The Wandering Minstrel

We passed this very clean 1950 Chevrolet pickup truck on our way back to Arizona this morning. Note the chrome on most everything including the differential. Clickable image courtesy of The Better Half.

Back in 2007, I posted about carrying a small safe while camping or staying at a hotel. At the time, I used a small cooler made from fabric, fiberboard and plastic insulation. It worked for a while, but eventually, the safe (and firearms) proved to be too heavy and the fiberboard liner under the cooler failed.

Last week, we saw a rigid cooler by Coleman on sale for $20, so I picked it up. Today, I outfitted it with the little safe, some ammo and I used some gun cleaning rags to pad around and underneath the safe. Both the Better Half and I lifted the loaded safe, ammo and cooler and found it to be no heavier than a cooler packed with ice and beverages. Intuitively, it seems that this is the solution to carrying a concealed safe while traveling or camping.

Clickable image courtesy of the Better Half.

Nowadays it’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe but just up Railroad Street from where the Better Half snapped this photo stands an old A.T.& S.F. Steam Engine that originally ran along these tracks years ago. I like the railroads because it’s in my blood, I guess. My Granddad was an engineer on the Pacific Electric Railway and I grew up sneaking rides in his rail yard engine in Long Beach Harbor where he was working when I was a post-WW2 kid. My two brothers were there too, but I’m the only one with the built-in railroad interest.

This was beautiful - we can hear the train blasting their horns from our hotel room and it was just a matter of time before the crossing gates would lower during one of our trips to town and we could see one of these beauties roll by. As the train passed, we noticed that the load mostly seemed to be of USA origins, not the usual Yang Ming and other Chinese shipboard carriers we see in on the trains in So Cal.

Eat your legumes, greens and have some beers and you could pass more gas. I’m not sure about propane, but methane is definitely involved. The Better Half took this (clickable) image along US 60 between Brenda and Hope, Arizona, this morning.

Short post today - on the road again. We passed this billboard along I-10 near Palm Springs, CA. Glad to see that NRA supporting rocker Ted Nugent, of “Kill it and Grill it” fame, is getting gigs. Clickable image courtesy The Better Half.

Update: The Better Half informs me that Ted’s latest Manifesto is Ted, White and Blue.

An Accident on Interstate 10 today brought traffic to a complete dead stop. At about 11:18 this morning on our way back from Arizona, we encountered the stoppage between Blythe and Desert Center. The outside temperature was 113°. We waited for 35 minutes in the sweltering heat for traffic to start moving again.

Clickable Image: Traffic on I-10 at a dead stop. Top: looking west.

After 20 minutes of waiting, we saw a young man on a mountain bicycle go by heading toward whatever incident was ahead on the highway. About 15 minutes after that, he was heading back telling anyone who would hear that there had been an accident up ahead and that it was now cleared and traffic had started moving ahead. Buddy, if you’re reading this then God Bless You!

All I can say is thank God for our air conditioned SUV. The Better Half and our dog were reasonably comfortable in spite of the temperature reported in the readout integrated into the rear view mirror. Talk about Urban Heat Island effect - hundreds of idling vehicles on the hot bituminous pavement generating massive bubbles of hot air under the vehicles.

After we got rolling, the readout dropped to a mere 117°. We passed the accident site - we could see no wrecked vehicles but there was a gaggle of CHP in the median with accident scene tools still investigating the incident.

Now, we’re home and it’s a nice cool 89° - just right for a couple of cold ones to take the edge off of an interesting interstate commute.

. . . are a thin disguise.

Seriously - I’ve lived in California all my life, worked in Florida for months at a time, been to Hawaii, the Bahamas and Tahiti, and I have never seen a palm tree like this one along US Hwy 60 near Surprise, Arizona. Who the hell are these green enviro-freaks that think this is any less an eyesore than a good cell tower? In fact, being a techno-person, I think cell towers are a functional piece of infrastructure with an aesthetic appeal and not in the least offensive in metro areas.

Clickable image credit The Better Half - but don’t get her started on the rampant cellular-conifer eyesore issue. She has yet another discourse on those.

. . . and that’s all I have to say about this . . .