next Thursday afternoon where the temperature will be in the 70s to low 80s.

Day and Night

Like most folks, we’ve been lying low here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. Other than grocery – and beer – runs we haven’t left the park. Well, Donna’s been out for bicycle rides, but she doesn’t stop anywhere.

For entertainment, Donna and I have been watching a series called Narcos. My middle daughter, Jamie, gifted us access to her Netflix account, so we downloaded the series and saw the final episode last night. Donna has been taking her laptop to the deserted pool/office area where she can get free wifi to download Netflix. We’ll start on Narcos Mexico next.

Speaking of wifi, I had a rather strange message from Verizon on my phone. My plan includes 15GB of high speed mobile hot spot on my phone – it’s called an “Unlimited” plan, but it isn’t really as it throttles to low speed after 15GB. The message I received from Verizon said I would have an additional 15GB of high speed hotspot on my phone from March 25th to April 30th. But here’s where it gets weird – they also provided a link to their website page “Corona Virus FAQ.” This page says the free additional data will not be displayed in my account online. Okay, so I have more data but I can’t see how much I actually have. Furthermore, my data usage cycle runs from the 11th of each month to the following month ending on the 10th.

So how does the “extra” 15GB figure into my data cycle? I’m also confused about which devices get extra data. Reading the FAQ, it looks like we should have “extra” data on each of our lines – we have three – Donna’s phone, my phone and the Jetpack. The FAQ doesn’t seem clear to me if each line gets 15GB or is the 15GB shared over all three lines? Inquiring minds want to know.

I got a couple of things off of my “to do” list. Nothing too big – I replaced the 48″ flourescent bulbs in the galley, I cleaned and conditioned the leather Euro-recliner and ottoman, I did a deep clean of the Weber Q grill. My biggest project was re-stringing the day/night shade in the window at the head of our bed.

The shade on this window is 30 inches wide and has four strings – the other window in the bedroom has two strings. The four-string repair wasn’t much harder than the two-string, but having done the two-string before, I had some experience to draw upon this time. It all went fairly smooth. I still had the tool that came with the first kit to draw the strings through the shades, it’s handy. The new kit didn’t come with the tool.

The day/night shades have two pleated shades – one is for privacy but allows light to filter through – the day shade – the other blocks light completely – the night shade. There’s a draw bar at the bottom of the shade. Pulling it down puts the day shade in place. There’s a second draw bar, pulling it down folds the day shade pleats at the bottom of the shade while drawing the night shade down. The draw bars are held in place by friction due to the way the strings are routed.

Inside the top bar, the strings are attached to springs. Tension from these springs create the friction where the strings go through bushings in the draw bars, allowing the shade to be held at various opening positions. You can have the shade all the way up, exposing the whole window or you can position the day or night shade anywhere from all the way up to all the way down and every place in between.

Day shade down, night shade partially down

We had a traditional Easter dinner last Sunday. Donna prepped a rack of lamb with a fennel crust and I cooked it on the Traeger wood pellet smoker/grill. She served it with Brussel sprouts and buttered egg noodles.

We followed that with another Traeger dinner on Monday – lemon and herb marinated chicken thighs. Donna served it with grilled bok choy and jasmine rice.

On my last Costco run, I bought one and a half racks of babyback ribs, so I did my famous Memphis-style smoked ribs on Tuesday. It was more than Donna and I could eat, so we invited our friend here in the park, Joe, to stop by for take-out ribs and gave him the half rack.

Donna has been picking citrus here at the RV park. Many people left in a hurry and she got permission to pick and take grapefruit, oranges and lemons from various sites. We put some out for neighbors walking by to take on Sunday. They didn’t last long. She plans to pick some more for us and to share.

It’s beginning to heat up out here in the desert valley. Other than Saturday, when we had clouds and a few intermittent sprinkles, it’s been clear and in the mid to upper 70s. Most afternoons have had winds from the south-southwest gusting up to 20 mph. The winds are calmer today and we should see temperatures reaching the mid to upper 80s for the next week.

We plan to head for higher ground in two weeks – we will leave on April 30th. The temperature here is forecast to reach the 90s by then – the average high in June here in Mesa is 102 degrees. If all goes according to plan, well be in Springerville, Arizona for the month of May. Springerville is at an elevation of 7,000 feet above sea level and will be 20 to 30 degrees cooler than here.

Face Mask Mission

With the radical changes our society – and the world – have experienced over the past few weeks, I have to wonder if we will ever reach a state of what we once considered normal. As data is acquired, projections of the pandemic severity are changing daily, mostly bringing more positive news. There’s still a lot of missing information and I’m sure things will continue to change.

