Work and a Ride

We're back, we're still exhausted.  After the unpacking, there is the pulling of weeds.  It was a very wet summer, and everything has grown.  We spent today outside picking up mesquite leaves and killing weeds.

I discovered termite tubes up on the hill behind the house.  Come to find out, they're not wood eaters.  They swarm, land somewhere, drop their wings and then settle in to reproduce.  The internet says it's not necessary to kill them, but I am still thinking about that.  This is a tube.  It's center photo, and looks sort of like a dog turd.  They build the tubes so they can forage without dehydrating in the sun and heat.

The oleanders have filled in.  Last year they didn't have bottom leaves due to the shade from two enormous sage plants.  This year they grew a lot; lot's of rain. 

Last winter, the fruit trees did not produce anything.  I don't know much about citrus, actually I don't know anything.  However, it appears there will be fruit this year.

Yesterday we rode the bikes.  Even though we'd missed a week, 4 days of which were sitting in a car, we weren't as de-conditioned as I was expecting.  You've seen this photo before.  Left of the photo is a house.  There is a trail that runs behind their house.  Evidently, they're hoping to discourage people from walking on the trail by piling debris at its starting point.  I view this as antisocial behavior.

We've made the obligatory trip to Costco.  It was very disappointing.  They don't carry the Kirkland ravioli, Aidell's chicken sausage, Nature's Bakery fig bars, or Nature Valley granola bars.  I was able to source the last two online, but Aidell's will come from Safeway at an exorbitant price.  This Costco also doesn't have the olive oil I buy in Spokane.  I'm surprised the stores are so different.  Next year, we may be traveling with olive oil.  

47 continues to deteriorate, just not fast enough.  He's started making weird sounds, that are not words, when he's speaking.  The twitter neurologists (and there are some) are saying it's damage in the part of the brain that controls speech.  The DOJ continues to try to prevent democrats from voting and winning.  It's going to be interesting to see how far they're willing to take this.  In Alaska, 47 is taking the position that if Mary Peltola wins, the election was stolen, and the only true result must be the republican won.  Sore loser much?

In news of the delightful, it does not appear that Vanky and Jared Kushner will not be able to buy the protected island off the shores of Albania.  The citizens have been protesting in large numbers, threatening to overturn the government if development is allowed to proceed.  We should do that here.

I mentioned that Jim's laptop had a catastrophic hinge failure on the trip down to Tucson.  While at Costco, we saw an Acer on sale.  It has one terabyte of storage. (!) I am really tempted to go buy one as back up for when my current Lenovo self destructs.  Their hinge/screen frame design is just criminally bad.  We've had two failures so far.  How long can a PC sit around and not be used?  Anyway, we UPSed the pc corpse to the Spokane computer guy, he is very confident he'll be able to retrieve the documents and downloads files.  Fortunately Jim does not have photos or music on his laptop.

Jim captured a nice sunset the other night.

 

In news of the very sad, Patrick Stewart has died.  He was a stage actor famous for his Shakespeare roles, then he was Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek, and was in X-Men.  He was so good, with that deep plummy British accent.  
A family statement shared via his official social media and Instagram accounts confirmed he passed away following a brief battle with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia.  It's interesting to me that the Alzheimer's was brief, it took 10 years to kill my brother.  Brief is better.

Was he not a lovely man?

So, that's what we've been doing as of late. 

Bullhead City to Tucson

We're back.  I'm too tired to type.  Maybe tomorrow.  Anyway, all is well. 

Ok, this is funny.  When we arrived, we each had a new pair of indoor flip flops on the shoe rack (for wearing indoors only) that are identical to our current pair that we have in Spokane.  Neither of us has any memory of ordering them.  This is just weird.  

Also, neither one of us could remember how to turn the ice maker on.  This is how.

Turn switch in the freezer to on.  

Old people, we're fun to watch.

Spanish Fork to Bullhead City, AZ

Today was a very long drive.  It's not that much longer than yesterday, but it felt like forever.  

