I can see Picacho Peak from here

I'm seated on the couch in the RV, coffee in hand, looking out the window over the dinette at Picacho Peak just peeking over the top of the sunshade at the military packing area. Picacho is a very distinctive mountain rising above the desert floor between Tucson and Phoenix, long used as a landmark by people crossing the desert. After 14 days and 3,900 kilometers of travelling and exploring we have arrived at Skydive Arizona, our home for the next 6 weeks. We'll be attending the Christmas Boogie, The Canadian Invasion, The Sisters In Skydiving Boogie, and Mark Kirkby's 16-way Invitational event before heading to Vegas to party with some friends from Ottawa.

We've visited Mammoth Cave, Carlsbad Cavern, the Gila Cliff Dwellings, driven through a miles long Christmas light display celebration of God, Guns, and all that is right and great with America buried in caverns dug beneath the city of Louisville Kentucky (well worth the outrageous entry fee) , explored the City Of Rocks, toured Graceland, camped in state parks and roadside rest areas, drank Corona beside several campfires, crossed the Continental Divide at least 3 times, and ridden at a dangerous and unsafe speed up the best twisty motorcycle road in New Mexico. The day is partly overcast, we'll have plenty of time to jump later so today we're going to either climb Picacho Peak or take the bike and tear up the fantastic road running up Mount Lemmon in Tucson.

2 Weeks down, 12 more to go!

So did the person who landed in town on Sunday die?

3202 Skydives. Not one cutaway. The odds say I should be averaging one every 500 jumps. Not one. A perfect record.

Then came jump 3203.

It was my 9th tandem in 2 days, and when I tried to do my control check after opening the right toggle wouldn't release. I let go of the left toggle to yank on the right with both arms but it was locked solid. I briefly considered landing on rear risers until I looked down at the 65 year old out of shape woman strapped to my chest before coming to the inevitable conclusion that finally, after 22 years and 3202 jumps, I was finally going to have my first reserve ride.

"Jane! Resume the free fall position!" She quickly crossed her arms on her chest, hauled her legs up between mine, and put her head back on my shoulder. She was ready long before I was.

Every single time I had rehearsed a cutaway on the ground I looked down, found both handles, then smoothly pulled the cutaway handle to release the main, followed by immediately pulling the reserve handle to deploy the reserve.

The plan went to hell when I looked down. The handles weren't where they had been every other time I'd run through the sequence. In fact, after a brief and increasingly panicked search they appeared to have vanished altogether. I had a flashback to the very first tandem I ever did in 2006 with Ross Redman strapped to my chest, same thing, no handles. Anywhere. In desperation I grabbed the main lift webbing and followed it up, and up, and up, and up, finally finding the cutaway pillow perfectly angled to be hidden behind the webbing well above my head, because we were hanging the harness, rather than having it hanging from me like it was all the other times I'd rehearsed.

Finally! I released the left toggle which I'd been holding down to keep us from going into a spiral, pulling firmly on the cutaway, then more firmly, and as we began to spin around in a circle started to jerk it desperately with, of all things, Christine Fouchards voice singing in my head:
"You picked a fine time to fail me reserve....
400 feet and I'm losing my nerve...
I've seen some bad ones,
Lived through some sad ones, 
But this one, I just don't deserve,
You picked a fine time, to fail me reserve.

Just as I came to the conclusion that we were done, this was it, we were about to get a planet stuffed up our ass (which would hurt - twice), Christine's voice shifted to "PEEL PULL!" I peeled, I pulled, the pillow came free, and almost instantly we were under a gorgeous bright orange reserve.

At the time it seemed to have taken forever to work through the problem and get under the reserve, later when I checked my ProTrack I was surprised to see that our second free fall ended at 3200 feet.

I reached forward with the cutaway handle and shouted to Jane "Here! Hold This!" Which she did, and the rest of the flight down to the ground was pretty normal except for all my giggling.

Which is when the real fun started. Mile High is located just across the Trans Canada Highway from the bustling town of Arnprior. Depending on winds it's not at all unusual to use the Prior Sports Bar or Tim Hortons as the spot to leave the aircraft, that's how close the town is. On Sunday the wind was blowing straight into town, which carried my discarded main parachute across the highway to deposit it in someones back yard.

