Friday, February 26, 2010

RV repairs and a Ride to Arivaca

Greetings and salutations! Today is an internet morning for me. Three days of early rising for RV maintenance and an early up for a ride to Arivaca have not left much time for blogging or surfing in general.
This is from last Saturday, the day the weather changed for the worse. Jim and I scampered up the Starr Pass trail and managed to return to the truck 5 minutes before the skies opened up and it rained pigs and chickens. Happy were we with that timing. It's kind of cool to stand on the ridge line up there and watch the weather coming at you. Then one realizes that the weather is coming at you and it's time to go.



Monday was day 1 of the RV maintenance experience. Hitching was successful, we did not make any mistakes and departed without incident. Beaudry RV laid off many people just before Christmas, one of them was our former service adviser. Our new service adviser is not an improvement. Jim walked into his office, and was greeted with a surly "how can I help you" which actually translated as "why are you bothering me". Said service adviser had previously assured us that labor charges for the grey tank would be covered; but when we arrived this was no longer the case. The tank is 4.5 hours at $120 an hour, so this is a non-trivial amount of money. He had to consult with his manager. I think this service adviser is less than truthful. As it turned out, Beaudry covered the labor, but not with a smile.
After dealing with the surly one, we were hungry so we went to the Rincon market for brunch. They have a cute little housewares department. I think this apron is just cuter than a bug. Jim, for some reason, would not put it on and model it for me.



Monday was cold and miserable, so we went to the mall, and then hung out chez Winnipeg campers RV and waited for the day to be over. Maintenance was not completed Monday, so we spent the night at the Beaudry RV resort. I love that, it's a giant asphalt parking lot with hookups. I do not know how they can call it a resort. They're also $200 a month more than where we stay. Go figure.

Tuesday dawned clear, severe and COLD. After dropping the RV we went back to the Rincon for breakfast. We like that place. After breakfast, we went for a walk in the Sam Hughes neighborhood. It's an old neighborhood, very nice; and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
This is one of the largest agaves I have seen to date.


Nice gate.


Nice palm tree in someone's back yard.

I love when people paint their houses something other than beige or white. The fuschia geraniums against the pink house, with the blue walk way is very cheerful.


We decided to go to the Arizona State Museum. They have a collection of 20,000 Native American pots - 150 of them are on display. They also have displays and history of the major tribes of the Southwest. They're very well done, it's a good museum.

Behold the Doris and Arnold Roland Wall of Pots. It's pretty dang impressive. It covers 2,000 years of pot making in the southwest.

Wednesday was welding day. For some reason I did not get any interesting pictures. Probably due to my fear of going blind if I'm in the vicinity of an active arc welder. I'll take pictures of the final product later, because I know everyone is looking forward to seeing how the wobbling bicycle problem was solved.

Dang this is becoming a massive post! It's almost over, I promise.

Yesterday we parked in Amado and rode out to Arivaca. Going out it's a fairly consistent grade up, and we had a headwind. Coming back, one realizes that no, there is also climbing going back. I think it's up hill both ways.
This is the goal of the ride, the Gadsden Coffee shop. They have really good coffee and the food is pretty good. I had pie. It was very pleasant to sit in the sun and chat.

On the way back we had some pretty good headwinds (again) and some gusting side winds. I hate side winds. About half of the vehicles one sees on the ride are Border Patrol agents. They go out into the hinterlands looking for people crossing the desert to enter the US. Apparently they'd found a few and were loading them in to the Wackenhut bus for transport to somewhere. It's a strange thing to see out in the middle of nowhere.


Eventually the wind swung around behind us and we all felt young again riding down hill with a tail wind. On the way back one sees this view for awhile. It's nice to look at.


So, that is all I have to report. Today we are doing laundry and going to the library. This afternoon we will close the kitchen grey tank, which will allow us to determine if it is holding water; or not. Stand by to be amazed.

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