Brownie's

Decided to do a run to Brawley today to exercise Goose's wings and charge up the battery.  Also to charge the phone and laptop.  I don't want to be one of those irritating campers who constantly asks for charging privileges, even though it has been offered.

The Slab Spa and Reducing Diet is in full effect.  My first full day I had a cup of coffee in the morning and ate absolutely nothing all day until Chili Bob came to fetch me for supper with Rich and Mary.  Mary made scalloped potatoes with leftover Christmas  ham, and she had saved me a plate.  I'd gone to Calipatria to visit my favoritest hardware store in the whole world, Zendejas True Value Hardware.  And also to do a garbage and water run at the rest stop.  When I got back Mary fired up the generator to heat it up the plate she saved for me in the microwave.  It's the oceans of light that does it, I think, or maybe that you are too busy catching up with friends and getting pulled into long, meandering, interesting conversations with all sorts of people who like nothing better than to converse, or else you find yourself stopping on the way back to camp to just look at the stars, brilliant and amazing, filling up the bowl of the desert night, and somehow eating just seems so unimportant.

Breakfast today was coffee and one slice of the excellent cinnamon raisin bread from mia kara amika Biela, toasted on KD's stove using the folding toaster I'd picked up at Wally World on the way in.  That was hours ago.  I'd gotten up early (another sort of amazing thing, since I usually am not a morning person).  But as I said to the person who asked me what had gotten into me, I'm a Slabber.  We get up at dawn to dump tanks, haul water, fetch wood, make coffee and play a couple hands of poker, all before ten A.M..  In fact I don't really qualify as a true Slabber, and all I really did was make coffee and sit staring out at the early morning light stealing across the desert.  But that's enough.

Eventually I stirred myself to get organized and perform the morning's ablutions and a couple of other chores, and by the time I was on the road to Brawley I realized I was really hungry.  Brownie's was calling.

Brownie's is one of those comfy, old-fashioned restaurants that you don't see much of at home.  They offer Mexican and classic American food, solid, dependable fare, served in a comfortable, homey dining room with walls covered in sports memorabilia, celebrity photos (many of them signed by the celebrities themselves), class group photos from the local elementary school dating back to the fifties, and assorted other local memorabilia.  To me, Brownie's is all about comfort food in a place I come to be on holiday, far away from all reminders of my troubles.  I'm very fond of it.

Having a classic BLT with potato salad on the side.  KD's cupboards and ice box are stocked with food, but I thought I deserved a treat, and it gives me a chance to put up an update using their outlet (I steered unerringly to the table with a plug, like the well-seasoned travel blogger I am!)  I can also recommend their chicken fried steak.  They make that sucker with tri tip, and it is a supreme example of the art.  If you are passing through Brawley and wanting comfort food, stop at Brownie's.  They are located right on Main Street in Brawley, California.  Brownie's gets Five Trees On The Mountain.

Jerry Rice's signed jersey from his days with the Raiders and a wall of happy sports memories.

Slab City!

Pulled in about 3:30.  Met the peeps and I'm still welcome.  Here's Kadydid and the Goose.  Kadydid has arrived.

Holy Stove, Holy Cooking Pot, Holy Ramen!

It's a signal moment.  I have cooked in the trailer.  Celebrate this moment with me.

 

 

Some meals are so pure and so perfect that they become holy in our memory, crystalline moments of transcendence that will never be forgotten.  The Last Supper seems to have been one, and perhaps the first taste of manna the Israelites had in the desert.  I had such a meal the first time I went to Burning Man. After days of frantic preparations and an epic journey to reach Black Rock City that seemed like it would never end, an exhausted last push to make camp and then a collapse into the oblivion of sleep, my brother made a batch of Mussels Provencal.   We'd been eating bad fast food and junk food snacks or not eating at all for long stretches in the push to get ready and the long drive to get there.  And then, that first meal, simple and pure, broth with butter and wine and the humble mussel still in its shell, it was like nothing I'd ever tasted.  To have real food, made by hand and served hot, eaten in a kind of dazed silence. It was so wonderful that I tried to recreate it the following year, but while I got the recipe right and it tasted good, I couldn't recapture that sublime purity, the holiness of my first meal in Black Rock.