Which is when the phone calls to various emergency services began. Police, fire, ambulance, the airport manager, the drop zone itself. The slowly tumbling main parachute couldn't possibly be anything but some poor bugger crashing to his death, screaming all the way, with "You picked a fine time to fail me reserve" the last thing he'd ever hear.

Which is how it came about that the guy who runs the local paper was asked 4 days later "So did the guy who landed in town on Sunday Die?"

Which led to the newspaper guy calling Trevor, and when Trevor explained what really happened, he said "yeah I get this sort of thing all the time from farmers who are having their annual brush fire and the fire trucks show up after somebody panic cell phone calls only to find a nicely controlled pile of branches"...

For the record, rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. The only difference is that this time it wasn't me who was doing the exaggerating.

And I owe Amanda a bottle of her favorite party beverage for saving our lives. There goes my perfect record.

"We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat"

That's one of the best known lines from a movie ever, delivered by Roy Schieder just after the monster great white shark surfaced behind the boat that was hunting it.

You see the same thing over and over again and eventually it ceases to be anything special, whether it be a sunset into the ocean, a view from a mountaintop, or even a very cool paint job. I've been looking at Twin Otters painted in cool and unusual ways for so long that they've become background noise - literally. I pay them no attention other than as a way to get to altitude. Then someone to whom it's still new and fresh sees the view, and suddenly you realize that "Yeah, that is pretty cool!" 

A friend from the Invasion saw the picture of the otter taxiing past my window and commented how much she liked the Shark painted on the side. The next day as I walked out to the plane I viewed it in a whole new light, and this morning I walked out to the end of the runway to see if I could get some good pictures. I don't know if the pilot saw me there or not, but either way, I have a pretty good idea how Roy felt when that shark came bearing down on him. I shoulda' stood further to the side!

 And then the Skyhawks started learning how to do CRW while dust devils a few hundred feet across were going past the landing area. I decided to take a day off and go wash my bike.

The Less Romantic Side Of RV Life

Just finished a 4 day road trip to Big Sur on the California coast, widely considered to be the most picturesque and scenic 100 miles on the Pacific Coast Highway. Not to mention the most dangerous. The road itself is carved into the side of a cliff, a never ending series of twisties and sweepers, in most places there are no guard rails, so I'm trying to watch where the hell I'm going as I'm going like hell, and trying to gawk at the view all at the same time. I'm coming back next year and spending a week just wandering up and down that 100 miles.

It's now evening and I'm back in Perris, which brings me to the part of RV life they don't tell you about in the brochures. The whole vehicle is self contained, it can generate it's own electricity, has a hot water tank, the fridge can run on propane, there's a propane stove and a 50 gallon fresh water tank. All of the systems must be maintained from time to time, especially the black water tank for the toilet and gray water tank for the sink and shower.

Once a week, under cover of darkness, I sneak my 11 foot tall, 32 foot long Ford Triton V10 powered motor home into an empty RV slot - they're for staff only and unavailable to the general public - to drain and flush the black and gray tanks, and refill the fresh water tank. This is the less romantic side of the RV life, playing with poo. I also plug into a post to get some electricity to recharge the house batteries that run and power various onboard systems. In the morning I rise early to sneak it back out again before anybody gets up for work. I don't know what the penalty is for stealing electricity or disposing of poo into a staff only "Poo Disposal Hole" are, but no doubt the consequences are dire.

Normally it goes off without a hitch. I wait until things have quietened down, and leaving the headlights off slowly creep into the ghetto, back into an empty slot, hook up the hoses, and begin the process.

I hadn't counted on the Canadian Army doing night jumps. I don't know who was more surprised, me encountering a crowd of heavily armed soldiers covered in glow sticks wearing night vision goggles, or them having a blacked out motor home looming out of the darkness and blundering around in their staging area. I didn't help matters any when I panicked and turned the headlights on. I'm just glad they weren't carrying live ammunition, they probably would have shot first and asked questions later. I may have to come up with a different poo disposal plan for the future.