We’re practicing social distancing, mostly keeping to ourselves. One friend here in the Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort, Ginny, is quite the seamstress. Ginny made facemasks for us. The first one she gave me was cloth with two cloth tie-straps. With the mask in hand, I drove to Home Depot, donned the mask and went inside.

I was looking for a home central air conditioning filter element. Ginny wanted to modify the face masks with a pouch to hold a section of paper filter made from a MERV12-rated air conditioning filter element. Home Depot doesn’t use the common MERV rating system for their filter elements – they have their own efficiency ratings. Their filters come with efficiency ratings of four, seven, nine and 10 – at least that’s what I found at the store I was at. The two highest levels, nine and 10, claim they will filter and trap virus carriers. I bought a large level 10 filter and gave it to Ginny.

Ginny also needed elastic to make straps – the cloth tie-straps are labor intensive to sew. Apparently elastic is in short supply right now. Donna heard about making stretchy straps from pantyhose so she donated a pair to Ginny. Ginny made us new masks with a pocket to hold a three-inch by four-inch section of paper filter material with stretchy straps to hold the mask over our ears made from the pantyhose. It’s brilliant.

Ginny, along with a few other seamstresses here in the RV park are on a mission to complete 200 face masks by the end of the week for use by administrative personnel at Banner Health here in Mesa. Cheers to them!

Donna was doing a bi-weekly happy hour Zoom call with various family members – they’ve decided to make it once a week from now on. They sit at their computers with an adult beverage and converse for an hour or so.

Donna has also been getting out on her bicycle to keep in shape. Today she rode the Usery Pass loop. It’s a 25-mile loop from here that involves climbing up and over Usery Pass which includes a 9% grade over a 4-mile stretch. It’s a fairly demanding ride.

I’ve puttered around on a few projects here. Nothing too demanding, just minor things that need doing that I’ve been putting off. Donna gave herself a project. She wanted to change the clear glass shower surround. She had a plan to install an opaque covering on the glass. She ordered a cling film material that’s semi-opaque with a small square prismatic pattern on it. She did a great job installing it and is happy with the result. The photo doesn’t capture the rainbow of colors in the prismatic pattern.

I made a batch of jerky last week and it’s the best so far. I think I have the jerky recipe down after four iterations. Donna continues to feed me well. We’ve only ordered take-out once in the last three weeks. Here are a couple of dinner plates. The first one I actually prepared and cooked on the Traeger smoker grill. It’s wild Alaskan salmon filet with a mayonnaise-dijon mustard based glaze that also has fresh squeezed lemon juice and dried tarragon.

Glazed salmon over Jasmine rice with grilled vegetables

I cooked this entree the last time we went out nearly three weeks ago to Mike and Jodi Hall’s house. That was the first time I tried this glaze and although it was good, it didn’t present all that well. I wasn’t familiar with Mike’s wood pellet smoker grill – it’s not the same as my Traeger – and the temperature got away from from me making the glaze turn grayish.

The next dish is one Donna made before, but it’s been a while and it’s a favorite – chicken Gabriella.

Chicken Gabriella with garlicky cauliflower mash and asparagus

The weather has been warm with highs reaching the low 80s. Tuesday evening we had clear skies and watched the International Space Station cross the sky from the northwest to the south of us.

The temperature was slightly cooler yesterday and a few raindrops fell after sundown. The next couple of days will be in the mid 70s and will only reach the upper 70s for the rest of the coming week. No complaints about that – it’ll get hot here soon enough.

Open Spaces

Now that all of the regular activities here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort are stopped, a lot of people have packed up and left. I guess for those that have regular sticks-and-bricks homes and family elsewhere, it made sense for them to head home while they can. Talk of restrictions on travel to and from some states have created a sense of urgency for some people. Of course, the Canadian visitors had their reasons for leaving as well.

Donna has been staying active, riding her bicycle and doing strength training three days a week with our friend and neighbor here in the park. Ginny comes over on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and they do their socially distanced training routine on the empty concrete pad east of our site. Ginny and her husband, Joe, were in my refined skills pickleball class last year. They’ve come a long way with their pickleball game. It’s too bad we’re not allowed on the courts here at this time. Like us, they’re planning to stay through the end of the month in their park model.

Lately my activity levels have really fallen off. We go out for a walk most evenings, but that isn’t much. We see a few people that are socializing in their sites with friends, some of them are still having fairly large gatherings. We’ve decided to avoid these situations and keep our distance.

