Journals: 2004(3)
by Ric Carter
Journals: 2004(3)by Ric Carter |
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PROFESSIONAL-GRADE JOURNAL
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(( INDEX )) >> NEXT >> CONTENTS:July 2004: Prep-O-Rama Rolling To Bisbee Photo WetDreams Life In Bisbee :Aug 2004: And More Events :Sept 2004: YA Laundry Day The Modern World ACCOUNTSSIGHTINGS btang phlog: a photographic blog of the real surreal and unreal FoundPhotos Archive: shared digital images TypoGenerator: randomized graphic posters THEMESTHE MODERN WORLD Oh how I love the modern modern world And modern meals of homemade spaghettini And the TV weather guy wears a bikini Yes I love the modern modern world See what happens when I just talk into the tape deck? I ramble on and on, with no tight form or mental edits or even any crap that anyone else might give a rat's ass about at all. Just a flow of EGO and ID with no SUPEREGO to hold the reins. Pretty flat-boring shit, ain't it? Move along, folks, just move along; there's nothing to see here. | ||
Friday 2 July 2004A welcome present when we arrive back from Tahoe - my beloved camera (Sony DSC-V1) has been repaired! The damage was covered by warranty! I've heard much badmouthing of Sony customer service, but they've always done right by me - the few items I've taken in for service were returned quickly, well-repaired, at a nominal cost. I have no complaints. | |||
Preparations GaloreTuesday 6 July 2004Barely able to remember these last few days - it's been hot here, and now 3500 feet (greater Volcano) feels low and thick compared to 5500 (Bisbee, upper Gringotenango) or 6500 (Tahoe) or 10000 feet (Cedar Breaks). But I think events went something like this: And today was more of the same. I finished editing the journey pictures, have started trying to put our old videos into the computer and grab stills - more pictures to manipulate, eh? Maureen spends much time arranging the Swiss visit. The old cat sleeps under my desk all day. A jackrabbit munches our drying seedy grass. Contractors don't return calls. We plan to leave for Bisbee in two weeks. An exchange of emails with sis Marsha. She and hers are leaving Riverside to vacation in New Orleans. IN JULY?!?!? YOU'RE NUTZ!! (She replies: rolling in the sand, howling at the moon.) (I reply: I expect no less of you.) She sez, when they return they'll put their house up for sale and move to Tucson, just two hours from Bisbee. So we won't be all alone. Then there were the ETs who landed their UFO across the road and started abducting deer, but you don't want to hear about them. Or maybe they were just neighbors being unfriendly? Wednesday 7 July 2004Not quite as hot. We (I) repaired Bobbie's porch steps, secured the anti-ice gratings REAL GOOD. Afternoons I keep falling asleep just before swim times, guess we'll have to leave earlier and I'll sleep underwater. Meanwhile I'm still struggling with getting video into the Goliath computer (Toshiba P25-S487), it's not set up with the right drivers. Damn. National politics keeps getting grimmer and weirder, as do the online rants and conspiros and omens. A dog (Jack Russell Terrier) is now a successful artist. The Pope will soon be succeded by a cyborg - no history of sexual abuse. The CIA is plotting a coup. Deer bound past my window. All police psychics are utter failures. Bush Sr is linked to the Reagan assassination attempt. We and our house are not overrun by ants. What does it all mean? Stay tuned for the consequences. Thursday 8 July 2004
Sister Barbi in New York City is hoping to retire (on disability) soon. She wants to come to California or Arizona (her dog is named Zona -- she has an Arizona Room in her house -- etc) while husband Bill prefers Florida (ah, an East Coast guy) -- but there are still impediments. She emailed, and I replied:
