Road Chronicles 000304 - HITTING THE ROAD

Disconnecting from the Power Grid            February 2000

The weekend after my last workday Rita fell and punctured her jaw. She had low potassium levels and had to be taken to the hospital emergency ward and pumped up with intravenous potassium. We spent the rest of February putting wheelbarrow loads of “spare” stuff in the gurney so that we would “fit” into the motorhome; Putting the finishing touches on the towing rig; arranging personal affairs (including) mail forwarding, and arranging to get hold of the rest of my 401(k).

On the last day of the month we almost pulled up stakes and headed out. Well it was raining a monsoon by the time we were ready to hook up and Rita was hollering at me instead of helping. If she would have helped we would have hooked before the monsoon hit. As it was I got completely drenched and sidetracked by her yelling and the great deluge, I forgot to pull the plug (30-amp that is). I stopped just out of the stall and was extremely depressed, what with emergency hospital bills too. I straightened the prongs with my pliers and hoped for the best. We headed for our first monsoonal drive thru the mountains on the way to Scott’s Valley.

Santa Cruz to Bakersfield

Early March 2000

In Scott’s Valley they decided that the electric cord was still good (this electric cord problem was to give us much trouble downstream, until we got to Minden). We spent about 3 days watching the stock market and the soaps in the RV Shop’s lobby and sleeping up on the rack (well sort of) by the garage. They checked the wheels and also found nothing wrong. They still groan when we pull off the freeway and negotiate city streets at 15-miles per hour. They did 'rotate' the front tires to see if it improved the problem. The big reason we went there was for power jacks. I was not about to go on the road manually jacking the rig every time we stopped. Of course the market was plunging all of the time we were there.

When they finished we headed down the Coast Highway to Pajaro River and then along the river to the junction with Interstate 5. We had thought of stopping once we got to the Central Valley but everything was going so well we decided to press on to Bakersfield.

We stopped just before the freeway onramp. I guess I had the emergency blinkers on and a bunch of other stuff and may have overloaded a circuit, because halfway down the valley I realized we had no lights and no cruise control. We had head and tail but no signal lights. So that was my first experience handling an almost 60-foot train of vehicles down major freeways in heavy traffic in failing daylight and no way to signal to other drivers what my intentions were.

By merging slowly we managed to just piss off half the commuters, but the scary part was at the end of the freeway off-ramp in Buttonwillow, where we had to make a left turn in heavy traffic with only headlights.

It was probably during the drive down the Central Valley that Rita discovered it was more fun to ride up front with me and watch the scenery than to lie in bed in the back and scream bloody murder. She also learned to use the cell phone to call ahead and assure that we had a place to stay at night.

We stayed at a trailer park advertised as a RESORT. Well it had a swimming pool and a hot tub but it was no resort. The spaces were gravel with the only two nice features: a good utility post and a slab of concrete with a redwood table. I found the fuse that controlled the cruise control and signal lights and if it blows again I will pull to the side and be back on the road in about 5 minutes.
This is the first file I have written on my new computer with one of those little robots watching. The dog is wagging his tail and sniffing. I should give him something to do, but I’m too busy.

Plugging in at this campground tested my bravery. Luckily when I threw out everything I saved my galoshes and I knew where they were. So the first thing was to don my galoshes and stand in about 3 inches of water while plugging into the shoreline.

It rained and rained and we waited for a clearing and warming before heading over Tehachapi.

Bakersfield was our first clue that we were leaving civilization for red-neck country. I guess they have a country western museum there and it has a story with it that I am sure you know better than I care about. I also found out that lots of red-neck communities don’t have mailboxes and you have to look for the post-office, even at midnight. There were also lots of red-necks living in crumbling trailers and a drug pusher who drove around in an old laundry truck delivering his wares. The red-necks in East Bakersfield also had a roof decoration we were to become used to--old tires on the roof, thrown up there to keep the plastic sheeting water-proofing in place. We have been told that the Okies in West Bakersfield call a roofer instead.

Bakersfield to Mojave

Mid March 2000

Sometime around the middle of March we headed out. I got to listen to my favorite Western radio station that I always listen to when climbing out of Bakersfield to Tehachapi. That’s about the only place I listen to country music because it is a good station and it lends itself to the enjoyment of the mountain road.

I had wanted to have lunch in the quaint little town of Tehachapi with Rita. I was amazed to see that the quaint little town now had an Albertson’s, McDonalds, Burger King, ad nauseum. Well it was not quaint any more. Disgusted by the march of the cookie cutter we turned around and left hungry.