This whole social distancing thing has been somewhat controversial, but I think we can’t ignore it. One of the statistics that really sticks out in my mind is the number of COVID-19 cases in New York. New York has approximately 20 million people and as of 3pm yesterday, they had over 92,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. California has approximately 40 million people – double the population of New York – but they have only about 9,200 confirmed cases as of yesterday. That’s only 10% as many cases with double the population.

Why is that? That’s the question everyone would like the answer to. Here’s my thought on this social distance thing. Whereas New York has high population density in New York City, it also has heavily used mass transportation – subways, trains, buses and taxi cabs. Californians have large population centers as well, but they are much more likely to travel alone or in small groups in their personal vehicles. People in New York are more likely to spend time indoors – sharing space with others – while Californians are more likely to be outdoors and not in close contact with strangers. Maybe that explains why New York has so many cases compared to California – that’s my theory for now.

Since last weekend, the only time Donna and I have left the RV park was to go grocery shopping. I’ve done most of the shopping, but today we both went. I dropped Donna off at Sprouts where she likes to get fresh produce and some specialty foods while I went to Winco foods to buy a few staples and beer. It worked out good, I was able to buy some needed foods at the lower Winco prices while Donna found everything she wanted at Sprouts. With our limited refrigeration and food storage, I go out to shop a twice a week.

Speaking of limited space, Donna’s been doing some re-organizing. Our bathroom has a closet space that holds our Splendide 2100 washer/dryer and cleaning supplies. We also had a basket for clothes that needed to be washed on a shelf above the washer dryer. Donna wanted to use this space as additional pantry space. When you live in about 300 square feet, finding space for a clothes hamper can be a challenge. Donna came up with a solution. She found pop-up mesh hampers online from Bed, Bath and Beyond. She ordered two of them – one for whites and one for colored clothes. These hampers are very lightweight. She put them in the shower so they don’t take up any usable space. When we shower, we just pull them out and temporarily leave them on the bathroom floor. Then we dry the floor of the shower and put them back.

Colored clothes in the black hamper, whites in the white one

You would think with all this time spent at home and not going out for happy hour that we would be saving money. Well, I’m doing my best to keep the economy rolling. I find myself in front of the computer screen placing orders online. Donna, too. So we’ve had Amazon deliveries almost daily!

We didn’t dine out very often anyway – we’re used to home-cooked meals and only went out to dinner once a month or so. Here are a few meals from the last week. First is pan-seared mustard flank steak with roasted garlic cauliflower and corn.

Another dinner plate was creamy lemony orzo with shrimp and peas. Delicious.

Last night, I grilled a pork tenderloin that Donna prepped with her mojo marinade. She served it with fire roasted sweet potatoes and steamed asparagus.

I bought a 2.5-pound London broil steak today (top round) to make beef jerky. My last batch was the best so far – I’ve made small improvements with each batch. I’ll prep this steak later today and smoke it tomorrow.

We’ve had excellent weather for the past week with temperatures reaching the upper 70s and low 80s. We topped out at 85 on Wednesday. The week ahead should be more of the same.

Shut the Door

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser around here – and all across the country. Last Thursday, I made a trip to Costco at opening time. Usually if I arrive at 10am, the parking lot is only half full and shopping is quick and easy. Not now! At 10am, the parking lot was nearly full. As I grabbed a cart and headed to the entrance, I was told by employees at the door I had to enter from the left by walking past a long line of carts they used to create a barrier. It seemed strange to have to walk halfway across the parking lot just to turn around and head back toward the entrance.

I noticed a steady stream of shoppers exiting the store with full carts. It appeared that people were leaving at about the same rate as we were entering. Just as the guy in front of me got to the entrance, an employee stopped him and they shut the door! There were only about a dozen of us near the entrance. They kept the door shut for about 15 minutes, which created a line of people the length of the building. When they opened the door, I was the second person in and saw an empty store. Of course, everyone waiting in line was impatient to get what they needed and a mad rush up the aisles ensued.

Waiting for the door to reopen at Costco

It seemed to me that the process was creating more misery than it solved. The flow of people exiting seemed to be about equal to those entering. Shutting down the entrance and waiting for the store to clear out was just creating a series of rushes into the store. They were out of paper products and limited bottle water purchases to one case.

On Saturday, we planned to visit Mike and Jodi Hall for a barbeque. The plan changed when Mike and Jodi were invited to go to Frank Burk’s place. We were included and met Frank and his wife Kelly and another couple, Victor and Sherry. There were eight of us and we maintained social distance. We had drinks on the patio and up on the upper gazebo deck. Frank and Kelly’s place is a couple of miles east of where we used to live. Frank had the place built on desert property and it’s very nice with great views from the deck.

