An Eclectic Mind

Traveling again.

If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard from me here in a while, it’s because I’ve been traveling. I’m doing one of my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventures in northern Arizona, accompanied by a video crew and staff writer for a respected travel magazine.

The goal of this trip is to gather about 90% of the video needed to create three individual broadcast-length videos, each of which will be made available on DVD. It’s a huge project and, so far, we have at least 20 hours of raw video footage to wade through.

I’m flying with a door off and a video guy on board taking glare-free video images of what we fly over. He also has at least two POV.1 cameras mounted inside the helicopter at all times. The other video on the ground is “chasing” us — actually, he’s getting a big head start each day to drive to the airport where we’ll land before we arrive — and taking video of us landing. Then there are cameras whirring all over the place on the ground.

The writer is sitting up front beside me, taking notes and using my Nikon D80 to shoot images of what she sees. Although a good portion of the shots have some unfortunate glare — not much you can do about that when shooting through Plexiglas — many of them are really good. Like this shot she took of a herd of wild horses we overflew on the Navajo Reservation two days ago.

It’s been a busy week so far. Although I’m trying to demonstrate to the writer what my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure is all about, I’m also working with the video crew to make sure we capture all of the footage we need for our three videos. I’m hoping she understands that my usual clients won’t be rushing around like nuts all day.

I’m treating myself to a few of the activities my excursion guests get to enjoy. For example, on Tuesday, I joined the crew for a boat ride on Lake Powell that visited the “business side” of the Glen Canyon Dam before squeezing about a mile up Antelope Canyon (see photo) and gliding up Navajo Canyon for a look at the “tapestry” of desert varnish on some cliff walls. I skipped the Sedona Jeep tour and Monument Valley tour to work with one of the video guys or just rest up. Normally, while my guest are touring, I’m scrambling to get the luggage into their hotel room and confirming reservations for the next day. You might imagine how tired I am after 6 days of playing pilot and baggage handler.

At this moment, however, I’m sitting at the dining table of a double-wide mobile home near Goulding’s Lodge in Monument Valley. (Long story; believe it or not, the only lodging we cold get here in MV was in a pair of mobile homes that are part of the lodge.) I have the front drapes drawn aside so I can watch the eastern sky brighten for what promises to be a classic silhouetted butte sunrise. I always enjoy my dawns here at MV. Seeing the famous buttes outside my window is always surreal.

Today, we were scheduled to fly down to Winslow for lunch, then tour Meteor Crater and the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River. Normally, the Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure takes this route on the way to its last overnight stop at Flagstaff. But today we’ll probably go straight back to Page. I have four aerial photo shoots at Page starting on Friday morning; the money I make doing them will pay for this video excursion. We’ll do more video between those flights. Then we’ll hit the Crater, Falls, and Flagstaff on our way back to the Phoenix area on Sunday.

It’s a big trip and a bunch of huge projects. Just the kind of thing to keep me busy between flights for the winter season. But if all works well and as planned, I might be flying this route weekly in the coming spring and fall — with real paying passengers to take care of along the way.

We make it official.

Today, I created a flyer to sell my horse, Cherokee. Here’s the text and photo:

Paint Quarter Horse for Sale

Cherokee is an approximately 18-year-old registered Paint Quarter Horse gelding. (We don’t have his papers, but can get them; his registered name is “Up Steps a Devil.”)

He is well-behaved and extremely friendly. He’s a good trail horse with plenty of experience riding alone and with large groups. If you ride with the Wickenburg Horsemen’s Association, you may have seen him on some of the rides or in the Gold Rush Days Parade. He’s been trained for a rider to open gates while on horseback. He loads well, has no known health problems, and is really beautiful.

We’re selling Cherokee because we’ve recently had to put down his stall mate, Jake, who was about 30 years old and had developed age-related health problems. We’ve made the decision to do more traveling and have decided to 
get out of horse ownership for a while.

You can learn more about Cherokee by calling Mike on his cell phone: 602-725-8567.

