Where Have I Been and What's Next?

I've been home and contemplating what kind of stuff to post here now that I'm not on the road. I also have taken a look at this blog software and found a setting to make it easier for people to post comments without having an ID. So don't be afraid, I can always delete your comments if I don't like them :-)

New gadget purchased in the last couple of weeks. I purchased a Kindle 2 off the Amazon site. It's the geek factor, I don't read enough books to ever get it paid off with lower book costs. To cost justify it I'd have to read hundreds of books, but that isn't why I got it. Walking around with a Kindle makes me think we are closer to attaining the Star Trek dream. You never see paper on Star Trek, but we are really a long way from it in reality. Unless you own a Kindle, then you can pretend it's the 22nd century. Some other time I'll let you know the pros and cons of this thing. Anyway, while surfing around the Amazon site I find where I can publish my own book. Now there's an idea, I can publish my own book with no up front costs on my part. That sounds like a good second career. I'll start writing books. I only have to learn how to read, then how to write, then come up with an idea for a book and finally write the book. When Diane, my wife, came home from work I told her about my idea of writing a book. Well, her response was 'So what time today did you start drinking?' Wow, I just opened my first beer when she got home. Guess that wasn't much of a vote of confidence.

Speaking of voting, I also found a gadget I can add to my blog to take polls. So I'm giving you a chance to put your two cents worth on the subject. I'm hoping anyone can vote and you won't need an ID, but of course I didn't test it. So good luck.

Space is Really Cold and Why Few Pictures of Me on this Blog

Friday night turned out to be a clear night, excellent for telescope viewing. I set up the scope on the front porch of the Cabin and aimed it at the first subject in the sky at dusk; Venus. I went back inside and waited another hour until the sky became completely dark. Once it was dark and I saw the sky was still clear, I moved the telescope to a spot on the driveway away from the lights of the cabin and tried calibrating the computerized object finder that I had problems with a few times before. This time it calibrated on the first attempt, and I was ready to explore the Universe. It's a good thing it calibrated fast, because when it is dark and clear up north you become part of Space. Or in other words, it is FRICKING FREEZING COLD! But that along with the dark moonless night makes it perfect to observe deep space objects. The Object Finder has an option to 'tour the night sky'. I observed about six different objects before the LCD screen was freezing up and getting difficult to read in the 8 degree temps. That was fine though, since my fingers and toes froze about 5 minutes earlier. The most impressive object was the Orion Nebula, I was surprised at how well it looked in the telescope, filling the complete field of view. I went inside for another half hour to wait until Saturn rose over the hill to the east, and then eventually Comet Lulin. Once back out, I commanded the Object Finder to locate Saturn for me. The screen was really cold and hard to read, but it displayed exactly where it was. It was a nice clear steady view of Saturn and its' rings. I picked out a few other objects to view while waiting around for Lulin to rise above the hill to the East, but the clouds moved in and my hands lost feeling before it became visible. All in all, it was a very good night with the scope.

Biggest lesson learned that night - don't exhale when your using the telescope. With one exhale you can fog the sighting scope, eyepiece, and your glasses all at once. It's really cold standing around waiting for the fog to clear from all that freezing cold glass!

Now I'd like to clear up something about the pictures of me in this blog. My dear wife Diane made a comment to me on my pictures when she came down to Arizona a couple weeks ago. She asked me 'John, your wearing the same Packer sweatshirt in all the pictures of you posted on the blog. Don't you ever change your clothes?' So if anybody else thought that, first, you shouldn't be paying that close of attention. Your most likely at work and shouldn't be spending time checking out what some old retired guy is wearing. Second, I have three Packer sweatshirts, two of which I packed for the trip. So I do change my clothes, and I did laundry three times on the trip, so back off. Geez, I checked all the pictures, and in many of them I was wearing my black jacket. That is why I don't like to many pictures of me floating around, I always end up defending myself.

Heading North Chasing the Stars

Heading to the wilderness of Florence with the telescope to see if I can focus in on Saturn and the Comet Lulin. I call it wilderness because I have no Internet access, and barely have any TV reception left. At least they delayed the digital transition until June so I have a couple of channels to watch until then. The Sky's might be clear on Saturday night, that looks like the only shot this weekend to use it. I have a feeling I'll only use it for a little while once I get standing around in the freezing cold of the night. But we'll see. Diane's heading up with me, so I need to come home Sunday so she can get to work bright and early Monday morning :-)