We had a great time with good food and great company.

Monday morning, Donna and I played pickleball. All of the organized pickleball activities were cancelled, but open play was still happening. The pickleball club provided hand sanitizer and placed buckets of water with dish soap at each court entrance to wash the balls between games. Everyone was mindful of keeping their distance. Pickleball, tennis and golf were just about the only things left to do here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. Everything else, including the swimming pools, is closed.

On our way back from the pickleball courts, we saw a saguaro cactus that had been felled and partially cut up. I asked a woman on the front porch of the park model across the street what was going on. She told us the cactus had been damaged by a golf cart when a woman’s dog jumped from her cart and she lost control trying to keep the dog in. I asked her if they realized it’s illegal to cut down a saguaro in Arizona. She said it was private property and the owner was concerned about the cactus falling over and causing damage to his home.

To satisfy my curiosity, I looked up the law. Private property or not, you have to obtain a permit from the Arizona Department of Agriculture before you can cut down a saguaro. If you don’t get a permit, you can be charged with a felony! They don’t issue many permits and usually require a saguaro to be relocated instead of cut down.

Donna found a two-pound package of large wild Argentine red shrimp for just $11.98 when she rode her bicycle to Basha’s grocery last week. What a deal. She grilled some shrimp with asparagus, peppers and onions and added pesto then served it over cauliflower rice. Excellent!

Tuesday Donna made a dish called Skinny Burrito Bowl. It was Mexican spiced chicken breast with black beans, corn and salsa over cauliflower rice and topped with cotija cheese and cilantro. Cauliflower rice is a staple of Donna’s Bright Line Eating plan – so that makes it a staple for me. I don’t mind – cauliflower rice is quite good.

We played pickleball again on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. A rumor was going around on Wednesday about the park closing the pickleball, tennis and shuffleboard courts. It turned out to be more than just a rumor – a guy stopped by the courts and showed us a notice from the Viewpoint management advising that all activities are closed. I find it hard to understand as the pickleball club was taking prudent precautions with the sanitizer, ball washing and no physical contact. People are continuing to leave the park as activity ceases. Many of the Canadians have been told by their health insurance carriers that they will not be covered for coronavirus if they are in the USA.

I heard that Costco had a senior hour from 8am to 9am where only members over 60 years old could shop. This morning I went to restock our bottled water, toilet paper and booze. I got there at 7:40am and was shocked once again. They had half of the lot taped off into what looked like a TSA security check point at an airport. An employee was handing out tickets to enter the line which snaked across the parking lot. Again they were closing the door to clear the store out – they were closing it at 10-minute intervals this time.

Line snaking across the Costco parking lot

There was a second line for people under 60 that had to wait there until 9am! I finally handed over my ticket and entered the store at 8:40am. They had pallets of toilet paper in the first aisle with employees asking if you wanted Kirkland brand or Charmin and they would hand out one package per shopping cart. The bottled water situation has obviously improved as they had a five-case limit instead of one.

I believe the number of cases of coronavirus in Arizona was – and is – under reported. I’ve been watching the data on this website and found that only 793 tests have been performed to date in Arizona. I think the most important data to track is the number of new cases under historical data.

The weather over the last week has been great. We’ve had mostly clear skies and the temperature reached the mid-to-upper 70s each day. Today and tomorrow are forecast to be cooler – in the 60s. We’ll be back into the 70s by Sunday and will see 80 degrees next week. We’ll continue to sit tight – we don’t have anything better to go to.

Interesting Times

“May you live in interesting times” is an old Chinese curse. These are certainly interesting times. The day after I wrote my last post, Donna went to the dress rehearsal for the Viewpoint Concert Band’s final performance of the season. When she arrived at the ballroom, there weren’t any chairs or music stands set up. She was informed that the concert had been cancelled as the management at Viewpoint had decided to curtail all events involving more than 10 people to prevent unnecessary risk of coronavirus infection.

Donna had a gift for her band director, Dr. Bruce Amman. She obtained photos from a photographer at their last concert where Bruce played a sax solo and also conducted the band. She had them made into a collage mounted on an acrylic block photo frame. She presented it to Bruce before heading back to the coach, disappointed over the cancellation.

Gift for Dr. Bruce Amman, director of the Viewpoint Concert Band

The restriction on gatherings didn’t seem to affect pickleball as we played in the St. Patrick’s tournament on Saturday. We got off to a slow start and even though we finished up with some strong games, the first two games sunk our chances of making the playoffs. At the pickleball courts,there was much discussion over changing plans for many of the people here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort.

