“Your shower has a skylight; Mine has a sky.”
– Matt Lipski
This has been a week of changes, upgrades and adjustments. I sold my e-bike last week to a guy down the road. I loved the idea of the bike, but in reality, it just didn’t work for me and my riding conditions. In the end it was just a burden, so I lessened my load and took part of the money I recouped and bought a cooler that plugs into my “cigarette lighter” (I’m sure the young, tech people have a better name for that outlet) of my solar system. It has two separate compartments, and I have it set up to have the smaller one be a freezer and the larger one to be a refrigerator. It doubles the space of my onboard (think “college dorm room”) refrigerator. I can now make and store extra ice. And I bought a watermelon and only ate half. I was able to put the other half in my new refrigerator cooler. What a luxury!
I kept the rack on the back of my van where I my e-bike lived and bought two large totes. I have MRE’s and protein powders so that when I am off grid for a long time I don’t have to drive to the grocery store. They are sort of back-up meals for me. But they took up a lot of space inside the van, so I moved them to the outside tote. The other one is for beverages; I have a bottle of tequila, a bottle of vodka and a bottle of whisky. I also have various cans and jars of drinks, from V-8 to seltzer, sodas, etc. They are now out of my way and made room for the new cooler.
I had a glitch in my solar this week. At first I thought perhaps the new cooler was using too much juice, but it only takes 40 watts, so I don’t think that’s the issue. We’ve had a lot of partly cloudy days, and a couple of times, I have forgotten to turn my solar suitcase panels to face the sun, so that contributed to the loss of stored power. I found my plug-in charger and borrowed Matt’s generator for an hour and got back up to fully charged.
I spent a lot of time riding around with Matt on his side-by-side this week. He dumps trash daily and I usually ride down with him. He likes to just drive around the desert at night, and I love riding the back “two tracks” as Matt calls them (paths that are just two parallel dirt trails from previous vehicles passing through.) We found a mound with lots of petroglyphs on one of our sunset rides.
My friend Marcos who I met my first year on the road at BLM land south of Joshua Tree National Park arrived in Quartzsite yesterday. We met up at the drum circle last night and he brought his friend Caleb who also lives in a van. It was a nice reunion. Marcos and I have stayed in contact and met up at least once each year at various events. It’s been nice to have a friend who started nomadic life around the same time as I did, and to compare notes each time we meet up.
We’re battening down the hatches today as heavy rains and flash flooding are predicted in Quartzsite. I made a cherry cheesecake yesterday, and invited Matt and his dog Sunshine to come over and eat cheesecake, drink coffee and play board games until the storm passes.
Lessons From The Road: This year in Q is so totally different from the last two. I’ve really settled in and because Matt has been so generous and driving us both into town, I seldom need to move my van. I’ve been driving to Ehrenberg/Blythe every Monday for groceries or to pick up things I’ve ordered from Amazon at my PO box in Ehrenberg, but otherwise, the van stays put. When I do go into town, I always top off water and propane so I don’t have to move the van an extra time. With copious fresh water and propane, I can shower much more often, and being in a clothing optional area, I don’t have to worry about getting arrested for showering outside naked. Life is good.