In a few days the weather forecast took a drastic change. Predictions were to be rising temperatures all the next week breaking though into the hundred plus range for the last weekend of April. Could we manage? The days were tolerable but not pleasant. Each day more people would leave. Was it foolish for us to stay? Beans would seek cool places inside, hyperventilating. I didn’t like seeing that. Thinking of it only becoming eight or more degrees hotter for the next five days straight I finally decided we need to move on. The following morning in no great hurry I loaded up the bike and put gear away while Beans hung out by her tree looking for lizard friends to terrorize. Finally it was time. It was sad for me to take Beans away from her tree. She knew. She didn’t want to leave either. I felt so bad for her as she was eyeing a lizard. My neighbor Theresa hadn’t returned that night from wherever she went each afternoon. She still hadn’t showed by the time we pulled out from Camp Quarantine at 9 AM. I dropped off four gallon jugs full water by the dumpster for anyone who wanted them and deposited the trash. I then drove on down to the Road Runner 14-day stay camp. I wanted to know if Samantha was still there in her little black Nissan Cube cooking in the sun. My goodness she was still there! All by herself with a little dog and Sprout the cat. How does she do it? No shade of any type, just parked there on the hard rocky ground out in the open. She had to be baking. Then I drove back north and over to the other long term camp across the highway. I noticed three hardcore desert rats had left my area in Tyson Wash and saw even more had left from over at La Posa South. I didn’t feel so much like a wuss now. From there it was on into town for apples, oranges and yogurt at Roadrunner grocery. I said goodbye until next year to the checkout lady. “Drive safe. I’ll be here when you come back.” Last year when I left she had her arm in a cast. Imagine doing checkout one armed.
We got rolling heading west. In twenty miles we crossed the Colorado River and hit the border agriculture check point in California. I had agonized over this moment for weeks. What kind of restrictions would I be facing entering California? Would I be questioned extensively, put into a fourteen day quarantine−especially since I had South Dakota license plates, a state that wasn’t observing much of any type of quarantine. Well, here we go Beans. I pulled up to the kiosk in my lane and there was no one there! I glanced over and the inspector lady in the next lane wearing a mask was waving me on. Geez Louise! I wanted to talk to someone and see what I was in for in driving north the length of the state. All that concern and fretting for nothing.
Claire my GPS girl had routed us through the Los Angeles basin (she always enjoys messing with me) a route that I would avoid by all means. Usually I go through the high desert north of the cesspool. But I thought about it and heck, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic and everyone is in lockdown, traffic should be next to nothing. “Let’s have an adventure and follow Claire’s lead Beans. What do you think?” No comment.
So as I figured (hoped) the drive was fine. I enjoyed the ever changing scenery just putzing along at 57 miles per hour. At a rest stop nearing Indio for lunch I saw only a few people wearing a mask including the worker emptying trash cans. Rest stops are entertaining for people watching. Travelers from Oregon parked next to us just to leave a brand new head of lettuce and bag of potatoes on the table for anyone who wanted them. I went and checked. Oh, it’s cabbage. Not interested. She loses her Cadillac owner’s manual supplement under the car and they drive away.
Onward we drove. It was only just past noon and I thought maybe I could get through the LA basin, up and over the Grapevine then down the other side this day. I felt more and more that we did the right thing in leaving Arizona. I was able to see firsthand so many businesses closed, entire shopping malls, casinos, amusement attractions, restaurants, car dealerships all with empty parking lots. I really got a good sense of the impact this virus pandemic was putting our country through. A follower had left a comment on my latest blog post: The 1918 Spanish flu came back the following fall and winter and was even more deadly. How could this county make it?
It was all smooth sailing through the Los Angeles area. There was no traffic and best of all no smog. I could see the distant downtown Los Angeles Civic Center skyline of high rise buildings on the far horizon some twenty plus miles away. That was unheard of unless there had been a heavy rain to wash the smog away. Even driving along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains on the Pasadena Freeway sometimes the smog is so bad you could not even see the mountains right there out your window. We needed more pandemics to cleanse the earth. News reports said the International Space Station could see Beijing, China for the first time.
