Well, somebody’s getting away from it all, and they’re taking it with them as they go.
I don’t get around much anymore, so I had never seen this before until just recently: A Mercedes Sprinter RV … with a rooftop tent. Another Sprinter … towing one of those Igloo-looking trailers, a Scamp or Casita.
Sheeyit. And here I’d been thinking $250 a night was a little spendy for a motel room someplace that isn’t enjoying triple-digit temperatures or an End of Days deluge.
Instead of loading up the old Highway Hilton I don’t have for an extended voyage I’m not taking, I’ve been getting my exercise a little earlier in the morning, before Tōnatiuh starts taking orders for gabacho asada.
Yesterday it was a leisurely couple of hours on the bike with some like-minded gents of a certain age and two 21-ounce bottles in my cages. Today it was a 6-mile solo hike on the rolling foothills trails, with a 2-liter bladder in the backpack and a stout staff for disputations with serpents (none rose to the challenges of my staff or the thermometer).
The idea is to get back under cover before the heat advisory kicks in noonish. Which I did. Even so, a bit of grub, some cold water, a warm shower, and a short nap by the fan all seemed like excellent ideas, better even than a large RV towing a smaller one.
But then what? There’s the whole rest of the day to deal with. However does one fill the hours?
Well, we can always follow the misadventures of that guy, whose shysters are arguing that it’s cruel and unusual to bring his fat ass to trial while he campaigns to reclaim his old job, after which he can drop all the charges against himself.
Or we could root for an MMA cage match, a weenie-measuring contest, or perhaps death rays at 10 paces between Zuck and Schmuck, who are quarreling over which of them is the One True King of the social-media hellscape.
Can’t one of them just pull a phone from a stone and settle it that way? My calls to Merlin keep going to voicemail.
Mad Blog Media 
I hear you folks hit triple digits. Yech. We only hit the low to mind 90’s up this way, 2,000 feet higher, thank goodness.
Took the dog for a hike this morning after slathering on sunscreen. Got home, gorged on water and a little cheese and tofurkey sandwich, did some puttering around the house, and then hit the hills on the Cannonball for an hour 45, by which time my water bottles were zeroed out.
Between human input and El Nino, sure is hot out there.
Yup, triple digits is The New Normal here for the near future.
Nothing like what they’re getting in Arizona, though. Judas Priest. If you thought Phoenix was bad before, have a squint at it now.
The Geezer Ride here starts at 7:30 now with the idea of wrapping up 10-ish. And I guess I’m gonna have to start fetching a cooler along on my grocery runs.
Meanwhile, Herself observed a couple overcooked zombies on her way to work yesterday. One, a woman with a bunch of bags on the deck along Tramway with a few first-responders having a look at her, and just a short distance from her was the other, staggering along in the left lane of Tramway, a multilane, median-divided high-speed state highway. Cars were swerving to avoid the dude.
A third got clocked on I-40 at Eubank — a teenager fleeing the police, apparently — but she didn’t actually see that one. Think about being homeless and addicted in this heat. Hell would look like a Virgin Islands vacation.
Meanwhile, I just got served up an ad for a $39 room at a casino in Laughlin, Nevada, where today’s high is expected to be (wait for it. …) 114°. No thank you, please. Sounds like a bad bet.
The other day you pondered TdF market penetration these days. Well, I know who’s NOT covering it:
It’s all about the Bundle, according to Joshua Benton at Neiman Journalism Lab, who is aghast at learning that The New York Times will no longer promote what it does best: Its coverage of global news. Writes Benton:
That was a classic post. Kinda like a Reader’s Digest condensed version of a classic foaming rant, complete with mind altering imagery. I can see those two sumbitches tugging on that phone in a stone. Chapeau, buddy, you still got the touch.
We had a 17 foot Casita for 8 years. Though it is small and light as trailers go, you still need a big pickup to tow it in the mountains.
Thankee, Paddy me boyo. One good thing about being a data hoarder is there’s lots of loose info scattered around in the old cranial attic; all I gotta do is kick it into a pile at the curb and stick a “Free” sign in it.
