The Pandemic Year
During our stay in the Bureau of Land Management Long Term Camp Area of Quartzsite, Arizona for the winter of 2019/2020 I had set myself a few goals to accomplish. One I succeeded at, another was placed somewhat out of my control due to unexpected circumstances I would never have imagined, and the last was a failure of my own doing.
Let’s begin with success. It was back in January 2018 while camping in the desert near the Colorado River at Ehrenburg, Arizona that one day I walked over to visit my neighbor Tim. Picture Santa Claus in the desert: big, long white hair with a bushy gray beard to match and wearing faded dusty ratty clothes. That was Tim. He was sitting outside his van reading on a tablet. I asked him about the device. It was a Paperwhite Kindle. Where this Kindle differed from others I had seen this one was backlit. There was no glare on the screen. You could read outdoors and the pages looked like those as if reading a paperback book, off white on color. Now this I liked. I went back to camp and ordered one from Amazon just like that. No taking several days to think about making the purchase or not which is my usual method of buying things. It arrived two days later at the local post office in Ehrenburg.
One of the first eBooks I downloadedfor free of course−on my new Kindle was Spirit of the Road by Rick Huffman. The author told the story of him going to school to learn how to drive a big rig truck and trailer and then taking his little cat along with him on cross-country hauls. It was a fun and interesting read where at the end Rick told a little bit about himself. He wrote that he had never written anything before let alone imagined himself self-publishing an eBook. But here it was. Well I thought to myself if he can do it, why couldn’t I? And so a two-year long project was born.
I had the material from over sixteen years of blogging and journaling my travels. All I needed to do was put it all together. I started working on organizing my writings soon after reading his book. I began reviewing what I had, rewriting some, editing it (several times), proofreading it (several times more) and then finally take on the task of formatting the word documents for publishing. Upon arrival at Quartzite in the fall of 2019 I had four books pretty much ready to go after over a year and a half of fiddling with them. The above mentioned goal I set for myself was to get them published before hitting the road again in 2020. Easier said than done.
I read all I could about how to self-publish an eBook. I watched YouTube videos on the subject. In the end I didn’t feel I had the confidence in doing the formatting myself. It was too technical for my limited computer skills. The previous winter I had met a lady camped near me who self-published her mystery eBooks. Remembering her I felt there must be other self-published eBook authors out here in the desert. I planned to put up some notices on bulletin boards at each camp area looking to pay someone who had done it before to do it for me. I did make contact with one woman who said she was a writer and told her what I had going and would she be interested in making some money. She got back to me saying she hadn’t done any eBooks and was already spending way too much time in front of a computer for her work. She suggested a couple of online services. The previous searches I had already done online wanted way too much money and seemed to cater to the professional writer who was trying to make a living from their work. I just wanted something basic as I would be putting my books out there for free. But her suggestion got me looking online once again and I soon came upon word2kindle who looked promising and was reasonably priced. They would not only format your word document but also design a cover for your eBook. I gave them a go with the first book and was very impressed with the final product. It was much more than I could have ever done myself. Well worth the money. I was very pleased. I followed through with the remaining three books. This alone took nearly three months doing one book at a time. That’s all I could manage and keep sane. I’m the slow methodical type. I’ve got to think things out, take it step by step. They were very patient in working with me and my limited computer knowledge. By April I could check this goal off my list. I had all four books published on Smashwords (for free) and on Amazon (where I was forced to set a price−99 cents) and listed them on the sidebar of the blog where my followers could easily click for a free download.
The other goal was to meet someone to travel with. I had traveled with and spent months with a couple of women in the past and found their company much more preferable than with men. Men have a tendency to be full of themselves, egocentric and I don’t give a toot about sports, baseball, football, basketball and so on. I had already had one unpleasant experience years earlier and I think it had soured me traveling with men. Most single female nomads I have met are out on the road leaving behind an unpleasant situation−a breakup with a boyfriend, an ugly divorce or the death of a spouse. Seeking a new relationship is the last thing on their minds. Here they were on their own on the road doing something they always dreamed of doing and loving it. I am not looking for a relationship. All I want is a friend, a nonphysical relationship which removes all pressure from the two of us; someone to travel and share the experience with, someone to join in on long walks, short hikes, and slow bicycles rides, plus have someone to go out to a restaurant with occasionally. I have a problem going to restaurants sitting there by myself. I needed to work on that, a lesser goal for the year I suppose.