After 330 miles of driving we stopped for the day at a rest stop atop Tejon Pass just north of the San Fernando Valley. It was in the seventies with a nice breeze. We’d be roasting back at Camp Quarantine now. I brewed up a cup of tea right away and ate some cottage cheese. Beans was glad we stopped. She rides in my lap all the time. That is the only time she’ll sit in my lap is while driving. She looked out the door wondering if she wanted to chance it asking to go for a walk. She hadn’t eaten yet but at least went pee. She finally decided she wanted to go out but it didn’t last long−too many people and too noisy with the interstate close by. It would be an earplugs-in-place night for me. I wasn’t used to the constant cacophony of noise yet. But we did have a nice spot at the end of the line and far away from the big rig truck section. We had another overnighter, an older couple from Oregon, two spots down from us in the old style Toyota Dolphin mini RV. I micro waved a little burrito for dinner. I missed my traveling road food stops−Subway sandwich, Panda Express Chinese, Burger King Whopper or Carl’s Jr. burger but just didn’t want to deal with all the possibles I’d expose myself to. I just wasn’t comfortable with this whole new world I found myself immersed in yet it was nice getting to see a lot of different sights for a change.
On the third day, the homestretch, it was not to be as a long drive as the first day but was viewed with some anticipation. We had to drive up the 680 freeway in the East Bay by Oakland. It is just as bad as driving the freeways in the Los Angeles area, bumper to bumper with the only redeeming factor being you don’t have as much territory to cover. I had high hopes it would turn out to be just like it was in Los Angeles and I wasn’t disappointed. What a wonderful drive it was. Most of the time all four or five lanes were completely empty as if there was an apocalypse going on. The only thing missing were the zombies. We reached the Carquinez Bridge at Martinez crossing over the San Francisco Bay into the North Bay counties which most always has long lines at the toll booth. As I was struggling to dig out a five dollar bill for the toll I glanced up to be sure I was in the cash only lane. The sign above read NO CASH. THE BILL WILL BE SENT TO YOU. CHECK YOUR MAIL. There were no employees manning the toll booths another result of the coronavirus. The last few days of travel felt like I had driven into the Twilight Zone.
At the House
We arrived at the house just at noon. I had a long list of tasks facing me which was fine. It would keep me busy and when it came time to leave I’d feel pretty good about continuing on. One important reason for deciding to return to the house was to drop off my fancy Gary Fisher mountain bike. It was an expensive high-end bicycle and as such I always felt compelled to take good care of it. I always kept it covered from the sun beating down upon it plus keeping it from the eye of those wanting to steal it, even though it was always locked up. But all of this protection was a hassle putting on or taking off the bicycle cover, and so I hauled the bicycle around for over a year and probably only rode it two or three times. Stupid. Now back at the house I could switch it out for my prehistoric old Stumpjumper mountain bike. It I didn’t care about as much. It could set out exposed like everyone else does with their bicycles you see strapped on the back of motor homes. Once I made the switch I could really see how this bicycle took up much less room hanging off the rear ladder carrier. It was not as big and had the standard normal sized twenty-seven inch bicycle rims and tires. The Gary Fisher Paragon bike had twenty-nine inch wheels. My thinking was I’d be more inclined to get the bicycle down and ride around wherever we were, especially if I didn’t want to unload Gracie.
With that done I forced myself to sit down and post the bicycle on Craigslist, not something all that fun. I had already did some research and found the bike had a blue book price at one quarter what I paid for it which was disappointing. Bicycles just don’t hold value I guess. So I listed it at five hundred dollars adding that I would take offers and needed to sell it before I moved on down the road in a few weeks time. Straight away I began receiving responses. What follows is a sampling, unedited, just as I received them.
First one: “I’ll give you $250 today.” I got back to him and said he was the first to reply but I would wait and see what other offers I received. No way would I sell it for that. I’d rather just hang it up in the garage. He gets right back to me. “Okay, how about $230?” Seriously? I responded with I’m sorry, I must have not made it clear in the write up. I am looking at the highest offer, not the lowest offer. I apologize. My sarcasm was lost on him.
Another respondent: “what size is the bike? What size are the wheels?” Good grief it’s all there in the write up! I wanted to write back You’re an idiot but I didn’t waste my time and ignored him.
Later another moron: “This is the bike I have been looking for for a long time. Unfortunately at this time I can only come up with $250. Would you be interested? Thought I’d at least try.” I replied Sorry, I already have an offer for two hundred dollars more than your offer. Thanks for your interest. He gets right back to me. “How about $430.” Oh yeah, I think I’ll take twenty dollars less. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I didn’t reply. His math skills were nonexistent.
