Hello again, California

So here I am, back at my usual winter hangout in the southeast corner of California. 

Did laundry and got groceries in Yuma on my way here, so I'm all set for a while. I feel good.

So long New Mexico

Here's my home for a couple of days. National Monument land in Vekol Valley, south of I-8, about 20 miles east of Gila Bend AZ. Plenty of room, excellent cell signal, 70°F weather. I'm starting to feel normal again.

Timing

 Perhaps the end of Thanksgiving weekend — the reverse of over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house — isn't the best time to be out on the highways. Lots of traffic. And a wreck in Tucson had us stopped for a while. Maybe an overdose of tryptophan had a driver dozing off.

Backwards world

I was loading my stuff into the van this morning when I noticed the thermometer. I'd be warmer in the refrigerator. Such is life at 6,000 feet at the end of November. In a hour or so I'll be on my way to lower, warmer elevations. With the heater on.

Oh brrrrrrrrr...

My refrigerator and the insulated box I built for it are mounted where the passenger seat once was. I needed to remove it so the mechanic could get the engine cover out of the way and reach the top transmission bolts. 

I went out this morning, a little after 9:00, to reinstall the fridge and, whoo, an icy wind out of the north made things bone-chilling cold out there. I'll procrastinate on that task until it warms up a little this afternoon. In the meantime I'll get the house in order. One of the best things about a tiny house is there's not much to clean. And, thanks to living alone, there's not much mess in the first place.

UPDATE: It clouded over and a bit water started falling from the sky at about 11:15 and there was no telling if it would get worse or how long it would last. So when there was a break in the drizzle I resigned myself to being miserable, went out and reinstalled the fridge and loaded some things I had stored in the shop. Now it's time for a run to the waste transfer station.

Third time's the charm. Maybe.

Richard and Michael (shown above reattaching a heat shield to the new transmission) finished up the job today. They test drove the van. I test drove the van. We agreed everything was good. So tomorrow I'll load the Rolling Steel Tent and clean up the house. Then Sunday I'll head out on my third attempt at returning to nomadic life.

The problem with the first replacement transmission had nothing to do with Michael and Richard. They do excellent work. It was the transmission. Expert installation can't keep junk from being junk.

As an example of how seriously these guys take their jobs, here are the notes Richard made of everything he did to swap out the bad transmission and install the replacement. Documentation, man.

There were also a couple of Post-It notes to himself reminding him where he had left off the day before and what he had to do next. Far more organized than me.

The next post will be from somewhere in Arizona — hopefully not broken down at the side of the road.

Maybe my final weekend here

Looks like it's going to happen

The new transmission is at the mechanic's shop. I saw it with my own eyes, complete with a fancy shipping crate. I was so delighted I forgot to take a picture. The mechanic says we're on for Monday. I can only write in short declarative sentences.

Progress. I hope.

The mechanic called and said the remanufactured transmission was in El Paso and should be here by tomorrow. Yay!

However, the shop will be closed next week for some sort of preplanned reason. (Deer hunting, I suspect.) But he promises to jump right on the swap job Monday the 20th and have it done before Thanksgiving.

So, fingers and toes crossed.

A treat for the feet

A few years back I realized I needed shoes with a wide toe box. So I got some Keen semi-sandals. Perfect. 

Then I got some Keen hiking shoes. Excellent. No blisters or callouses on the sides of my feet. In fact, there was room to spread out, which my feet gladly did. That made meant my sneakers were now too narrow, even though my wide feet had stretched them a little. So I went searching for wide toe box sneakers.

Fellow van dweller, Scott, praised Altra shoes because of their wide toe box and zero-drop heel. I bought a pair and, though the zero-drop heel took some getting used to, they’re my shoes. They feel like the moccasins I wore when I was nine years old.

Scott is into the barefoot philosophy of shoes somewhat. I’m into the protect my feet from pokey things philosophy. The Altra soles are a little too thin and flexible for me. Gravel, sharp stones, thorns, twigs and other stuff on the desert floor aren’t very comfortable. I found myself wishing the soles had a layer similar to the fibers inside tires—flexible yet able to spread the impact of pointy things over a broader area.

Then, in answer to my wishes, I discovered Altra made some inserts they called Stoneguards. They aren’t made of Kevlar, titanium or other high tech substance, but I assumed they had done some testing and determined they helped. And they were only twenty bucks. Worth a try.

The Stoneguards arrived today. I trimmed them to size and tried a side-by-side comparison. I walked around with only one of them inserted and… Yeah, I felt a difference. Was it only because there was an additional thin layer of rubbery stuff between my feet and the gravel? I don’t know. But they help.