Monday 19 July 2004EARLY MORN: Now just outside Rancho Cordoba, California. This is the peenultiate day for our move, relocation to Bisbee, Arizona. We've rolled all the way to Rancho Cordova to pick up a truck from Penske Rentals, rather than from a more local supplier, because of cost. Local U-Haul, whose operative looked and behaved remarkably like my sister Barbi, had a truck, but the cost would be, oh, 500 or 700 dollars more. Ditto, except for the operatives, with truck rental firms along Highway 49. So we make the hour-and-a-half journey down the hill, spend the half-hour fiddling with paperwork, and head back to load this sucker. A little more cloud cover today. Some of it is probably caused by the big Carson City fire. So hopefully it won't be too incendiary, too oven-like, when hauling furniture and boxes up into this device. There's no ramp on it, so everything has to be man-handled up. Person-handled up, excuse me. And tomorrow morning, whenever we are ready, we set forth. Mapping software shows that from our Sierras home to Bisbee is just a tad over 1000 miles. Since Maureen's hands and arms are still injured, we've broken that down into three days of roughly 330 miles per day. So tomorrow it's the Sierras to Tehachapi (or rather to Mojave); then to Ehrenberg (because there's no motels in Quartzite, Arizona); and then on to Bisbee. MIDMORNING: tis a glorious time to be driving across the Central Valley -- fields are green, sky is blue, a line of clouds nestled into the mountains, but generally very clear -- from Jackson we can see Mt Diablo. The past few days have been a blur of activity, or lack of it. Maureen has been slowly boxing kitchen- and house-wares, books and blankets and utensils. While I have been desperately transferring home videos into computer-readable form and archiving digital photos onto DVDs so we can leave the CD'd originals in California and take copies to Arizona to work with -- something like offsite backup, yah. And in the last week we managed to swimming at B&B's a couple of times, rush around transacting business a couple of times, take deliver of Maureen's new small computer and get it all installed and setup for her, yes I did. Otherwise we have endured high temperatures and anticipation. So today we, I, load all the heavy stuff into the truck -- furniture and boxes -- and hopefully have time to go for one last swim -- and throw all the clothes together tomorrow, gather up all the foodstuffs, and leave. What we're taking is our excess furniture, a bare minimum for the Bisbee house. We did some calculations and figured that the truck rental somewhat less exensive than buying everything new. Well, not new -- used. Buying locally. Had we bought everything locally we'd still have all this excess furniture stashed away up here in the mountains. Thus we find some slight justification for the cost of the rental -- and for transferring furniture and office/studio, and the minimal library, and minimal electronic entertainments. Once we settle into Bisbee, Maureen will be very busy painting, decorating and refurbishing furniture. Those are her projects, I am not going to be dragooned into those. I hope. My purview will be digital photo work. And together every day we shall go strolling about Bisbee and environs. And exploring that portion of the world on both sides of the border, and plotting further acivities. AIRNETTING: Meanwhile in the last few days I've trying to set up wireless networking between our two new machines, the big Toshiba GOLIATH and the little Sony Vaio GAZELLE, which are both wireless-equipped (NO THEY AREN'T, NOT THE TOSHIBA! DAMN!), and my old Sony Vaio GINOME. We bought a package that included an adaptor for Ginome and a wireless router, and I switched things on, and no matter what I do, the machines will not speak to each other wirelessly. And when the router is switched on, external networking goes away -- Ginome can no longer read mail. There are IP conflicts. And nothing in the documentation about resolving such. So our networking will continue to be wired. Long ethernet cables... Luckily it's a small house. | |||