The next morning I wasn’t looking forward to the day’s stupidity. Really, I had planned to let the ad play out until it expired but I didn’t have the tolerance to put up with imbeciles. If you can’t write any better than a first grader or do simple math I don’t want to sell my bicycle to you. I finally screwed up the courage to check my email. One of the first was from Jorge who asked if the bike was still available. I wrote back it was. Jorge asked if he could come to see it “today” and he could be here at 9 AM. I said sure and gave him the address. He was punctual arriving right at nine. He earned his first points there. He stepped out of his dad’s truck that he borrowed wearing a mask and slipping on a pair of latex gloves. “Oh, I guess I better get my bandanna on” I said. “I’ve been out in the desert for six months and not used to this situation.” He was a clean cut Mexican in his twenties and nice. More points earned. I had previously written to him someone wanted the bike at the asking price ($500) but he couldn’t come until Sunday−all a made-up story on my part. I added “...but he could flake out”. Jorge had written back that he understood as he had been dealing with flakes in trying to sell his car. Okay, I added more points. He said he was just getting into mountain biking and asked if he could test ride it. Being he came alone I didn’t ask for his car keys. If someone was with him then I would. I think you get my reasoning there. He came back from his ride saying he really liked the bike and wanted to buy it. He of course asked if I would take something less than the posted price which I respected. It can’t hurt to bargain a little. I reminded him of my «fictional» Sunday buyer at full asking price. He understood. I told him I would sell it to him now instead of holding out for two reasons: “You seem like a good person and I’d like for you to have the bike plus I just don’t want to have to deal with idiots and flakes anymore.” He smiled. “I get it.” He pulled out four one-hundred dollar bills and five twenties. He came prepared to bargain just as I would have. Smart kid. More points. He got a box full of extras−inner tubes, tools, biking shoes and a really excellent bicycle at a great deal. I watched him load the bike in the back of the truck and said goodbye.”Take good care of it.” He replied “Oh I will.” I walked away getting a little bit emotional, something I didn’t expect to happen. Not so much the bike itself which I really did like and had a lot of great riding adventures on, but I think it was a matter of realizing yet another chapter of my life had come to a close. Same as when I sold my last motorcycle a few years earlier.”Well that’s it. It’s all over. No more motorcycles in my life.” Well now it was no more serious mountain bike riding for me. I was okay a half an hour or so later...kind of. But I felt good selling the bike to Jorge. I learned a lesson several years earlier from a big mistake I made in selling my previous Honda Trail 90 on Craigslist. This Mexican kid saw the ad. He was a gardener in the area and kept coming by the house pestering me to lower the price. I wish I had told him to bugger off but didn’t. He eventually gave me the price I was asking. Ever since then I regretted that sale. It was a very nice motor bike and I had fixed it up, restored and detailed out. I know it was probably left sitting out in the backyard and is now ruined, uncared for. That sale still bothers me.
With this unsettling chore accomplished I could now focus on shopping at Walmart, Home Depot and an auto parts store. Traffic in Santa Rosa has always been an issue in the past. Not so now! I was out there on the streets early and discovered not all that many shoppers. Thank you COVID-19. It was so strange for me to see everyone wearing masks. These people had been doing so for over a month. Back in Quartzsite with so very few people mask wearing was practically nonexistent. When I stopped at the auto parts store all the aisles were closed with ASK FOR ASSISTANCE signs hanging from crime scene caution tape. I wondered had they sanitized everything? The girl at the counter said to use the hand sanitizer then I could step under the police tape and go pick out my quart of oil for the Honda 90. Strange times we live in. I was back at the house by noon, worn out from my ordeal and took a nap. How am I going to manage out there in the world? Cute story: Coming back to the RV from shopping Walmart I set the bag of purchases inside then went to go return the shopping cart to the cart corral. Yes, I am one those few who do not leave their shopping cart lying higgledy piggledy about in the parking lot. When I came back I see one bag knocked over. Beans had got in there and picked out her catnip banana toy and was wrestling with it on the floor with the cardboard still attached. Sorry Dad, but I wanted my nanner now! I couldn’t wait. So cute. I love my cat!