My favorite kind of road sugn

My Favorite Place for Coffee, Higher Grounds Coffee House , Idyllwild

Skull Rock, Joshua Tree National Park, near Palm Springs

I have GOT to get me one of THOSE! I'll never get cut off in traffic again!
At least, not by the same guy twice.

Beth, my partner in crime, at a lookout on a great section of twisty mountain road with Borrego Springs in the background

This is the sign just above the piece of road shown below

Highway 74 above Palm Desert, 15 minutes from Beth's apartment

Pacific Ocean from Dana Point

That's 5,000 MILES, since arriving in Arizona, and that pic is a week and many miles old

The view out my front window, I'm camped next to the memorial park for the Twin Otter went in on take-off years ago.

The view from my front yard. Life does not suck.

Gotta go, I'm meeting Beth, Mark, and Lerinda at 9 on the creeper pad to start dirt diving our first 4-way of the day - In Jump Suits, Don't Be Late, Don't Be Last! Has the snow melted yet?

It Was Just A Matter Of When....

And How Expensive.

This is the beginning of my 5th year with this motorcycle, my beloved 2010 Yamaha FZ1, 135 neck-snapping wheelie-poppin horsepower of pure fun. Yamaha claims it's a "Sport-Touring" bike, but the emphasis is really on the Sport part. Together we've traveled over 60,000 km all over North America, and despite the fact that most of the time we've been exceeding the speed limit - often by a considerable margin - I had not yet received a single speeding ticket. I've had cops flash their headlights and roof lights at me in a warning to slow down, received a written warning from the friendliest highway patrolman in Arizona the first time he pulled me over only to have him extract a solemn promise from me to leave the state the second time he pulled me over, but no tickets. Until yesterday.

The fine that accompanies a speeding ticket isn't the real issue, it's all about the demerit points. I can afford the fine, however enough demerits can cost you your licence. But as long as you get a ticket in a state that doesn't have a reciprocal demerit point sharing arrangement with your home province, the points don't follow you home so the only consideration is a financial one. As far as I'm concerned the last 60,000 km were worth every friggin' penny of this ticket and then some.

I left Page Arizona at 7 in the morning headed back to Echo Bay Nevada, but instead of heading northwest on the highway I started out in the complete opposite direction. On my way into town I'd had to make a 100 mile detour because of a landslide that closed a pass through a small mountain range that had cheated me out of what on the map looked like a really twisty section of road. My waiter at dinner the night before (he rides a Ducati Monster) informed me that if I went past the "Road Closed' sign on the highway I could run most of the fun part before being forced to turn around. He went on to say that because the road was closed that there would be no traffic, and no cops. It sounded too good to pass up.

I went past the Road Closed sign doing around 70 miles an hour, by the time I got to the hills I was over 80, and the last time I looked at the speedometer as I leaned into a series of climbing S turns it showed well past 90 and I was still accelerating, butt shifted well off the seat into the turn, knee out to lower my center of gravity, inside arm controlling the handlebar, outside arm relaxed, head up and looking through the corner, grinning like an idiot at how perfectly my day had started.

Which was when a black and white blur came around the corner going the opposite direction at an even greater velocity than my own, but not so blurry that the word Sheriff printed on the side didn't register. 

Crap.

There didn't seem to be any point in slowing down, he had to know that I knew there wasn't any place to run, and I figured it was going to take him a while to slow down, get turned around, and catch up to me, so I just kept on going.

After a couple of minutes when I came to a straight stretch on a plateau I slowed down, and eventually I saw the flashing blue and red lights appear in the rear view mirror. By the time he arrived I had pulled over, removed my helmet, and had Drivers Licence, Registration, Proof Of Insurance in hand.

Instead of pulling up behind me, he pulled up beside me, and through the lowered passenger window asked in a conversational tone "You do realize the road is closed up ahead don't you?"

"Yes." I replied, "But my map showed too good a section of highway for me to pass up."

"Is all your paperwork in order?" he asked as he nodded his head toward the slips in my hand.

Momentarily confused I paused for a second before confirming that indeed it was all up to date.

