Courting Disaster, Part Two

Speaking of courting disaster (see previous blog entry, which is much more interesting than this one), the brakes in my car seem to be acting up. I'm in Las Vegas, and heading out in a few hours for the drive through mountainous terrain back to Sedona, so "Guardian Angel, hello? Are you listening? Wake up and protect me!"

Courting Disaster

Here's the letter I received last night from my trailer restoration guy in Denver:

Hi,

I can't begin tell you how thankful I am that we decided to pull the skin on your trailer, even with all my experience I was shocked (not literally) at what I found with the wiring on your trailer.

As you know I said I am unable to verify the condition of the wiring unless I pull the skin.

On virtually every place the wiring went through one of the frame members it was worn down to bare wires. I can't believe it was still working.

Had we not done the work we are doing it would have only been a matter of time before it failed, or much worse it burned the trailer to the ground. All it would have taken is for one of the bare wires to touch the other or the aluminum skin and it very likely would have caught on fire.

The good news is we found it before anything bad happened. . . .

This has been a real wakeup call for me. I'm now convinced that every vintage camper should have the skin removed and everything inspected. Your trailer is in great condition, but the fact remains it's almost 50 years old and you can never tell what's hiding under the skin.

Just thought I'd fill you in on this little update, otherwise everything is going on great.

After that, he added two photos, plus his comments, as follows (if you look closely, you can see that the blue plastic coating on the wiring is worn away, stripped down to the bare copper wires):

This is where the wiring goes through the frame crossmembers.

Wow... how this even worked is beyond me.

The really scary thing for me is that the electricity in the trailer was hooked up at every campground I stayed in on the way from Ohio to Denver. In Columbia, Missouri, it was hooked up for two days!

I must have a guardian angel.

Middle of Nowhere and "Duh!"

My computer monitor seems to be dying.

In case it goes out soon, I looked online today for the location of a nearby Starbucks.

The nearest Starbucks with a wi-fi hot spot is . . .

. . . 27 miles away in Camp Verde.

I really am in the middle of nowhere.

Then I realized that because my computer screen is dying, a wi-fi hot spot won't do me any good unless I have a usable computer!

Duh!

Apache Tears

There's a stone found out here in Arizona. It's called an Apache tear.

It's actually obsidian, a glass-like substance formed by volcanic eruptions--which is a mystery because the nearest volcano to Arizona is probably Mt. St. Helens or something.

Here's one version of the Apache Legend (this comes from Wikipedia):

"The stones are supposedly the tears shed by the wives and families of a band of Apache warriors who were killed by the U.S. military in retaliation for [an Apache] raid on [a white] Arizona settlement."

The tears became petrified and turned to stone.

Because Apache tears are pieces of volcanic glass, when held in the palm of your hand, the stones are opaque and appear black. When held to the light, the stones are translucent and you can see through the stone.

If you're given one by a friend, it's very bad luck to give it away.

Polished Version:

Natural, Unpolished Stones:

Road Trip Nightmare--Don't Trust ARIZONA HIGHWAYS Magazine

Okay, so I read about a picturesque little scenic drive in Arizona Highways magazine, with an adorable little remote bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and decided to take a road trip to check it out.

Whatever you do, never trust Arizona Highways magazine!

First of all, they gave the wrong name for the road, so I didn't know if I was in the right place.

Next, they totally exaggerated the "scenic beauty" of the place, which was just basically more northern Arizona high desert, something I've seen my share of by now, believe me.

To make things worse, my search for the nonexistent scenic beauty led me to, as my grandfather used to say, "out where Jesus left his sandals." I was on a dirt road, out in the middle of nowhere.

And that was when the car trouble started.

But a few minutes earlier, I'd seen this REAL grubby and scary guy walking down the road. He looked like the 12th runner-up in a Kenny Rogers look-alike contest, in filthy overalls. He tried to flag me down for a ride, and I might have stopped to help him if I'd seen his car broken down or something (there was a small 10-spot tent-camping campground nearby, and I think that's where he may have come from--either that, or the Yuma prison). Anyway, I hadn't seen a broken-down car, so I just shook my head sadly and drove past.

He gave me the finger as I went by.

The car trouble was that my car was, like, shaking on the dirt road, and acting like I had a flat tire or something.

I pulled over. ("Pulled over" isn't really the right term. This was a narrow dirt road with no place to pull over except a very muddy little foot-wide run-off ditch beside the road.) I grabbed my cell phone: it had a very weak signal, and its battery was dying fast.

Of course I'd conveniently left my cell charger at home. Worse, I had no weapon with me to ward off the angry Kenny Rogers look-alike, not even my tear gas.

I'm an idiot.

So anyway, I pulled over and without getting out of the car to look at the tires, I called Triple A. The call was breaking up badly, but I was managing to communicate with the dispatcher, who naturally asked my location.

Um, in the middle of nowhere?

I really had no idea how to describe where I was. The road wasn't labelled the way Arizona Highways magazine had said it would be, and I hadn't kept track of how far I was from the main road. I guessed about ten miles down the dirt road? At that point the call began to break up again, and when the call failed, I didn't bother to call back.

I was trying to think of who to call to help me. I made a call to my friend in Phoenix, and got no answer. I got on the Internet on my phone and sent out an e-mail to another friend. But my cell signal was dying, so I just turned off the phone. I was hoping maybe another car would come along, but I hadn't seen one since I'd left the main road.

Then the rain began.

It had obviously rained earlier, because parts of the road were very muddy.

The scary thing is that Arizona has these things called "washes." A wash is, like, a water path that may look totally dry one minute, and then a storm, even in another part of the area, may suddenly cause the wash to flood, and I mean FLOOD, as in "flash flood," with enough force to sweep your car along with it.