It was cold last night, so the air in the tires was showing less air pressure than there actually was.  It took a long time for the idiot light to go out.  It went out when we were in St. George.  Speaking of St. George, never go there.  If you do go there, do not go to the Maverick gas station that's right off the end of the off ramp.  It was packed.  We ended up leaving and going down the street a little to a Shell that wasn't busy.  St. George itself is ruined.  It used to be a charming little town, now they've planted houses everywhere, traffic is horrible, and we left in a hurry, never to return again.   That was our key learning for today. 

It was fairly windy today.  This was taken at a Flying J.  Jim wanted to put air in the tires.  Did you know that stations who still have air are charging for it?  The air station at Flying J was broken, so no air for us.  

Ultimately it did not matter, the tires warmed up, and the TPMS was happy.

The Virgin Rivet Gorge is on this route.  It was, as always, breath taking.  I love going through there.

We're staying at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites.  I think we may be looking for something else.  They're cost cutting by taking in room coffee makers away, and I think they've decreased the number of luggage carts.  When you travel with as much crap as we do, having a luggage cart is critical.  The guy at the front desk said that people were keeping them in their rooms.  I doubt it.  Also annoying is that when we reserved we asked for a 4th floor room away from the elevator.  We're on the 3rd floor close to the elevator.  I hate that because people tend to get off the elevator, congregate, and chat.  There used to be a coffee table in this room class, which is now gone.  So, my user experience is not great this trip.

Tomorrow we will be in Tucson, and I am heartily happy about that.

Butte, MT to Spanish Fork, UT

Today was Butte to Spanish Fork, Utah.  It was a complete and total shit drive until about ten miles north of Ogden Utah.  We had MANY miles of gusting sideways wind, rain, heavy rain, and mist.  It was gruesome.  The car seems very susceptible to winds from the side, we get pushed a lot.  Once we hit Salt Lake, the weather cleared and it was a nice day.  Traffic southbound was not terrible, there were a few rolling slowdowns but not bad.  Northbound sucked for them.  All driving was done on I15.

Most of Idaho and Montana are under construction.  New lanes, new bridges.  

I have photos.  This is how most of the day looked.

Last night we had a tragedy of first world epic proportions.  The hinge on Jim's Lenovo failed in spectacular fashion.  One side had already failed, but we got it to the PC guy in time and he screwed it back together.  This time was way worse.  Click on the photo to enlarge, and behold the beauty of the destruction from the hinge giving it up. 

We have the spare laptop with us, Jim will have to use it until we return to Spokane in the spring, or we buy something in Tucson.  The internet assures me that the data on the drive is recoverable.  This is good, because my beloved is not good at backing up files.  I'm not either, but he's worse.  So, that has been a bummer.

The heck of it is, we really like the Lenovos.  The keys are backlit which is very helpful for those of us with aging eyes.  The mouse pad is very nice, we like it a lot.  We just don't like the 5 year cycle of death for the hinge.  It's all over reddit and the internet, it's not like they don't know they have a design issue.  I wrote about this here. So, I say to you all, back up your files!

 

Spokane to Butte, MT

We are in Butte, MT.  The forecast still says it's not going to freeze.  We are happy about that.  The route from Spokane is get on I90 and stay there until you hit Butte.  Tomorrow we will back track to I15 and stay on that for awhile.  

I have a few photos.  It was not a good day for photography due to the bright sunshine and dead bugs on the wind shield.

Here we are in beautiful downtown Deer Lodge.  It used to be a thriving community until the Milwaukee Railroad pulled out.  Population dropped by 50%.  They will probably never recover from this.  It was an enormous payroll, they did the majority of the heavy maintenance for the Rocky Mountain division.  There were acres of shops to do this work.

The yellow trees are Larches.  They are a deciduous conifer.  In the spring they grow new needles.

This is a terrible photo what with the glare on the window.

These are trees with leaves.  There was a lot of fall color today.

We're at the Hampton Inn in Butte.  It's still a nice place to stay.   Tomorrow we are up and out to Spanish Fork, UT.  Friday and Saturday are the long driving days.  

Carry on and keep calm. 

That Man

This is 15 seconds, it's worth looking at.  You can really see the malice and crazy when he goes off on a reporter.  To play the video, click here, and then press the video button.  I still don't know how to imbed a working video from twitter into blogger. 

The car appears to be 90% loaded.  However, I'm still at the stage where little stuff keeps appearing that must be packed.