He seemed to think about that for a minute before he nodded his head, and said "In about 8 miles you'll start seeing the warning signs, better slow down then 'cause if you keep going the way you were you'll never get stopped in time, and I don't feel like spending hours doing paperwork."

Then in a cloud of dust he wheeled his truck into the desert and disappeared back in the direction he was travelling when I first saw him, leaving me standing on the shoulder of the road holding Drivers Licence, Registration, Proof Of Insurance.

4 Hours later in Utah when I came around a corner going 86 miles an hour in a 65 zone however, I wasn't so lucky, 'though the exceedingly polite young man gave me a break and only wrote me up for 80.

$150 For 60,000 km of fun? And no demerits?

He must have been wondering why I was grinning while he was handing me the ticket.

Cuidado Senor, Es Muy Caliente!

No Shit Sherlock! The Fajitas were sizzling hot before the waiter set them on fire!!!  But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Vegas: Much Drunken-ness, and an unsuccessful negotiation to get a stripper to wash my motorcycle wearing a bikini, KA by Cirque Du Soleil isn't any better the second time around even if you stay awake through the whole thing, Mark rented a motorcycle that he would never buy, but he enjoyed his stately ride alongside Lake Mead while I got tired of waiting for him and ran ahead at a great rate of speed.

Ladybugs: I forgot that the plague of Ladybugs that had invaded Ottawa at the time I was shopping for a motor home were a rare strain of biting ladybugs. I was reminded of this at my campground on Echo Bay on Lake Mead shortly after my arrival. I had scooped up and released a couple dozen of the little spotted devils while I was setting up camp (I think the heat and motion of the motor home woke them up). Then there was a piercing shriek from the campsite next door followed by a stream of curses. I looked out the window and there was a blue haired lady at least a decade older than my mom looking at her arm in wonder as she proclaimed " I just got bitten by a ladybug! Have you ever heard of such a thing!" I quietly closed the blinds.

Which brings me to today. Yesterday I woke up in my quiet little campground, and as I drank my morning coffee my gaze fell upon a spread open map of northern Arizona. There are 3 things circled at the top of the map: Monument Valley, The Wave, and Antelope Canyon. I made it to Monument Valley 2 years ago

But I couldn't visit the other places on my list as I was chased back to Eloy by a blizzard that would have left me stranded for a week.
So with no more thought than I put into going there, I've come here, Antelope Canyon. I crossed 2 mountain ranges, a couple of deserts, passed through National Parks, half the Navaho Nation, and took over 600 photographs, to bring me to ........

Then at dinner tonight the waiter in my nice little Family Oriented Mexican Restaurant in Page Arizona walked over to my table, and Set Fire To My Dinner!!!! Everything was normal while the guy walked up, the cast iron plate covered with steak and chicken, onions and peppers, was doing just fine until he poured some kind of liquor over it and Set It On Fire!!! What was he thinking?!?! Everybody knows that setting alcohol on fire leaves the flavor behind, but burns off the alcohol! His warning was wasted, I was already crying over the lost alcohol.

But overall, it's been a good day.

I Hear It Was Minus 25 Degrees Today In Ottawa

Or, My Day In Pictures

 State Road 167 on the way to my campground at Echo Bay, not much fun in a motorhome, but, on a MOTORCYCLE!?!?!

 The golf course next to Skydive Mesquite. It looks like one of those cartoon drawings of a golf course from hell, and makes for a lousy out if you get a bad spot

A lookout on State road 169, North Las Vegas is 20 miles past the furthest range of hills

My copilot

The Best Show In Las Vegas

Las Vegas is legendary for it's shows, everything from Wayne Newton, Celine Dion, Tom Jones, Penn and Teller, a whole string of magic acts, Cirque Du Soleil, to the constant never ending trapeze acts over the gambling floor at the Circus Circus. But today, the best show in town, without a doubt, was watching me maneuver a 32 foot motor home and 12 foot trailer down Las Vegas Boulevard.