It was fun listening to the old Los Angeles radio stations while driving through the Mojave to Yermo where we spent the night at a KOA run by a spikey-haired lesbian. It was a nice park and a welcome relief from the Bakersfield ghetto park.

The next day, we drove to Baker and then through Shoshone to the Amargosa Valley, which the internet had implied contained a nice park with trees by a river (later determined to be the radioactive Amargosa River). But Amargosa Valley looked pretty desolate and we drove to 95 where we found Fort Amargosa. This is a trailer park that is near no shopping centers or stores -- the RV equivalent to a company town. We had read about Pahrump but imagined it to be nothing more than 3 casinos, 3 golf courses, and 9,000 RV dwellers, all clustered in a valley of wineries (which was close to the truth).

So we headed north, to known territory of Beatty. Beatty doesn’t look the same in an RV in the afternoon when you have to spend the night as it does from a car on a days tour from Death Valley. We stayed the night under some nice trees in a nice park. But Beatteites profess to buy their groceries in Pahrump. Whore houses are all over the place and you have to be reminded of them constantly. And the only place we could stay with an internet hookup was on a little triangular patch of dry grass between a trailer with loud rock music and another with a mean dog. So we Headed south again to Pahrump.

Leaving the highway (95) there was little promise of anything more than mesquite widely scattered and sand dunes. But as we broached the pass the Pahrump Valley spread marvelously before us and we knew we had found a sort of refuge from the wind whipped wasteland called Nevada.

Baby-Boppy

Our cat has always been terrified on Motorhome runs for propane. He would either hide in a corner under the bed or under the driver’s seat. It was probably on the run from Scott’s Valley to Pahrump that he decided to examine the foot petals. Being in open country with no pending stops I used gentle persuasion to discourage him. Eventually he decided to ride on my lap. Now soon after a departure he generally spends most of the trip on my lap, forgoing trips to the food or water dishes and the litter box and sometimes fascinated by the scenery going by. Most of the time he sleeps. In camp when the door opens he runs the other way. There is at least no danger of him running away. At night he snuggles between us, especially on cold nights.

Pahrump

It seems that a newcomer to Pahrump once asked “Does the wind always blow this way” and the response was “No, sometimes it blows the other way.”

Well Pahrump is the biggest place I have ever seen where it looks like the majority of the population lives in Motorhomes, Trailers, Mobilehomes, or Gringohomes (my nickname for one of the other three homes which has beed modified with cinderblock and plywood additions.

It has Bloomberg and Money Magazine, a movie house with 3 movies, reasonably good computer paper (which you have to buy at the grocery store), pizza parlors, a winery, an Albertsons, a Blockbuster, 2 (now) hardware stores, several nurseries, an RV parts and repair shop, and a snow-capped Mount Chuck (named after me). It has lots of Ravens (my totem). One of the better features of Pahrump is its bird life: we enjoyed watching the roadrunners, magpies, ravens, and California Quail; although we felt that the latter were traitors for having crossed the California border. Pahrump had an excellent Italian restaurant, but I guess the Bavarian owner-chef screwed the books and now it is an empty shell.

In springtime, the wind howls like hell and at least 2 cottonwoods fell over, one on the nice pullout trailer of a neighbor. Radioactive and caustic dust devils range the valley filling your car and home with alkaline and radioactive dust. There are days when the sun replaces the wind and you wonder why you hated the wind. The park we stay at is The Cottonwoods. It is an old place populated mostly by red-neck roustabouts.

It’s virtue is, that it is too far for Rita to walk to the casinos for free drinks, although we have visited Sam’s, a cowpoke bar where I took my life in my hands by too loudly screaming that Doctor Laura Schlessingbottom the talk show pseudo-psychologist was a Yiddish bitch (actually I may be more Yiddish than I think--see Minden). I guess I got away with it because dudes not bitches rule in cow country and there aren’t too many Yiddish cowboys.

Rita and I had lots of arguments in Pahrump during this stay (always about alcohol) and I took to frequently walking the streets at night. These streets have no lights and almost no dwellings. And it is not so pleasant to walk down a pitch dark country road on a moonless night with the wind howling and blowing dust everywhere. You can hear coyotes (they may or may not have been coyotls) howling occasionally (although I did not know what one sounded like then). Every now and then, a cowpoke from a local bar, or some teenagers on the way to a score, would whiz by about 80 miles per hour with blinding headlights and I hoped they wouldn’t run into me or shoot me. Then I would be blind again while my eyes adjust to the dark.

The RV park managers are Jack-Mormons and friendly and easy to get along with. Looking back they have been our best landlords over the year. Although, I have no great love for Mormons, it seems that Jack Mormons are pretty regular folk.