The other thing I have learned from many of the women I have met in the past four years on the road full time is that they are, well I don’t want to say poor, but are living on minimum means. They have to be careful with expenses. They had no career where a comfortable retirement plan was waiting for them. One day they woke up to find themselves a widow or left behind dumped for a woman many years younger or sadly and all too frequently got tired of the abuse and left. All their life they had been someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, someone’s mother. Now they were someone for themselves and loving it and certainly didn’t want some man mucking it up.
Being an introvert I like being alone. It keeps the confusion to the minimum. I work at being isolated when selecting camp places. This doesn’t bode well as you can imagine if you are trying to meet someone. Being a bit of a recluse doesn’t help any. But I have met women who are the same way themselves. They are out there, just a bit hard to find. I’m not shy and can easily approach someone to chat with. Naturally a solo woman is always on guard especially if approached by a man. I can sense it immediately. Within a minute after introducing myself they realize I’m just a harmless old man and I can always tell when the barrier comes down and they are relaxed. It has happened so many times now it has become sort of a game for me−how much time will elapse before they relax. Well circumstances I never would have dreamed of in the beginning of the year would soon sink opportunities to fulfill that hopefully planned goal. Thus this was the failure not of my own doing.
Lastly I wanted to get back into my pen and ink art. I had an unfinished drawing sitting there in the motor home for three years now. I was very disappointed in myself. My only excuse was working on the eBooks took time away from my art. I felt now having the books published I’d once again pick up an ink pen for drawing pictures more often instead of writing words. Check the FAILED box on that one.
Playing Musical Camps
There are four Long Term Visitor Area camps at Quartzsite. At these the visitor pays a $180 permit fee which is good from September 15 through April 15. For this fee you can disperse camp wherever you please. Each camp has dumpsters for trash and only one has water and free dumping of waste tanks which those staying at the other three camps are entitled to use. In previous years I always stayed at the free 14-day stay camps which there are five of around the area. As the name implies, you can stay for only fourteen days and then must move on. Last year was the first time I tried the LTVA angle and I liked it. I would do this from now on each year.
When we arrived in Quartzite at the first of October 2019 I drove on down to La Posa South LTVA to fill with water before settling down at one of the other sites closer to town. Pulling in I saw a notice on the kiosk building door where you purchased your permit. It seems the company that made the permit stickers hadn’t delivered yet so you were unable to obtain one. The notice stated you were welcome to stay and they should arrive in a week or so. I went on in, filled my water tank and seeing that hardly anyone was here yet decided to just stay there until the permits showed up. I selected a nice area far from anyone else and parked. It felt good to be “home”. A few days later my first neighbor showed pulling in and parking their trailer a couple hundred yards distant, just far enough away. It was an old man and lady from Idaho in what looked like a brand new trailer. In fact everything they had looked new. I watched them pulling gear out from boxes unwrapping it all. They stumbled along trying to figure things out in setting everything up from a fence corral for their little dog to a big tent for which what purpose they needed a tent I could never figure out. Hooking up the brand new sewer hose to the brand new portable sewage holding tank was a spectacle to watch. The first attachment of the hose led to a back splash of sewage that drenched the old guy’s clothing and he evidently got some in his face and eyes. I missed the actual explosion but I certainly heard it. And this proved to be the first problem with me and neighbors for the year. The woman, besides being one of the ugliest of women I have ever seen was volatile crazy. She would yell, scream and curse at her poor brow-beaten husband constantly. He was meek as a mouse and took this abuse without a word. “You (blank) stupid moron, you (blank) idiot” and so on with every other word a foul curse word only a drunken sailor could match. Sometimes she would let loose on their little dog as if it had any idea what she was ranting about. I was growing weary of this when a couple days later Mr. Toys and More from Minnesota arrived. He had a big-rig truck tractor which he pulled their humungous six-wheeled fifth wheel toy hauler trailer behind. I couldn’t believe all the crap he unloaded out from the back of that trailer: one full size Harley Davidson motorcycle, a smaller dirt bike motorcycle, a small ATV and then a big ATV plus two bicycles. Then there were three very large solar panels that he leaned up on the back of the truck against the cab. He set up two large shade structures, several tables, wheeled out a huge master chef barbeque, a half a dozen chairs and an untold number of plastic crates that no doubt held more much needed essential crap. This was all fine and very entertaining to watch until he started up his music. I didn’t want to be hearing that. Mr. Toys and More provided me with the incentive to pack up and move away from bat-shit crazy lady.