Oooooooooo, sparkles!

The company that warrants the replacement transmission that went bad wanted the mechanic to check some things about the device’s condition. So I limped the van to the shop this morning.

The mechanic checked the level and color of the automatic transmission fluid, wiped the dipstick on a paper towel, looked at it for a couple of seconds, then showed it to me. There were metal particles in the residue. Quite a few for just that bit of fluid on the end of the dipstick.

 “Well that’s not good,” said I. 

He concurred.

The philosophy of trousers

A couple of months ago I got a pair of pants I love. Sort of a cross between cargo pants and hiking pants. They fit great and I like the fabric, which is lighter weight than denim, has a bit of stretch, and has a subtle ripstop weave. They’re made by Wrangler. 

I wanted to get another pair, but the store didn’t stock them anymore. So I found them on the Wrangler site where I was offered a selection of colors. Ah, colors. Ah, choices. 

There had been only one color when bought the first pair—sort of a darker khaki that shifts depending on what color it’s mated with. When I wear a white shirt the pants look to be neutral brown that leans just a hair toward yellow. When I wear a tan shirt the brown drifts slightly toward olive. A red shirt makes them look gray. All of which is fine, just curious.

The color samples on the Wrangler site didn’t match the pants I have. Other than black, charcoal and navy (default man colors) there were three tones in the khaki-to-olive drab range, with two so similar I wondered why they bothered making one of them.

Now, I know from my decades as an art director that accurate color reproduction is tricky, especially when viewed on a monitor, which tends to skew things slightly toward blue. And everyone’s monitor is adjusted differently. (The color on the right is labeled "olive drab" but might look gray on your device.) I also know that fabric color can drift from one dye lot to the next, or that fashion companies fiddle with colors for their own reasons. So I was ready to accept that the pants I own match one or neither of the khaki colors on the screen.

But do I want the same color? Do I want something familiar and satisfying, or do I want variety? That gets into the realm of Big Life Questions. What type of person am I? What type of person do I aspire to be? Is sameness comforting or boring? Is change interesting or risky?

I chose variety and clicked the dark olive option. I will laugh if that turns out to be a perfect match of the pants I have.

UPDATE: The new pants arrived. They’re the dark ones. The original ones are light.

Well, that didn’t last long

I was going up a long steep mountain grade leading from New Mexico to Arizona when the newly installed low mileage transmission started acting up. Or not acting. Third gear was slipping and sometimes not wanting to stay in gear. 

Sigh.

I had made a choice: go with the salvaged transmission that was available, or wait who knows how much longer for a remanufactured version. The salvaged transmission came out of a wrecked van with a third of the mileage of the Rolling Steel Tent, so I figured it should serve for a couple of hundred miles more. Right. And I was very tired of waiting.

I limped to the summit and a cell signal. I called the mechanic and broke the news. We talked options, including reinstalling my old not-as-broken transmission. He called back five minutes later saying he had talked to the transmission supplier and gotten him on the hunt for a remanufactured or new one. The warranty would cover the replacement. I’d just need to pay any extra price difference. Okay.

Now the trick was to get 170 miles back to the shop without a reliable third gear. I chose a longer, slower, twistier route because it was flatter and mostly downhill.

And I made it.

Meanwhile, the power had been shut off at Lou’s place, so staying there would mean boondocking rather than having the comforts of home. I could’ve handled that. But my trusty neighbors Pat and Marjean invited me to park at their place where I could plug into their RV hookup, use their bathroom, and wash my clothes while I wait. And wait. And wait for the next transmission.

It could be worse. I’m not totally stranded in the middle of nowhere, starving and penniless. This is just disappointing, inconvenient and patience-trying. As they say, it’s another story to tell.

Starting over

I didn’t go very far today. It was late morning by the time I took care of the last few things at the house. 

I’m still in New Mexico near Cosmic Campground — a place dedicated to stargazing. I don’t have a telescope, so I’ll have to be contented to watch the sky with my bare eyes.

Meanwhile, I need to get back into the van life groove. How do I cook dinner? Oh, yeah.

Reunited at last!

The replacement transmission is in and working as it should. The Rolling Steel Tent and I are partners again. Now it’s time to load up and get back to my real life—for real this time. 

Goodbye old transmission

It has been ten months since Lou passed, and about twenty months that I’ve been here. That’s not very nomadic. I hope I haven’t forgotten how to do this.