It seemed like a simple proposition, there were only a few turns to negotiate once I left the Boulder Highway to get to the conveniently located RV park right behind the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino, within a stones throw of the strip. I had the route programmed into my GPS, I'd looked it up on Mapquest to familiarize myself with it as much as possible, I even checked Google Earth so I'd know what the entrance looked like so I wouldn't have any trouble recognizing it. What I hadn't counted on was that the RV park was no longer operated by the KOA chain, and that their sign had come down resulting in me overshooting the entrance. That led to me and my 44 foot train weaving all over a whole series of streets with up to 5 lanes of traffic going each direction as I tried to circle back to the hotel.

I wound up back on the strip going the wrong direction once more overshooting the street I wanted at another congested intersection when I spotted my solution ahead of me at the next intersection. It was a sign showing the 3 left hand lanes turning left, with the leftmost lane getting the OK to do a U-turn. Perfect! All I had to do was make a quick U-turn and I'd be right back where I needed to be.

I now know the answer to the age-old question about just how much room it takes to make a U-turn with a 32 foot motor home and 12 foot trailer on Las Vegas Boulevard. The answer is: More Room Than I Had.

I made it about 3/4 of the way around before I realized I was in trouble, but by then it was way way way to late to just do a left turn and continue circling the neighborhood. I ground to a halt firmly planted sideways across the road, completely blocking the busiest street in the city. I started to quickly back up to try and cut the angle, wriggling the whole thing back and forth, resulting in the trailer jack-knifing to a right angle with the RV just as the light turned green and the traffic started on the cross street, resulting in total gridlock in every direction. I don't know if they spotted it on traffic cameras or if it was the several hundred horns blaring that alerted them but the first Cop was there within a minute.

He strolled up to the window, politely tapped on it to let me know he was there, and when I rolled it down he congratulated me on my optimism, questioned my sanity, and expressed surprise that it wasn't somebody considerable older or younger that would attempt such a boneheaded move. After I assured him that I was sober, the rest of the cops who had come to see what all the commotion was about cleared enough room for me to maneuver, and the first Cop guided me around the turn. The entire process from beginning to end took 6-7 minutes, with me expecting to see news cameras show up any second.

Once I'd finally cleared the intersection he had me pull over to the side, and after the ritual of checking drivers licence, registration, proof of insurance, he asked me where I was trying to go. He must have been afraid I might repeat the stunt, which is why I arrived at the entrance to the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino RV Park with a police escort.

I didn't offer an explanation to the guys at check in who had clearly seen me get led in, nor did they ask for one, in fact they seemed to consider it normal. This is Las Vegas after all.

I'm safely installed in Slot 82 with the slides out, plumbing and electrical hooked up, and the bar is open.

Ladybug Ladybug Where Have You Been.....

"Ladybug Ladybug where have you been...
I've been to London to visit the Queen"

Or, in this case, they've gone to Arizona, no doubt to devastate the cotton crop. When I was shopping for an RV south Ottawa was under attack by an onslaught of Ladybugs, resulting in dozens stowing away on board the RV. They went into hibernation in the cold and have been coming back to life over the last few weeks. I had been capturing them and setting them free outside until it occurred to me that they're probably an invasive species. If the Arizona cotton crop is destroyed in a few years by a mysterious invasion of orange shelled bugs with black spots on them.......

The Canadian Invasion is over, the madness has ended until next year, Skydive Arizona has become a ghost town compared to what it was just a few days ago. I've been remiss in keeping the blog up to date, I've been way too busy taking part in the general nonsense and stupidity to report on it. Here's a few high points, in no particular order.

The best entertainment going for the last couple of days has been watching the test drops to certify the new Curve container to a new TSO standard. Stu, Beth's Boy-Toy, has been tossing dummy loaded containers out the back of a Skyvan at 400 feet, the previous week he was the dummy, jumping out with intentional malfunctions packed into the container, but at a much higher altitude. Parachute Test Pilot might sound like a fun job, but it would have to a damn well paid one to interest me.