Moving for me isn’t a problem. I can do so in fifteen to twenty minutes if I don’t have to load up the Honda Trail 90 and that’s what I did this time. I walked on down a few hundred yards and found a nice spot where I couldn’t hear Mr. Music Man. I walked back, threw things together in the RV and moved it to our new spot. Then I went back for Gracie and rode the motorbike on down to the RV and our new homesite. All done. Alas this spot didn’t last long. Nearby generators droning on accompanied by barking dogs soon had me moving once again, this time a mile further on. There I found a nicely landscaped spot done so by previous campers in years past. This one would do nicely for several weeks being away from the ever growing hub-bub of new incoming snowbirds. We stayed there until after Christmas when some people from California finally moved in. They had a generator although it wasn’t really a loud obnoxious one but it was very mildly purring along annoyingly. I’d wake up in the morning to that thing humming away and go to sleep at night the same way. But when one day they drove off for the day and left the damn generator going, that was it. Time to move. Plus I was ready for some new scenery anyway.
After topping off the water, going into town for propane and grocery shopping I returned but moved over to Tyson Wash LTVA on the other side of the highway from La Posa South. There was a lot of real estate over there much of it without anyone in sight. I set up in a nice flat area and immediately realized how much quieter it was there. At the old camp I was hearing the distant crunching of tires on the gravel road from people going back and forth filling up water and dumping tanks and trash. I just had grown used to hearing it. This new area was much nicer although with less entertainment. It lasted eleven days.
Three trailers moved in too close. If I can hear you talk, that’s too close. There are acres and acres of open desert here, why right there? Shortly another showed up in a big fifth wheel towing an ATV. I was going to give it until morning but I knew I’d just brood about it. I hopped on Gracie and went to scout out a new site. I found one not too far away so just parked Gracie and walked back to retrieve camp. When I returned two more units had arrived all circled about like the old wagon trains. Not a solar panel one among them. Generators would be in full harmony by evening. I broke camp and pulled out to the sound of barking dogs. Yep, I was glad to be moving and would sleep well that night.
We stayed at this camp for a month while the world was slowly coming off the rails. A lot of people had move on by March, many coming for the big RV show and sales, gem show and other attractions of January and February. We moved up the dirt road a mile towards town which placed us in the center of the Tyson Wash LTVA where the dumpsters were. This is where the more dedicated long-term campers were scattered about yet still leaving enough space to be somewhat isolated. I could at least go for walks now within a community of sorts having something different to see. This camp would eventually become known as Camp Quarantine and would be our final move.
Michelle
I had recently got involved with a traveler website called RVillage. People would post all types of topics about RV life and travel. The site allowed you to establish where you were in the country so others nearby may contact you to meet and make friends. And so that is how I met Michelle while over at the nicely landscaped camp in La Posa South. She had posted on the site about the water leak in her brand new trailer. Seeing she was near where I was camped I sent her a message offering to take a look at her problem. I figured it was a simple connection at her water pump for the leak only occurred when she turned on the faucet. She checked out my profile on the site, saw I was just an old geezer and said sure, drop on by. So I walked over to her new Starcraft trailer about a half mile distant. She came out, said hello and locked on to my hiking stick. “Oh, that’s what I need.”
Michelle was in her fifties and had a couple disabilities plus a little yappy dog that soon settled down when it realized I wasn’t a threat. She had bought the trailer new with warranty and as so often happens the manufacturer all but completely ignored her inquiries about various problems with the rig. I have heard these stories so many times. I always encourage people just starting out to buy used, preferably a year or so old. By then the previous owner has taken care of all the issues that surfaced in the first few trips out on the road. She said someone else looked for the leak but couldn’t locate the water pump telling her he’d have to cut a hole in the floor from up underneath. So for weeks she had been hauling in water in jugs never using her plumbing at all. That’s unacceptable. I asked if I could come in and take a look. This had to be an easy fix−perhaps a loose connection on the output side of the water pump. I got down on the floor, opened the little cubby compartment under the sink where I could hear the water pump churning. Unbelievably there was no access to the plumbing. It was completely boarded off by the back of the cabinet. Not even any screws to undo a panel. Who builds an RV without providing access to the plumbing? Starcraft for one. In The Little House on the Highway I can pop off a panel underneath the closet (no screws needed) and see my water pump, hoses, wiring and water tank. Incredible. “I’m sorry Michelle. I’d have to destroy the backside of the cabinet to get to the water pump and fix that line back to it.” She said not to worry as she didn’t mind hauling water in one gallon jugs. I felt bad. If it were my trailer I’d cut a hole in the back and fix it up to be able to access all the time. Here is another thing with some of the women I meet on the road. Some are fixer-uppers and some just don’t have that ability. But they will in time. It’ll come out of necessity.
