Author: Steve

Work day. Got my WiFi hookup and work to do on the website. We’ll have a
couple more buttons on there soon: “Request a Proposal”, and “Why Choose
Us”. The sun came out and Judy did some errands. It’s a beautiful blue-sky day.
Calm too. I got a run in the sun today… I mean walk. I got a walk in the
sun. Larry the mobile RV repair guy here came by and fixed our fresh water pump
for us. We’ve had more trouble with the fresh water pump. We’ve replaced
it several times. We replaced it with a really expensive one last time.
The expensive one lasted almost six months. Larry said he replaces a lot
more expensive pumps than cheap ones. We replaced it with a cheap one. It
works great. Picked up two more jobs at the office today: one in Denver, one in Bailey.
We’ve scheduled several new road jobs for 2005. We have a job scheduled in
Edwards at the end of January, followed by one in Montrose. Then the Bailey
job. All three of these are new this year. They’re doing a good job at the
office following up on inquiries, sending out proposals, and scheduling
jobs. Annie is starting to look more like Annie. It’s been tough ever since the
new groomer carved a schnauzer out of our Cockapoo. The new groomer is now
the used-to-be groomer. The old groomer is a mobile service that came to
our house in Louisville. If she won’t come to Golden, we’ll go meet her in
the driveway at the house in Louisville.

More rain. A visit to Tony the Freightliner mechanic. It took about an
hour for him to rinse everything out and put in a new filter, while
explaining it all to us. We got a lot of valuable conversation out of that
exchange. We’re always interested in learning more about what we’re doing. Speaking of learning more about what we’re doing…. We’ve been motor
homing for years. We know a lot about motor homing. But know what? There
is a lot more to learn about full-timing. Full-timing in cold weather, you
have to know how to hook in an external propane tank so you don’t have to
move the motorhome every two weeks to refill the on-board tank. And then,
you have to know how to tell when that 100 pound external tank is running
low so you can get it refilled without it running dry overnight on a really
cold night. You have to know whether you can leave the dump hose connected
in really cold weather. You have to get a heated fresh water hose so you
can still have full hookups even in weather below freezing. You have to
know what to do for an address and how you’re going to get your mail. You
have to know where to vote. You have to figure out what to do about a
telephone number. You have to decide where to register your motorhome for
license plates. Your home address matters a lot for filing income taxes,
paying property taxes, and paying sales tax if you buy a new rig. You have
to know what to do when the shop needs to keep your RV for several days when
they work on it. You just gave up your house. There is a lot to know.
We’re still finding out how much we don’t know yet. Anyway, Tony was the greatest, and we’re happily on the road again. This
new fuel filter may not handle all of the rest of the junk in our tank. We
may have to stop and do this again. Just in case, we bought two more fuel
filters to carry with us. If I need to, I can stop and change it myself. There really isn’t much to go wrong with this diesel motor. It is so
simple. It looks like an old Chevy in-line six-cylinder engine from the
fifties, except it’s a little bigger. It doesn’t look like these new fancy
car engines with all the stuff crammed in together under the hood. It’s
just a simple old six-cylinder engine with an alternator and a radiator.
And a turbocharger.
We drove to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Here we are on the Las Cruces trip, and
we finally made it to Las Cruces! Cold and rainy all day. When the clouds
lifted, we could see the snow on the mountains just a few hundred feet
higher than us. Cold rainy and windy when we got here. The weather was so
bad, I had to put on long pants.

