Desert Donkey Dung

My frustrations with living so independently on BLM land in the boondocks include the lack of good cell phone, internet, and ham radio coverage.
We get weak and spotty cell and internet coverage, and several good ham radio repeaters reach out here.... but I rarely if ever get any positions reported from my trike rides,  Even the higher power radio in the RV and Explorer do not get coverage from our Senator Wash area, adjacent to Imperial Dam north of Yuma.
I rode a good seven miles of nasty rough roads both yesterday and today, and it is not fun riding.  The dirt roads are barely bulldozed out of the eternally scattered volcanic desert rocks and gravel, still full of oversized rocks and potholes -- but the paved roads are WORSE.
The pavement must have been laid back in the 1930's or 1940's and barely, if ever, maintained since. What little asphalt exists has wasted away next to nothing, leaving up to 2" rocks standing up glued to the weathered asphalt remaining underneath.  It rattles the cars and RV's traversing it something awful.  It's not quite as bad riding a bike on it since the speed hitting these rough surfaces is lower, but it is NOT fun pedaling along with your teeth rattling along with everything else on the bike or trike, watching for the even worse potholes and gaps as well as watching for stuff on the bike to fall off and bounce off into the cacti and dust.
What's a bit funny is that the awful pavement belongs to California, along whose border this BLM area lies.  When the roads cross into AZ property, they are much better maintained.  What the cat-hair does CA do with all those high taxes they impose on everyone?
There are places closer to Yuma and civilization that cost more money, but we're beginning to think it might be worth it.  Long term BLM visitor permits  cost $180 for a 3-month pass, which is next to free since the pass includes permission to get fresh water, dump USED gray and black water as well as trash.  But what paved roads exist are terrible and it's really a pain to ride or drive anywhere to get mail, go visit RV Heaven (Walmart), etc.
The silly reason for today's silly title is that there are actually feral donkeys (burros, actually) that forage out here, and they occasionally wander through the camping areas willy-nilly.  Most visitors have seen them, but we have yet to encounter any, except for an unfortunate one lying along highway 95 between here and Yuma that was busted open for the birds and buzzards to enjoy.  Supposedly it was shot by some unthoughtful passerby and left there for several weeks.  It is long gone, obviously cleaned up by BLM or maybe even highway workers.  We KNOW live ones exist by their piles of poop scattered all over creation, some fresh, much of it ancient.
The weather locally is suddenly and dramatically getting warmer and even HOT, with forecast temperatures in the high 80's today, and upper fifties and low sixties overnight.  Thus the crowds of winter sojourners are thinning out, we in the next couple weeks as well.
As I walk the dogs around I am unable to resist visiting vacated campsites.  About half of the RV'ers leave a bit of trash behind, some leave a few scraps of firewood, and some leave behind what must be termed RV Rock Art.... One nearby place has what appears to be a large iron cross outlined in the ground with arranged rocks.  Another has a cartoon man character outlined in rock:

As I view this photo now,  I'm thinking it resembles Santa Claus.  Oh Well.
Ride Started:  11:15 AM    Ride Ended:  12:32 PM
Ending Battery Voltage:   13.3  
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  7.07 
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed   
4.2 MPH                                 5.7 MPH                     21.6 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time  
1 hour 41  mins                     1 hour 14 mins            26 minutes

Riding without Recording

I've been riding several days a week out here in Desert-RV-Land, but for some odd reason I have trouble finding time to blog about it.

I suppose with such short rides lately I have trouble being enthused about sharing them with anybody.

We'll be back in NM for a couple weeks or so in another couple weeks.  I'll see if blogging can again be accomplished.

For now I'll post a couple screenshots from the bicycle GPS.

See what I mean?  Less than 2 miles for itty bitty trash runs isn't much.  I'll get fat and die if I don't repent soon.
Another factor is the lack of radio relays for the GPS/APRS tracking.  North of Yuma there isn't much in the way of infrastructure, cell phone  coverage included.

Sundown Test Ride Without Flats

Today's tracking via GPS and Ham Radio

After my rescue yesterday and subsequent replacement of rear tire and tube, I was out of time so far as testing it out.  I broke out the hand pump and topped off all 6 trike tires (3 each on Jacque's trike and mine) but didn't get anything out on the road for even a short test ride.
I've gotten such good performance and reliability from these small (35 X 406 mm) tires that I'm buffaloed by the failures I've been having now.  Now I'm getting afraid to even ride unless the tires are super pumped up and hard, hoping to avoid ruining any more.
So this evening I just rode a couple miles around a couple blocks just to make sure all things are again working OK.  The front shifter cable has been rather stiff and cranky since the rains a few days ago so I sprayed both graphite dust and WD-40 lube into the control cable housings in hope of freeing it up again.
It must have done the trick since all shifting was without complaint.  All systems go.  Maybe I can get in a decently long ride ...... manana maybe.