Diane gets a special award for one of the best bruises of all time that didn't result in a broken bone. She was launching a 2-way with a student when she clobbered the back of the door frame with her upper right arm. The livid black yellow and blue bruise went from elbow to shoulder, and when she put a tensor bandage on it to try and keep the swelling down she managed to turn it into a kind of waffle weave pattern, it was really quite pretty. She didn't think so though and when pictures got posted on Facebook she insisted they be taken down before anybody at work saw them. She went for an X-ray, nothing broken, she could still use the arm ok and kept right on jumping.

Aidan had slept in the RV the night he got there and I made the mistake of making breakfast and coffee in the morning, resulting in him becoming my morning wake up call as day after day he knocked on the door, mug in hand, with a hopeful smile on his face. A couple of mornings I came back from a run and found him inside, with a full pot brewing, so it worked out for both of us.

I can't remember how it got started but on the last Saturday the beer that Philippe had bought wound up in the landing area, resulting in several near collisions as everybody tried to beat everybody else to the cooler. All the discipline everybody had been showing all week went straight out the window with people bumping canopies on final in an effort to be first. Even though we were well back in the pack Curtis and I tried to beat each other resulting in us kiting our canopies up the landing area until Monique bellowed at us to get them on the ground, there was still a dozen people coming in and we had turned ourselves into 20 foot tall moving obstacles.

I had stocked the RV with beer and Vodka on my way to Eloy, my room mates Phil and Ray both bought beer, I received a bottle of Tito's Ultra Premium Vodka from Cassandra as a thank you for all my coaching, a couple of other bottles showed up mysteriously, and then when the Canadians left they gave me all the booze they had left. Beer, Vodka, Wine, Jack Daniels, Fireball Liqueur, a plethora of mostly oversized partly full bottles no doubt purchased by drunken Canadians trying to get their heads around the incredibly cheap prices. I have more beer than I can possibly drink before I return home (really! I swear! Even Me!), I went through the liquor and gave a bunch to the retired Airborne Colonel in the RV next to mine, he's having a Super Bowl party this weekend.

I haven't jumped since Sunday, I've spent all my days tearing about on all the roads I've wanted to run on previous trips and didn't get the chance.

The road enters the frame on the bottom left, it took 10 minutes of constants twists and turns up Mount Lemmon to get up to where I took this picture. 2,000 feet to 8,500 feet in 25 miles.

The RV has proven itself to be one of the wisest purchases I have ever made. Living right on the DZ, steps away from manifest, our own kitchen, bathroom and shower, warm and quiet. I have only eaten out half a dozen times since I left home, and with all the food that was left with me when everybody went home I won't have to buy groceries for a week. And I won't have to buy salad dressing or condiments until I'm in Ottawa. I had so much of some things that a lot of it would have gone bad before I could us it so I took all the extra over to the packers, they were even happier to get the free food than the Colonel was to get the free booze.

The only problem so far with the RV was getting the plumbing working. I had been given a 5 minute tutorial when I picked it up, and all I gathered from that was "Water goes in there and there, and comes out there." Simple enough. Until I hooked up a hose and immediately had water coming out there there there there and there, with a rapidly growing muddy lake spreading out around around the thing. Several of the storage compartments quickly flooded with a mix of water and pink RV antifreeze. A couple of neighbors saw my predicament and came to my aid, and it turned out that a couple of fittings had cracked, probably from being improperly stored, and after running all over Casa Grande for parts I got that all squared away and continued the process, turning the water back on.

Which resulted in a whole new series of leaks starting inside the RV. If anybody ever needs to know anything about RV plumbing, just ask me, it took 3 days to get it all sorted but now I have hot and cold running water on demand, the toilet flushes just like it's supposed to, and all the water stays where it should.

I was supposed to leave tomorrow for Vegas to meet up with Mark, he's working a trade show there and has taken some time off afterwards, but there's rain moving in so I'm going to leave as soon as rush hour traffic clears in Phoenix. Mark has rented a fast motorcycle so we're going to explore the the area at speed and try not to get arrested.

After he leaves I'll be heading down to Perris for a bit before leaving the RV there and going to Palm Springs to hang out at Beth's place, returning to Perris for the Dueling Drop Zones Competition (more on this later).