At this time of year, the majority of people in the park are visitors from Canada. The Canadians had concerns over their healthcare insurance and possibilities of borders closing. Most of them elected to leave this week and head back to Canada. Their concerns were well-founded as announcements by the Canadian and US governments were made. The RV park was nearly full a week ago, but now there are many unoccupied sites.

Our neighbors across from our site, Sue and Chuck, decided to leave early and head back to Illinois to be with their families. We had a little after-dinner cocktail send-off with about 10 people in attendance Monday night. Donna played Danny Boy on her clarinet, an Irish ballad from the concert that got canceled, as a going away present for Sue and Chuck, who pulled out on Tuesday.

On Sunday, Donna wanted to get some groceries. I dropped her off at Sprouts, a natural foods store, then drove to Winco Foods to restock on beer and look for a few items. I was in for a shock. The empty shelves and meat department made me feel like I was shopping in Venezuela. The beer cooler was full, so that was a good thing. I managed to buy two dozen eggs and some coffee. I drove back to Sprouts to find the situation there was much different. For some reason, people haven’t mobbed Sprouts and they were only sold out of a few categories – soups and pasta for example. These are easily stored and only require water and heat to prepare, so I guess they’re popular right now.

Donna was able to complete her shopping and got most everything on her shopping list. I bought two pounds of beef top round to make jerky. RV living means we have less refrigerator and freezer space than most sticks-and-bricks homes, so we shop more often. With so many visitors to central Arizona pulling out, I’m wondering if some of the pressure on the supply chain will be reduced. I can only hope so.

We’d already extended our stay here through the end of April. Our original plan was to spend April in San Diego, however, we were going to fly to Miami for a wedding the first week of April. Donna’s niece, Michelle, is getting married and we could fly non-stop from Phoenix, but not from San Diego. We planned to leave April 2nd and return on the 6th. Now the wedding has been postponed until the fall, so we won’t have to worry about making the flight or traveling to Florida.

For now, we’ll plan on staying here until the end of April and then make decisions as the situation evolves. Arizona is a good place to be right now. For some reason, there are very few cases of COVID-19 here – only 20 cases reported in the state.

Meanwhile, we aren’t suffering any shortages, just lacking some amenities here at the RV park. The pools and hot tubs as well as the gym and recreation rooms are closed. We’re eating well though and I have evidence of that. Last week, Donna made a couple of new dishes for dinner.

Chicken with tomatoes, olives and feta over spaghetti

Slow cooker beef bourguignon with ciabatta bread served over cauliflower mash

Donna made her usual St. Patrick’s day meal yesterday – corned beef, cabbage, carrots, champ (Irish mashed potatoes with scallions) and Irish soda bread. Delicious!

I smoked another batch of beef jerky and I think it’s my best effort so far. Each batch has been an improvement!

The weather for the last week has been great – daily highs in the low to high 70s. Today we have clouds and sporadic rain showers. The temperature will only reach the 60s for the next couple of days before we get back into the upper 70s over the weekend. Maybe the abundant sunshine and time spent outdoors has something to do with the low number of COVID-19 cases here.

Racing and Rain

The warmer temperatures held up through the weekend as forecast – and it was a great weekend. It started early for me on Friday. I was up before sunrise as Mike Hall was picking me up at 8am. Sunrise here in central Arizona can be just as spectacular as the sunsets sometimes are.

Sunrise behind the Superstition Mountains

Mike showed up with our friend Jeff Van Deren and we headed out toward Payson to do some target shooting in the desert. Even on a weekday, it pays to get out there early to claim a good shooting spot. We had a blast (pun intended) and spent a couple of hours burning up ammo.

Mike dropped me off before noon – he planned on going out for lunch with his wife, Jodi. Donna was out – she had met up with Sara Graff for breakfast, then ran some errands. I made lunch and showered. Donna came home by 1pm and then I took the Midget and drove to Mike Hall’s place. We had a plan for the afternoon.

The Phoenix Art Museum had an exhibition called The Art of Speed, which was scheduled to be on display from November 3, 2019 to March 15, 2020. This exhibit had a number of historic race cars from around the world. Many of the cars were racers I read about as a youngster and dreamed of driving. Most of the cars were racing machines I was aware of, but had never actually seen other than in photos.

The first car we saw outside of the hall was the John Player Special Lotus 79 Formula One car driven to the World Championship in 1978 by Mario Andretti. I saw Mario drive this car at the Long Beach Grand Prix.