Christmas was approaching and I had an idea. I dug out the half a dozen hiking stick projects I had been carrying around for a couple years now, selected one, cleaned it up, sanded it and applied a coat of Tung oil to it. Then one morning I could see far away Michelle driving off in her truck. Probably to go fill water jugs no doubt. I walked over with the finished hiking stick complete with a strip of masking tape on it where I had written: MERRY CHRISTMAS. I leaned the stick against her trailer by the door. Soon she returned and I watched through binoculars. She walked up, saw the stick, picked it up, looked around and took it inside. A couple times later over our time at that location I visited but she never asked about the stick. She had no idea where it came from.
Time to Straighten Up and Fly Right or in other words Get Your Shit Together John!
One day towards the end of February I was sitting at the table working on an eBook when I got very dizzy thinking I’d pass out. I didn’t but I was very shaky, weak, had no energy, all symptoms of being hypoglycemic. I had been eating crappy for some time now. I would start each morning with a honey oat granola bar with my coffee. Breakfast most often was a processed breakfast cereal combination with one of the cereals being a honey oat bran. I’d drink a small soda (7.5 oz. Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, Pepsi) everyday especially when I was running down and needed a boost. My afternoon tea would always be accompanied with a sugary pastry of some sort filled with so many mystery ingredients that they didn’t need a best by date on the packaging. I’d have a fruit juice drink with every dinner. A before bed snack would be a chocolate brownie, or vanilla wafer cookies or something sweet. Now I was scared. I did the research and learned what I needed to do−cut out all sugars and start eating healthier. Plain and simple.
I went through my stores on board and set out all the poison foods I had. I hate throwing food away. I boxed up a large amount and set the box out on the ground by the dumpsters near camp. I wrote a note on the box: Food inside. Had to get rid of all sugars. Doctor’s orders. 
An hour or so later the entire box was gone. I was glad someone took it all instead of just picking through it. I kept leaving items in a plastic bag as I found them over the next few days. Nothing went to waste. In the meantime I went into town and did a big shopping spree buying up healthy foods including more fruits and vegetables. One of the recommended breakfast items was Greek nonfat plain yogurt. Oh well, I’ll try it. The first day I added some raisins and peanuts to three big tablespoons of yogurt. Okay, here it goes and I took the first bite. Oh, that’s not bad at all. I can do this!
One night I woke up at 1AM and felt really bad. This issue had been on my mind for a few days already so naturally I’m lying there thinking the worse trying to decide what to do. I have Kaiser Health. The nearest Kaiser facility was in Indio, Ca. 116 miles west from where we were. There were clinics in Blythe, Ca. I had already checked. Would they accept Kaiser? If I decided to go, could I even make it that far? I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to be around all those sick people. Hospitals are germ factories. What if they keep me? What if I get worse? All of this worry focused on Beans. She needs me. I can stagger out into the parking lot and feed her. Crawl if I need to. I don’t want her in the care of someone else. She would think I abandoned her. I don’t care about me. I care about Beans. I’m scared, not for me but her. Oh the sacrifices we will make for our pets. I had already written to my ex that I had an issue. The next morning, thankfully still alive, I texted her: If anything every happened to me would you take in Beans and care for her? Typical response from her were questions. What is the matter? Are you worse? Could you please just answer the question? “Yes”. Just her saying yes knowing that Beans would be safe in a good home that she’s familiar with was a tremendous relief to me. My eyes got watery. I could drive the six hundred plus miles to the house if it killed me.
I was over reacting to all of this. I haven’t had a runny nose or sore throat in well over ten years. The last illness I ever had was at this time eleven years ago when the wife gave me a flu bug that morphed into pneumonia requiring two visits to the emergency room. I needed to realign my thinking. Things go a bit out of whack and my world is coming to an end. I’ve been out here in the desert in years past when my neighbors had heart attacks! That afternoon I felt much better since this thing started a week earlier and this was the third day into my new eating plan. I walked to the dumpster then continued on for a brisk walk. I was back! Just like old times! I felt the best I had for the past ten days. I still had my moments. I was still learning.
