An Eclectic Mind

Book value: $250. Reliability: Near 100%.

This morning, I had to drive down to Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to pick up my helicopter for a charter out in Aguila, AZ. I have a 1987 Toyota MR-2 that I bought new in October 1986. That’s my airport car. It basically lives down in Deer Valley when I’ve got the helicopter out. The idea was to drive it down to Deer Valley, park it, do my flight, and then bring the helicopter back to its Wickenburg hangar so I could wash it before returning it to Deer Valley.

That was the idea, anyway.

This morning, the MR-2 roared to life, just like it aways does. But I had some trouble getting it out of first gear — I leave all my cars in gear when I park on our hilly driveway. I rolled back and got it half turned around. Then I attempted to shift into first or second to depart. The gearshift wouldn’t budge.

Understand this: the car is standard transmission. It was my first standard transmission car. I learned to drive stick on that car. A week after taking it home, I was driving back and forth to my job in downtown Manhattan from New Jersey, battling bridge and highway traffic. I got really good with a stick shift really fast.

And the car still has its original clutch.

It only has 133,000 miles on it. When I bought my Jeep in 1999, it became my secondary car. When I bought my Honda S2000 in 2003, it became my third car. I didn’t even need it for sporty drives anymore. That’s when it became my airport car.

Here’s my old helicopter and Toyota MR-2 parked at Howard Mesa during the summer of 2004.

I don’t think I put more than 1,000 miles per year on it after that. It spent the summer of 2004 at Howard Mesa or Grand Canyon Airport when I flew helicopter tours for one of the operators at the Grand Canyon. It spent at least two years in Prescott as an airport car — my mechanic was based there for a while — and then another whole season in Scottsdale — I used to fly there quite often. When the Scottsdale cops called and threatened to tow it away, I drove it home. It spent a year or two in my hangar. Then I brought it down to Deer Valley to be my airport car there.

It didn’t mind neglect. It just about always started up when I turned the key. The only exception was once in Prescott, when the battery had finally died. Fortunately, I’d parked it pointing down a little hill. I released the break, popped the clutch in second gear and got it started. Drove it to Sears, put in a new battery, and went about my business.

Every year or so, I get the oil changed. I bought it new wiper blades and sun screens about a year ago.

Today, when the clutch wouldn’t engage, I wasn’t very surprised. Hell, it was the original clutch! More than 23 years old! What the hell did I expect?

My Honda visits my Toyota at DVT.

I took my Honda down to Deer Valley. I locked it up. I wasn’t happy about leaving my best car overnight at Deer Valley. The Toyota was disposable. The Honda wasn’t.

As I flew west to my gig, I thought about the Toyota. I wondered if this was how it would all end. It didn’t seem right to put hundreds of dollars into a car with a Kelly Blue Book value of under $250.

I did my gig. It involved over 3 hours of flying north of Aguila. It ended with a flight to Wickenburg to photograph some property. I’d drop off my clients at either one of the spec homes they’d built or nearby private helipad that they led me to believe was part of their property. We were doing the photo flight when I heard some chatter on the radio. Wickenburg Airport was closed. Turns out, an F-16 trainer had crash-landed there earlier in the day. So I landed on the helipad. I didn’t have enough fuel to get back to Deer Valley and I couldn’t land at Wickenburg. I wound up leaving it there for the night. As I type this, the airport is still closed.

Back at home, Mike got the idea that maybe the Toyota’s clutch wasn’t broken. Maybe it just needed fluid.

We pulled the owner’s guide out of the glove box and looked it up. We found the reservoir. It was bone dry. (Oops!) We grabbed some of the recommended DOT 3 brake fluid out of the garage and filled the reservoir. I pumped the clutch pedal. A lot. I started the car, pushed down the clutch pedal, and smoothly shifted it into first gear.

It works.

So my Toyota continues to run smoothly with its 23-year-old clutch. Best of all, it seems very forgiving of my neglect.

How can I not love a car like that?

Days in My Life, Flying cars, helicopters, repair, Toyota MR-2

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We revive my comatose Toyota and bring it home from Prescott.

In October, 1986, twenty years ago last month, I bought my second ever brand new car: a 1987 Toyota MR-2. It cost a whopping $15K, which in those days was above average for a new car, but not really considered “expensive.”

