Who throws out a perfectly good space capsule?

Apparently, it happens...and more often than I would have expected.

I recently took a roadtrip with a friend to Southern Arizona, to spend a few days with my good friend, Cheyenne McCray.  On the way, we spied a space capsule out in the middle of a field, next to I-10.  Yep, you read that right...looked like a space capsule fell out of the sky and came to rest in the Arizona desert.  How did it get there?  Did they lose track of it?  Can that even happen?  Was there a momentary black-out on their radar systems?

Thank God it didn’t fall on my house!!!

Being your basic Doubting Thomas, I decided it had to be a hoax and drove on by.  But then when stumped for a blog topic, my friend reminded me of the strange space capsule we had seen.  So, I decided to research it.  Because who leaves a perfectly good space capsule laying in a field in Arizona, anyway?  That must create national security issues.  Isn’t there a department responsible for picking up lost space capsules?

Okay, here’s the deal.  When you have something that goes bad and is no longer serviceable, but is damn heavy, what do you do with it?  Haul it to the dump and pay tremendous fees to have them take it off your hands?  No!  And how would you load it, anyway?  Not gonna happen!

Alright, I’m getting ahead of myself.  The item I’m talking about is a cement mixer.  Yep...you heard that right...a cement mixer from a big ‘ol cement truck has something in common with a space capsule.  

Apparently, the cement mixer thing had outlived its usefulness and the wife of the guy who owned it wouldn’t let him bring it inside the house.  So, there it sat, until some clever mind (an artist named Jack Millard) was creative enough to turn it into lawn art, or in this case, field art.

Be sure to check out and “like” Jack Millard’s facebook page at: 

https://www.facebook.com/pg/voicesthroughtart/photos/?ref=page_internal

Because here is what we saw sitting next to I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson.  Great, huh?  Well, apparently, it’s so great that people have actually placed calls to 911 to report it.  Imagine how fun that first call was to get!  LOL

http://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/arizona-news/234076563-story

Imagine my surprise when I start snooping around on the internet and run across another space capsule in a field in Oklahoma!  It seems Arizona isn’t the only place to have a cement mixer drop from space.  Apparently, the lost cement mixer of Winganon, is reported to have landed in 2011.

Be sure you go to their page and “like” it! 

https://www.facebook.com/search/photos/?q=winganon%20space%20capsule

So...not just one space capsule sitting abandoned at the side of the road, but two!  We have either become the most wasteful society on the planet, or the most creative...I vote for creative.

Anyway, if you are ever traveling between Phoenix and Tucson, watch for the space capsule in the Arizona desert...and be sure to email me if you see it.  I’d love to hear about the strange and unusual sights you have seen in your travels, especially if you’ve seen the sister capsule in Oklahoma.  I’m thinking about making a trip back there in the spring...so I need an address.  LOL

Well, that’s my story, silly and spacey, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now, ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love Ya,

Kayce

Holy Flying Vodka Bottles!!!

Hey there, how ya’all been?  Good, I hope!  I’m doing better now…now that Murphy has been evicted from our couch!  Okay, I know none of you have any idea what I’m babbling on about, so let me back up and fill you in on what’s happened.  I’m currently on an extended road trip from Arizona to Pennsylvania, and back again by way of the scenic route.  In short, I think we are going to hit about 25 states by the time we are done.  All right, maybe not quite that many…but close!

Anyway, this trip has been a real learning experience for me and the toughest part was learning to drive a 30’ motor home.  Driving 5000 miles isn’t a problem.  Staying away from home for 3 weeks isn’t a problem.  Traveling with a woman I’ve met only once before isn’t a problem.  But getting this stinking house on wheels down the road seems to be a life-altering challenge.  I kept thinking if others could do it, I can.  But I might have been wrong.  LOL

Okay, here’s the deal.  Within the first week on the road, I’d broken 2 pairs of reading glasses and a pair of flip flops.  Then I broke the motor home.  Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself here.  Remember Stupid Girl—my alter-ego that does all the stupid crap…or at least takes the wrap for it?  Well, she’s along on the trip too.  I tried to make her stay at home, but the bitch jumped in the RV and refused to get out…so I had no choice but to take her along.  Who knew she was going to insist on driving?!  And who knew she'd invited Murphy to tag along too.