We got to sleep to the sound of rain on the roof. We got to wake up to the
sound of birds outside our window. The neighbor on the starboard side has
bird feeders. They’ve been there for quite a while; the neighbors and the
feeders. This time, we put the binocs next to the bed the night before, so
when the birds went off in the morning we could just lift up and look at
them. Tons of birds. Mixed in with all the other birds, we saw another
unusual one. Acutally, two unusual ones. We saw the Bendire’s thrasher
again. They’re shy and secretive compared to the curve-billed thrasher, and
the Abert’s Towhee. We’ve only seen him once before. And more of my
favorite: the little chuckling clucking gamble’s quail scratching about on
the ground. I don’t get tired of listening to them nurdling. Another day in the rain. We decided it would be a good day to drive, so we
could be stopped somewhere when the sun comes back out. We drove east
underneath the weather. It didn’t change all day. If you drive from east
to west, you drive through the systems moving west to east. The weather
changes every day. You drive west to east, and the weather doesn’t change.
We’re still in Arizona, south and east from where we were. South on
Interstate 17 through Phoenix, then east on Interstate 10 through Casa
Grande, Tucson, Benson, and stopped for the night in Willcox. Stopped for
the night in Willcox? Limped into Willcox. We picked up fuel in Casa
Grande. A lot of fuel. Seventy gallons from a truck stop. It wasn’t long
before the sputtering started. But we didn’t know it was fuel. We just
knew it was sputtering. We pull over and shut it off. We wait. We start again. It’s better.
Seventy miles an hour. Then it starts slowing down. It’s losing power.
Then it starts sputtering. It goes slower. I put the flashers on. It
starts blowing black smoke. I pull over and wait. It gets better….. Judy called ahead to a Freightliner mechanic in Willcox. He has helped ten
RVrs in the last two weeks. They all tanked up at the same truck stop.
Rubble in the tank. Now it’s in our tank. Our fuel filter is blocked. He
needs to change it. We need to burn up the rest of this fuel and get some
good stuff. Guess stuff happens. Life on the road. Judy is awesome. Two weeks ago, she was in surgery. One week ago she could
barely move. Today. She is still sore and gets tired easily, but she can
get up and down by herself, climb and descend the motorhome stairs without
assistance, and even reach above her head to get stuff out of cabinets.
Yesterday, we shared a laugh. A really big laugh. It takes a lot of
abdominal muscles to laugh. We’ve snickered a little. We’ve started to
laugh, then groaned instead. But last night, we shared a guffaw. It hurt a
little, but it had to happen.

Work occupies my thoughts and my time. Revise and update the Colorado
mailing list. Done. Complete the New Mexico mailing list in preparation
for my approval to practice there. Done. Revise the flyer for the December
mailing. Done. Make a few more changes to the web site. Do the annual
reviews. Finalize the 2004 projections so I can do the 2005 projections. A
staffing change in Denver. Take some on-line CPE… I’m not done yet. Did I mention the website lately? It’s still in process; a good one
probably always is; but we’re getting a lot of information there. Check it
out: http://www.taylorandcompany.net/ <http://www.taylorandcompany.net/>. My daily run has degenerated to a walk. A sharp pain under my right kneecap
won’t let me run downhill at all. If I run until it hurts, then try to
walk, it still hurts. If I just do an exercise walk, it doesn’t hurt much.
After all the running and racquetball, though, it’s hard to consider walking
exercise. But if I don’t consider walking exercise, that means I’m not
exercising any more. I have no choice but to change the rules and declare
victory. Walking is exercise. Maybe if I’m nice to my knee for a while, it
will get better by itself. Last trip I mentioned that I was reading a book called “The Big Year”. It’s
about listing how many birds you can see in North America in one calendar
year. It’s a 2004 book about the 1998 big year. The story is now complete,
and I’m happy to report that the 1998 big year destroyed the old record of
721 with an astonishing total of 745 birds. In 1953 the record was 572. In
1955 it was 598. 1971 626. 1973 669. 1979 699. 1983 711. And 1987 721.
You have to see all the regular North American birds, then you have to have
a particularly bad weather year that blows in accidentals from Siberia and
pushes South American birds up across the border. 1998. A particularly bad
weather year. 721. A record that will never be broken……

A photo from the Shockley side of the family: John Jacobs, Judy’s nephew,
being interviewed by journalists in Fallujah.