And what did I get for my money? A really fun, 2-seater sports car. Red, of course — it was my first red vehicle. It was also my first five-speed, and since I didn’t know how to drive a manual transmission in those days, I couldn’t even drive it home from the dealer.

Less than a week later, I was driving it to work in downtown Manhattan. One of the perks of my job with the City of New York, Office of the Comptroller, Bureau of Financial Audit was a free parking space near the Municipal Building, where I worked. I worked an 8 to 4 shift in an attempt to avoid rush-hour traffic. (New York’s rush hour is later in the day than Phoenix’s and doesn’t seem to last as long. I think good mass transit has something to do with that.) My big challenge in those early days of driving with a clutch and gearshift was the ramp from the Harlem River Drive up to the Cross Bronx Expressway and George Washington Bridge on my way home. The ramp was a steep climb and it was always backed up in the afternoon. If there’s one thing that’ll teach you how to drive a stick shift, it’s being forced to drive uphill in traffic.

Six months later, I was working in Redbank, NJ, for another company. The 60-mile (each way!) commute was only one of the reasons I hated that job. I found another one after just four months — I started looking after only two — and settled down to the last “9 to 5″ job I’d ever have, at ADP’s corporate headquarters in Roseland, NJ. That was a 30-mile commute. Just right for the MR-2.

Years passed. I left that job and went freelance. I had a few questionable years. Then things started looking up. I had money and flexible time. But I kept the Toyota. Why not? It was a fun car to drive.

In 1995 (I think) I drove it across the country to Yarnell, AZ, which isn’t far from my current home in Wickenburg. It was loaded down with all the things I’d need for a winter as a snowbird — possibly the youngest snowbird in Arizona. I spent three months living and writing in Yarnell. I got to know Prescott and Wickenburg. And that winter, my Toyota had its first accident.

It happened right downtown in Wickenburg, right in front of St. Anthony’s Church on North Tegner. I was driving through town with Mike, who had come to visit for a week. We were on our way to Tucson to meet with his cousin Ricky. The person in front of me was making a left turn into Yavapai street. I was going straight. Unfortunately, a senior idiot from Pennsylvania, driving in the opposite direction, decided to make a left turn right in front of me. The road was covered with a thin layer of sand and when I hit the brakes, the car slid right into the corner of the guy’s bumper. The impact wasn’t hard — neither of us were going very fast — but it was enough to put a dent in the middle of the Toyota’s front bumper that made it look as if I’d hit a pole.

To say I was angry is an understatement.

Although the car was already almost 10 years old, the insurance company sprung for the repairs. Three weeks later, it was good as new. Actually, a little better. The air conditioning had started working again.

Before I went back to New Jersey at the end of that winter, I drove the Toyota out to California for a weekend. I took a picture of it at the beach on the Pacific ocean. From sea to shining sea. I’ve since lost that photo. After all, it was taken in the days before digital photography.

In those days, we called the Toyota “the mule” because I’d found a roof rack for it and, when it was installed, we could pack all kinds of stuff on it. I drove back to New Jersey by way of Florida — I was a speaker at a writer’s conference there. Mike came with me. Along the way, we camped out at Big Bend National Park and were nearly washed off the road by flooding in New Orleans.

Two years later, the Toyota and I made the drive again. This time, we were moving to Arizona, to an apartment I’d found in Wickenburg. I’d had enough of New Jersey’s cold, snowy winters. I wanted a new life in a warm place. Mike would leave his job (kind of; long story) and follow me five months later, in May, when our house was sold.

In 1999, I bought the red Jeep Wrangler I still drive around quite a bit these days. The Toyota began a life of leisure in the garage, pulled out for trips to Prescott or Phoenix. It was starting to look its age, but the paint was still bright and it still ran like a charm.

In 2000, I bought a helicopter. It was a two-seater. About a year later, when I started getting helicopter maintenance done in Prescott, I decided that it might be nice for the Toyota to live up there. Then, when I flew up, I’d have something to drive when I got there. Since I flew up at least once a month or so — not just for helicopter maintenance; we prefer shopping in Prescott to shopping in the Phoenix area — the car was driven quite regularly.

Meanwhile, at home, I missed the Toyota. The Jeep might be fun on dirt roads, but it’s miserable on highways. The Toyota is fun on all kinds of paved roads.