Most of the cars inside the exhibit hall are part of privately owned collections and were on loan to the museum for display.

The first two to catch my eye as we entered the hall were enough to give me chills. The first was a car that many consider to be the most beautiful Formula One car ever built – the 1967 Gurney Eagle. Dan Gurney won the 1967 Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps with the Westlake 12-cylinder powered Eagle – the only American-made car to win a Formula One race in the modern era.

Right behind the Eagle was the 1965 Lotus-Ford Type 38 – which one the greatest drivers of all time, Jimmy Clark, drove to victory in the Indianapolis 500. It was the first rear engine car to win at Indy. No front engine car has ever won since then.

This Ford GT40 was owned by John Wyer. His team raced to victory at Le Mans in 1968 and 1969. The story of this car is currently in theaters in the Ford versus Ferrari movie.

The next car epitomizes the sports cars built in Southern California in the late 1950s – the Scarab of Lance Reventlow. Lance was described as a “young man with nearly unlimited funds and a taste for all things fast and beautiful.”

Back in the day, it was common for race cars to be painted in nationalistic colors. Many race fans were fervently nationalistic. Italian cars were traditionally red, German cars silver, English cars green and American cars were blue. This wasn’t always the case, but was true more often than not.

The Ferrari 250 GTO is an icon. It won three straight GT Championships.

Some of the photos aren’t as clear as I would’ve liked, but the lighting for photography was difficult and flash was not allowed.

The 1957 Maserati 450S was developed specifically to compete with Ferrari.

This 1954 Lancia D24 Spyder won the Targa Florio – a race in Sicily run on public roads with a lap distance of 45 miles!

The next car was known as a “Birdcage.” This 1960 Maserati Tipo 61 had a space frame chassis built of approximately 200 tubes. If you look at the area between the instrument panel and firewall, you can see the construction technique. This car – chassis number 2470 – entered 16 races, winning six of them and finishing in the top three 13 times.

Next we have a Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe. This car won the GT class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1964 driven by Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant.

Stirling Moss drove this Maserati 250F Formula One car to victory in the 1956 Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

A.J. Foyt won his first Indianapolis 500 in this Trevis Offenhauser in 1961. A.J. would go on to win Indy three more times.

There were several other cars on display, but I didn’t try to capture photos of everything. The car Mike and I both wanted most to see wasn’t there! The Roger Penske-Sunoco 1973 Porsche 917/30 was probably the best race car ever built. It decimated the field in Can-Am racing with its flat 12-cylinder engine producing 1,500 horsepower. It was so far ahead of everyone else that it killed the series when everyone gave up on beating it. I found out later that the owner had a commitment to show the car at the Amelia Island Concours where it won best in show.

After touring the museum, Mike and I retired to Lucky Lou’s for a cold one or two where we were joined by Jodi and friends. I came home to find Donna had cooked up a new-to-her dish, Creole chicken and sausage. Tasty!

Saturday morning, Donna competed in the Viewpoint Pickleball Club Ladies Tournament. Donna played in the 3.0 group. She won the round robin portion handily, scoring a near perfect 65 points out of a possible 66. She went on to win the semi-final and then – wait for it – she and her partner won the tournament! On Monday she joined me in the 3.5 round robin session and played well. She’ll continue to try her hand at the higher 3.5 level.

Last night, we attended the annual Viewpoint Pickleball Club meeting and banquet. There are 510 members in the club this year and around 200 came to the meeting and dinner. Pickleball continues to grow as a sport and the Viewpoint Pickleball Club has grown as well over the four years we’ve played here.

In my previous post, I said I thought we’d reached the end of wintry weather here in Mesa, Arizona. I mis-spoke. Yesterday, we had a few rain showers after a warm and sunny weekend. It continued to rain off and on overnight and has been raining most of this morning. The temperature is expected to reach 70 today, but the next few days will be a few degrees cooler with more rain. If this all winter has for us, I can’t complain.

This coming Sunday, Donna will perform with the Viewpoint Concert Band in their final performance of the season. I’m sure she’ll continue to practice clarinet daily, but she won’t have the rehearsal and performance schedule to motivate her.

Daylight Saving – and the Apocalypse?

It’s been over a week since I wrote my last post. Time keeps getting away from me. We’ve settled into a routine here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort in Mesa, Arizona and it’s keeping us busy. Donna is managing to practice clarinet daily and has a two-hour weekly session with the Viewpoint Concert Band along with tennis lessons and pickleball. Last week, she also volunteered to sit in on presentations by employees of a local company and critique them. The ladies pickleball tournament that was cancelled due to weather will be held this Saturday and Donna is in it.

