1-19-05 Crime wave, cactus, turds, tattoos, desert camp with real wood

The night before last, which was the night that Ken bailed out and went home. There was an incident I failed to report on. In the middle of the night after all the generators were turned off and probably everyone was asleep, there roared to life a car without much of a muffler that tore out down the road toward the exit. The exit is about a half mile or so and this guy had it floored and was bouncing and bottoming out as the road is not graded and is just the normal contour of the desert. It brought me up straight out of bed to watch the numbskull do his trick. It is the rule in camp that you go just about as slow as you can go to keep from creating dust and especially at night to keep noise down. I didn’t think much of it, just that it was odd behavior.

 A nice cactus in the morning sun, it is pumped full of rain water. You can see how the desert has really greened up with all the rain they have had. Even the Palo Verde trees are getting leaves and I have seen several California Poppies along the road. there are lots of little flowers in bloom but no big show yet.

When I got back to camp yesterday early evening I had a hard time finding a camp spot and was at the very rear of the campground turning around when a guy came out of a hobo looking camp and yelled ‘welcome another Montanan’. Well I had to stop and talk with the guy. He had no teeth, long hair and very grubby appearance. It turns out that he and his brother came down from Kalispell, MT for the warm weather. This dude’s bro finally came over to chat too. he had on a pair of cut off jeans and flip flops and was covered  in tattoos and scars. They said they didn’t mind if I camped not far from their camp and since it was that or some huge motor home, I opted for the spot. They were real friendly and invited me over for a visit which I did after I made some grub and checked my email. They had a Yamaha six fifty and they said they were going to ‘tear up the desert’ with it. Great… We got to yakking and one of them said that there was a burglary last night. The car that zoomed out last night evidently stole a generator from one of the campers and evidently almost got caught, hence the speed run to safety. They actually came up with several variations of the story and I thought the car came out of the vicinity of their camp so don’t know the ‘rest of the story’. I felt a little uncomfortable when they were around my camp. They came over several times to check out my camp stove which really does sound like a jet about to take off, and just to talk. I got the feeling that they were kind of looking the place over. They were nice but I had an uneasy feeling.

The turd hauler was out early this morning trolling. There are two of these guys looking for business and this dude was making an early morning run with his wife. It was so early I bet some of the campers hadn’t made their deposits in their holding tanks yet. On my way out I saw a guy selling water from a big tank that he was hauling in a trailer. Some of these motor homes are so big that the owners don’t want to move them and chance someone taking ‘their’ spot. These motor homes cost a quarter million or more and here they are camped in a free campground rather than pay a few bucks and have their hookups. Maybe the threat of a burglary might make some of the wives force their husbands to move to a more secure place.

 The guy with the tattoos came over this morning and I got to take a good look at his tattoos and hear the story of them. On his chest is a picture of a girl that he says looks exactly like  his ex wife. Under the picture is 6 6 7 which he says is the feminine notation for the 6 6 6 of the devil. I didn’t know that and may or may not be true, but he had it tattooed and he believed she was!!!

He had eyes on his elbows to keep an eye on what was behind him. He had a huge picture of two skeletons screwing on his ribs on one side and a sort of skinned female in a anguish pose on the other ribs. On his back was the coolest of the tattoos. He said it was a work in progress. It represented a dragon that had ripped his skin to revel the mussel structure underneath. He said it was taken directly from a medical text and it was anatomically correct. There wasn’t any color on it yet, just the main blue/black work. I think it will be pretty cool when it gets done. This guy is quite a specimen to look at. He survived a car crash and he really must have gotten screwed up bad. He has huge scars all up and down his legs, arms and his body has long scars too. he said they didn’t think he would live. When he stands up straight one knee is about three inches above the other but they were able to make both legs about the same length and he is held together by pins and bolts. He said the cold weather was just killing him up in MT and they decided to come down to AZ for the warm temps. I talked with another guy this morning who said he was down here from Michigan for his arthritis. He said it was –54 up there, and I told him I had a brother up at the very tip of the Upper Peninsula.  He said he must be dumb. Well, my brother isn’t dumb, but he makes some really screwy decisions some times. J

I have been looking for the guy that was teaching me how to knap obsidian to make arrowheads, but have not been able to find him or the other guy that does it. I did find one guy that said he saw him around, but didn’t think he made enough to keep his space profitable. I talked with several vendors and the story seems to be that it isn’t so good this year. it could be from a combination of things like  the cold rainy weather they had two weeks ago and it could be that the economy is not doing so hot. One guy said that quite a few of the vendors just packed up and left their spot and another guy told me that fourteen of the vendors in that area were not coming back next year.

snip from the Mogambo Guru
And of course, no day is complete without somebody showing me that inflation is roaring back to life and is consuming us all. In his spare time, he has figured out, "In 2002 dollars, the Dow actually has gone from 8,000 to 6,000. You actually lost 25% of your nest egg over the past two years!" So, as an example, if you had $100,000 in purchasing power two years ago, and now you have only $75,000 in purchasing power, thanks to the devaluation of the dollar by 25%, and you want to privatize Social Security by forcing people to put money into the stock market? Hahahaha!
end snip.

I haven’t been buying anything, just walking around and talking with the folks. I did find a couple of guys that are going to Mexico this winter but they travel on a different level than I do. One guy said that it is really reasonable down there and they found places to stay that were only sixty-five a night. When he saw the shock on my face he said I could probably find something cheaper but it wouldn’t be as nice. Well no shit Sherlock. I told him that I had a motor home and intended to stay in it. A Micro it may be, but it is still a motor home to me. He didn’t know how much it cost to ferry across from Baja to the mainland which I will try to find out as I think that is what  I want to do if it isn’t too pricey. It seems like the only people I have met so far that have gone down to Mexico have only gone to the tourist places. I have decided that I am going to Slab City and surly I will find some low budget, back road, adventurers there who have experience in Mexico. 

So here I am camped out in a huge expanse of desert somewhere west of Blythe and east of Desert Center. I am the only small light for many miles other than the highway, which is a string of cars and big trucks on their way to or from LA. I found a nice dead tree along the track and I stopped and cut off several hunks and picked up quite a few branches. I have my little bow saw that really comes in handy, but I sure do miss my chainsaw on this hard ol’ desert wood. When the wood is this hard ya gotta make Indian fires and put the middle of a long piece over the fire and burn it in half and then in half again. This desert wood sure does make a nice fire. When I was camping with Ken I picked up a couple of two by four road kill along the way and that makes a fire but it isn’t as pleasing as ‘real wood’.