In June 2003, I bought a Honda S2000. So now I had a Jeep for dirt roads and around town driving and a sports car for paved roads and road trips. I vowed to never let the Toyota know I’d bought the Honda. I didn’t want it to get jealous.

One time, we got to Prescott to do a little shopping and found the Toyota’s battery just about dead. Mike gave it a push down a hill while I rode inside, gathering speed. I dropped the clutch and the car came to life. We drove it to Sears and bought it a new battery — its third in about 15 years.

In 2004, I got a summer job with Papillon at the Grand Canyon. I lived in a trailer on our property at Howard Mesa. The Toyota became my spare car up there, spending time either at Grand Canyon Airport or Howard Mesa or taking me from one point to the other. It shared this duty with my Jeep. So yes, I had two cars and a helicopter with me that summer. What good is an asset if you don’t use it?

At the end of that season, the Toyota went back to Prescott, where it stayed until it needed an oil pan replacement, which I wrote about in another blog entry. I was flying up there less and less. I’d sold my little helicopter and bought a bigger one. It was brand new and didn’t need much maintenance, especially since Ed Taylor, Wickenburg’s excellent aircraft mechanic, had gone to the Robinson Factory Maintenance Course and was authorized to do maintenance and repairs. He did all my engine-related work — oil changes, fuel reorientation SB, etc. — while the Prescott folks handled the helicopter-specific stuff (rotor blades, gear box, etc) and 100-hour and annual inspections.

Earlier this year, I switched helicopter mechanics. I now take my helicopter down to Williams Gateway airport in Mesa for work. I flew into Prescott less and less. I realized that it was kind of silly to keep a car there.

A few weeks ago, on our return trip from a weekend in Sedona, we decided to stop by the airport and pick up the car. We found it looking sad and feeling comatose. Even a push start wouldn’t get it running. We towed it back to a parking space and went home.

Yesterday, we drove up to retrieve it, bringing along jumper cables and tools. It started right up with a jump from Mike’s Honda, but there wasn’t enough juice in the battery to keep the engine running when it was at idle or when switching gears at low speed. (It still has its original clutch, which is really starting to show its age, so it’s a bit tricky to drive.) After two attempts to get it out of the parking lot, we decided to park it, remove the battery, buy a new battery at Sears, and put it in ourselves. (We do have AAA, but we needed the car towed to Sears sometime within our lifetimes and AAA seems to have a problem with fast service when it comes to towing.)

At Sears, the guy who tested the battery said it was the second deadest he’d ever tested. (How he made that conclusion is beyond me, since his meter didn’t read a thing when connected to the terminals.) We discovered that the old battery was only 3 years old, so I got a new one at a discount. We bought some other stuff at Sears, had sashimi for lunch in a nearby Japanese restaurant, hit Office Max for a computer cable and Petco for dog vitamins, visited Old Navy for some winter shirts, and then spent an hour (and almost $300!) at Costco. At 4 PM, we returned to the Toyota, which was waiting patiently, looking more faded and forlorn than ever. Mike installed the battery and I hopped in behind the wheel. I stepped on the clutch pedal, turned the key, and the car roared to life. “Let’s go!” it was saying.

Sounded good to me. After manually cleaning the dusty windshield — the wipers have dry rot and need replacement — we headed home. You know, I had that little sucker up to 80 mph? Wasn’t meaning to, of course, and was pretty surprised to see that speedometer needle in the straight-up position.

Mike followed me, just in case the car decided to lose a wheel or collapse on the way home. No problems, though.

I stopped at Safeway to pick up some groceries on my way home. When I pulled into the parking lot, people looked at me as if I were driving some kind of junker. Little did they know.

The Toyota is home now, in one of Mike’s parking spaces on the driveway apron. For the first time in a long time, all six of our vehicles (including his 1986 Mustang Convertible, which, in my opinion, looks worse than the Toyota) are in the same place at the same time. My Honda is in the garage, of course. We toyed with the idea of bringing the Toyota to live in my hangar at the airport, but I think I’d rather keep it home, at least for a while. I’m going to drive it today. I’ll get it an oil change and a little check up at Dan’s place. (The Toyota loves Dan.) I’ll bring it by the airport to wash it. I’ll pull out the Zymol and see if it can make what’s left of the paint shine again.