Also for sale: a two-horse straight load trailer in good condition.

Download the flyer in PDF format.

Farewell to a good horse.

One of my two horses, Jake, will be slipping into the forever sleep later today. We don’t know his exact age, but we think he’s about 30. He developed some serious and painful foot problems this past spring and we’ve been unable to reverse the process. Rather than subject him to more pain with a questionable quality of life, we’ve decided to put him to sleep.

I bought Jake as a second horse about 10 years ago. I had just one horse and Mike and I could never ride together. So I went with a friend to a local horse trader to see what he’d brought back from his ranch up north that spring. He was offering Jake, a sorrel Quarter Horse gelding. Jake had a swayback — his back dipped down and then back up to his hind quarters — and really high withers. The horsetrader claimed Jake was 11 — a magic age for horses because it’s neither too old nor too young — but the vet later said he was at least 17. I saddled him up and went for a ride with my friend and the horsetrader’s wife. Jake was extremely well behaved. At one point, the horsetrader’s wife said, “I wouldn’t be ashamed to ride that horse.” I thought it was a weird comment. I wasn’t ashamed at all. I bought him.

I could tell at once that Jake was very different from Misty, my other horse. While Misty was friendly and would come up to you to be petted or brushed, Jake was far more aloof. He’d obviously been struck around the face — if you approached him with your hand up, he’d run away in sheer terror. It took a long time to build trust in him. But as soon as you put him on a lead rope or put a saddle on him, he was yours. He had a ranch horse work ethic and would do whatever you told him to, without hesitation.

Jake became Mike’s horse. My horse, Misty, another sorrel Quarter Horse, later developed serious front foot and leg problems. After months of pain, I made the decision to put her down. It was heart-wrenching. She was only 19.

I got another horse, a pretty paint Quarter Horse named Cherokee. Cherokee was a spoiled brat who really make Jake look like a prize. Jake was alpha male — the boss — who protected his food and space from Cherokee with pinned back ears and bites. Cherokee never gave up trying to steal Jake’s food. Recently, he was starting to succeed.

We’d often bring them to our summer place on Howard Mesa, where we’d set them loose in our 40-acre fenced-in lot. When there was good grass, they’d graze together. Sometimes, Jake would wander off without Cherokee noticing. When Cherokee realized he was alone, he’d call out to his friend and prance around until he found him. We’d ride around the mesa on the two of them, enjoying the warm sunlight and high desert terrain so different from the Sonoran desert at home. Jake was always at ease and never spooked; Cherokee was always freaked out and, in those early days, taught me how to fall off a horse.

Jake’s teeth were the first to go. They got to the point where no amount of equine dentistry could fix them. We switched his diet to mostly pellets that we’d soak down with water. One vet told us that was keeping him alive.

Then he started coming up lame. We took him to the vet and had his front feet X-rayed. Navicular disease. It’s caused when the navicular bone gets kind of porous and puts additional pressure on the nerves in the horse’s foot. ALthough there’s surgery that could ease the pain — I know it well because Misty had it not long after I bought her — Jake was too old for that. We decided to go with pain medicine and special shoeing to ease the pain. But nothing really seemed to help and yesterday, Mike made the big decision, which I know was hard for him.

Animals are lucky. They have us to spare them from a long, painful, lingering death. Jake will go to sleep later today and not wake up. His pain will be over.

And we’ll miss him.

Wickenburg is still a horsey town.

What’s 35 feet long, has four wheels, a bathroom, a refrigerator, a sofa, and a queen size bed and can fit three horses? My horse trailer with living quarters — the one I’ve been wanting (but not trying, evidently) to sell for the past year or so.

How many people do you know who could use such a thing? If you and your friends and family live in a city, the answer is probably zero. Even if you have friends who own horses, the answer might still be zero. After all, you need to not only have at least one horse, but you need a 3/4 ton pickup to pull the darn thing and a real desire to take your horse camping. Even I don’t know too many people who meet that criteria. (Although I do admit that I know at least a dozen.)