 

But just now, I came close.  I pulled in to Brawley about 9:20, and messed around deciding what to do next.  It didn't make sense to run out to the Slabs and try to find my peeps and set up camp in the dark, so I prepared to spend the night at, you guessed it, the Walmart.  I needed some supplies so I went in to do the traditional pre-Slab Walmart shopping run.  I was hungry, and with the trailer it just isn't practical to go hunting for more fast food, and I'm sick of it anyway.  I happened to see a bunch of ramen noodles, and I decided I would get a package and light the stove and make a meal.

 

The crew at Dr. George's got the honor (and risk) of lighting the stove for the first time in god knows how long to make sure it worked.   Then I lit it for the first time before leaving home, to test it and make sure I could do it.  But nothing had been cooked yet.

 

I rooted around and found a pot and some water and a measuring cup and I turned on the gas at the tank and lit the stove and put on water to boil.  Such a simple, basic, domestic act, but what a triumph after this long, long journey with KD.  Cheap ramen, staple of bachelors and broke college students, costing only twenty eight cents, but so perfect for this inaugural meal.  It was hot and good, and the steam beat up into my cold face, and I could not have asked for anything better.  Holy holy holy!  Holy ramen that feeds us in the desert!

 

I haven't busted through the wall yet, but I'm getting close.

 

Coachella TA

Just pulled in.

Ontario TA

Just hit the ginormous Ontario TA.  More later.

Boxing Day Morning on Frazier Mountain Parkway

I once heard a comedy routine about how dumb it is to realize you are cold enough to need another blanket but somehow be unwilling to get up and get the one that is folded up at the foot of the bed.  Why does that happen?  I think it happens when you are almost warm enough to go to sleep, but not quite.  You somehow think if you just curl up tight enough, it will be ok.  It took me a long time to brave the full cold and pull down a second sleeping bag to go over the down bag.  The down bag would have been warm enough if I'd been zipped up in it, but I just had it opened up like a blanket and cold air was leaking in around the edges.  When I finally gave in and spread the 40 degree bag over me as well, I was a lot more comfortable.  And in case you are wondering why Mr. Heater wasn't doing his duty, it's because he had run through the partial cylinder I put on and then gone out, signaling to me it was time to go to bed.  And I've been sternly admonished to NOT go to sleep with the heater running.  Several times.  Which I wouldn't do anyway.

 

I don't have plans to do any real cold weather camping in KD, which is a good thing because she really isn't set up for it.  But there are things I can do to improve the cold seepage, including insulating the floor when I have it redone next spring.  And sealing out a few drafts around the door, and adding more insulation when the ceiling is done.  KD is still a work in progress (like me, for that matter).

 

Had a hot Flying J shower and decided to have breakfast at the attached Dennys.  This Dennys doesn't get Five Trees.  Service is well-intentioned but a tad slow.  And the first year we stopped here on our way to the Slabs, our T-bone steaks looked like a something out of a child's play food set, a grimly putty-colored item that had been painted by Chinese slave laborers who had never seen a steak.  Food this morning a bit better, though the sausage was cold.  Still, they get points for putting me in the only booth that has an electrical outlet, and inadvertently encouraging me to get wheat toast instead of white. 

 

Getting ready to head out.

The View Of The Surrounding Mountains Is Striking. There Appears To Be A Visitor Center Of Some Sort, But It's Not Complete.  No Information On The Sign Boards, And The Touch For Information Sign Is Not Live.  Impressive Sculpture Of What Seems To Be A Condor Or A Vulture.

Mr. Heater and a Very Merry Christmas

Decided to stay here in LeBec for the night.

Last year about this time, Tennessee Ken acquired a new Mr. Heater.  His old Mr. Heater, a boon companion and profoundly important appliance, had served him well.  Ken always showed him the respect he deserved, never calling him just heater, always addressing him as Mister Heater.  That was the brand name, of course, but it was funny the way Ken made it sound like a gesture of respect.  Well, it was a gesture of respect, and affection too, I think.  Ken did love his heater on those cold nights, whether they were in Tennessee or in Slab City.  Then events conspired to put him in possession of a larger, newer model.  There is an interesting story behind that, involving drama, danger, and some comedy (in retrospect).  It seems that when you don’t scew the propane bottle in properly, a leak can form around the fitting.  Then when you light Mr. Heater, propane coming out around the neck of the bottle forms an interesting flame effect in the form of liquid fire dripping down the plastic housing.