And then, when I’m finished playing with it and convincing it that I still love it, I’ll take it down to the Phoenix area and probably park it at Deer Valley airport, or perhaps Scottsdale, if I can find free long-term parking. These days, I seem to fly more in the Phoenix area than around Wickenburg anyway. It would be nice to take care of some errands while I was down there.

Oh, and for the record, the Toyota has a book value of about $250 these days. It costs about $400/year to insure. (No, I don’t have collision coverage on it.) It’s hard to sell a nearly worthless asset when it’s so cheap to keep.

Days in My Life Arizona, cars, driving, Toyota MR-2

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My 1987 Toyota MR-2 returns to Wickenburg for an oil change.

“The oil pan is damaged,” the oil change guy in Prescott said. “I can’t change the oil.”

“Can I see?” I replied.

He escorted me to the secret underground chamber where the oil change guys who do the under-the-car stuff perform their magic. Everything was covered with a thin coat of oil that slicked up the bottoms of my Keds. I looked up at the underside of my 1987 Toyota MR-2 and marveled at how old, rusty, and dirty it looked.

“There,” the oil change guy said, pointing.

Pointing was not necessary. The oil pan was clearly bashed in. The bash was at least six inches across and four inches wide and probably reduced my total oil capacity by a pint. I was lucky it hadn’t bashed about two inches farther back, where it would have bashed off the drain bolt. Or that the rock that had done the damage hadn’t bashed right through the metal.

I pulled out my digital camera and tried to take a picture, but the battery was dead. Figures. How often do I get a chance to photograph the underside of one of my cars?

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to get the plug back in,” the oil change guy explained. “Sorry.”

We climbed up into the garage and he pulled the car back out into the Prescott sunshine. He took out the paper floor mat and plastic seat cover and left the car there for me to take away.

I went for a second opinion, pretending I didn’t know anything about the bashed in oil pan. A few minutes after they pulled the car into the garage, the shop manager came out looking upset. “I hate to break this to you,” he started.

“My oil pan is bashed in,” I told him.

“You know?”

“Sure.”

“Well, we can’t change the oil.”

“Because you’re afraid you won’t be able to get the plug back in,” I finished for him.

He looked stunned. I was a mind reader.

I drove off, now just about out of time. I’d gone up to Prescott to drop off my helicopter for service and had spent the day shopping, filling the Toyota’s passenger seat with all kinds of things. The oil change was my last task of the day. It had been over a year and 1,000 miles since I last had the oil changed and I didn’t want the car to feel as if I was totally neglecting it. (I got it washed last time I drove it, two months ago.) But no one would change the oil and now it was time to go back to get Zero-Mike-Lima.

I’d have to get the oil pan fixed. I wasn’t about to do that in Prescott. I’d bring it back to Wickenburg to the only mechanic the MR-2 loves: Dan.

But not that day.

I offloaded my purchases at the airport and stuffed them into Zero-Mike-Lima, then flew home.

This past weekend, Mike and I drove up to Howard Mesa to drop off our camper. We were supposed to have our shed delivered (again) but the holiday weekend made that impossible, so it was postponed (again). But on the way home, we had to drive right past Prescott Airport, where the MR-2 lives. Mike dropped me off and I hopped into the MR-2.

“Surprise!” I told it, as I removed the sunshades.

As usual, it started right up. I love that car.

We had dinner at a new Asian fusion restaurant in Prescott that I can’t recommend. The scores, based on a scale of 1 to 10, are as follows: Atmosphere/Decor: 8; Service: 3; Food Quality: 4; Value for Dollar: 5. We can cross that one off our list.

Then we drove home.

Now there are two ways to get from Prescott to Wickenburg. We call them the curvy way (White Spar Road – route 89) and the straighter way (Iron Springs Road). Mike wanted to go the straighter way, but we were in town, closer to get to the curvy way. It would have taken 15-20 minutes just to get to the other side of town. So I voted for the curvy way, presented my logic, and won. I led the way.

Now the Toyota may be 18-1/2 years old and it may have 132,000 miles on it and it may also have its original clutch, but it was born a sports car and it hasn’t forgotten how sports cars are supposed to perform on curvy roads. And I certainly haven’t forgotten how to make that baby perform. We took off on White Spar Road, settled into second gear, and screamed around every one of the curves. Fortunately, there was no one in front of me — I hate passing on double yellows (just kidding, officer!) — so there was no real reason to use the brakes. Just keep those RPMs up and let the engine do all the work. I had a blast. And I beat Mike to Wilhoit — fifteen miles down that curvy road — by about three minutes.