Rolling To BisbeeTuesday 20 July 2004MIDDAY: We're rolling down the mountainside! Just left the house. After great travails, we got everything loaded and we're finally en route. The cheezy church in Jackson has on its signboard: ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN BUMPER STICKERS. Ha ha ha. YESTERDAY: After my last report yesterday, Monday, we drove across golden grasslands at the edge of the Great Valley, up to Jackson in late morning. We pulled in at the Hospice Thrift Shop to see if the futon couch we'd been awaiting for a week was finally priced and available. And it wasn't priced but it was available. So we that,and a couple of rocking chairs. Sort of pre-loading furniture for Bisbee. We ran into cousin Beth, not difficult since her office is next door. She had just gotten a call from her son Trevor, who is now a firefighter, and he had just called to say that he is being sent down to Southern California to fight some of the big fires down there, his first big fires. He said, "Mom, pray for me!" We certainly all hope that Trevor gets through this unscathed. Then up the hill, and we reached home a bit later than we'd expected. But luckily it wasn't blisteringly hot. As per plans we got all the heavy stuff loaded, then went over to Beth and Brad's to jump in the pool for an hour and cool off. Then back over to home and finished the truck loading. And the details of that loading, yes, the details are what the devil is in. And doing that detailed stuffing was arduous in its own way. TODAY: Fast-forward to today. We finally finished packing up kitchen and personal and office stuff, and loaded all THAT into the old Explorer. Out in full sun and heat of necessity, unfortunately. But finally by early afternoon we were underway. We have these days planned for about eight-hour drives, six to eight hours, depending on the time we spend stopped and resting and eating, et cetera. And it is now late afternoon, early evening, and we're almost to Fresno, which is about the halfway point for today's run. Yes, it will be late when we pull into Mojave. Rolling through the central San Joaquin Valley, we have eucalyptus and dry fields on the west, and vast expanses of vineyard on the east. At least at one point. There's considerable variation along here, of course. Huge clusters of grain silos, directly across from acres of greenhouses. Or almond orchards across from alfalfa fields. We're on old 99, railroad tracks running right beside the roadway. Every ten miles or so, a greater or lesser town or city appears. DENNY'S: It's a long day, alright. Go thru a snarl of trucks climbing the Tehachapi grade, get down into Mojave just before 11 pm. Still 83° out. Not quite enough sun to jump into the pool. Fifteen hours of loading and driving, and at the end of the day it's Denny's again. Well we got out early this time, it was only a quarter to midnight. Usually when we're at Denny's it's because it's after midnight and there's nothing else. Of course, that's why we were here then this time too. Why we were there then. Wednesday 21 July 2004MOJAVE: Early morning, just leaving Mojave. Blazingly hot here, even at 8:00, 9:00 in the morning. Actually when I opened the door at 7:00 the sun burned in like Vulcan's breath. Now we roll eastward across the Mohave Desert, adjacent to Edwards Air Force Base. Jets have been swooshing by all day and night. Signs are up on the streets and in the motels, proclaiming Mojave the HOME OF THE VOYAGER -- pictures of that catamarin plane -- I guess that'd be cata-aero-plane -- scattered about. Pretty soon they'll have to update that to HOME OF SPACESHIP ONE. Damn, we just missed the takeoff... Fires are burning near Palmdale and Lancaster, just a few miles south -- a heavy pall of smoke obscures the San Gabriel-San Bernadino mountains, the Traverse Ranges. In Mojave we stayed at the Econo Lodge -- it's called Econo Lodge because they have the cheapest possible towels. However it's old, clean, small, comfortable -- air conditioners are on constantly, must have a huge power bill there. We did not feel like hanging around to avail ourselves of the pool. The "continental breakfast" consists of boxed donuts, potted coffee, oranges, and the local newspapers, proclaiming all the fires and road closures and casualties hereabouts. BORON: Now we've passed the terrible little pit of Boron, California, turned south at Kramer Junction heading towards San Bernadino, going out here thru the joshua tree stinkin' desert. Right next next to huge powerlines we pass a home-made sign offering real estate: 200 