“I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls
And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.”
~ Paul Simon
Soundtrack for a Sunday Morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p9OeEyo5Pc
I woke up Monday morning near Ashurst Lake, just southeast of Flagstaff. My latest version of a wireless router is set to arrive today at Mailbox Plus. I’ll pick it up on Tuesday and head east to Two Guns. Monsoon season is upon us and according to the Weather Channel, it is due to debut this week with storms predicted most afternoons. Staying in the forest would mean dealing with dreadful mud, so off we go to Two Guns where the soil is sandier (and much more absorbent) and although it is generally hotter than Flagstaff, the afternoon rains should cool it off enough to be tolerable.
Monday morning, I started the tearing down ritual. I was here for a while and put out my awning, hung up the sides and put out most of my solar lights. It is always fun to come back from a nighttime walk and see my site all lit up. The tradition started last fall in Quartzsite when Matt and I got carried away with decorating our “compound.” It still makes me happy when I take the time to set up everything wherever I’m staying. But it’s a lot like Christmas decorations: stringing the lights and putting out the decorations, setting up the tree is all fun and games until it’s time to take things down, pack them up and store them until next time. Setting up can be fun; tearing down is work. I’ve gotten much more efficient at packing up, (and always start the process the day before I leave instead of having that hanging over my head on the morning I’m needing to drive to a new place) and I got the lights put away in record time. My awning is a different story. When Matt and I set up together, we always helped each other with the set-up and tear-down of the awnings. It really requires 3 hands; with 4 hands, it’s a breeze. With only 2, it can be a pain in the ass. The awning is 10’ in length out from the van. Once the legs are contracted and folded into place, the process of rolling up the awning itself takes some skill and concentration. It’s 8’ wide and it must be rolled up evenly…if not, by the time it reaches the van it has gone crooked and some of the fabric sticks out on one side or the other and it can’t fit into the pouch that’s attached to the van. On Monday morning, it took me three tries to get it right, but it was snug in its bag well before the rains started.
Tuesday morning, I was awake with the dawn at 5:30. I made coffee and got back in bed, reading e-mails and listening to podcasts with my favorite living being lying across my legs. I congratulated myself because even though it was a moving day, I was in no rush. I made a second cup of coffee and then went outside and started loading the few remaining things into my van. We got on the road before 9:00 a.m. I drove down Ashurst Lake Road and crossed over Lake Mary Road into a nearby campground that has pay showers. For $7 I got 8 ½ glorious minutes of hot water. I set my iPhone’s timer for 7 minutes so as not to get caught with a head full of conditioner after the water stopped. When the timer went off, I rinsed my hair and still had a minute left to give my feet a second scrubbing with a stiff brush. I got dressed and Cosmo and I drove off to complete our errands in Flagstaff.
I picked up my new (third time’s a charm) Wi-Fi router from Mailbox Plus and then went to the Amazon Locker to pick up an adapter I needed to make the router work on DC instead of AC. I was just a block or so from Filiberto’s Mexican Restaurant. They are open 24/7, so I picked up a veggie burrito before driving on to Two Guns. When I came out of Filiberto’s, it was raining huge drops, but I managed to outdrive the storm and by the time I got to Two Guns, it was dry and I could see the dark, black clouds behind me in flagstaff and also in front of me to the east in Winslow. Two Guns often has rain to the east and west, but manages to stay sunny, making for some great photos.
July is prime time for Milky Way photos and with the new moon earlier this week, conditions would have been ideal. I got out of my van each night before going to bed and looked up. Extreme cloud cover and often torrential rain kept me from my mission, so I mostly just sat inside with the lights out and enjoyed the lightning show. It’s monsoon season here, so we get rain almost every afternoon/evening.
Cosmo turned 9 on Wednesday. We celebrated with a long walk, throwing a tennis ball throughout the duration. I took some time to remind myself it’s been the best 9 years of my life.
The new Wi-Fi router seems to be the solution I have been looking for. My two previous models were small-one the size of a hockey puck and the other resembling a cell phone-and the company I get service from has the advantage of doing a tower search and choosing the best signal from the three major carriers. I got a signal wherever I was, but it was a weak signal as I rarely park in a metropolitan area. Both hot spots kept overheating and shutting down quite often throughout the day. I bought small cooler ice packs to keep them from overheating, but that turned out to not be the ideal solution. In a long conversation with my friend Richard, he suggested that they were working very hard to try to pull in the minimal cell signals and that was causing the overheating. We weighed all the options. One cell company would give me a “free” modem if I signed a 3-year contract. Another would give me a better monthly rate, but the equipment was quite expensive. In the end, I decided that TravlFi gave me the best option with being able to connect to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile cell towers—whichever had the strongest signal in the area. I chose the next model up from the hot spot I had. It was only slightly more expensive, no contract, and for $99 a month, I get unlimited bandwidth. It has antennas connected to the device, so it doesn’t have to work so hard to pick up the signal, and it came with an external antenna that I can mount to my roof to boost the signal even more. The company has excellent customer service. Whenever I call, I get connected to a real human being, in this country, who speaks English as their first language. I’ve only had it for a few days, but it appears to be the solution I’ve been searching for.
We didn’t get as much rain this week as predicted. For whatever reason, every afternoon I hear thunder and early every evening, lightning strikes abound. The skies are dark to the south, east, and west, but as the storm approaches me in Two Guns, it always seems to split and go around me on either side. The storms close by help cool things off, and even though The Weather Channel predicts flash flooding in my area every day, we’ve had little rain. Cosmo and I take long walks in the early morning and late afternoon when the heat is not too bad. The rest of the time we’ve both been pretty lazy and as best as I can tell, neither of us feels bad about that.
And finally…My happy songs of the week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEgBMTMUanU&list=RDKEgBMTMUanU&start_radio=1
Love you like a dog.