God, I love that car.

I waited at the side of the road in Wilhoit for him, then let him pull out in front of me to set the pace for the straight part of the drive. He set a quick pace: about 75 mph. The MR-2 handled it nicely. I’m glad he kept it below 80, because I’ve noticed a serious increase in fuel consumption when the speedometer needle moves past that 12:00 position on the dial. (Yes, 80 mph is straight up on that car’s dash.) The stereo, which had been tuned into a classic rock station based in Prescott, stopped picking up a signal, but the Scan feature locked in on a Dewey/Humbolt-based station that was playing late 1970s disco. I’m talking about We Are Family, Kung-Fu Fighting, Copacabana, and other big AM-radio hits from my early college days, when my tastes in music were somewhat confused by the Top-40 thing and my job at a retail clothing store. Although the stereo’s two back speakers are dead and I have them turned off, I still cranked up the volume so I could reminisce while driving 75 mph into a high desert sunset.

For the record: I don’t like disco. But listening to it for short lengths of time does bring me back to a simpler time of life, when I only had one car to worry about (a 1970 Volkswagen Beetle that would never be reliable) and having $20 in my pocket made me feel rich.

I started smelling something weird at Kirkland Junction. Engine smell. Now the MR-2’s engine is behind the passenger cabin — it’s a mid-engine car — so I don’t usually smell the car’s engine problems. I figured it was the car in front of me, which was Mike’s truck. I got a little worried about it, but there didn’t seem to be a problem because he was keeping up his pace, probably listening to some blues music as loudly as I was listening to disco on crummy speakers.

On one of my glances in the rearview mirror, I noticed some brown splashed on my back window. Shit. My MR-2 was bleeding.

I checked my gauges. Everything was fine. But the smell was still there and there was definitely some kind of fluid splashing up from the engine compartment’s vent onto my back window.

I flashed my lights at Mike’s tail end. He was grooving with the blues band and didn’t see me. I slowed down. I wondered if my cell phone would work up there. Then I came around a bend and saw that Mike had also slowed down. He started to speed up, but I flashed him again and pulled over. I came to a stop behind him on the shoulder and turned on my 4-ways.

“My car is bleeding,” I told him, stepping out. “I’m afraid that if I shut off the engine it won’t start.”

“Pop the engine lid.”

I did as he instructed.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Turn it off.”

I turned it off. “What is it?”

“It looks like those guys who were going to do the oil change didn’t screw the cap on tight,” he told me.

The engine had been spitting oil out the filler cap, probably for the past five or ten miles. There was oil all over the top of the engine.

Fortunately, the cap had wedged itself on top of the engine. He got a paper towel from his truck and came back to the car, then pulled out the cap and screwed it on tight. Then he closed the lid.

“Start it up.”

I started it.

“How’s your oil pressure?”

“Low, I told him. “But it wasn’t low when I was driving.”

“Rev it up.”

I revved. The pressure needle climbed.

“It should be okay,” he said. “Keep an eye on it. And keep your RPMs down.”

We continued on our way. He kept his speed down to just around the speed limit. My oil pressure looked good. The radio station switched from disco to 50s rock. Ick.

I left the Toyota in the parking lot next to Dan’s place. Dan has a gate at his place that he locks at night.

Let me tell you about Dan.

Dan used to run a car fix-it place in Wickenburg called Dan’s Automotive. Mike and I took all our cars to him. He’s always been able to fix them and he doesn’t charge an arm and a leg. More than once I went to him with a stupid little problem when Mike was away — the kind of thing where someone knowledgeable about cars will just look at or listen to, adjust one thing, and the problem goes away — and he worked his magic on it without charging me a dime. He’s a laid back kind of guy, the kind of guy that Mike and I can deal with.

Then Dan sold the place to someone else.

I won’t mention names because I don’t have anything nice to say about the buyer. I continued to bring my cars to him. The Toyota was first. I had a nasty vibration at around 55 miles per hour that couldn’t be fixed with a tire balancing. He did something to it, and it seemed to be better. Then he asked if I’d ever had the timing belt replaced. The car had over 120,000 miles on it and I had to say no. He told me that the belt could go at any time and then it would be a costly repair. Changing it now could save money down the road. I bit and told him to change it. I also asked him to fix my air conditioner, which hadn’t worked right in about eight years. Four hundred plus dollars later, I got the car back. The air conditioning worked. But the car didn’t drive right. It had no power at all until I got to about 4800 RPM. Then the power kicked in. It was very noticeable in the lower gears. I brought the car back to him and told him about the problem. He had it for a few days and claimed to have fixed it. But he didn’t. The car now drove like shit and I was heartbroken.

