Making Sense of Things

1. Oh to be riding in the Arizona desert with your bud, also carrying that illegal machine gun with ya and feeling good and not a guilty feeling any where.

   • Arizona has its own vibe, Cederq. It doesn’t mean that every other place doesn’t, but it’s unique and to me, it resonates.

     • As I travel around I’m always looking for a place that “feels right”. Some day I might find one that also tells me it’s time to stop..

       • It sounds cliche (from Tolkien) but “not all who wander are lost.”

       • Rob, +1

         • The second week we were here, I turned to my wife and said “I’m HOME”….and she didn’t get it…..

           She’s a city gal, and I’m proud of the adjustments she’s made being out here in “The Sticks”, as she called it once.

     • My ex wife and I had moved to Reno years ago and I really, really liked the high desert vibe. Several times we went camping into Nevada’s interior and went down to Northern New Mexico and Southern Utah and I felt that, home… unfortunately she didn’t. A city girl par excellence. It was enough for her to tolerate dry RV camping. I will be back there soon enough and I was thinking Northern Arizona.

2. drjim: so you guys are like Eddie Arnold and Eva Gabor in “Green Acres?” Where she pines for the 5-star restaurants, and you just can’t wait to get out to that barn and shovel horse shit?

   And after 3 seasons, the missus finds that shoveling horse shit is a wonderful and spiritual thing?

   How far off am I?

   • The true star of Green Acres was Arnold-the-Pig. I was crestfallen when I learned that there were about 20 identical genetic clones of a pig, each of which had been taught to do just one thing.

     • Now I’M heartbroken.

       • Right!?

         • first the road runner, now Arnold? my whole life is a lie. i gotta stop coming here….

   • Substitute “Macy’s” for “5-star restaurant” and you’re within slingshot distance. The first few times out here she was amazed we had several movie theaters, AND a Kohls’.

     I’m just glad she saw the Macy’s on our first trip here…..it eased the pain of relocating tremendously…..

     • DRJIM, I don’t know how long Macys will last as a brick-and-mortar store. They’re fading, losing a lot of money. America turned into chain stores and little pink houses, almost everywhere. There is a Macy’s in Flagstaff, an hour’s drive away and that’s close enough.

       I wonder if I will ever set foot in a movie theater again? I used to like to see movies, but with the plague, and all that, I don’t know. Better to sit in front of the 75″ flat screen at home and avoid other people’s germs.

       • She’s hitting up Kohl’s on an almost daily basis, grabbing items that are marked down Eighty-Five per cent, or more, to clear out the store before they close it.

         • Is brick and mortar gone forever, DRJIM?

3. My son was in his high school’s drum line. They LOVED it when the band marched through an extended railroad underpass during the Harvest of Harmony Parade.

   • Beating a drum in a tunnel sounds remarkably the same as the thrum of a motorcycle exhaust.

4. We you used to call them “tunnel tests” and they were usually done on the back wheel…

   • Better on the back wheel.

5. Maybe off topic, so blow it off, if needed.
   I have heard that the antifa BLM terrorist are calling for the destruction of the Alamo. I am a fairly sedate fellow. But I would pay for a place on the wall. My rifle was state of the art in 1870 and my pistol was the newest thing in 1911. The glass on the rifle is 20th century though.
   I think the walls no longer have rifle platforms. But I am handi with wood framing.
   It’s gonna be a bitch because the streets and buildings have closed in on the Alamo but damn I’m old and my grandkids could say pops died at the Alamo . What a story.

   • I have heard the same thing and wondered if Texas would allow a mob of BLM terrorists to destroy The Alamo. The Ranger statue is down (a complete disgrace) and I wondered if Texas would surrender to the mob. Of course, my hope would be that it wouldn’t, but with what I saw in Dallas, and elsewhere, it did give me pause.

     I’m glad to hear that at least one Texan would not.

     • There are at least two of us then, although in my case as an exile, pretty good excuse for a road trip, wot?

       • Stand by for the Alamo discussion later today with a new blog posting in this regard. The question of what Americans allow the enemies of the nation to destroy and pillage is an important one.

6. I’m getting older too. I’ve found that 1965 comes in just fine, but last week is gone.

7. You can’t make sense of nonsense, LL.

   However, everything else is spot on.

   If I had to live in Arizona again it would be in Crown King.

   • I was at Crown King a few months ago and it’s overrun by people in side-by-sides. Seriously no bueno. WAY too many tourists. You have to fight for a parking spot. You wouldn’t like it the way things are now.

     • That makes me sad. They should have NEVER paved the road in.

       • It’s a dirt road coming in from Bloody Basin, but there are actual traffic jams going in there well before you arrive at Crown King. It’s become a destination for yuppies with razors and so forth. The last time I was there, I had to help out a guy who had a flat and hadn’t bothered to pack a jack when he drove into the desert. I doubt I’ll be back, but if you lived there, I’d make the trek for a tall cool glass of iced lemonade and a hello.

8. I used to work the commercial fishing season in Washington and spend the winters skiing in Santa Fe area, back when it was a sleepy little town. The high desert is a wonderful place. A guy could target shoot in any little arroyo outside the city limits. Ain’t that way now. Too bad, it was real nice.

   • That’s true of a lot of places. Civilization and gentrification has eclipsed what they once were. Where I rode dirt bikes as a young man is now multi-million dollar homes where the “Housewives of Orange County” live. I’d take my .22 handgun with me and plink. Dozers came in the intervening years and the little creek where I’d fish was turned into a culvert.

     • Saw the same thing in the Torrance area over the 35 years I spent in SoCal. There were many industrial areas with corrugated tin buildings and Quonset Huts that held small business’ and “surplus” places where you could get great bargains on electronic and mechanical stuff. Those are all gone now, flattened and replaced with row after row of ticky-tacky condos on postage stamp sized lots.

       Long Beach used to be the same way, but I never spent much time there until I met SLW and moved in with her about 8 years before our CALEXIT.

       • Being native to the area (and yes, I remember The Pike), I recall those tin buildings as well. There was a wealth of cool stuff and cool people selling cool stuff. Now, pink condos and strip malls.

9. I can definitely relate to the “I’m getting older” part.

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