Posted on

Mesa

New bird! Not an uncommon one, (not uncommon in Arizona anyway), but a new one for us. Costa’s hummingbird. Doesn’t occur in Colorado, but it’s common here. Got an extended quail fix today, clucking and chuckling and calling all around us. Next up, the gilded flicker. It’s a slam dunk bird in Tucson. Can’t miss.
Posted on

Mesa

More motorhoming advice: don’t ever run into anything. Don’t do any damage that requires a body shop. It sucks up a lot of time. Today, we met with the repair shop in Mesa and got the estimate for the repairs. Next, an insurance adjustor will inspect the damage and give approval for the work to go forward. The actual work is scheduled for week after next. In the meantime, we wait in town. The RV Parks here are amazing. Huge places; a thousand to two thousand sites in each. Park after park after park, just lined up one after the other. They’re about a quarter occupied right now, but we understand they’ll all be full in a month. Quite a winter community they handle here. We drove through several parks and found one we like. We have our own saguaro cactus, and even a gila woodpecker right on site. Friendly people.
Posted on

Weather reports

A compilation of weather reports:
Mine:
Weather update: it is currently forty degrees warmer here (and it’s not snowing).

Others:

It has snowed and snowed here today. We have about 2 feet on the ground — Aspen has twice that in the town, more on the mtn. Tomorrow, it’s supposed to do the same. I cannot ski for another week and am dying… This is a super dump!!!! Am trying to be good, but am not sure how long I can hang in there,…

28 inches of snow in the past 24 hours, currently 12 degrees and dropping like a rock! Send palm trees……….

It snowed 6 inches at our place yesterday afternoon and evening. It’s around 16 degrees now with a forecast ranging from 10 degrees to minus five degrees tonite. How’s that for a lack of precision? We’re making national news with our cold weather.

Snow here up to your ying yangs. It keeps coming… Jim is out on the Bobcat, scraping the driveway. The doggies are all huddled together even though it’s warm in here. Oscar is under a blanket. Maybe they have the right idea.

It has warmed up a bit here since yesterday. It was 23 degrees last night and is up to 31 this afternoon (25 with wind chill). Everything is coated in ice and covered with several inches of snow. Kathy decided to make a grocery run at noon today before the next wave of cold hits us, and we spent a half hour scraping off enough ice to make the car roadworthy.

Piss off.
Posted on

The incredible morphing power ranger

It’s not like when we were kids. No sir. We didn’t have fancy morphable toys that were cars or jet planes, then flying superheroes, depending on which direction we pulled their arms (or wheels, wings, or whatever). We had building blocks. We had tinker toys. We had tin cans from the pantry we could stack and unstack. It’s not like the old days. We ponder this, while driving down the highway in our motorhome. Our motorhome perfectly proportioned for freeway driving; the maximum size allowable to fit the lanes. When we park, push a button, things change. Slides go out, rooms are suddenly square. The dish unfolds, extends and finds the satellite. Awnings, steps, heat, air conditioning, vents, curtains? Buttons. Now we have the perfectly configured house. No sir. It’s not like when we were kids. Benson, to Tucson, to Mesa today. Seventy degrees.