I decided on Monday that it had to go. I want to buy a new travel trailer that we can use on helicopter ride gigs. One that’s smaller and lighter and has more space for people than animals. One that would cost the same as what I could get for the big thing, so I wouldn’t have to go into debt.

So I made some calls. I called the place we bought it from and asked them if they’d take it back on consignment. They would and they sounded eager to get their hands on it. I figured they’d move it in about a month. Until then, I could finance the new camper.

I then pulled out all my brochures from the RV show we went to with some friends in February. I wanted an “expandable” camper. That’s a cross between a pop-up camper and a hard-sided camper. I studied the floor plans for StarCraft, which is the biggest maker of these things and settled on a Antiqua21-foot model with two beds and a slide out. The floor plan put the beds on opposite sides of the camper and the dinette and sofa in the slide out. The result: plenty of floor space — the one thing that was really lacking in the horse trailer.

I made some phone calls and found a dealer who had the model I wanted in stock and on display. Then I loaded up the recyclables in Mike’s truck, hit the dump to drop them off, and started on the long drive down to Phoenix.

I took the truck because we’re looking for two pieces of furniture — a desk and a small dining table — and I planned to look for that while I was in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area. If I took my car, I would have found them and not been able to bring them home. But since I took the truck, I didn’t find them even though I could have taken them home. Murphy’s Law in action.

The trailer was exactly what I wanted, although I liked the upholstery color scheme in the 2006 model better than that in the 2007. They didn’t have any 2006 models left. I worked with the dealer guy to collapse and then expand one of the beds. It was a 3-minute job, just as he said. We talked money and I left some info for him to see if I qualified for financing. I was in the Home Depot Expo store a few hours later, looking for a table and desk, when he called me on my cell to say that I qualified for the lowest rate (7.9%, which doesn’t sound so good to me) and 12 years (which is insane). The monthly payments would be only $220. No wonder so many people are in such deep dept. Credit is just too darn easy to get.

The next day, I was doing the brochure rounds when I ran into my friend Suzy at Screamers in Wickenburg. I know Suzy mostly through events at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum, but she and her husband are also horse people. They live near us and have the same cleaning lady. I mentioned to her that I was selling my horse trailer with living quarters and told her what I wanted for it. Ask around, I said.

Later that day, her brother called. He wanted to see the trailer. I hurried down to the wash, where it’s parked out of the flood plain, with Mike’s truck and a rag. Although it wasn’t filthy, it wasn’t exactly clean, either. We still had some stuff in it. I got to work while I waited for him.

He went down the wrong road to get to my house — the only time he’d seen it was on horseback while riding up our wash — and called me on my cell phone. “You have to come around to Steinway,” I told him. “Unless you have four wheel drive. Then you can come right up the wash.”

A while later, his truck and a white Jeep rode up the wash. He and his girlfriend, in separate vehicles. I knew her from the Wickenburg Horsemen’s Association — Mike and I are members, although we don’t attend many rides these days. They checked out the camper and I knew pretty quickly that they liked it.

Today, he called back. Suzy wanted to see it. So I met them this afternoon, just as a thunderstorm was moving into the area. Suzy has one that’s like it, but only for two horses. There were things about ours that she liked better. She gave him the nod. He gave me a deposit check.

He’ll come next week to get it. I figure I’ll use Mike’s truck to pull it into town where we’ll dump the holding tank (I think there’s something in there) and use a power washer to clean the inside of the horse part and the outside of the whole thing. I’d like to sell it to him clean. When the weather cools down, Mike and I will give them a demo of how the awning and screened-in room works; it’s a lot easier to put up if you know how to do it.

It’s nice to sell it to someone in town, someone that we know. But it’s also strange. This isn’t the kind of item that everyone wants or needs. It’s a tiny market, at least in the real world. But this is Wickenburg. Despite the zoning changes and development, there are still a few of us horse people around.

Obviously enough to find a market, through word-of-mouth, for a horse trailer with living quarters.