I took it back up to Prescott. Every time I flew up to Prescott and drove the car, my heart ached. It had always been a sporty thing, one that was such a pleasure to drive. Now it drove worse than the VW Bug I’d had in college. And when I had a passenger on board, the added weight made things even worse.

To further add insult to injury, the air conditioner didn’t work very well, either.

Then we discovered that Dan had taken over the car fix-it place across the street from his old place. The guy he’d sold Dan’s to was not only a poor mechanic, but he was a poor businessman. He didn’t include a Covenant Not to Compete in the purchase agreement for Dan’s. Now Dan was back in business.

I brought the Toyota back down from Prescott to Dan at his new place and told him my sad story. “It’s breaking my heart every time I drive it,” I told him. “Please, please look at it and see what you can do.”

He did better than that. He fixed it. It appears that the timing belt was off by two notches. He set it the way it should be and the car was back to its fun-loving, tire-screeching, curve-blasting self. Woo-hoo!

So it was to this wrench-wielding hero that I brought the Toyota. I stopped in this morning to tell him why it was there.

“You know my Toyota loves you, don’t you?” I began.

He just smiled at me, probably wondering how such a wacko could be left roaming the streets.

“I tried to get the oil changed,” I said, “But they told me the oil pan was bashed in.”

“It’s been bashed in for a few years,” he told me. “You just have to work a little with the plug to get it back in.”

“Well, then can you just change the oil? And give it a look-over to make sure there’s nothing else wrong with it?”

“Sure.”

We talked a little about “restoring” it. It’s a kind of dream I have. Fixing it up so it looks like new. After all, it’ll be a classic car in just another six years. He was very non-commital, probably because he was wondering how such a wacko could be left roaming the streets.

“No rush,” I told him. “I’d like to have it back by Friday. It’s spending the summer in Williams.”

He promised to have it finished by then.

Now I’m thinking about the family photo I want to take: all my red cars and my red helicopter, together on the ramp at Wickenburg.

I’d better call the detailers. The Toyota and Jeep can really use a good cleaning.

As for the Toyota’s air conditioning, it doesn’t work at all anymore and probably never will.

June 3 Update: Apparently, the oil pan’s condition is worse than Dan thought. (I guess I bashed it a few more times since Dan last saw it.) He had to order a new oil pan from Toyota. Special order — can you imagine? So the Toyota will have at least one shiny part this summer. And this will be a costly oil change. Guess I won’t be driving it to my place on Howard Mesa anymore.

Days in My Life airports, cars, driving, Toyota MR-2

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I arrive at Howard Mesa and take care of a few unusual chores.

Last week, when I left Howard Mesa, I decided to check the water level in the big water tank. I tapped on it but couldn’t find the place where the water level was. So I opened the top and looked in. And saw a dead animal floating in the water.

There was a dead animal in my water supply. The water I bathed in. The water I washed my dishes in. Thank heaven it wasn’t the water I drank.

In my mind, the water was contaminated and had to be replaced. That meant it had to be drained out and someone had to scoop out that dead thing and any other dead things that might have been floating with it. And the water truck would have to come up to the mesa to bring fresh water.

Obviously, this was a job for Mike.

He arranged to meet the water truck at the bottom of the mesa this morning at 11 AM. We woke up at 5:30 to a cloudy day. The original plan had me flying my helicopter to Grand Canyon Airport (GCN), picking up my Jeep, and meeting him and his plane at Williams Airport. This way, he could avoid the 2-1/2 hour drive each way. The flight would take him less than an hour. But with low clouds, and t-storms in the forecast, I knew he wouldn’t fly. So I took off in Three-Niner-Lima while he took off in the Chevy.

I had an incredible 25-knot tailwind most of the way. At one point, my GPS showed a ground speed of 118 knots. Egads! And although it was cloudy, the air was smooth and there was no rain. A very pleasant flight. But with rain in the forecast, I decided to pick up the Jeep at GCN anyway, so I flew straight there. 1.2 hours on the Hobbs meter — a new record from Wickenburg. I’d left at 7 AM and had arrived at 8:15 AM. Wow.