When you are parked at a house camping it is referred to as mooch docking. Technically I should be hooked up to electricity with a long extension cord snaking into the garage and have a garden hose screwed in on the side to really be mooch docking. Since I wasn’t doing either maybe we’re just squatters. I was earning my keep though by digging holes for plants, erecting bird houses, hanging plants, checking downspouts, replacing sprinkler heads, setting up yard art and doing a bunch of other fix-it jobs. I built the ex a stone wall.”I worked on that off and on for over a week and it kept falling over. I don’t want you to work on it that long” she said. I told her I›d have it made in a thirty minutes. Her mouth fell open and she didn’t believe me. “Just tell me what you had in mind.” It was done within my predicted time. She loves her stone wall. Later in the day I glued together a creepy vintage child’s doll. “I’d just make a mess of it” she confessed. I had an idea of improving upon my bandana I wore for COVID protection. I had her sew in a layer of scrape silk material she had in between the folded triangles of the bandana. It came out great and I now had triple protection from COVID cooties.
She repays me by fixing a nice meal each evening. I hadn’t eaten this good in forever. She doesn’t have to do that but she enjoys cooking and has no one do it for. While I was doing little jobs for her I kept thinking about all the laundry she did for me, like five loads. That was huge and I really appreciated it. So I happily looked around for things to do to make her life better. I had been knocking off items from a long list of things she’d like done around the homestead, things she doesn’t want to hire someone to do. She feels bad asking but I tell her I enjoy doing them for I like to tinker and fix things. One morning I took down her multi-functional shower head and cleaned it of all the calcium build up. This was my idea and not on the list. Only half the holes let out water. It was annoying. I repaired some trim around a kitchen window, put a handle onto a side gate, replaced a pop-up sprinkler head, checked for a plugged up downspout (it wasn’t plugged although my days of getting up on a roof are over, let me tell you!), tried to repair some glass art piece that broke but the glue wouldn’t hold so that was a fail, dug a hole for her to transplant a cactus in my (now her) cactus garden, plus a bunch of other things I just did that she wasn’t asking for me to do. Lots of these things she could do herself. In fact she built a side gate herself and did a nice job. Her problem is she can’t focus. She’s scattered and has several things going at once and then never completes any. And too there is her procrastination issue. She’s aware of it.
Beans had a ball running around the house. When I first adopted her three years earlier she had spent only five days in the house before we took off on the road. Last year we stopped by the house at this time and she seemed to remember. This time there was no doubt. I set her down on the floor and she was very comfortable walking off doing a quick check of each room then taking off hauling ass around the house literally jumping up and bouncing off the walls. After awhile though she’s ready to go back out to her home she knows best. Beans became very popular in the neighborhood. The house sits on a well trafficked walking route for the residents and they see her sitting inside or outside on her leash when I take her for several exploratory walks each day hunting for lizards. One day she touched noses with one little dog and then I read that night that the virus can be transmitted from cat to dog and vice versa. Beans will be practicing social distancing from now on.
In between all of these projects I would do little things for myself on the RV, bicycle and the Honda. That’s a nice feeling on a personal level. Being at an address I could order some items online and have them delivered. My old antique iPad was slowly showing issues and I broke down and ordered a new iPad which required a lot of educating of myself in setting up, transferring data plus figuring out a separate keyboard/case that I purchased to go along with it. It was best to do that now while I could have it shipped to the house and figure out how to get it up and running using the house Internet. This and taking on other computer issues with the laptop went on for a couple days requiring a lot of headache pills. I’ll not devote several pages here as to all the problems encountered−most of which were avoidable if I knew what I was doing−but in the end I worked it all out. Someday I will learn to NOT install Windows updates on my laptop.
I needed to do maintenance on the RV while at the house. The Little House on the Highway had now 129,700 miles on it. Changing the oil I was not looking forward to mainly because I didn’t want to make a mess in the street. The last time I did an oil change was in a vacant campground in Missouri. As careful as I tried to be I still overflowed dirty oil onto the asphalt parking pad at the campsite because I had neglected to pop the vent on the newly purchased oil catch basin I had just bought from Walmart. So when the oil drained out of the motor into the basin the air in the container couldn’t escape thus oil overflowed onto the ground. I felt bad about that. All I could do was mop up as much as I could with paper towels and dirty t-shirts then cover the mess with dirt and leaves afterwards. It’s probably not even visible now but still it’s not something I wanted to happen. I returned that container to Walmart. This time I bought the same container and remembered to pop the vent. Everything went well when you take your time and think it out beforehand. I laid out cardboard, set the basin on an oil drip pan, made sure it was level and pulled the plug. Not a single drop was spilled polluting the environment. I now know it can be done. I’ve always done oil changes on all my vehicles the RV included. A couple times I’ve gone ahead and let my Mercedes mechanic do it while he was doing some other maintenance task. I didn’t even know if his shop was open during this lockdown. At any rate I’d rather do work myself so I know it’s done right and nothing is screwed up. I’ve never gone to one of those quick oil change places. I can’t imagine the lack of care or the crap oil they might use. I now had the oil container basin strapped in up underneath the RV and will be ready for the next oil change wherever I may be. Recording the oil change onto my chart I noticed that two air filters and a fuel filter was up for a change. Well being at the house where I could receive shipments I ordered all three from my usual source out of San Diego. Not a half an hour had elapsed since I pressed the PayPal button for payment than I received an email from Europarts “Your order has been shipped”. Good grief! The poor guy must have nothing else to do being in a locked down business. All of this would be a good feeling when I pulled away having all the maintenance done on the RV for another year or so.