Well, the second or third night out, we pulled into a gas station in Oklahoma (with Stupid Girl behind the wheel).  We had been either behind or ahead of the tornadoes the entire way through Texas and Oklahoma, so she was a little on edge and still trying to get the hang of missing curbs.  Well, there was this stupid ‘ol curb at the gas station…one of those things that sticks way out in everybody’s way for no logical reason at all and serving no purpose?  Yeah…you got it…Stupid Girl hit the damn thing and the RV momentarily became airborne.  Woo Hoo!  Who knew she’d need a pilot’s license to drive the damn thing?!  We all got out and walked around the RV and looked it over and all was well…only a little curb, nothing damaged, we’re good.  We get gas and we head on down the road.  It was a huge relief to finally get to the RV park without having the RV picked up and blown into Kansas like a flying cow.  So we parked and got out, hooked up the utilities, and then noticed one of the 4 tires on the back was flat as a pancake.  Crap!  Stupid Girl!  So we call the RV rental place and they dispatch a fix-it guy to the RV park.  I’m imagining a long night going from place to place trying to get the tire fixed.  But we lucked out.  We got a smart guy who realized the absence of a hubcap on that wheel meant the valve extender thingies were hanging outside the rim.  So when Stupid Girl hit the curb, she took a little chip out of the rubber valve and all the stinking air leaked out.  Voile…flat!  So our clever fix-it guy just pulled the valve extender off, put air in the tire, and we were good as new.  Yeah for smart fix-it guys!

 (smart fix-it guy)

Now, you might think that was the extent of Stupid Girl’s idiocy…but you would be dead wrong.  She got us to Pennsylvania right on schedule and we picked up our third passenger and set about visiting family.  Now, anyone who has ever driven in Pennsylvania knows the roads this time of year are either crap or under construction.  They are rutted and torn up everywhere.  It’s a mess!  So here comes Stupid Girl still learning to drive a 30’ RV into a town with teeny tiny narrow streets that go up hills and down hills and the straight roads only have 6 curves per half mile.  Holy hell…we need Batman to drive these roads and all we’ve got is Stupid Girl.

So…first couple of days she does good.  She makes every turn, doesn’t hit anything going forward or backward, and life is good.  Then we head to the park for a picnic and this is where Stupid Girl really earns her reputation.  We make it down the incline on a very rutted dirt road into the park just fine.  No problem.  Then it’s time to go home.  Uh-Oh!  Going down the incline wasn’t a problem…crawl and take the bumps very slow.  Going up is a different story because you have to go at least fast enough to maintain upward motion.  So she is doing good until we come to the big hole where the entire RV seems to be swallowed up and spit out like we’d fallen into the belly of a whale.  The motion causes all of the upper cupboard doors in the RV to fly open and the little gremlins that were hiding in the cupboards started throwing everything across the RV.  This is where the flying vodka comes in.  Now…just to be clear…no one had had a drop to drink.  This was a totally teetotaler picnic.  The vodka was just inappropriately stored in an upper cupboard and the little gremlin living in that cupboard had a terrific arm.  Because he hurled the damn vodka bottle across the interior of the RV.  Stupid Girl heard the pans hit the floor and the horrific thud of the vodka bottle.  So she stopped dead on the incline which now looked like Mount Everest!

Everyone else in the RV scrambled to make sure no one had been hit and to retrieve all of the projectiles from the floor and stow them safely in the lower cupboards.  When everything was once again stowed, Stupid Girl was still shaking from the commotion that had scared her half out of her wits.  So when she started to again pull out of the park and onto the teeny tiny little street made for mice pulling garden carts, she didn’t see the curb on the passenger side.  In her defense, she was sitting with the front end pointed in the air and she was shook up from the near-miss with the flying Smirnoff.  So imagine her surprise when she hears the bottom of the RV scrape the curb!  Maybe it only scraped the bottom, huh?  Noooo.  Then someone says, “I think you caught a post.”  Noooo!!!  Okay, let’s stop right where we are and let’s get out and see what happened.

It is not pretty.  We get out and look and there we are…we are off the curb and there are no steps to get into the RV.  Huh?  That’s not right.  What’s all that metal crap hanging down under the RV?  Oh crap…those are the steps?  Maybe we can just straighten them out, but first we gotta get out of the road.  So Stupid Girl jumps back in the RV and pulls it straight across the highway onto a side street where we can better assess the damages.  Then we get out again and this time we notice the odor.  Definitely not good!  Sewage is now spilling from the bottom of the RV onto the street.  I think I actually recognized last night’s dinner as it floated past us on the street.  We stared, dumbfounded, as our black water tank emptied itself on the streets of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania.  Residents of Wrightsville…we are soooo sorry!

Now what?  Let’s open the door and see how badly damaged the steps are.   No…let’s not!  We open the door and there is a 2’x2’ hole in the floor.  Where there used to be steps inside the entry door, there is now a drop to the pavement.  That’s not good.  Oh, and under the steps…that’s where the 2 house batteries are stored.  We are screwed!  We have a 2 foot hole where our steps used to be, the batteries are wedged in sideways about 6 inches off the pavement, sewage is pouring out of our black water tank, and the broken pipe is hanging about 3 inches off the ground.  Holy Crap!