ACRES, DIRT CHEAP! Ah, and worth every drachma, no doubt... And then down over Cajon Pass into the soupy murk of the San Bernadino etc basic. We're passed by a Toyota 4Runner presumably driven by a a dentist, the license plate was 2TH FILR, Tooth Filer. CABAZON: Whooh! Our first rest stop out of Mojave was at Cajon Junction where there happened to be a Del Taco -- we had a couple burritos -- close enough to lunchtime. Then a quick tree-peeing break above Yucaipa. Our next stop after that is here in Cabazon, under the dinosaurs -- midday temperature was one-zero-three -- and this is the coolest we're going to be now until we jump into the pool in Ehrenberg, across the mighty Colorado River in Arizona. There's a hot wind from the west, which means that the desert itself is going to be VERY hot. The Whitewater Pass windmill farms are a-spinnin', the sky is still murky, a few puffy cumulous clouds here and there but otherwise just those shades of blue and gray. DESERT: Rolling down the downside of Whitewater Pass, we got a temperature of one-zero-seven. Further along, near Indio, just past sea-level, temperature is around one-one-three. A little further, we're on the long descent into Blythe, and we have a temperature of one-one-seven. I count that as just short of hellacious. Getting a little closer to Blythe, the temperature is brushing one-two-zero. The projected low tonight is around ninety-five. Yow. EVENING: We pulled into a motel, a Best Western in Ehrenberg, across the Colorado River from Blythe, at about 4:30 pm -- temperature was back down to one-seventeen. By about 7:00 when I called me Mum to tell her what's going on, temperature had dropped to one-eleven, although I said it didn't feel a whit over one-oh-five. Ha ha. Now, almost 9:00 in the evening, it's down to only one-oh-three. Icing over, almost... Thursday 22 July 2004EARLY START: 6:00 in the morning, Ehrenberg, Arizona. Very pleasant now, only 87° but the sun's just beginning to come up. The room at the Best Western is physically OK, but light coming in the window all night, air-conditioner horrendously loud, we did NOT get a good night's sleep. Last evening or afternoon we jumped into the pool -- like bathwater -- floating around under the incandescent sky -- fine until a disreputable fat guy came out to smoke on us. I wandered into the motel's lobby, over to the Continental Breakfast nook. Donuts, Cheerios. Diluted coffee. Toast'n'jamoid. The TV across the way is tuned to CNN, same old crap. Individuals and families come for their shares, blinking, yawning. Trucks blinker the desertscape. The sun pours down. PERAMBULATING: Rolling eastward across the central-western Arizona desert -- projected high for Phoenix today is only a hundred ten -- with scattered thunderstorms. Traversing this great creosote-bush and ocotillo scrub, there's not much to do except listen to the classical radio jukebox coming out of Phoenix, and not much to think about except dispatching all the trucks around here. I have fantasies of having an RPG or an M203 or an M80 [grenade launcher] or something, and just letting loose. BOOM!! BOOM!! * I have uttered a new song: THIS MODERN WORLD (click here). Heading south from Buckeye to Gila Bend, we pass a state prison. Grim-looking place, of course. Modern high-tech grim-looking, not ancient crumbling grim-looking, like in Guatemala. Or the Tombs in New York City. A little past the state prison we pass a sign selling OCEAN-FRONT PROPERTIES -- Rocky Point, that's Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, a couple hundred miles south. Just a small sign, not a huge billboard. No ocean-front property around here, though; just plenty of sand. We passed the sign: GILA BEND - 1700 FRIENDLY PEOPLE WELCOME YOU. The sign's right next to a couple of sand-blasted fighter jets sitting out a fenced enclosure. So maybe some of those friendly people launch warheads and ammunition. And what about the rest of the populace? All antisocial louts, or what? And in Gila Bend there's a SPACE AGE LODGE and OUTER SPACE RESTAURANT. Temperature here in Gila Bend at midday is one-ten. This place sometimes has the highest recorded temperatures in the country.