I wasn’t so sure about leaving. I knew what I had staying at the house and I felt safe and secure not to mention it being peaceful and quiet in this over fifty adult community. Driving off into uncertainty wasn’t all that reassuring. Things weren’t going to get any better though. In Quartzite I wasn’t around people. La Paz County in Arizona had only forty reported cases of the virus with one death. Sonoma County where the house was located there were over four hundred cases and thirty some deaths. I had plans for the summer. Didn’t we all? I was going to travel east and explore more of Texas (there were huge unmarked areas on my map of Texas yet to explore) and then continue on into the Deep South. I loved traveling in the southern states when Sinbad was with me. I wanted to now show it to Beans. But then the world went all wonky and I had to figure out what to do. The plan was to stay where it was safe in Quartzsite for longer than what we did. The unexpected excessive heat buildup saw to that. Now, where to go, what to do? I didn’t want to do what we did last year and the year before−drive up to Montana or Idaho. Something new was needed. Heading north from the house I’ve done so many times that it’s no longer appealing. For anyone else it would be magnificent. You have the redwoods, the Pacific Coast beaches and nowhere to stay. All state campgrounds were closed. All private parks unobtainable and I would not want to stay in a RV park anyway. There just wasn’t any free boondocking available (except casino parking lots) from the house all the way north through California to the Oregon border. Hard to believe but that is how it is. The entire Highway 101 coastal route is highly traveled by tourists and as such everything has become off limits. My new plan was to travel north through the center of California on Interstate 5. There are a few more opportunities than the coastal route but in the summer it can be unbearably hot, miserable, and just plain boring until you get close to Mount Shasta where the scenery improves the rest of the way to the Oregon border. I’ve been that route so many times. I’ve been all around Oregon for the most part. Driving along I’d constantly have this “been here, done that” mentality. Yet up the middle or the eastern portion of Oregon which is not all that populated or popular would be a good thing. And as far as I could determine BLM and forest service land was open for dispersed camping. I needed new and different. The state of Washington could offer that as I hadn’t been around all of that state as much. So going there was a possibility. A lot hinged on the prevailing COVID-19 situations. While in Quartzsite I occasionally would go into town to buy supplies. The few small Quartzite stores had small amounts of shoppers. While at the house the ex went shopping and picked up anything I may need while doing her own shopping. I simply was not comfortable being out there among the mask wearing masses. When I would hit the road again it would now be all up to me and I just didn’t want to be around the hidden infected within stores. What to do? All I could do was take all the precautions I could and select small stores for most groceries. Just seeing so many wearing masks was something I wasn’t used to and very unsettling. Maybe in time I would get comfortable with.
We spent three and a half weeks at the house. I began growing a bit bored with nothing else to do to help out the ex. We got rolling a little after noon on Wednesday the twentieth of May. Before leaving town I stopped at a nearby pet store for some hairball treatment for Beans, not me. After an overly active bout of running through the house she’d get to wheezing. This had been happening at times in the RV. We then got on Highway 101 heading north passing through territory I was long familiar with having lived in the area over thirty years. It all seemed the same, no changes to speak of. I knew I would be bored living here again although Sonoma and Mendocino counties are some of the most beautiful in the state. I needed to fill with fuel but the $3.59 and higher prices were not that inviting so I pressed on hoping for better. My planned stop for the day was supposedly a three and a half hour drive just in time for tea. Within the first hour of driving I noticed in the rear camera view that the cover on the Honda was ripped, flapping in the breeze. Fortunately I had ordered a new one while at the house for it was getting in bad shape due to the sun. I thought it had a bit more life in it though. I