If you've seen Into the Wild, you know what I mean. The protagonist pulls off by the side of the road and his car is suddenly swept up and carried away by a raging river.

I could see lightning in the distance. This did not bode well.

I still hadn't gotten out of the car to check the tire, and now I didn't want to, for fear of getting soaked.

So there I was, wondering which was the worse danger--grubby and angry Kenny Rogers, who was about to appear any minute at the crest of the hill behind me, or the potential flash flood from the thunderstorm.

And of course, I had neglected to obey the rules of off-road driving (to give credit where it's due, this is from Arizona Highways magazine):

"WARNING: Back-road travel can be hazardous, so beware of weather and road conditions. Carry plenty of water. Don't travel alone, and let someone know where you are going and when you plan to return."

No one knew where I was.

But give me a break: I had a huge bottle of water.

One out of three isn't bad?

In my defense, the description in Arizona Highways magazine hadn't made this sound like an off-roading experience: "By dirt road standards, this is a freeway, easily navigated by passenger cars."

Anyway, fearful of the rain, and the potential "wash," I decide to fire up the engine and keep driving as far as I could go on the flat tire, or whatever it was. I turned around the first time I had a chance and headed back to the main road.

Fortunately, I never saw Kenny Rogers again; I guess he'd gone back to his tent at the little campground.

And as I drove, the problem with the car seemed to subside. Could a flat tire somehow reinflate itself?

Once I got onto the paved road, in spite of the storm, the car drove even better still.

On the way back I passed an old-fashioned service station, a gas station not just with cashiers, but with people who actually know about cars.

The man explained that probably muddy tires were to blame. I guess mud gets not just on the outside, but up inside the rim or something. He attacked my wheels with a high-powered hose and sent me on my way.

I never did see the scenic beauty or the charming bed-and-breakfast place, but at least I made it back alive.


That's not my tire,
and I don't think mine were that bad,
but you get the idea.

Attempted Break-In

The above is my imaginary rendering of the person who TRIED TO FRICKIN' BREAK INTO MY HOTEL ROOM LAST NIGHT!!!

The room faces the outside; in other words, it doesn't face onto an interior corridor. And it's the room on the end, closest to the road and the parking lot (cars don't park right at the door here).

Last night around midnight I heard someone fumbling with the doorknob. I could hear scuffling footsteps, which sounded like more than one person--more than one large person, btw.

MY INCREDIBLY STUPID MISTAKE NUMBER ONE: I got up and could see the door wasn't deadbolted. Yeah, I know, stupid me, but I've been here for two weeks now and have gotten lackadaisical--which is surprising, because as a child I was severely punished multiple times for not locking doors and thus am usually a compulsive door-locker.

MY INCREDIBLY STUPID MISTAKE NUMBER TWO: I didn't immediately grab a weapon. (Hey, I'd been asleep and I wasn't thinking clearly.)

MY INCREDIBLY STUPID MISTAKE NUMBER THREE: Seeing that the door wasn't deadbolted, I was afraid to approach it and try to look out fear the ogre intruder would come smashing through. And so I stood in the middle of the room and said, "May I help you with something?" . . . in a female voice, obviously. Great, so now the guy knows I'm female. Jeez, I thought I was smarter than that!

MY INCREDIBLY STUPID MISTAKE NUMBER FOUR: I just thought, well it's a guest at the door of the wrong room, so I didn't call the police. I just went back to bed.

Now, in the light of day, I'm not so sure it was a guest at the wrong door, however. I can understand making a mistake about a center room, but not an end room.

And now the would-be intruder, a.k.a. the ogre, knows the room is occupied by a single female alone (if there were a man staying here, he'd have been the one to speak to them).

All kidding aside, this morning I'm a bit shaken up by the experience.

So now I feel like I have to call or write to all my friends and say something nice in case the ogre comes back and murders me in my sleep tonight.

That way they'll all have pleasant memories of me after I'm gone.

Doofuses

The people at the UPS store I deal with in my home town are idiots.

I'm expecting a large check, which I'm going to use to get a cashier's check to pay for the work on the trailer.

The UPS store in question is supposed to forward my mail to me each week. So all week I've been waiting for the mail and expecting this check.

I called the lady yesterday, and she assured me that she had forwarded my mail to me on August 28 and that I would get it that afternoon.

I didn't.

I called today, and now she says she *thinks* she sent some mail to me on August 28--but she's not sure.

Okay, says moi, what's the tracking number?

Oh, says she, there is no tracking number. I just gave it to the mail carrier.

Now this is a company that makes its living managing people's mail.

And she has no record or even memory of whether she forwarded my mail, and no tracking number.

And in the meantime, where is my check? If the check has been lost, of course I can get it reissued, but that will take a month or more, and meanwhile I have to come up with a cashier's check to pay for the trailer when it's done, which will probably be in two weeks.

And get this, when I complained, the guy at the store said, "Well, we forward mail for 40 customers. You can't expect us to keep track of everything."

Uh, yeah, I do expect that. That's what I pay you for!

Thanks a lot, UPS store.

Whole Hog

The trailer guy gave me a lot of options and prices for things to do to the trailer.

I want to fix the toilet, water system, and gas system, of course. I also need real trailer tires, stronger chains, working brakes, and so on.

And there are other things to consider:

• Do I want a 12 volt battery so I'll have lights without a hook-up?
• Do I want a shiny, new exterior?
• Do I want better insulation?
• Do I want air conditioning?

Etc., etc., etc. And of course each thing costs money for parts and labor.

After thinking it over for three days, I finally decided, what the hell, I'll go the whole hog.