I play pickleball on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and sometimes on the weekend. Wednesdays are long days for me. I play in the 3.0+ group in the morning, then I coach the Refined Skills class from noon to 2pm. Sometimes I’ll play another game or two after giving the lesson. Wednesdays are also Concert on the Green day here at Viewpoint. Musicians come to the park and set up in the pavilion between the golf practice green and the pickleball courts from 3pm to 5pm. Lots of people here watch and listen from their golf carts, others spread blankets on the grass and sit or dance. Donna used to hoop dance there, but now she has band practice from 3pm to 5pm on Wednesdays.

Setting up for Concert on the Green – pickleball courts in the background

We expect to continue our daily routines – meanwhile the routines for most people are about to be disrupted. Daylight Saving Time will begin this weekend – it’s correctly called Daylight Saving Time, not savings. As the clocks “spring forward” it will mean getting up an hour earlier – at least that’s what the clocks will tell them.

By law, each state in the USA can choose to participate in Daylight Saving Time or not. Currently, Arizona and Hawaii are the only states that don’t change their clocks. However, the territory of the Navajo Nation in the northeast portion of Arizona does observe Daylight Saving Time, which can be confusing when traveling through the area. Parts of Indiana didn’t observe Daylight Saving Time but that changed in 2006 – Indiana already has two time zones, so counties that didn’t change the clock made time very confusing there.

Daylight Saving Time is longer now than it was before 2007. It runs from March to November – it used to be April to October. What do you think about resetting clocks? I think there’s some truth to the old adage, “Only the government would believe that cutting one foot off the top of a blanket and sewing it onto the bottom makes the blanket longer.”

With the lack of Daylight Saving Time in Arizona, our clocks are equal to Mountain Standard Time from November to March. Then, when everyone else changes their clocks, Arizona is the same as Pacific Daylight Time.

On Sunday morning, I went to Costco. Getting there at opening time, 10am, on Sunday usually means no crowds and easy shopping and checkout. Not this time! I arrived just before 10am and found the parking lot nearly full. There was a line of people stretching over 100 yards with shopping carts waiting to enter the store. It took me over five minutes just to get in! I couldn’t figure it out. Then one of the store employees told me people were panicking over the Wuhan coronavirus and stocking up like the apocalypse was imminent. Seems a little extreme to me, but there’s definitely fear among the general public.

The weather for the past week has been mostly agreeable. The daily highs hit the upper 60s to low 70s and we only had a few raindrops last Monday. Otherwise, it’s been mostly clear to partly cloudy. Today we expect to reach the lower 80s and the warm temperature will continue through Saturday. I think we’re near the end of wintry weather in central Arizona. The weather forecast looks favorable although the weather guessers say we may have a few raindrops by the middle of next week .

I’ll close this post with a couple of dinner plates from the past week. First up was walnut-crusted tilapia with southern fried cabbage – with bacon. Everything is better with bacon!

Donna also grilled shrimp – she’s become quite the grill master. The shrimp were seasoned with adobo and grilled on skewers. She served the shrimp with a side of curried cauliflower, zucchini, onion and tomato (and brown rice for me).

Shrimp with curried cauliflower, zucchini, onion and tomato

Unlimited – Not

After many hours of work, I have my new laptop ready to go. As I reported before, my old laptop had become unreliable. The problems began when Microsoft decided to push an Operating System (OS) update to it. The update software is flawed in my opinion. It had an incompatibility with an app or program I had on my computer. But rather than set an error message and identify the issue, it would just shut down the hard drive. I would have no choice but to force a complete shutdown, reboot and hope I hadn’t lost anything I was working on – in most cases, I lost my unsaved work.

Meanwhile, Donna was becoming increasingly frustrated with her phone. Our phones are several generations old – we had Samsung Galaxy S5s. So, we headed over to Best Buy and did some shopping. Donna ended up with a new Samsung Galaxy S10 while I picked up a new laptop – a 2-in-1 actually. This means it functions as a normal laptop or I can fold the screen 360 degrees and use it like a tablet. I don’t care much about that function, I only needed a laptop. I found an ASUS machine that seemed like a good deal – a lot of computer for the money.

It has two hard drives – one is a solid state drive that handles the OS and some file storage and the other is a conventional hard drive disk that has 1TB of storage space. It also has a Core i7 processor with 16GB RAM. This is a serious upgrade over my old unit. It’s fast and has better graphics and video than I had before. I still have to get a couple more programs on board.