I do like Pahrump BUT:  the stupid Nye county government wants to bring in water from the nuclear test site and that is a shame because the valley is naturally protected from the radioactive water by a circle of mountains; almost everyone you meet lives in a movable house; the town is booming too fast and will soon be much larger than I want; everybody is depressed; and then there’s the wind and heat. But there is probably a lot of money to be made here.

We registered the Saturn as a Nevada vehicle and registered to vote and even though the Nevadans said we could vote again in the primary, we passed it up, knowing that we had already absentee-balloted in San Jose and didn’t want to cheat. We ate at the Italian restaurant, the BBQ pit, and the casinos where we gambled.

The IRS got our payment and the 401(k) came in (minus a hunk of money held out to pay for the fire-fighting in Idaho). We checked the mail late in the afternoon and when we saw the check we high-tailed it to Lost Wages and I entered the Schwab door 15 seconds before they closed for the day. All that without quite red-lining the water. Remember Saturns are cheap cars, not performance cars, so they are much better in flat steadily moving traffic than in traffic jams or coming over the hill from Pahrump.

Although not particularly dressed for the occasion, we decided to take in some of the Night Life and visited the Venetian. Rita Gambled a little and then we went “UP?” to the Grand Canal. I have to admit for Disneyland it was pretty nice. No sewage in the canal and at first I thought the sky was real. After a few seconds I remembered that it was an overcast day outside and realized that they only had a few scattered clouds “outside.” And then I saw God’s trap doors and fire extinguishers screwed into the sky.

We ate at the Chicano restaurant run by TGIF and I complained that the Venetian had an image problem, because all of the Venetians were Ffillippinnoss (mis-spelling attributed to the way the islanders seem to have trouble with spelling consistencies).

When we arrived in Pahrump there was still a lot of snow on Mount Chuck and the nights were cold; but, as I worked on the 1040 forms, the snow dwindled and the days became hotter and hotter. The Choice to leave was based on HEAT, SUN, and WIND; although the wind probably let up by the time we got to Utah.

The Thursday before Easter, we took a drive up the Pahrump side of Mount Chuck. Topo and AAA maps were unclear as to whether the road connected to the West side or not. AAA needs to add a LOCKED GATE symbol to their map.

On the Talus slope we had a close encounter of the third kind with a troop of Bible Shakers. I told Rita they were probably Snake Shakers, but subsequent investigation in town seemed to indicate that they just were reveling in God’s Natural Splendor before the holy event.

Higher on the talus slope, we came across a strange canyon carved right out of the talus slope which though deep seems to begin and end on the talus slope with no obvious connections to either the higher canyons nor the valley. It has a name and people recreate there, but I forget the name.

Up high we ran into the last vestiges of snow and a few other travelers. People leave dead bodies up there. I looked at Rita and then thought of the guy in prison that would value me as a sex object and decided she would not be another statistic.

At the “top” of the road was a locked gate. I am sure that if I was in the mood to trespass I could have followed the road on the other side and found the lodge. But I am getting too old for such foolishness without having a significant purpose, so we turned around. Rita watered the piñons while I stood guard. It could be pondered how I can spend so much time in Pahrump and visit Las Vegas and not see my daughter Lisa and her Area-51 husband. The  …   <<<EXPLITIVES AND WAISTED WORDS DELETED – WHAT’S THE USE???>>>  …

Leaving Las Vegas

May 2000

On Mother’s Day, we dined at the Pahrump Winery. Some people say I should buy stock in the winery, but I am a Californian and the winery did not impress me that much--a local phenomenon, but no earth shaker.

On May 27^th,we drove to Las Vegas and picked up a SONY VAIO PCG-F420 notebook. My tower computer has been on the fritz pretty good due to a combination of repeated brownouts, electrical storms, and severe desert heat. The heat sensor that I inserted into the Pentium cooler fins goes off on any hot day with the sun just on the other side of the engine firewall (only inches away). After paying $35 to Sam’s Club to join, I was told they would not accept my $1,000 check for a computer and had to get lost driving through Vegas in a motorhome looking for another computer store. The one I was looking for turned out to be next to COMPUSA.

We drove up past Mesquite. I had wanted to stop at Play it Again Sam’s er I mean Casablanca with Rita, but she overindulged in the sauce while I was buying the Computer so she had to do without. We drove through a Virgin River chasm on the way to Cedar City, but since it was dark we could not see it--too bad.

That night, we stayed in Leeds, Utah, and I was impressed by the boring cleanliness of the Mormons. The park was very nice with lots trees, but no pool nor hot tub. It had so many trees that I scraped off some of the paint pulling into the slot at 9 o’clock at night.