I tied down the helicopter, placed a fuel order, and hopped in the Jeep. I bought $20 worth of regular gasoline at a whopping $2.39/gallon. I used my Papillon discount at McDonalds to buy a bacon egg cheese biscuit breakfast with orange juice (I’m very picky about my coffee). Then I hit the road for the 40-minute drive to Howard Mesa.

Did you know that when an antelope is running straight toward you, it looks just like a kangaroo? When I got to the mesa, I thought I was seeing a kangaroo until it turned and I saw what it really was. A kangaroo would have been too weird.

When I unlocked the camper door, I was greeted with an all-too-familiar beep-beep noise. It was the refrigerator, telling me that it was out of propane. Of course, it didn’t run out just before I got there. It ran out some other time, perhaps days ago, so all the food inside it had plenty of time to not only go bad, but get really stinky. Well, that’s not true. Only the freezer was really stinky. It had been full of frozen uncooked shrimp and frozen chicken potstickers. And ice. The shrimp and potstickers stunk to high heaven and the humidity caused by the melted and warmed ice had gotten a good mold crop growing. Are you grossed out yet? Well, you didn’t smell it. I did.

I cleaned out the freezer and fridge while I waited for Mike. His timing was perfect. I was just finishing when he pulled up. He went right to work on the water tank. He didn’t see the critter right away, but eventually did. He fished it out with a pool skimmer we use at home for our hot tub. (Like leaves fall in it.) He said it was very small. He offered to show it to me three times. He didn’t seem to think it required a water drain. But it was a dead animal. I didn’t care if it was the size of my thumb. It was dead. It was in my water. The water was tainted. I wanted it out.

We had to dump 800 gallons of water. We dumped a bunch of it into the trailer’s holding tank to rinse it out. Right now the trailer is connected to our septic system so nothing is actually “held” in the holding tank. But since the toilet uses so little water, I thought there was a chance that stuff wasn’t getting flushed down the pipe. So why not use some of that water to flush out the tank?Mike used the rest to make mud. He did this while I was waiting for the water truck man. I left at 10:45 and arrived at the bottom of the mesa at 10:58. I then proceeded to wait until 11:50, when the truck finally rolled into view. Good thing I’d brought a book with me. Mike called twice during that time; the first time to report that he’d spoken to the water man’s wife and the second time to tell me that she’d spoken to him and that he’d be there “any minute.” The truck followed me toward the mesa. I noticed that anytime we went up a hill — even a little hill — he fell way back. I decided to give him a choice on which road to take to the top. I stopped right before the turnoff to the state road and walked back to his truck. “You have a choice,” I said. “The steep road or the bumpy road.”"We took the bumpy road last time,” he told me, remembering his trip to us on Easter Sunday (what a guy!). “How steep is the steep road? What’s the grade?”"I don’t know,” I admitted. “But when I take the Jeep up, I have to shift into 4 wheel drive. Of course, I don’t usually carry 2,000 gallons of water over my drive wheels.”"Let’s take the bumpy road,” he said.

I led him up the state road. He did very well. We arrived at the camper and I parked. He pulled into position in front of the big tank, driving through some of that nice fresh mud Mike had made just for him. The tank was almost empty. Mike needed the water guy to help him tip it to pour the rest out. They did that, then the water guy helped us rinse it out with a jet of water from the truck. Satisfied that it was as clean as it would get, Mike put the fittings back on and the water guy started pumping.

While he pumped, we talked about his truck. It had a white plastic tank on back. You could see all 2,000 gallons of water on board, right through the plastic, and you could watch it drain from the tank as he pumped. The truck had a Chevy Duramax engine, like Mike’s truck, and weighed 17,000 pounds when it was full of water. Wow.

He told us that in Flagstaff, it was cheaper to have water delivered than to buy it from the city. It was only $80 per load. (That works out to only 4¢/gallon.) Of course, it was $150 per load (7.5¢/gallon) to us on top of Howard Mesa. But it sure beats fetching it yourself. And if there hadn’t been a mouse in the water, the 800 gallons we had left would have easily lasted me the rest of the season. That’s $150/year for water.