If anybody is looking for a few days away from the frigid north, send me an email, I have plenty of room and can be talked into going just about anywhere within a days drive, you can pay your rent in beer, and Beth and I need 4 more team mates for the Dueling DZ's February 14th.

My TARDIS

In the science fiction series Dr Who the main character gallivants about the universe in a time and space machine called the TARDIS, for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. From the outside it looks like an old British Police Public Call Box, but on the inside it's huge, leading everyone who first sets foot inside to exclaim "It's bigger on the inside!' Well, my motor home, though not small from the outside, is like the TARDIS in that once you push out the slides it's even bigger on the inside. When I was storing it in Kim and Mathieu's driveway I couldn't put the slides out all the way because of the proximity of the houses on either side, but now that I'm set up in Arizona, IT"S HUGE! And I LOVE IT! I'm not sure I like it much when it's rattling and clanging it's way down the highway but I sure love it when it's parked in Arizona.


I've been here for 5 days now and haven't done a jump, but I've been out for hours and hours on my bike every day. Yesterday I went for a ride with the Loud Crowd from Eden North (both the machines and the riders), and today I went to Salt River Canyon. It's been hot since I got here so despite John Smiths repeated warnings that it would be cold I decided to head into the mountains. For the first couple hours the sky was clouded over and as I climbed up higher to where there was snow piled up at the side of the road he was proven correct, it was damn cold, and I didn't care. I was doing 80 miles an hour on a twisty mountain road, grinning like an idiot despite my shivering.

This was the road I got pulled over on twice for speeding by the same cop when I was here 2 years ago. He let me go with a warning both times, so this road holds a special place in my heart. The sun came out just as I reached the canyon and started down the switchbacks, encouraging me to go even faster as I went. It's about 4,000 feet to the bottom, then you cross a bridge by the ghost town before starting back up the other side. As soon as I reached the top on the far side I turned around to do it again. When I was nearing the top I started catching up to a slow moving tractor trailer laboriously dragging itself up the steep hill. Not wanting to get stuck behind it I dropped a couple of gears and wound in a bunch of throttle while I was still able to safely pass him, and shot past doing well over 100 miles an hour before quickly leaning into the corner. Just as I was about to slow down I realized that I was about to climb up the ass of a Highway Patrolman that had passed the truck a minute before. Even if he hadn't seen me he had to have been warned of my approach by the screaming of my engine, and even before I grabbed the brake he had his roof lights on.

Crap.

I slowed to his speed, put on my turn signal, and got ready to follow him onto the shoulder, which is when his roof lights went off, and he just kept rolling along down the highway at 55.

A moment later a Mustang came tearing around the next corner going to beat hell - roof lights on - the Mustang slowed down, - roof lights off. And the trooper kept rolling along at 55. Over the next 30 miles the process was repeated several times, everybody slowed down, nobody got a ticket, and everybody had a good day.

As I followed that cop all the way into Globe I wondered if it was the same one who 2 years earlier had told me "You were doing 86! That's a felony! I'm just going to give you a warning, but SLOW DOWN!" I decided I didn't care, that I probably couldn't get away with this a fourth time, and decided that tomorrow it was time to start skydiving, it would probably be safer.

View from a lookout as I neared the bottom heading east

In front of the jail in the ghost town

Looking west back across the canyon

Note the 4 roads, what you can't see are all the squiggly bits at the ends.

"Been Shopping?"

"No! Been Shopping!
Whatchya buy then?
I bought a piston engine!"

You'd have to be a Monty Python fan to understand the sketch those lines were taken from, but everybody should understand the punch line. I've decided to celebrate the collapse of  gas prices by purchasing the biggest most enormous engine I can find, a Ford Vortec V10, and heading south to see just how cheap the gas price will get. If you add up the engine displacement of my car and motorcycle and double them, this thing is even bigger! By a fortunate coincidence it came attached to a 32 foot motor home, complete with a trailer hitch to pull the bike. All told the thing is 44 feet long, and handles exactly like you would expect of a vehicle that's wider than a standard house lot.

