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January 18, 2005 9:46 AM
Good morning Vietnam! No it's just me communing with the four sagurro cacti in the distance and enjoying my tea. I like to have breakfast on the stern of the yacht, using the flat bumper top as a table. Today is another lazy day in the sun with work to do on the front of the trailer and a perfect excuse to mosey (watch out, I feel a straw cowboy hat coming on) into town to the hardware store for a saber saw metal cutting blade. Might stop for coffee at my favorite spot. I've got beans in the solar oven, the laundry's done and on the ladder (clothes line) and I feel really good. Keep them doggies movin, rawhide!

January 18, 2005 8:45 PM

As planned I did all the little things on my list, as you know I would, but toinght I had a profoudn sense of loss. I was watching Message in a Bottle - one of the movies I swapped at a tent at the main event.. Swapped eight of my tired old ones for eight different tired old ones. Didn't tell you about that did I, well that was yesterday. Tonight I felt a feeling that has come and gone throughout my entire remembered life. The feeling is that someone close to me has died and left, my soulmate, my other feminine half. I have experienced this throughout my life tiem and again, which has certainly got in the way I'm sure in my relationships. But it's only clear when the feeling passes through, and I wanted to remember it here, for it is so fundamentally part of me and my sadness that has followed me all my life. Enough of that!
Anyway . .
I cut the hole in the belly pan today and used that opportunity to bang out one of the two worst dents in the trailer. The hole now is covered with a galvanized sheet which will act as the holding area for the satellite cable when it is not attached to the truck (internet dish)
The leading corners are very soft - Airstream people call them banana wraps. Road debris and lousy backing up account from most of the dents in banana wraps. I didn't damage either of the two wraps but I have been staring at the dents for four years. Today I got one of them (left front).

this morning

this afternoon - not perfect but much better. Tomorrow I'll try to make it near perfect by using a sock filled with desert sand and pebbles to server as a backstop for my hammer. I may be able to get all the little ones. The other side is much more damaged and a much bigger project, I may or may not attempt it. It has a metal brace in the way which means I must drill all the rivets out and then form it by hand. Don't have a dolly here, and it I'm a little chicken. Here's what the right front banana wrap looks like:

Here's the underneath hole which is currently covered with a galvanized door.

Not sure how I can or will proceed on that one. However I have the time, the quiet, the desert and my thoughts. "tomorow will come" Tom Hanks - Castaway.

January 17, 2005 around midnight

Morning started with building a stew for evening and loading the solar oven. I cooked s shoulder roast when Dave was here and it turned out incredibly good. So today it's stew meat, carrots and and onion, cajon spices, pepper and an all day cook.

Loaded up the solar cooker at 9am	and brought the finished product inside a 5pm

I met with Scott and measured the modems and controllers for my satellite and confirmed that the order was successfully placed. I'll have to build a secure rack to hold the electronics in the front of the Airstream. I did my email and web work at the cafe, and headed to the dump - which is a waste transfer site about 1 mile out of town. No charge! You know how I like free. Also, the dump girl was very sexy and she had build a little dump shangra la with a couch and tables and flowers. I complimented her and made a mental note to make more garbage.

Before heading home I visited Hi Jolly's grave. He was the Syrian that the army brought here in the 1800s in their idea to bring camels (18 I think) to the Sonoran desert. They loved the desert but the army was cavalry then and it seems the horses went NUTS when the camels were around. There is much to this story, but for now, here I am at Hi Jolly's grave in the Quartzsite cemetary. Hey! he's got a hat on. Looks just like a monkey with a hat. Hat function number one was to make me look even cooler. Failing that it helps me see the screen on the laptop when the suns out. They really need to turn the sun down a notch or too here.

Back at the trailer I began water transfer from the free water that Dave and I acquired yesterday. It was 5c/gallon but the person to take the money wasn't around, we waited for hours and hours (right) and finally gave up after 30 seconds and left with 30 gallons of Bouse's finest refreshement - desert water filtered through rattlesnake hide and rare quartz from the mountains. Thinking of bottling it - could be a new product. Water transfer was coupled with drilling holes in the canopy of the truck to let in the sunlight - and making the entry for future satellite cables. In the picture below the one above the doors is for when the trailer is towing and I want the satellite on without fussing. The one of the left rear of the canopy will allow me to connect when I'm parked along side the trailer.

I drilled the canopy and used a jigsaw to cut the holes and then mounted the plates. It was very loud and I think all the RV'ers who have parked within a few hundred yards have learned their lesson. Just in case I'm locking the door tonight. Apparently some people come here not to work. Imagine.

What a nice job! two down, and tomorrow I go under the trailer and make more noise and bigger holes.

Well there was much more done and doing today but I'll leave you with the view at sunset from the trailer looking at the lights that line I-10 and the cars as they make their way up the hills to cross the Colorado into California. Blythe is on the other side of the hill, in California, but I haven't made my way there yet. Soon I hope.

Sleep tight little chichens. Soon I will tell the free chicken story on a new page of this site, just to bring everyone to the same page in my sun crazed brain. Nitey nite.

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