But, Thank God, we are not without resources.  We have a wonderful friend named Debbie who manages to come up with a pair of pliers and some wire.  She fearlessly crawls under the RV and manages to wire the pipe up so we have a good 6 inches of clearance now.  Yeah, what a woman!  We have called every RV repair shop in the county and no one is willing to come out and look at it.  Did I mention this all happened at 4pm on a Friday afternoon?  Well, of course it did…because Stupid Girl was driving!!!

Long story short, we limp back to our camp in the next town over where my friend’s 3 wonderful, amazing, resourceful brothers all show up with blow torches and hazmat suits…okay, maybe a slight exaggeration.  But they did show up with tools and know-how and they took the steps out, found the backup shutoff valve for the black water tank, put a temporary patch over the 2 foot hole in the floor of the RV, and straightened the door out enough that we could open it in case of a real emergency.  Then the next morning we make more phone calls and find a wonderful repair guy in Dover, PA who comes up with an ingenious temporary way to put another fitting on the black water tank so we can use the toilet and dump it at the parks.  Yeah again for smart fix-it guys and good family!!!

          (those were our steps)          

 (that's where the steps used to be)

So how, you ask, are we doing now?  Well, we can’t use the door so we have to enter/exit the RV through the cab by climbing over the seats.  But we can use the toilet.  Yeah!!!  We have to crawl under the RV to dump it and often have to get creative on where/how to park so the drain tube will reach, but we’re getting pretty good at that.  Stupid Girl seems to have finally figured out how to miss the curbs, so life’s been pretty good for a few days.  Now we just have to deal with the rental place when we return the unit.  Of course, we have been good doobies and kept them appraised of the events and progress, but I’m certain they are sitting there holding their breath and expecting Stupid Girl to return their RV as a convertible.  It could happen, ya know.  We have 3 more days to go, so cross your fingers that Stupid Girl is done being…well, STUPID.

That’s my story, stupid and stinky, and I’m stickin’ to it. Hold on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast.......(and Stupid Girl is driving)!

Love ya,

Kayce

(Thanks to Peg for the pictures...check out some of her pics and quotes on Facebook at "Humans I Meet".)

Where The Heck Is Noah With That Ark?

Hello out there in reader-land!  How the heck are ya?  Good, I hope.  All is well here in Arizona now that the floodwaters have receded.  Huh?  Floodwaters?  I see you scratching your head and wondering, “What the heck is she talking about?  Arizona’s a desert.”  Yes, Arizona is a desert and, yes, there are floodwaters—at least there have been this week.  Plenty of water…more than enough to share.

You see, God (in his infinite wisdom) decided this was a good year to replenish the groundwater for us dry Arizonans.  So he has sent us plenty of much needed rain.  It has been a very wet monsoon season this year…good for some, not so good for others.  The funny thing about a blessing is that it isn’t always a blessing for everyone involved…probably something to do with that old adage about maintaining balance in the world.

One of my favorite sayings is, “You win some, you lose some, some get rained out.”  There’s more to the saying, but when I tried to look it up to get it exactly right and note who said it, things got fuzzy.  So I’m just going to use the version I like and we’ll leave it at that…someone very smart said it at one time.  LOL  Anyway, this week we got rained out.  On Monday, the lovely Valley of the Sun got bucket loads of water.  How many bucket loads?  Glad you asked.  Lots!  Lots and lots of bucket loads!  Arizona typically averages only 7 inches of rain per year.  But on Monday of this week, different parts of the valley got anywhere from 2.5 inches of rain to almost 6.5 inches of rain—and all this happened between midnight and 8am!!!  My particular little piece of paradise got 3.3 inches and, holy cow, am I glad I wasn’t one of those that got over 6 inches!!!  (Hmm…don’t think I’ve ever said that before.)  Oops…sorry…Tina Gerow is a bad influence!  I digress…so here’s what happened at my place.

I, like everyone else in the valley, was awakened twice during the early morning hours with severe flood alerts—those obnoxious and loud buzzing alerts that come over your cell phone.  (And while I’m on the subject, why can’t they give me an alarm sound option like that…something that I can’t possibly sleep through no matter how hard I try?)  Anyway, like everyone else in the valley, I didn’t take them very seriously.  Why?  Because the alarm network is not tuned to “my area”…if it’s flooding anywhere in a hundred mile radius, I’m getting woke up…and it never freaking floods here anyway, that’s why.  As long as you stay out of the dry washes and aren’t trying to get your Yugo through four feet of rushing water, you’re usually okay.  Well…unless you’re riding out a microburst in a houseboat on Lake Pleasant…but that’s another type of storm and another story altogether.  Anyway, I’ve lived on my place for over 25 years and it has never once flooded…so when I get this loud, rude buzzing alarm at 2am and then again at 4am, I’m just plain pissed.  I’m sleeping here, people!!!  So I get up both times and shuffle to the back door and look out.  No flood waters up on the patio, dogs not doing the backstroke, horses not water-skiing in the pasture.  We’re good.  I shuffle back to bed mumbling curses to be placed on the people who run the emergency alert system and all their offspring for 20 generations to come.