Riding around the neighborhoods, we occasionally find something we cannot resist photographing.

I owned a 1959 Ford Pickup like this in the early 1970's..... not as pretty, of course.


Ride Started:  5:57 PM    Ride Ended:  6:19 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   13.8   Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  13.0  (Solar charging only)
Lowest Temp  64 F      Highest Temp: 67 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  2.44
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed   
7.9 MPH                                 8.4 MPH                     15.3 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time  
19  minutes                            17 minutes                  1 minute

It's Only Flat on the Bottom..

Today's Half-Tracking

Thursday, yesterday, Jacque took the Exploder to the local fresh food field market and I just had to take another wonderful trike ride.
Since I've been having so much tire trouble recently, I checked the tires prior to this ride by had-squeezing them.  They seemed puffed up enough, so I saddled up and took off.
I enjoyed the trip greatly until I had about reached the halfway point.  I suddenly noticed a weird light scraping sound in the rear and the trike was wobbling ever so slightly.  Grumpily I pulled to the edge of the pavement and looked at my rear tire.  It still had air, but the bead on one side had pooched out and, try as I might, I could not get it to re-seal and re-seat inside the wheel rim.
What made this even a bit more frustrating was a couple of less-than-friendly cars that passed.  One was a fellow in a large pickup who snarled at me as he stopped:  "You need to get out of the road!  You're going to get RUN OVER!   I thanked him for his advice, but ignored him and kept working on my decrepit wheel, and in a few more minutes a car passed by the other direction and a shrill female voice called out "GET OFF THE ROAD!!"
All this while I was parked on the outer edge of the rather wide pavement, where I normally ride unmolested and unchallenged much farther into the road, where there is still enough room for cars to pass each other whilst still avoiding clipping my little horseless and motorless carriage.
This is the first time I've experienced negative reactions here in southwest Arizona and it makes me wonder how people get so offended at non motorized cycle riders.  Are we cyclists, as a group, so snarky that it bleeds over and offends others?  It surely can't be jealosy over our lowering pressure on gas prices, improved health, better hearts and waistlines, better sex etc, right?
Back to the Crippled Trike Problem.  I needed to elevate the rear wheel so I could undo the gears, chain, derailleur, and all that rot, so I could work on the tire rim.  No big enough rocks were available, very unusual in these parts, nothing but small rocks and gravel.  I wandered farther out into the rocks and discovered some broken bricks that had been discarded.  Gathering several of these, I carried them back to the Catrike and moved the trike WAY off the road, into the rocky gravel, and jacked up the trike using the bricks.  I got the wheel removed, again, and tried over and over to get the tire's bead to seat properly, but nothing doing.  I was about to give up and call Jacque to come rescue me, again, when a nice fellow in a big black Ford pickup stopped and offered assistance.  We chatted about his lack of 20 inch trike tires and he offered to give me a ride back to the RV, trike and all.  His pickup had a nice lid on the back but it turned out there was nothing inside and he had lots of room.  We loaded up the basket case stuff:  Trike, wheel, tube, tools, panniers, and whatnot that had been scattered around the wounded trike.  It was at least several miles out of his way but he was happy to deliver me safely to my door and drove off with a smile.
Nice Guy.  I need to copy his behavior sometime.
This was all very handy since I'd just visited Johnny Yuma's Bike Shoppe and purchased a new tire and tube to refill my spare stock from the last disaster.  Now I gotta order some MORE spares and hope they get here before I lose another tire....

Ride Started:  12:22 PM    Ride Ended:  2:13 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   14.4   Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  12.5  (Solar charging only)
Lowest Temp  60 F      Highest Temp: 67 F   

Dirty Laundry

Today's Tracking

We generally can make it a week between laundry runs - Living in the RV full time.
We waited almost a day too long this time, as we used up the last of our clean underwear this morning.  We had planned on laundry yesterday, Monday, but ran out of time before we got busy with other things, like dancing.
Side note:  We have been amazed at the amount of dancing going on out here in white and silver-hair land.  Back in Albuquerque the Caravan East and Cowboys dance halls  both closed years ago and its been hard to find anywhere to dance except for such nightclubs like the Caravan and Cowboys, and now even those have gone out of business.  Yet out here where few are under the age of 60 and the average age must be somewhere north of 75, there are dance clubs and parties all around.
In Quartzsite, we only spent a little over a week but went to at least 4 dances.  The senior center has dances every Thursday and we learned (at the last minute) there were also weekly dances every Friday night at the Gold Star RV Co-op.  One Thursday night we were hungry and decided to dine at Silly Al's Pizza.  Of course, since this is the BUSY season, we had to wait over half an hour to get a table.  Just as we were being seated, a 3-piece band materialized and began pounding out snappy old Rock 'N Roll and Country/Western tunes.  The dancing area was small, but the toe-tapping got us on our feet and we danced until the waitress appeared at our table and danced some more while we waited for our meal and - by the time we were served, it was almost too late to make it to the Senior Center before THAT dance ended, so we stayed and danced some more at Silly Al's.  It was a BLAST, and both young and old were keeping the dance floor crowded.  Why can't there be more of this kind of action "back in the real world" where retirees don't outnumber workers by 10 or more to 1 ?
Down here in Yuma, farther south, we only know of a couple dances per week but have no doubt there are others we don't know about.
Anyhow, today we didn't dance, though we did last evening (Monday).  We loaded one big bag of laundry again on Jacque's trike and the other on mine and rode 3.5 miles over to the closest laundromat.  Jacque did the laundry and I sat and read my smarty-phone until she was done (about an hour or so).  Then we loaded up the spun (still wet) laundry in the same baskets and rode back to the RV and hung the laundry on ropes strung across the awning bars on the entry-side of the RV.  A few hours later and they were nice and dry in spite of the partly cloudy day.

