10-31-06 BC camp
Well I made it to my 61st birthday but I am not sure how much longer I can last hanging out with these dirt bikers.
I pulled out of Goldfield and made my way down to Beatty. It is a nice little town at much lower elevation where it can get blazing hot in the summer but isn’t too bad in the winter. It is a gateway to Death Valley so they are set up for tourists and snowbirds. Geez, I almost fit in with the snowbirds but my rig looks a little different. It seems like everyone on the road these days has a huge fifth wheel trailer with several pop-outs or an enormous motor home. It is really rare to see anyone with a small camp trailer and so far mine is the only train I have seen on the road. My train must be somewhat legal as there have been several cops that have seen it and not stopped me. I have heard that there are some states that don’t allow you to pull two trailers but I suppose those are those chicken shit states back east, well maybe California too, where everything fun seems to be illegal.
This is at the turnoff to Pahrump. It seems like there is someone named Titus that is running for something. Someone had a little fun with this sign…..
Just down the road from the tits sign I found this Datura plant. I have a friend (Carla) in Miles who grew some sort of ornamental Datura and I said if I saw a wild one I would take a picture of it for her. These plants are real survivors and extremely hardy. This one was about five feet in diameter and looking pretty tough after a summer in a hot windy valley. You can just see one of the trumpet like flowers on top. This is also known as the Devils Deadly Nightshade and a member of the tomato family. The plant was made famous in the Don Juan Yaqui way of knowledge” books and the story is that several people have gone crazy smoking the seeds. That isn’t what made me the way I am, I never smoked any.
I made it down into Pahrump to the grocery store and got some grub. I picked out a nice piece of land where they had roads and will soon be a housing development for my night camp. In the evening there was a stream of cars coming back from Las Vegas. I guess this has turned into a bedroom community for LV. I think they had imagined it to be a retirement community, which I am sure it is also.
I didn’t feel comfortable going through Pahrump and going into LV that way, so I headed back out to highway 95 and followed it right through the middle of LV and out the other side to Boulder City. As it turns out, Tom was near by where I pulled in to call him and it was just a short hop over to his training center where I set up camp. It wasn’t long before Tom got his bike out and we made a little run up on the hill overlooking Boulder City. It really is a nice looking town from up here.
We picked up Bob on his KTM and went for another ride that over looks a big valley where the Colorado River runs. Bob is my new neighbor in Goldfield too. He is a retired Geo-hydrologist.
They are supposedly picking out the easy roads because I am a whiner about rough/sandy roads.
I made a big mistake!!! I let Tom take the Bloodhound out for a ride. He came back with a big smile on his face. He says that the Bloodhound isn’t the problem and didn’t directly indicate that I might be the problem, but what else could it be?
This got Tom all fired up and he put on his teaching hat. I am in school now and he is going to make me a dirt rider. Sheesh, the things you have to do to sell a piece of property. I hope I live though it.
By the same token I guess he figures that has to do almost impossible things just to buy a piece of property. This must be what they call ‘trials and tribulations of life’. Damn, it sure is fun……
We gathered up Bob for another run in the desert and he came with his BMW Dakar. They left me in the dust as usual near this power substation. Because of the dams produce power, there are power stations and the huge electric lines going all over this desert. They let you ride on the power lines, which is really nice as that opens up a huge chunk of land for riding.
This is a typical valley floor power line that we ride. They mostly are in great shape but I sure have to watch for those sand traps and loose deep gravel. Bob and Tom are way ahead in this photo, but they stop every now and then to see if I am still plodding along.
We made it out onto a very nice dry lake and I let the Bloodhound stretch its legs. Wow, these are a lot of fun.
We followed one of the power line roads to a paved highway that leads to the lake down a nice canyon. Tom on his dirt bike opted to take a really sandy twisty road back to town while Bob and I rode the pavement down the canyon.
I forget the name of the lake but it is the next one down from Lake Mead. There are a string of lakes on the river that they use for recreation and irrigation purposes down river.
It is sure nice to see the water in the desert. This lake is full but I have been told that Lake Mead is at 40% or something like that.
Tom and Karen are thinking of getting one of these building for their new property in Goldfield. We all went over to the ‘Tough Shed’ dealer and checked them out. They have lots of different models but this is the type they were thinking of getting. It would be somewhat larger than this but they want to start with a small building at first. They are living in a very small house now, so they are used to being efficient with space.
I got a little dust in the camera shutter again it appears. This is a house that one of Tom’s friends is building. He showed us around and it is all so different than anything I have ever seen. It is made with huge blocks of cement/Styrofoam that are about eight feet long and maybe a foot and a half or two feet thick and two feet high. He says that they weigh five hundred pounds each. They have a R value of 40 and you can cut them with a knife. To put in electrical wire, he just takes a chain saw and makes a shallow cut that he pushes the wire into. He takes a router and ‘routs’ out the place for the electrical box. The house is going to be heated by solar with a 7500 gallon hot water storage tank buried out side. The blocks are made in Mexico from the packing material used when they send parts and pieces of things that they assemble in Mexico, for import into the US.
This a view of the floor from the basement. He used recycled wide flange steel beams for this floor and the span is something over thirty feet.
Everything in this house seems to be extremely well thought out and using the
newest cutting edge components.
Here is one for my flower fiends. No frost here…..
Tom took me to another overlook yesterday after a lesson on how to loosen up and learn to stand and weave on my bike. We went out a power line road that was sandy in spots and rocky and rough in the other spots. It is always a beautiful view when we get there but it sure beats me up. Tom says that it is all a matter of me learning how to ride the Bloodhound right. I will have to say that I have come along way in being able to travel these roads better. I am standing more and learning to recover in those bad spots. I had some close calls but they don’t count if you don’t go down and eat a little dirt or sand.
On the way back Tom took the little bumpy trail along the side of the paved road. it looked like he was on a hobby horse with the bike just bucking back and forth while he just floated along. It was beautiful.
I have been using the rowing machine to get my leg somewhat strengthened in the morning when Tom’s clients are not there. Karen comes in, in the morning before work, to work out. She is an amazing in her strength and focus. She was a professional mountain bike racer (Diamond Back Bikes) and Tom said she did miles in 5 minutes in school. She just had knee surgery a couple of weeks ago but as you can see from this photo, it isn’t slowing her down that much.
One of Toms clients was the man who invented the space pen. It has a pressurized ink cartridge that is supposed to write anywhere. If I ever get to the moon on my motorcycle, I will be able to write with it, if I cant bring my laptop. The guy was over 90 years old and was working out at Tom’s. He had a place just around the corner from here. Tom looks a little ‘spaced’ here, I guess it is from too much waiting to see if I can ride down simple unpaved roads.
If you are wondering what camp in BC looks like, here ya go. That is Darcy protecting my camp. We are getting along well and I am getting some good dog pets in, which I needed.