You can’t go wrong with an Arthurian Legend reference. I’ve forgotten how many takes on that I’ve read or watched over the years: Disney, T.H. White, John Steinbeck, John Boorman, Monty Python … I may even have dipped into Malory’s version at some point.
Occasionally I miss having regular deadlines. Them sumbitches is stimulating.
How’s the weather down your way? You guys having to hunker in the bunker too? We open all the doors and windows first thing to let the cool morning air in, then close doors, windows, blinds and curtains and keep the a/c at 80°, which feels about right.
Our heat routine is been the same as yours. The rains have started, but they are small storms that don’t last. We have had no measurable rain at our place. The 100 degree days ended last week. Now it’s high 90s. Early morning walks are our answer for keeping the heart going. Duffy is 13 now and slowing down. He hates the heat.
Just read the forecast summary for the next week. High pressure dome moving West back over us. !00s are coming back to us this weekend. Nothing like in Tucson or Phoenix though. We are close enough to the border that the illegal storms and outflows can re4ach us before they hit the wall.
If you receive an ice cube in an envelope in your mailbox, that will be from me. If you receive an envelope that is dry, crusty and water stained, you can blame your postman for stealing the ice cube.
I wonder if contractors in the desert SW are receiving more inquiries from people wanting to have basements installed under their homes.
Enjoy those earlier AM rides, runs and hikes.
Does that work? I mean a basement in the southwest? Here in the Mitten State my walkout basement is sometimes 10 degrees cooler than the upstairs so I rigged fans to blow the cool air back up the stairs that is dropping down into basement. Lo and behold my high school science teacher was right! Warm air rises and cold air drops! Turns out running a few lower voltage fans is less costly than the 220AC air conditioner compressor/furnace blower.
I just figure a basement puts you that much closer to Hell.
After you move here to the Southeastern part of Aridzona and try to dig a hole to plant a tree, you understand why there are no basements. Plus, you learn what a caliche bar is.
Yo y Hola mi amigo, Paddy Me Boyo: We lived in Tucson several times and, in our initial homeowner effort, spent merciless (and sweat-filled) hours/days pick-axing caliche (4′ deep by 6′ wide) so as to plant some mesquite and other trees for eventual shade.
They grew fantastically quickly when we returned for visits over the years compared to other less laborious neighbors; but when we visited a few years back, they had all been “eliminated”. Too much work I guess to prune and pick up the seed pods.
Basements ….. no thanks! 🙂
I do recall caliche. It was something that I would periodically run into while MTB’s in various Texas locales. It was an extreme bitch to clean off and one of my frames bore the worn through scars in the paint from where the coated tire spun around. I suppose from a geology perspective it could be considered a near approximation of sedimentary rock. Highly compacted silt and clay soil from years of flood runoff. Certainly difficult to excavate. But with the proper heavy equipment as is used in large construction projects, possible to get through. I live in the land of volcanic basalt, so everything can be got through, eventually.
I don’t know whether it was proper caliche, but there was a clay base underlying the sandy trails in some Bibleburg parks and open spaces that was like quick-setting cement after a good rain.
Palmer Park and Sondermann Park had the worst of it, especially the latter. I rode in there just once after a rain. That stuff would latch like a Gila monster onto frames, forks, tires, shoes, bibs and jersey, anything and everything it touched. By the time you found a water source to start dealing with it, it was too late. Time for the hammer and chisel.
If it looks like caliche, sticks like caliche, and hardens like caliche, chances are that’s what it was. I ran into it in Georgia once.
So you sou’westerners are saying geo-thermal cooling doesn’t stand a chance out there due to this caliche being like armor?
No, geo-thermal cooling / heating using a heat pump is certainly possible here. Not sure what equipment they use to bore the necessary holes or trenches. But, I think digging a basement is possible but way too expensive. Apples and oranges, heh?
Here’s an answer.
https://kjzz.org/content/708380/qaz-why-dont-homes-arizona-have-basements
Aha, KJZZ. A fine radio station. Many’s the time I listened to their jazz programs whilst recreating in McDowell Mountain Regional Park. KNAU in Flagstaff is another good’un for those of us who enjoy the classical. I once wrote that it was possible to drive from coast to coast and never be out of earshot of a public-radio fundraiser.