Brazilian dinner in Quartzsite Arizona

A few months ago, we were invited to a family dinner in Austin, Texas. Carol made a unique dinner of rice, beans, salsa, eggs, greens and mango. She said she learned it when she lived in Brazil many years ago. The dinner was so beautiful, and delicious, that I posted a photo of it here on our blog. Almost immediately, I got a comment on that entry from Gypsy John saying, "Yummm .... I want some of that!" So, I determined that, next time we saw Gypsy John, I'd make that dinner and invite him over. You guessed it, he's here in Quartzsite (read his blog/website here) so we had the dinner here at 'the cabin'. All I had to go by was memory and the picture in the blog - but it came out pretty good. Thanx Carol! And, thanx John for the photo below.

Christmas in the Desert

Ahhhhh, we're back at 'The Cabin' in Quartzsite with our adopted family; Lynne, John, Dick and Frankie. It is sooo nice to sit around the fire on a cool desert night. But, Ariel was impatient to open presents ... she *knows* which one is hers! We started Christmas morning with Mimosas and a fabulous brunch made with contributions from the whole 'gang'. Our outing for the day consisted of a little Geocaching Then continued on - down the same dirt road - to the Bar in the Desert. This place is just too fascinating ... no electricity out here - totally self-contained with solar power and water tanks. Yet they're able to support a band. We enjoyed a couple drinks and our unique surroundings. Odie and I even got up on the dance floor for a couple turns - no-one else would dance with me! Uh-oh, if you take a look at last year's Christmas photos, you'll see that we're dangerously close to creating a *gasp* tradition here! hmmmmm We hope all of you had as nice a Christmas as we did!

Ho Ho Ho

I really think that a lot of these RVs go *way* overboard in the Christmas decorations. I mean ... where do they keep all this stuff the rest of the year? But I thought this one was rather tasteful ... don't you? Christmas roadkill.

Desert Sunset

Both the sunrises and the sunsets are often spectacular out here in the desert. We don't see the sunrises very often - remember I said it's cold! But I got out the camera for a particularly nice sunset the other night. It looks like our Datastorm satellite dish is communicating with Mars! And, as long as I was out, I thought I'd show you how RVers can still decorate for Christmas! This is not us, mind you ... Jim hung one little string of multicolored lights on our awning - and we'll get out the Santa hats for the side view mirrors when we get back to Quartzsite!

Desert Cold

I'm serious ... it's *cold*! When we know it's going to freeze overnight, we should probably detach our water hose so it doesn't burst. So far, we've been lucky. brrrr

Desert Dry

Something I must have with me AT ALL TIMES is chapstick. Otherwise my lips would crack and fall off! I use the term 'chapstick' loosely though. When I use the brand name stuff - I have to reapply every hour or so. I found some 'organic' lip balm at a natural food store in Austin and I only need it once or twice a day ... a good find. Being a Florida girl, you learn not to leave a box of crackers open overnight - they'll be soggy and worthless in the morning. Here, I left a box on the counter ... wide open ... for a couple days. When I decided to clean up I almost tossed the crackers. Before tossing them, I picked one out and bit into it. Crunchy, crispy as the day it hit the shelf! Amazing. So, we're still hanging out at Palm Creek and helping people with the WiFi. We've gone to the gym a couple more times. I think our main motivation is our 'treat' in the jacuzzi afterward! I wonder how much water they need to add every day in order to keep up with evaporation? Next week we'll be heading back to Quartzsite to spend Christmas with Lynne, John, Frankie and Dick.