Then the sun comes up and the world looks a lot different.  My alarm goes off, I shuffle to the coffee pot to make my java salvation, then to the door to see how wet it is outside.  Holy Freaking Floodwaters, Batman!!!  I step out the door and it’s a sea of water as far as my bleary eyes can see…well, at least to the edge of my property line.  What?  What the hell?  Where did all this water come from?  My brain is clawing along in the darkness, trying to drag itself up from the depths of sleep deprivation to make sense of what I’m seeing.  No help.  Then I hear it…rushing water.  Huh?  I don’t live near a river.  What’s rushing?  Where’s it coming from?  Where’s it going?  I step outside and start walking around to see what the heck’s going on and there it is…irrigation.  What?!  Who irrigates in a flood?  Well…me, apparently.

I’ve left my irrigation gate closed from a few days ago when I’d last irrigated and all of my ports are open.  So a deluge of irrigation water is flooding down the ditch and spewing from my irrigation ports.  Both pastures are under 8 inches of water.  I look around and so are the horse pens…and the barn.  The horses are standing in their pens with their floaties on, looking at me like, “You gonna fix this or just stand there gawking?”  OMG!

So I run in and grab my flip-flops…because everyone knows flip-flops are the appropriate footwear for walking through a flood (NOT)…and I run to close my irrigation ports and open the flood gate to allow the water to go on down the road.  On the way, my flip-flops get sucked into the mud and I have to finish the journey barefoot.  I’m outside in my jammies, soaked to the waist, mosquitos are making a meal of me, and I am searching through the mud for my shoes…but my ports are finally closed!

Then I go to survey the damage.  Sheesh, what a mess!  The horses are standing in 4 inches of water, not a dry spot in any of the pens to stand on.  There are three new rivers running from the pasture into the barn and under the storage unit built into the back of the barn.  There are car parts, briquettes, firewood, light fixtures, chairs, and shelves all standing in 4 inches of water in my barn.  Even my neighbor’s horse pen that is used to store firewood and barnyard junk is underwater.  Definitely Stupid Girl at work again.  And you can believe the next time I see her, I’m gonna bitch-slap her into the next county!

So I grab a shovel and go to work (still in my jammies and muddy flip-flops), shoveling mud to dam up the rivers and stem the flow of water into the barn.  A half hour later, the rivers are dammed, I’m covered head to toe in mud, and the horses are still giving me the evil eye.  I look around and wonder, “Where the heck is Noah with that ark?”  Right about now I could use a good ark.  Did I miss the email that said I was supposed to build one?  I hate it when stuff gets lost in internet hell.  Where’s the justice?  I’m awakened twice in one night by useless cell phone alerts but I miss the email about building an ark!  Oh…uh…hmmm…yeah, maybe I should have put on my reading glasses and read those alerts more carefully.  Could there have been some mention of an ark?  So here I am limping back into the house in broken flip-flops that have given up the ghost to the sucking mud, jammies soaked and muddy, but victorious.  I look like a refugee from a war zone.

Well, I guess this is an example of all’s well that ends well…I think.  It’s now the end of the week from hell and all is well…at least for a day or two.  I called in a friend to help muck out the barn, I apologized to my neighbor for flooding her pen, I drained the horse pens enough that they have a few square feet to stand on that are not at the bottom of an ocean.  But now my big dilemma is how the heck to get rid of the millions of tiny baby frogs that came in on the flood waters.  You see, our irrigation network brings water from Lake Pleasant into the valley.  Apparently all the channels between me and Lake Pleasant were open and as the ditches and the lake filled with rain water, it created a tidal wave that traveled to the end of the path, right into my closed irrigation gate and open irrigation portals…apparently bringing with it every newly born baby frog in three counties.  They are very cute and less than a half inch long…but there are thousands of them and they are everywhere.  And if these tiny baby frogs live, a month from now I will have a plague of frogs that could be a new chapter in the Bible.  Argh!  So watch for the newspaper headlines—“Valley author eaten by plague of hungry frogs!”

That’s my story, frightening and froggy, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya,

Kayce