While we were doing odd jobs around the place, I decided to peek into the engine compartment for my Toyota. The Toyota lives at Howard Mesa these days and every time it’s parked for more than a week, mice take up residence in its engine compartment. I was supposed to put moth balls in there last time I was up, but I forgot. So when I opened the lid, I fully expected to find at least one mouse nest to clean out. Instead, I found a rabbit crouched on top of the engine. He was alive and very cute, with big brown eyes. He didn’t move when I saw him and asked what he was doing in there. He didn’t even move when Mike came over to look at him. Or when I took a picture. We were just starting to think that it was a mommy bunny sitting on some babies when it took off through the engine. It hit the ground running and gave Jack the Dog something to chase for a minute or so. I left the lid up to discourage other squatters from taking up residence.

When the water guy was done, we led him and his truck down the steep road. We had the camper’s gas tanks and a cooler with us. We made the trip into Williams where we had an extremely mediocre lunch, filled the gas tanks, and spent $100 on groceries — some of which replaced the items that had turned into the stinky mess in the freezer and fridge. We finished up our trip to Williams with Dairy Queen. Back at the camper, I put away the groceries while Mike took care of the gas tanks. A while later, the fridge was running again, with some dry ice to help it along.

Mike and Jack left at 4:00 PM. Since then, I’ve been doing odds and ends to set up housekeeping for the week, writing blog entries, and having dinner of potstickers. I wish the iced tea I made this afternoon would get cold already.

Autumn is coming. It’s 7:22 PM and already 66 degrees inside and out. Time to close up the place for the night.

Off-the-Grid helicopters, Howard Mesa, Toyota MR-2

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I make three good transportation decisions in the same day.

I’m just finishing up a week working at my summer job at the Grand Canyon. While I’m working, I live in my trailer at Howard Mesa. It’s a 36 mile drive or 28 nautical mile flight to work.

At the end of my work week, I fly home. Normally, I leave directly from Grand Canyon Airport at the end of my last work day. It’s a 1-1/2 to 2 hour flight at the end of a day when I may have already flown six or seven hours. The air is usually hot and full of thermals. Or thunderstorms have moved in. It’s not fun.

So here’s the situation last night. I get a bad night’s sleep, mostly because I have a headache and the wind keeps flopping the awning around. I wake fully at 5:15 AM. It’s cloudy. I make my first decision: I’m not going to fly home directly from the airport. Why? Because I simply don’t have enough time to pack everything up into the helicopter and close up the trailer.

Then I make my second decision: I’m going to drive to the airport. This one had some real logic behind it. It was cloudy and the weather folks were predicting a 50% chance of rain. There was a definite possibility that I wouldn’t be able to fly back from the airport at the end of the day. That means the helicopter would have to be left there overnight and retrieved in the morning. That would add an hour to my travel time the next morning when I needed to fly home. So I drove my Toyota, which had been parked at Howard Mesa for about a month, to work. It took exactly 41 minutes, including the amount of time I needed to open and close the gate.

Later, at the end of the day, I made my third decision: I’m going to drive the Jeep back to Howard Mesa. The Jeep had been parked at the airport for about a month. I use it on the days I fly in, as my local transportation. So I swapped the Toyota for the Jeep and drove back to Howard Mesa at the end of the day.

These turned out to be good decisions. The reason? First of all, I flew 6.5 hours and was exhausted. Certainly not feeling up to another 1.5 to 2 hours at the stick. Second of all, nasty thunderstorms were all over the area — especially at Howard Mesa. The roads were unbelievably muddy. The Toyota would never have made it up the Mesa. Heck, the Jeep almost didn’t — I skidded off the road into a ditch and needed to shift into 4-Low to get out. And flying up would have been completely out of the question.

So now I sit here in my trailer, toasty warm while it rains outside. The Jeep is covered with thick, reddish mud what will certainly turn a few heads the next time it rolls into civilization. The helicopter awaits me outside, where the dust is (hopefully) being washed off by the rain. Tomorrow, I’ll sleep as late as I can (probably until 5:30 if I’m lucky), have a leisurely breakfast, and pack everything up for my return trip to Wickenburg. The air will be cool and smooth for my flight. Sure, I’ll miss a morning at the office, but I can’t work ALL of the time, can I?

Days in My Life driving, Grand Canyon, Howard Mesa, Toyota MR-2, weather

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