Arizona

Well, we're back in Arizona. After a couple days of R&R in Quartzsite after the Austin trade show, we were back on the Arizona highways to Casa Grande. We're currently staying at Palm Creek Golf and RV resort because they have LOTS of WiFi users needing help. There's almost 2000 sites here. It's nice to feel wanted ... the management here provides us with a complimentary site. We told them we weren't sure what our schedule is, but we'll definitely stay here for a couple weeks. They reserved us a site thru the end of March! hmmm, think they're telling us something? Here's our site: And, can you tell that the weather is beautiful? It's even warming up today - 70 degrees in the sun. It's been in the low 40s at night - brrr. We were here in January last year and it rained a lot. I don't think it has rained since! I've taken to boiling water in an open pan just to put a little humidity in the air inside the motorhome. Our first visit here this year was last month and we were VERY busy because there was a backlog - both Jim and I were out and about all day every day. This time, Jim is doing most of the 'housecalls' and I get to do my normal computer work. We're also giving our seminars. We really like doing those - especially when people tell us afterward that they went home and tried the things that they learned and their WiFi works so much better now!! Here's Jim coming back from some of his rounds. Odie loves to ride in the cart! We've also been able to take advantage of some of the facilities this time around. Believe it or not, we went to the gym and did 20 minutes on the stairmaster. I know, it's nothing like the 1.5 hour workouts I used to have with my dance group, but hey! it's a start. Then, of course, we rewarded ourselves with a soak in the hot tub. Life is Good. Here's photos from Palm Creek's website of the gym and an aerobics class I may try next.

Convention Time

Last week Jim and I flew to Austin to help work the Coach Connect / Road Connect booth at the ARVC convention. The Phoenix airport is a ZOO!! We allowed 2 hours extra time before our flight and we needed every minute of it. Austin was a piece of cake. I didn't realize how big a city Phoenix is and how small Austin is. It's fun to see how a booth comes together for a trade show like this. You only do it once/year and in the meantime, everything has changed, so you can't just pull out what you did last year. We decided to use part of the booth to present a short seminar, but it needed to take up as small a space as possible. Our projector can do rear projection, but we needed a screen to project onto. Jim and I put our heads together and came up with a big black piece of foam core. We cut out the projection area. Then, Jim found some nice edging to finish it off and a piece of gauzy white material to stretch over the opening. We were quite proud of ourselves for having concocted this. And it did do the job ... but it still took up too much room and looked a little more like a Punch and Judy show than a high-tech presentation. So, at the 11th hour, Frank called around to rental centers and ordered a 60 inch TV with computer inputs. It was delivered at 9am when the show started at 10! Hey! Plenty of time! And, it looked great. The other thing that comes together for trade shows is people. It is so rare to have everyone involved in the company together. So, we did our share of partying! Whew! It's a good thing this only happens once a year. I'm exhausted. We're back in our cozy motorhome in Quartzsite, AZ now and I spent all day yesterday in bed, with a novel, nursing a cold. We get back on the road tomorrow.

Thanksgiving in Quartzsite

Back 'home' with the whole 'family'. This is where we spent Christmas last year. Such a great place - room for 3 motorhomes to park, and a 'cabin' where we can all gather for meals etc. Pretty good parallel parking job, doncha think? And, we get to take our morning walk with Lynne and John, letting the dogs run free in the desert and even getting a little exercise ourselves hiking up the hill. Gee, maybe we should set up a geocache here?! Then, on Saturday, we even got our kayaks in the water!! Yep, kayaking the might Colorado River. Yeah - I know, it's pretty tame here. We put in at Blythe, about 90 miles north of the Mexico border. I understand the Colorado is barely a trickle by the time it gets there. It was great to get outside and paddle ... even if we didn't have to paddle very hard! To see a picture of me, you gotta go to Lynne's blog! This is the second time she's beat me to the post! So, tomorrow we get on a plane to Austin to work the Coach Connect booth at the ARVC convention. We're leaving the motorhome and the dog with Dick, Frankie, Lynne and John. I probably won't post in here till we get back next weekend. Hope you all had as wonderful a Thanksgiving weekend a we did!

Geocache by the Saguaros

Lynne and John came and stayed in the site next to us for the weekend. She beat me to the punch, publishing it in her weblog! It didn't take long after they got here for Jim put John to work climbing up on a roof and repairing an antenna connection. But, they are so good at making it clear that all work and no play is no good! We had dinner together Friday and Saturday night and, we took a few hours off on Sunday and went geocaching. It was a short - but steep and challenging, walk. This was a quick find. Then, back home to Palm Creek. And, back to work. Here's how I scoot around this 2000 space park to help people with their Wi-Fi Internet connections. Tuesday morning we gave another seminar. This one was on 'Safe Computing'. Next, it's our turn to visit. We'll be headed to Quartzsite to stay with Lynne and John ... and Frankie and Dick ... For the Thanksgiving weekend.