Ride Started:  11:51 AM    Ride Ended:  1:47 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   13.5   Ending Voltage: 12.9  Lowest:  12.9  (Solar charging only)
Lowest Temp  60 F      Highest Temp: 67 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  6.96
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed   
5.4 MPH                                 6.2 MPH                     18.0 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
1 hour 17  mins                       1 hour 7 mins           10 minutes
(The GPS was shut off during the laundry stop, so laundry time is not accounted for)

Another Flat? Come On -

Thursday's Desert Yuma Tracking via GPS and Ham Radio

I'm getting a bit lazy about prompt blogging/reporting my thrilling bike and other adventures lately.
I'm at least riding more often than blogging, which is probably a good thing.
Thursday I wanted to get in a more decent mileage ride so I rode the outer perimeter of the Foothills Golf Course and Estates wherein we are currently parked at the home of a very generous and affable fellow Church member.
I rode the first couple of miles without incident.  As you approach closer to the I-8 intersection of Foothills Drive the shoulder disappears and the traffic multiplies exponentially.  So I turned off Foothills and rode a couple of the inner side streets to get me up to the Frontage Road paralleling I-8 which dead-ends just west of the Border Patrol Interstate Stop on I-8 and turns back south returning towards our current home (as in "Home is Where you Park It").
I thought I was enjoying the ride when a faint rumble and gaggle jiggled the back of my brain, so I stopped to make sure no tires were flat.  I had just replaced the right front tire and tube a couple days prior, and both front wheels this time were fine..... Not so the rear tire.  RATS.  BAH.
Of course, the rear wheel is the drive wheel, with the 9-gear cassette and chain and derailleur and all that rot.... I had stopped near a low brick decorative wall which actually gave me both a place to sit and a place to elevate the frame of the trike allowing difficult access to the rear wheel assembly.
I still had a little CO2 in my handy-dandy tire inflator from the last tire disaster, and of course it went to waste when I used it to re-inflate the low tire only to feel it rather quickly go soft again.  So I dug out the toolkit and removed the axle, wheel, tire and tube, from the trike.
I had a new tube in the pannier but wanted to make sure the tire wasn't hiding a nail or thorn or other puncture-inducing device.  The tire felt smooth and ouch-less as I carefully felt its insides throughout its circumference.  New tube installed, used another CO2 cartridge to inflate the assembly, started to re-mount the wheel.  As usual, the tire bead had not seated on one side and was protruding out in ungainly fashion.  Let out the precious store-bought CO2 to re-seat the tire and thankfully this time it held.  I had not ridden it sufficiently to destroy the tire like the last one.
Thus all this unplanned delay added to the length of an already longer ride.  The rest of the trip was uneventful, and all tires are currently tight and inflated and holding air.

Ride Started:  1:52 PM    Ride Ended:  3:55 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   13.9   Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  12.5  (Solar charging only)
Lowest Temp  75 F      Highest Temp: 82 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  9.4 
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed  
6.5 MPH                                 7.8 MPH                     16.5 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
1 hour 26  mins                       1 hour 11 mins           15 minutes

Super Bowl Sunday Sunset Ride

Super Bowl Trike Tracking

Shortly after the last blog entry I realized it was almost sundown.  I also had consumed too many carbs today and needed to burn at least a few of them.
So I took off for a relatively intense 3-mile ride around our lovely neighborhood.
Again, I note unusual fatigue and overheat, meaning I really really need to do this more often.

Ride Started: 6:01 PM    Ride Ended:  6:23 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   13.9   Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  13.0 (Solar charging only)
Lowest Temp  71 F      Highest Temp: 71 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  2.98
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed  
7.5 MPH                                 8.6 MPH                     17.9 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
24  minutes                             21 minutes                 3 minutes