Hitek Homeless

Hitek Homeless July 25th, 2010

We’re back on the move again and slowly making our way through Texas in what can only be described as damn hot weather. More importantly though, the household has expanded. While we were at Caverns of Sonora, the ranch manager’s dog had a litter of puppies. After much hemming and hawing over whether or not we could care for a dog in this lifestyle, we finally decided that if we didn’t have the time for a dog now, then we never would.

Rain enjoying a cool ice ball on a hot day.

So, making her Internet debut, we present Rain. Her parents are both working dogs that have worked cattle, sheep and goats in all sorts of weather ranging from snow and ice to hotter than hell southern Texas. Casey, her mother, is a blue heeler and her father is Slick, a border collie. Odds are pretty good that she’s too smart for either one of us, but with a little luck and a lot of treats, maybe she’ll tell us what we’re doing wrong.

The first few days, there was a lot of tension between her and the cats, but they are slowly getting used to her and only hissing when she gets seriously into their personal space. I’d rather not talk about my scars when she met Hunter the first time, though. Rain seems to be adjusting to a nomadic lifestyle much better than she liked the first couple of weeks while we were still working. Rather than spending so much time locked up to stay safe from the cats, she gets to go where we go and do what we do. In less than a week since we left the cave, she is already a different dog, and apparently, much happier!

Oh, if you were wondering, she’s currently 8 1/2 weeks old and her birthday is 5/25 if you want to send her presents.

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• dog , lifestyle
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johnny May 11th, 2010

Well.. well.. well. What a fun day I’ve had. I spent about eight hours lying on my back in gravel inventing new curses to throw at Northwood after seeing the mess on the bottom of our camper. For future reference, according to the manual, Arctic Fox campers are not designed to be ‘lived in’, have the slide put out without jacks or have any water in any of the tanks while not in a truck bed. Also, their customer service folks have pointed out that ‘no one builds anything square, except maybe a picture frame.’

We had a few problems early on, but they seemed like just small issues. About a year ago, we were at the factory in Oregon and asked them to fix a ground bolt that had sheared off. The service tech pulled the water heater, replaced it and sealed it. He, however, neglected to actually replace the ground bolt. While there, we asked about the reason our camper is not actually square side to side and received the above quote as a response.

Two days ago, our fresh water tank fell through the bottom of the camper. Can you guess what I’m thinking about their overall design and build quality? I called them just to vent, not expecting more than the ‘we know that will break, so we put it in the owner’s manual’. That’s exactly what I got.

While pulling off the bottom of the camper, I found broken welds in every support throughout the camper. In fact, there was a broken weld directly under… wait for it… nothing. Most of the supports had more than one broken weld… every one of them had at least one weld broken on the passenger side… where the slide is. The average number of broken welds per brace was roughly three.

Most of the broken welds were just broken beads. I only recall seeing a couple where metal had actually sheared. Speaking of the metal, I had to bend a few pieces to get the wiring out of it while working on replacements. I managed to SNAP a piece of the aluminum with nothing but my hands and feet.

So, I have lots of little bruises from lying in gravel, but all six broken and completely under-spec’d braces have been replaced with two by fours. Tomorrow, Jenn gets to help support some shower board material to replace the luan that had to be broken in order to come out and we’ll have an enclosed camper again. Hopefully, nothing moves into our sub-floor in the meantime.

So, if you’re thinking of buying from Northwood, ask them to send you an owner’s manual so you can read their escape clauses first… and ask them just how many days a year the camper is designed to be used. Sadly, I forgot to ask.

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johnny April 29th, 2010

After a lackluster winter at Amazon’s Fernley facility, Jenn and I decided we’d be better off looking for a job we enjoyed than one that promised big bucks and may or may not deliver. As one of our interests is caving, we decided to try and get jobs at a cave for the summer, even if it meant working the gift shop and cleaning restrooms. It turns out that we lucked into one of the most amazing jobs we could hope for.

Our first choice of positions came through and we got workcamping positions at Caverns of Sonora. For those of you that have never heard of it, Caverns of Sonora is one of the most decorated caves on the planet. While there hasn’t been a study that I’m aware of, I believe it could very well be the most decorated cave in the world based on formations per square inch. We are lucky enough to be spending a fair portion of every day guiding tours in this cave.

The tour is a very up close and personal experience. We are literally inches away from formations throughout much of the tour. On top of that, we are working for some of the best people you could hope to be around. The cave is owned by a family that has owned the land surrounding it for five generations and the general manager has been a true caver for forty-six years. I can’t imagine a better work experience.

Words cannot begin to describe this beautiful cave. But to give you a general idea, we spent a week training with two to three tours a day that are close to two hours long and on our first day off, we took two tours through the cave just to enjoy it and take photos. I snapped five hundred and forty some odd pictures in three and a half hours. Almost eighty have been uploaded to the gallery. The pictures do not do the experience justice, but they are far better than words could ever be. I only wish I had half the photographic skill of the professionals who have done the off-trail photos.

The pictures for this post are chosen more or less at random as I would be very hard pressed to pick favorites from the photos we’ve taken so far. At twenty bucks a person, the tour pushes the limits of our budget, but it really makes me stop and think what beautiful things we may have missed over the past two years by being thrifty. I hope none of them were nearly as beautiful as this, but I will definitely think twice the next time we pass a ‘tourist trap’ by because we don’t want to throw our money away. Some of those traps are probably every bit as worthwhile as this one. Please take a look at the gallery. I’ve yet to see someone come out of a tour disappointed; in fact, the most frequent comment is ‘this is the prettiest cave I’ve ever seen.’

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• caving , tourist traps , work
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johnny February 7th, 2010

So, it’s kind of last minute notice, but today is Jenn’s Birthday Anniversary. To celebrate, we’re throwing a burrito bash. At 2pm PST (yes, an hour from now!), anyone that wants to wander over for a couple of burritos is welcome. We recommend bringing your own chair.

Place: Slab City, USA. Corner of East Beal and County road.

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johnny January 22nd, 2010

Whew! The weather has been pretty nutty around here lately. We spent a couple of days in Quartzsite putting up fliers for freecampsites.net and got rained on every evening. One mid-day shower caught us while out on the scooter. Fun!

Quartzsite is just not our scene. Two days would have been more than enough even if the weather had been great.  It was pretty crazy to pull into the BLM area the first night and see rigs lined up awning to awning just like a commercial campground. We had to go about a quarter mile deep into the area before we found a spot where we could get a mere hundred feet from a couple of neighbors. The next morning, we found out why the area was so ’sparsely’ populated as the kids in the converted school bus had breakfast and blasted the MTV version of the Grateful Dead over the world’s crappiest PA system. Ah, well… at least it wasn’t polka.

This morning, we got up ‘early’ to try and make it back to Slab City by dark. Apparently, I was still on California time and not really adhering to Jenn’s schedule. Still, we got out at a reasonable time and then sat in mid-morning traffic at Quartzsite while the rain started splattering. The wind had not stopped in at least 24 hours.

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• Weather , fulltiming , tourist traps , towns
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