Seminar Time

The other day, Jim and I did our Wi-Fi seminar. We had an audience of about 35 people. Some folks who had never tried it, some who tried it and liked it, and some who tried it and hated it. But we find that everyone appreciates some good, straight information. I get such a kick out of hearing Jim ramble on and on ... when I can hardly get him to say 3 words to me sometime! For example, there have been times that Jim will say something like, "I ran into Harry at Home Depot today." I'll say, "Cool, tell me about it." Jim, "I just did." But give him an audience ... on a topic he knows so much about ... and he can talk for hours! The next day, I made a lot of customer visits while Jim worked with the network engineers troubleshooting some issues. Ever have one of those days?

Busy, Busy

Sorry, I haven't had any time to post on this blog lately. I'm handling most of the visits to WiFi users in this park. Jim used to do most of that, but he's been busy doing other things: Yikes! I better make sure our health insurance is paid up huh?

Deja Vu and Weighty Subjects

We left Austin on Thursday morning, traveled all day and into the night, and we were still in Texas! Here we are Friday morning at the rest area where we slept. And, Odie was happy to find that he had his very own rest area: So sorry that we couldn't stop and take advantage of some of the sights in West Texas. Someday we really must spend some time in the Big Bend area. And, we even passed right by a couple other sights on our 'must-see' list: Caverns of Sonora and Balmorhea Springs. They scuba dive there! But, alas! We have a job to do and we need to be in Las Cruces right now to do it. If you want to see a blog by people who are really seeing ALL the sights in this country, check out our friends Diane and Andy. Diane's been keeping a wonderful blog - showing us everything we've missed! Gee, thanx Diane! But then I remind myself, there aren't too many people I know (who are working) and get to wake up to scenes like this: That's our site at Hacienda RV resort, where we had some work to do for Coach Connect. We were also here last year. It's Deja Vu all over again! We always look at the Datastorm Users Map when we stop at a new place to see who else may be parked near us. At Hacienda, we saw that Weigh It was right in the same park, so we went over and said hi. Come to find out they will weigh our rig (each corner independently) without us doing a thing. And, it only cost $30! We've had this done before but it's probably been a year - so we said, let's do it. They do the weighing right at your site, all you have to do is drive up a couple feet. Here's how they do it: Then they feed all the numbers into their computer and give you a printout. We sit down and discuss it. The good news was that our weight is very evenly distributed left to right, front to rear. More good news is that we haven't added any weight during our life and travels of the last year. The bad news is that we were about 1,000 pounds overweight last year, and we're still overweight now. They put a little more air in our rear tires according to the tables of weight to tire pressure ratios. And, we vowed to toss a few more items. If you've been reading our blog for a while, you know that we got 6 really good brand new tires last fall. So we still feel pretty safe. But we know that weight and tires, tires and weight - that's probably the most important aspect of being safe on the road. So, we will keep working on it. Jim finished his work at Hacienda and we got back on the road. Another Deja Vu. Here's the highway photo I took of west New Mexico on Highway 10. It sure looks an awful like the photo I took last year on this same stretch of highway! And, we also stopped again at St. Clair winery in Demming, NM. We enjoyed the wine tasting, stocked our 'cellar' and even replaced the wine glass (bought here last year) that we broke! Now we're in Arizona where we have work waiting for us at Palm Creek Golf and RV. We stayed the night at Cochise Terrace RV resort. We're over 4,000 feet in elevation here, and the weather is crystal clear and 55 degrees. What we noticed right away is that, although the park was clearly able to handle big rigs, there were a lot of smaller ones parked here. We discovered that it was a rally of RVing Women. Cool. And, here's a Roadtrek, our favorite camper van style of RV. Actually, it's Roadtreks that started this whole adventure. My Mom had her eyes on them for many years and so, introduced Jim and me to them as well. That's what we were planning to get (actually put a deposit down) until we decided to go full-time and found our current motorhome on eBay!