So all of this brought me to a decision that needed to be made: do I want to do what I had planned when leaving here? I was thinking of driving east through New Mexico, on into Texas and maybe revisit the South. Now I just didn’t feel like it. I felt like I didn’t have the energy or simply had lost the enthusiasm. I used to hike and bike every day. Slowly this winter that happened less and less. Yet I was feeling good…considering. I look at so many around me everyday and they just scream “poor health”. Then I think they must feel worse than I do yet they carry on. Deal with it and quit your sniveling John. You’re getting older. This is part of it. One lady I tried to give my applesauce to said “No thank you. I have to be careful with sugars”. Yeah, that’s why I’m trying to get rid of it. She laughed and we talked sugars for a bit. She was 73 and told me “You will always be adjusting. Get used to it. You’ll be fine.” Maybe in a month when it gets closer to the time I planned to leave I‘d be more into it.
Then the COVID-19 Wuhan virus pandemic madness hit.
It all started out with someone in Wuhan, China eating a bowl of bat soup or a pangolin burger if we are to believe what we read in the media. Well I guess we are for soon a cruise ship is waylaid in the Far East due to infected passengers on board. Then the virus makes its way into the U.S and other countries and soon thereafter pandemonium breaks out. People panic and begin hoarding with toilet paper becoming the most sought after commodity. Store shelves are wiped clean of all paper products. A long-term supply of toilet paper wasn’t a concern for me. Before arriving in Quartzsite I stopped at a Walmart outside of Phoenix to stock up on supplies that would be unobtainable in little Quartzsite over the winter. Toilet paper wasn’t one of those but I grabbed a four pack anyway just because. You can imagine my disgust sometime later when I broke into that package discovering I had mistakenly bought single-ply toilet paper! Who uses single-ply toilet paper these days? I didn’t even know they still made it. Several months later as I write this I am still working on that very first roll of single-ply toilet paper. A roll of single-ply toilet paper seems to last forever. My mistake turned out to be blessing in disguise. Back to the downfall of life and we knew it. What followed next was the government, state and federal, enacted stay-a-home policies. Schools close, stores and restaurants close, public events are canceled and entire states go into lockdown mode. Everyone is ordered to shelter in place, practice social distancing (six feet away from each other), and impose a self-isolation quarantine. Parents begin to home school their children and in a very short time earn a deep respect for teachers and what they have to do with thirty kids every day. If at all possible businesses allow their employees to work from home. Other businesses simply have to lay off personnel meaning no income for employer or employee. Unemployment claims skyrocket. Nation’s economies are severely shaken. I asked Beans what she thought. Social distancing? Ha, cats invented that. Basically, during the pandemic we had all become cats. We avoid people, stay indoors, stare out windows, get bored, take naps. Yep, we were all cats now.
The only item I was in need of were paper towels. I checked in stores for days and weeks before finally a small supply appeared on the shelf at Family Dollar. A sign was taped to the shelf ONE PER CUSTOMER. My real concern lay with food for Beans. Junk food such as Friskies, Nine Lives and Fancy Feast always seemed available, but I get Beans quality grain free cat food. After a tip from a lady working at Petco in Idaho over the previous summer I had made the switch to Tiki Cat which she loves. It is a bit pricey but only the best for my Beans. In Quartzsite I was able to order it online from Amazon or Chewy and it would be delivered at the mail drop in town by United Parcel. Only thing was the mail drop would shut down for the season at the end of March. I made an order (a few hundred dollars worth) and completely filled the storage compartment under the dinette seat with Beans food. And in a worst case scenario she can always munch on my moldering body after I expire from the coronavirus.
I had friends check in to see how we were doing during this lock down stay-at-home crisis. Being an introvert out in the middle of the Arizona desert, nothing had changed. Sheltering in place, social distancing, self isolation...this was a normal every day to day life style for me and many of those out here in the desert. We wouldn’t even know anything was going on if it weren’t for the out of control news media, which I felt was the root of many of our problems in society.
As of March 20 the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control reported 26,686 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States with 340 deaths. In comparison the figures for your garden variety flu cases for the flu season (we were in week 11 for the season at that point) stood at “...at least 38 million flu illnesses, 390,000 hospitalizations and 23,000 deaths from flu”. The only thing I saw here was a higher percentage of death rate for COVID-19. A large majority of those deaths