I couldn't post yesterday, as we had dead runner Ron staying with us - he came out for the Rock'N'Roll Half Marathon, which I was smart enough not to run.

                                   
Since Ron was visiting, that means that the sleeper sofa was pulled out - when the sleeper sofa is pulled out, then there's no room to sit at my desk, and I can't get to my keyboard. When I can't get to my keyboard, I can't post Fat Charlie's Diary : )

But, had I posted yesterday, I would have posted that Ethel and I took a little road trip in the Beemer. We went from New River to Lake Havasu City, AZ, and walked across the London Bridge;, then we went up through eastern California and southern Nevada to Hoover Dam, and then came home via Kingman, AZ.


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We drove over 600 miles, did sightseeing in Lake Havasu City and did the Hoover Dam tour. It was a long day. Eventually, you'll be able to  see the slideshow on Snapfish (when Ethel gets that worked out), but, for now, here are some things that I wanted to point out:


First off, in Hope, Arizona - between Wickenburg and Lake Havasu - they have an actual gasoline pump that requires one to pay inside before you can pump gasoline - it won't take a card. Yep, they want to use CURRENCY - you know, "...legal tender for all debts, public and private". You have to go inside and give real money to a real person.

                               


I'm not sure which year it was, the last time that I actually paid an attendant for gasoline, but it might have been 1994.

The gadgetry (card slide, keypad) are all installed, but for some reason that stuff isn't hooked up - and, in manly Arizona fashion, they convey this information to the consumer by the simple device of covering the card slide slot with a big honkin' piece of Duct Tape.

When we got to Lake Havasu City, we noticed that pretty much every sign everywhere had some reference to the London Bridge.

In case you didn't know - in the late 60s, they decided to tear down the London Bridge in London, and one entreprenurial soul in the local government came up with the idea of selling the bridge instead. It was bought by the man who builds McCulloch chainsaws (that guy, all by himself, is amazing - his wife is a Briggs of the Briggs & Stratton Briggs, and his inlaws are Evinrudes : ) and moved to Lake Havasu (the cost of moving the bridge was twice the cost of buying the bridge, which was twice the cost of demolishing the bridge :)  and was rebuilt and opened there in 1971.

We walked over the bridge and back, eating lunch on the far side (the Island side) -

                                         

Other than London Bridge, there's not that much to do in Lake Havasu City (for folks my age, that is - my nephew in Wisconsin tells us that LHC is considered the new "hot spot" for Spring Break in the Upper Midwest. I suppose that, if you're in Wisconsin for a whole winter, then the very idea of Arizona, all by itself, sounds good :) so we headed up through eastern California and southern Nevada to go see Hoover Dam.

Along the way, we saw this interesting configuration of vehicles - an RV bus towing a truck with a big quad in the truck bed:

                                                      


Most of you have heard of the turducken - a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a goose. We have christened this vehicular verbosity a Butruquad (pronounced "Buh-truh-kwad"), for obvious reasons.

I wish that I had a picture of Boulder City, NV, to show you - but I didn't think to take a picture, because, mostly, there was nothing there. We saw a sign that said "Boulder City, NV - Founded 1932, Elevation 2510". But there was nothing on the other side of the sign except creosote bushes. And sage. And more creosote bushes.

In fact, it was about FIFTEEN MILES past the "city limits" sign where we saw the first residential or business structure. Obviously, the folks in Boulder City are expecting some serious growth, Real Soon Now.

When we dropped down from Boulder City towards the dam, we passed a casino (actually, anywhere in Nevada, you can pretty much put in the words "we passed a casino" and you'd have a fifty-fifty chance of hitting it, which is better odds than you'll get at the casinos (well, pretty much anywhere in Nevada, that is, except in Boulder City, which doesn't allow gambling - and doesn't have anything but sagebrush and creosote anyway)) - and outside of the casino there was a large sign that said "Helicopter Rides $29".

Huh? Ride in a helicopter for $29? Of COURSE I'm gonna do that!


                        
Having never been in a helicopter, this wasn't really a "decision",although Ethel didn't want to go - she figured that it wasn't worth the money. as thechopper ride only lasted a couple of minutes (or a few, depending on where you're from) - but it did go out over Lake Mead, and we had some pretty wild angles over the ground.

(I figure it this way - after the ride is over, all I'm going to have are the memories, and the right to say "yes, I've flown in a helicopter". Will a half-hour ride give me that many more memories? Nope - mostly, I'll have the memory of getting in the chopper, going up, seeing things out of the window, and coming back down. I figure I got a great ROI :)

That chopper pilot gets a LOT of flight time, and most of it is taking off and landing, which I suspect are two of the most difficult maneuvers - this leads me to believe that he gets a lot of practice.

Hoover Dam (BTW, if you're my age, you may have read about a big thing called "Boulder Dam". It turns out that, for the first many years of the dam's construction, it was known by both names. I didn't know this - in driving from Boulder City to Hoover Dam, I kept wondering where Boulder Dam was :) - is BIG. All of the numbers about it are big.  It's 726 feet high, 1244 feet wide at the top, and 600 feet wide at the base - and, at that base.it's also 600 feet thick, front to back. 96 people died during construction - some of them are still stuck in the concrete (which is, BTW, still drying near the center - it's been 75 years, and it hasn't finished curing yet).

There's a lot to say about Hoover Dam, but you can read all of that online. However, it's like the Grand Canyon - it's one of those places that you are supposed to visit, if you're ever in the area. I wouldn't think that most folks would drive 600 miles just to see Hoover Dam (which was Ethel's stated reason for the whole trip, anyway - and she'd already seen it!) but 600 miles with Ethel is a reason all by itself - Hoover Dam is just a good excuse.

For some reason, Ethel likes this picture:

                               

This, to me, is proof of love - you and I see an old bald guy with a Hawaiian shirt in front of God's Own Pile of Concrete.

Ethel sees a nice smile :)

We left Hoover Dam just after 6 PM (Arizona time) and, as we were leaving, Ethel said "We've got a quarter tank of gas". I said "Well, that will get us to Kingman". What Ethel didn't say was "You have just under a quarter tank of gas". That phrase, "just under", turned out to be an interesting omission.\

Well before we got to Kingman, the litlte "Low Fuel" light came on, and we started looking for a gas station. Of course, we hadn't passed a gas station since Boulder City, and the area between Hoover Dam and Kingman, AZ, looks an awful lot like the first fifteen miles of Boulder City - i.e. sage and creosote bushes, and nothing else. At all. Especially gas stations.

As we kept driving, the needle kept dropping, and it seemed like the light was burning brighter.

As the needle fell below the line to the left of the letter "E", and bottomed out there (and bounced), we started driving up a long uphill - sort of a test of faith. But Ethel said "If we can just get to the top of this hill, then we'll coast down into Kingman if we have to".

We got to the top of the hill.

Ethel put the car into "Neutral", and we started coasting down the long hill.

At the bottom, she put it back into gear just as we pulled into the first gas station in Kingman, a Mobile station. As we were pulling in, my phone rang. Here, by way of parting, was the conversation:

Me: "This is Jim".
Floyd: "Hey, Daddy. What's up?"
Me: "Ethel and I were running out of gas, and we just coasted down a long hill into a gas station".
Floyd: "Huh - that's funny. The last time we went to Vegas, Angela and I did that - we coasted down that long hill going into Kingman, and pulled into the first station we saw".

Yep. It's genetic :)