The person to whom this happened kept a cool head, applied a fire extinguisher, and then promptly evicted it and refused to ever have it in her house (motorhome) again.  This was a tad unfair, given that Mr. Heater himself was the unwitting victim of an improperly attached propane cylinder.  But never mind, this meant that Ken inherited a new heater to replace his well travelled one.

When Ken saw my own heater, an adorable little red GloMaster that runs on butane, he burst out laughing.  The entire time we were together last year, he made many jokes at my and my poor little heater’s expense.  It’s true that the GloMaster was only suitable for heating a mouse hole (“would take the chill off an 85-degree day,” as Ken repeatedly reminded me), but it looked so good!  That shiny red paint and boxy, milk-house heater styling made me love it.  But in the end, I was forced to admit that Ken was right and the damn thing was next to useless.  Probably it would have helped warm a tent, but I was always terrified to light it in a tent, and last year I was camping in a friend’s unconverted cargo van, which was impossible to heat with the GloMaster.

And so, after Ken had tested the new heater that he had acquired due to that little mishap of his fellow campers and found it perfectly sound, he told me he wanted me to have his old one.

Mr. Heater had a hard life.  His plastic body partly melted when a similar incident happened to Ken wherein he failed to properly attach a cylinder and the thing caught on fire.  Its grill was a little askew from the subsequent face down landing it received when he pitched it, still on fire, out the door of his van.  It was stained and disreputable looking, but it somehow seemed right for Ken, a stained and disreputable character himself, yet impossibly lovable for all that.  And it still worked!  Mr. Heater still worked like a champ.

Ken left the planet and everybody who loved him before I could test out my present.   But I managed to spirit it away before the county coroner’s office carted off most of the rest of his meager possessions.  It’s here with me now.  Running and warming up the inside of KD.  The blast of warmth taking the chill off not an 85-degree day in a mouse hole, but  a chilly Christmas night high up in the Grapevine where I am spending Christmas alone in KD, makes me remember the warmth of Ken’s personality, his great, shining spirit, the way his laugh was like the sun coming out.

I was almost ready to turn off Mr. Heater and climb under the sleeping bag when I remembered it was still Christmas and I hadn’t opened my presents yet.  Among them is a groovy new screw driver set which will be helpful in working on KD and might stop me from constantly borrowing my Dad’s set (I’m pretty sure the screwdriver set was from Dad, even though my gifts were given from both Mom and Dad).  Also an entire box of See’s rum nougat, my absolute favorite See’s candy, which there are never enough of in the nuts and chews boxes that are always circulating at this time of year.  And a very wonderful gift for Goose, which she will receive with enthusiasm, and which I am deeply grateful for because when Goose isn’t fed, we don’t get very far.

This Christmas seemed like it was shaping up to be a bit of a dud, since I’m starting out late and totally missing Christmas at Slab City, and my Campin’ Fun Buddies won’t be following for days yet.  I didn’t want to be on the road on Christmas, eating Taco Bell for Christmas dinner and spending the evening at a truck stop.  But.  It’s ok.  It’s still Christmas.  I’m still loved.  I’m on another adventure, and my riches are many.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. 

 

LeBec

Just pulled into the Flying J at LeBec.  Stayed in the truck lane amidst the friendly big rigs who didn't mind if we dawdled along at 25-30 mph over the Grapevine.  Deciding if I want to push on or stay here.  I've certainly got more driving left in me, but the issue is finding somewhere to stop.  I'll consult my routing and update when I have more.

Buttonwillow

Second hundred miles (actually further).  Stopped at the Buttonwillow TA.  I'll gas up here and look for something to eat.  It won't be much of a Christmas dinner, I'm afraid, but thems the breaks.

This TA has lots of parking.  Trailer friendly.

Update: publishing now since I couldn't get this post to upload in Buttonwillow.  This should have published at 6:40.

First Hundred Miles

Stopping at the excellent John Erreca Rest Stop for a bio break and safety check.  A lot of people traveling, but this large rest stop is up to the task with many spots for trailers and over-sized vehicles.

Everything still attached, running gear in good shape, and surprisingly, things seem to be staying put in the trailer.  Definitely feel the extra weight of the new batteries on the tongue and the counter balancing weight of clothes and shoes in the trailer :-), but sway control is working and so far, so good!

Kadydid and the Goose in the trailer section, and the grassy area of the facility below.

Almost Ready

Christmas breakfast with the 'rents, then hitting the road for our next big adventure, KD and me.