Spuds and Splits

Rewind to the day after Diane arrived in Phoenix. Shirley had gotten us tickets to the annual 'Spuds and Splits' event in the neighboring RV Park. This is a fund raiser for the RV Park softball league. It takes place in the large activities hall in the neighboring park, so it only takes two minutes to get there. But now remember, these are all retired people, so we need to head over 25 minutes before they even start serving. After all, we don't want to be eating while they are piling up the tables and chairs like they were for the breakfast we attended a week ago. Well, two minutes latter we are there, but there are only a couple of people outside the facility. Something is wrong, there isn't a line waiting to get into the place, and we're here only 23 minutes before it opens. There should be 100+ retirees visiting out front waiting for the big event. So as not to look like old fools, we drive around the park sight seeing for 10 minutes. By then we see some people heading toward the Hall, so we pull into a parking spot and head in. Upon entering, we immediately realize why there wasn't a line before the event. The place is well over half full of people already seated and eating. Obviously they opened 30 minutes early assuming there might be some 'early birds'. Well, we didn't look like fools, but now I felt a little foolish thinking there wasn't anyone there yet when we first arrived. I've been here a month, I should of known better.

Upon entering, we turn in our tickets, and move to a table a few steps away. There we are given a plate with a large potato, or potatoe, depending on your political affiliation. The potato (or spud if your having a hard time following along) is split (no, this isn't the split part) and shaped to provide a bowl. You move to the next table where you pile on chili, onions, peppers, salsa, melted cheese, or a variety of other condiments until you have a complete meal heaped on the potato. Then you search for an open table, where you sit down and eat. Now Shirley is suppose to save a spot for friends of theirs that were running a little behind. Now behind means they will actually show up after the starting time of the event. Of course Paul and Shirley ran into other friends, and it became a challenge to figure out where and with whom to sit. It reminded me of a high school cafeteria watching kids try to figure out who they will sit next to, and who do they want to be seen with. Some things just don't change with age. Well, we finally picked a table and leaned some chairs up to reserve them for their friends. We then dug into our spuds.

Their friends arrived about half way through my spud, but I didn't really slow down much, just continued inhaling my meal. After all, when I'm done with the spud, I'm only half done with the event.

While finishing the spud, I eyed up the split situation on the other side of the Hall. I could see there weren't many people yet diving into the splits, so I figured we wouldn't want to wait for a big rush latter. Now this event had several hundred people here, so lines will at times form in key areas. I kept my focus though and finished my spud in good time. Now in order to maintain a modicum of manners, I looked at our table to see if anyone was ready to hit the splits table. After all, it might look rude if I jumped up myself and ran over there. Diane was close to being finished, so I encouraged her to wolf down her spud so she could go up to the split table with me before a line formed. That didn't go over real well, but we did get up there before any line formed. There we were handed a tray with a split banana and ice cream (this is the split part, still following?). Traveled a few steps to the next table where we could load it up with caramel, chocolate, nuts, various fruit, and whipped cream topped with a cherry. Just as we were finishing our split, I glanced at the split table where a line of 30+ people had formed. I looked at Diane and verbally reinforced my correct assessment on when to 'hit' the split table. We left full, and we finished before they were piling chairs. A successful event!

Suggested improvements for next year; 'Suds, Spuds, and Splits' Raise the price and add some beer. Heck, could add a band and make it an all night event. Could be named 'Suds, Spuds, Splits, and slither'. By the way, an all night event is defined as finished and with chairs piled by 10 pm.

Business Opportunity, Cell Tower Trees

I saw several of these out in Mesa. It does blend very well into the landscape. So much so that I'm thinking I should start selling them in Wisconsin. Now I know I"ll have to do a little testing to see if they can handle a heavy snow load, but it would be cool to have cell towers that no one can recognize. There was one right outside the RV park that I didn't recognize for days after I arrived there. What do you think? Ready to be one of my big investors? Maybe we could hang some coconuts off of the antenna braces.

Need a Trim, or Need to be Trim

Here's a photo I took at Greasewood Flats. I just liked the fact there was a bald guy waiting for the Barber shop to open. A few minutes after I took the photo he walked up to me with a concerned look on his face and asked me if it looked OK. He was concerned his jean jacket didn't fit him anymore and was afraid it looked bad on him. Of course he wasn't afraid enough to not wear it out in public! He seemed to feel better once I showed him the picture. I might of failed to mention I was going to put it on the Internet :-)

So now you know why he doesn't have the jacket buttoned.

Too Harsh, Out of Retirement? and saved from kidnapping

Ok, maybe I was a little harsh in my thought of being duped. I'm looking around the street, because that's what retired guys do, and I see signs that indicate it might not of been that nice while I was gone. In several people's yards I see Christmas decorations that must have been recently uncovered by the snow. There are extension cords running across the yards, and Christmas lights abandoned on the gutters. Obviously if it was nice out while I was gone this stuff would of been cleaned up by now. I also noticed the neighbor has two satellite dishes on his roof. It must of been bad if one dish wasn't enough to make it through the winter.