Just past Picacho Peak, heading towards Tucson, we passed the ROOSTER COGBURN OSTRICH RANCH, yup, and there's a bunch of ostriches out there, bobbing around, observing the passing scene. Little do they know that they are doomed to be skinned and eaten, their plumage turned into feather dusters, their eggshells looted and etched upon. YADO: Yet Another Doomed Ostrich. MID-AFTERNOON: We have reached Sierra Vista, temperature's down in the cool low 90s. The Ft Huachuca Aerostat is visible ahead. There are clouds around. We are in the shadow of a cloud! Oh, how long has it been? In Sierra Vista we pulled into the lodging we had reserved.. We had thought to stay in Sierra Vista tonight, now, late afternoon Thursday, and drive into Bisbee in the morning, after swimming and relaxing and cooling off, and doing the unloading early in the day tomorrow. However, the lodging we had reserved, Quality Inn, is a smelly hellhole, so we decided to go on to Bisbee. Oh yeah, we were advised not to look for rooms in the north-west portion of Sierra Vista, which is known as Frytown; the desk clerk said, "That's the drug area. If you park the rental truck there, it might be gone in the morning." Nice to know such things about our extended new neighborhood. BISBEE! Finally, late afternoon, we pull into Bisbee, and it's low 90s and thunderstorms. Rain is POUNDING down, oh boy. Fun to unload in. But we're here. Almost at the house. Let's see how things are there... Ah, the situation at the house is great. The neighbors, Caroline and Alan, are friendly and helpful. And the rain cooled off the air considerably, so in an hour-and-a-half we unloaded most everything. Muggy but not sweltering. We hosed off, walked down to the Copper Queen, and Catarina served us [mumble], a little appetizer: the best fried calimari and rice in chili-peanut sauce we've ever had, the best calimari we've ever had. And the steak, Maureen said was the best she'd ever had. My salmon roulade was stupendous, our salads were great. Catarina brought us free drinks and a free dessert. Ah yes, she know how to finagle our return business there... And so back to the house, we're staggering up the hill for our first night in Bisbee in our new house. The house needs screens and fans and certain window treatments and a little paint, and the walkway needs some straightening out, flattening. And other than that, it's about perfect. And so laying in the dark, I bid you goodnight.
Saturday 24 July 2004
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Life In BisbeeTuesday 27 July 2004OLDE BISBEE: We've been busy busy around Bisbee the last few days, getting the place straightened up, bouncing around for supplies. Saturday morning we made it to the Bisbee Farmers' Market which is a great event in a park down in the Warren district. Live music, an old-pop singer with karaoke tracks; fresh farm produce from fresh farmers; arts and crafts and handmade tamales, and old hippies, and playing children, and dogs, and et cetera. Back and forth to Sierra Vista a couple times these days. Yesterday we saw our first roadrunner of this century, tootling along by the Target-Staples parking lot. The weather has been monsoonish: lots of clouds, heavy rain now and then, broken up by intense sunshine. The vistas of the mountains and desert are glorious. And these last few days, I've been getting up VERY early in the morning and wandering around Old Bisbee capturing images, capturing light. Eventually I'll stomp around all the stairways wending up the hillsides here -- an Amalfi experience without the water. Out on OK Avenue, a dog barks at me. I finally got a workstation thrown together so I can start processing pictures. But now that we've about put the beds and kitchen in order, our next task is to get desks for Maureen and I so we can do our deskly things. AND THEN we can straighten up the place, invite the neighbors in for tea, and start wandering around and actually meet more people. And wander around the countryside, of course. Real Soon Now we've got to get down to Naco, across the border, and up to Tucson, probably overnight. Put the house together, then try to be away from it as much as possible. Yes yes... Saturday 31 July 2004Cousins Harry and Gayle up in southern Oregon emailed an inquiry today:
Saturday 17 August 2004
Today, Maureen sent off an email to her mother and scads of cousins, et al, updating them on our happenings:
Tuesday 20 August 2004A couple days ago I emailed sister Barbi in New York City and said, among other things:
Barbi, suffering from work, replied as follows:
Naturally, I had to gas on about the past, present, and future. I replied:
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NOON: a half-hour east of Gila Bend, it's 99° and raining. Very comfortable. This can't last, of course.