One of the biggest hurdles we’ve faced in our time on the road as full-time RVers is high-speed internet access. With our Verizon Jetpack, we have onboard wifi, but high-speed access is limited. All of the carriers offer unlimited data plans, but none of them really mean unlimited. What they mean is, you’ll have high-speed access up to a certain point, then you become throttled. Once you meet the throttling threshold, other users may have higher priority than you and your connection speed will suffer. It depends on how many others are trying to use the cellular connection at the time and whether you are a lower priority user or not. Sometimes the speed can still be good while other times it’s almost like an old dial-up.

Our “unlimited” plan with Verizon gives us high-speed access through the Jetpack for 15GB of data usage before it throttles. Then we can switch to our phones and use them as hotspots. We can get an additional 15GB from each phone, giving us a total of 45GB unthrottled high-speed access. This has worked out well for the most part, but downloading program files eats up data pretty quickly.

We started last week with the Viewpoint Concert Band performance on Sunday. Donna had a few visitors in the audience. Our friend Stevie Ann came out to see the show as did Mike and Jodi Hall with their granddaughter Swayzie. The concert was great and enjoyed by all. I’m amazed at how well the band can perform together with limited practice time. They only play together five times before each performance date. Of course, they practice individually to learn their parts, but to hear it all come together is really something. Now Donna is working on the music for the next show.

Speaking of Mike Hall, I first met Mike back 2006. We met at Red, White and Brew – it used to be a favorite watering hole for us. There was a core group of guys that often met there for a cold one after work. One of the guys was Lindert Hartoog. Lindert is from The Netherlands and worked as an engineer at the Boeing helicopter plant in Mesa. He also owned a rental house nearby that Mike Hall lived in. This house has a large workshop in back. Mike is an expert body and paint guy and he often did side jobs in the shop and also worked on restoring a couple of his own cars.

Eventually Mike got married to Jodi. They later moved out of Lindert’s house and bought their own place a few miles away. Mike maintained a rental agreement with Lindert to occupy the workshop – about two-thirds of it really. Lindert kept about a third for some of his own stuff. Lindert came up with some shop equipment at some point, including a vertical mill and a lathe that he added to the shop.

As a body man, Mike is well-versed in working with sheet metal. Fabricating parts from billet on a mill or lathe would be a new experience though. Mike Hall and I thought it seemed simple enough and we decided to teach ourselves. Last Friday, we attempted to mill a pocket cut in a block of 7075-T6 aluminum. It was a humbling experience. We both had seen these operations performed many times and thought we had a basic understanding of the process. After breaking a couple of bits and fighting with the machine, we decided it was time to regroup.

I came home with my tail between my legs and did what I should have done from the start. I became a student and over the next few days, read everything I could find about milling aluminum and viewed YouTube tutorials. There are lots of things to be considered when milling metals – rotational speed, feed speed and depth of cut are just the beginning. There’s conventional milling and climb milling to consider – and on and on. I think I’m on the right path now and I’m anxious to try my hand at it again.

Donna was scheduled to play in a pickleball tournament – ladies only – on Saturday. But weather intervened. Rain moved in Friday night and continued off and on all day Saturday. We’d had great weather with the daily highs reaching the upper 70s and even 80 degrees all last week until the weekend – just the opposite of what went on the weeks before. Saturday and Sunday were much cooler, but today the sun is shining and the forecast calls for continued sunshine and temperatures back in the upper 70s for the rest of the week.

I’ll close this post with a few dinner photos from the past ten days or so.

First up was a new dish – garlic mushroom chicken thighs. It was quick and easy to prepare and delicious – a keeper for sure. Donna served it with black rice and steamed spinach with feta cheese.

Next up was another winner – spice rubbed pork chops cooked in the crockpot. Donna’s been using the crockpot every Wednesday so she doesn’t have to cook a meal after her two-hour band rehearsals. This was another very simple recipe with incredible flavor thanks to seven different herbs and spices. And it was perfect over a serving of garlic cauliflower mash and a side of steamed spinach.

Last but not least, we tried another crockpot recipe that turned out great – seafood cioppino. This dish required more preparation time than the other two, but the flavor was superb. She served ciabatta bread with my helping and served hers over roasted spaghetti squash. This was a surprisingly filling dish!

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Uncategorized

What’s That Sound?

What’s That Smell?

Day and Night

Face Mask Mission

Open Spaces

Shut the Door

Interesting Times

Racing and Rain

Daylight Saving – and the Apocalypse?

Unlimited – Not

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