Hey, my working career might not be over yet. Watched the national news the other night and found out this old retired dog won Best in Show. He was retired once, but came out of retirement for this show. In people years, this old guy would be 70! What an inspiration, my best work might still be yet to come. Only problem is I don't have his good looks to work with. He's got a really long ugly name, but he's known by his friends as "Stump".

The news also informed me that Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the country. I guess the drug war violence is spilling across the border and kidnappings in the Phoenix area are increasing at an alarming rate. The thought of me being kidnapped and no one putting anything up to have me released makes me glad I'm out of there. It was bad enough worrying about alien abduction.

I've Been Duped and Reality Sucks

I've been duped by family and friends in Wisconsin. The flight home went well. Fairly uneventful except for the fact it was warmer in Milwaukee than it was in Phoenix. Here I've been feeling sorry for the people left in the Wisconsin cold and snow and I find out yesterday that you have it better than I did. Diane filling me with 'oh I had to shovel and snow blow while you were gone' only to come home to a lot less snow than when I left. Heck, it hasn't even been below freezing since I've been back. Well, I'm going back to feeling sorry for myself instead of the rest of you. Didn't think Wisconsinites were that mean.

Well, I'm home. It's great to be back except for the fact there is a pile of mail I need to go through, and I better start pulling the stuff together to do our Income taxes. First day back has been tough for a couple of reasons. One, I don't have the sympathetic audience of old people to exchange trivial gripes about the long lines at customs to get back in the country from Mexico, the cost increase in the RV parks, and whether the hot tub should have the jets running or not. My wife Diane doesn't seem to by very supportive when I talk to her at work and tell her I'm so busy I might not get through the mail, and I didn't check my email until this afternoon. I've figured out that going to work makes people crabby. Second, I usually have a beer by mid afternoon to make sure I stay hydrated from the desert. Well, I don't have that excuse here. So to try and transition, I found a cooler in the refrigerator called Bahama Mama that reminds me of warmer places. Oh, I have so much to get done, there isn't much time left in the day, so I better get back at that mail.

But before I go, here's a few things I need to tell you about in future postings that I haven't covered yet. I put them here to remind me later, otherwise as time goes on I'll forget and deprive you of this useless information.

Mission Church in Tucson
Waiting at the Barbershop
Packer Sweatshirts
Fellow Wisconsinites in Tucson hotel bar
Spuds and splits
Friday fish at the VFW
Business opportunity, or maybe not

There's more, but the thoughts are already slipping away with all these pressures of day to day life :-) So stick around. And by the way, my return flight to Phoenix is in April so I can travel back with Paul and Shirley and enrich my life experience. It was cheaper to book a round trip ticket from Phoenix than it would of been for a one way ticket back home, so why not?

All Good Things Must Come to an End

I'm talking about this trip, not this dang blog. You won't get off that easy yet. Well, tomorrow morning we head back to Wisconsin. The timing couldn't be any better. It's only going to be 58 degrees here tomorrow, and it sounds like it will be 50 degrees in Wisconsin. Perfect for the transition back to winter. This might be the last post 'on location' for me. I'm guessing the next time will be from home tomorrow night, or Wednesday. I have a few stories and pictures piled up, so I'll continue on with the blog for at least a little while, maybe longer if I can detect that anyone besides me is reading it.

Up Up and Away, see you all back home!

Photos of Sadona area

This picture is taken from the Catholic church built into the rock mountain. I assume the house in the foreground is the Rectory (Priest's house for those non Catholics) since it's right below the hill the church is built on. I'm sure the observatory is used to communicate with the Holy Father. (That's God, not the Pope...the Pope mostly uses a Blackberry to communicate)


This is a view from outside of the church. They call this area Red Rock Country for an obvious reason.

Cute little fund raiser

This piece of art work in Jerome is about 15 to 20 feet below the sidewalk. You can throw your money at this and other junk below for fun. It's the way they raise money for their museum. Hey, it's no worse than the casinos, and at least they don't give you the illusion your going to win something.

This is what Paul and I did while Shirley and Diane shopped in the 'galleries'. Let me tell you, it's impossible to get those 20's into the hole. I guess paper money doesn't really work very well with this kind of thing. Wish I would of realised this earlier. But hey, throwing 20's into an outhouse is probably cheaper than shopping in this town.

No I wasn't throwing paper money, but I'd most likely try it before I'd gamble in a casino.

Walk in the Desert

Friday, Diane and I visited the Saguaro National Park and walked down a couple hiking trails. Here's a flavor for what we were hiking through.