Many times over the years I've cursed motor homes as they swayed slowly down the highway or crawled even more slowly up a twisting mountain road, leaving me trapped in their wake as I waited for a place to pass. You can't see around the damn things so you can't get a good sight line to see what's coming the other way, and more often than not the cursed things seem to travel in packs requiring you to pass several at once. Even with the power to weight ratio advantage of a motorcycle getting stuck behind one can be frustrating, at times even dangerous. I've never liked motor homes. And then there's the drivers. Far too often they seem to piloted by a senior citizen, no doubt with fading eyesight and deteriorating reflexes, and no matter how big it is they don't even require any special training or licence to operate.

Well, if ya can't beat 'em.......     As part of my retirement plan - my very vague retirement plan - I had given some thought to buying myself a motor home at some point in the future, far, far, in the future, and spending the winter swanning about the southern US with my motorcycle in tow. The future has arrived. I just didn't realize how noisy the future would be. Think about taking an average house and putting it on wheels, then think about all the noise all the crap in it would make as you bounce down the road, the dishes and cutlery, pots and pans, especially all the doors and windows. No wonder all those people drive so slow, it's a futile attempt to keep the cacophony down to a tolerable level. And the reason they go so slowly as they make their way into a parking lot is because they're overcome with panic as they desperately survey all the traffic and obstacles and think "NOW WHAT?!?!?!"

The cheapest fuel I've found so far was a couple of blocks from Graceland Tennessee. $1.86 A gallon. Two years ago I paid more than that per liter at Saskatchewan Crossing in the rocky mountains. I was there on new years day, Graceland was going to open late, there were bad thunderstorms coming so I kept on going, that gives me an excuse to come back next year. I spent New Years Eve at a truck stop somewhere in Tennessee, partying with a bunch of truckers who'd started a bonfire in a barbecue pit. The cops came by to see what all the fuss was about, cautioned us against drinking and driving, then kept going.

Right now I'm having breakfast in a Starbucks in Midland Texas, across the street from the RV park of last resort, Walmart. Yesterday the weather had gotten worse and worse, rain becoming heavy rain, then snow, then freezing rain, then sleet. That's when the carnage started. First there was a tractor trailer on it's side in the ditch, then half an hour later another, a few minutes later another, and quickly it began to look like the set of a Mad Max movie. Vehicles of every description were strewn all over the landscape with varying degrees of destruction. There was even what was left of a pre-fab house still attached to what was left of the flatbed that had been carrying it that looked like it had rolled several times on it's way to the bottom of a ravine.

Enough is enough. It's not that the conditions are bad by Canadian standards, but there isn't a single salt truck in the entire state. I decided to call it a day and pull in to the next Rest Stop but when I got there the access road had a bunch of road flares burning across it. When I rolled past I could see 3 tractor trailers still on their wheels neatly stacked on top of each other in the ditch. It looked like they pulled onto the ice covered roadway and one by one were blown off at the same spot to slide into the ditch.

I finally made Midland just before the State Police closed the Interstate, and pulled into the first parking lot I saw, Walmart. It was only mid afternoon so I headed in for some shopping to be confronted by a scene of pandemonium. The place was jammed, everybody was buying warm clothing and emergency supplies, the aisle where the water should have been was barren, the battery and flashlight racks were empty, and I began to realize that I'd managed to drive a few thousand kilometers to put myself in the middle of a disaster. As I returned to the RV I could see that all the hotels in sight already had No Vacancy signs displayed, and I was glad that I had brought my own room with me.

It surprised me how many people had mentioned staying at Walmart when I needed, and I had slept in their parking lots many times in my car as I've made my way back and forth across the country. But it's not without it's hazards. I wasn't inside for a full minute before there was a knock on the door. I opened it to receive a well rehearsed pitch from a scruffy guy who was living in an even scruffier van asking me for money. At least a real RV park doesn't have panhandlers.

The Interstate has reopened, I will probably get to Eloy tomorrow night, the Canadian Invasion starts next Saturday, and my room-mates will be arriving soon after that. When that's over I'm heading to Vegas where Mark will be just finishing up a trade show, and after that the plan gets kinda' vague. I don't have to be anywhere anytime soon, and the only goal I have is to return home after the snow has all melted. Both here and there.