Category: Personal

Super Bowl Sunday

February 2nd 2020

Sunday morning at 5:30, 42 or 5 degrees, in the desert south of Quartzsite, not really a hot spot of Super Bowl Fever….just saying.

Have you ever wondered any of these thing? Why does the NFL use Roman Numerals to distinguish the Super Bowls? Why don’t they play the Super Bowl on Saturday night? Why are there so many talking heads analyzing the game for six hours before the game? Why are 20% of the Super Bowl played in Miami? These are just a few of my questions…like Roman numerals, hell most kids can’t read a clock with hands so I’m pretty sure they are not being taught Roman numerals. Think of nursing that hang over on a quiet Sunday rather than Monday morning at work. All these has beens analyzing the new kids and it drags on and on repeating the same thing over and over, starting with the PrePrePre game show…like seriously. And Miami great place to visit but not a place most would think of for football, there was a huge panic when it looked like there could be bad some weather…football is best when it’s played in the elements, I know it’s not as nice for the half time show…boo hoo it should be all about the football, the halftime show it not what the Super Bowl is about…

There are some advantages to watching the super bowl from the west side of the country, one being the game is televised two hours earlier, I mean like seriously why start the biggest game of the year so late on a Sunday that old farts like me can’t see the end? Although there have been many Super Bowls that were over in the first quarter, that is the problem with two weeks of hype and build up for the biggest game of the season and quite frankly it sucks…and the NFL has had some seriously bad games. The other issue is the officiating, or the lack there of, look at the lack of officiating in last years Super Bowl, that took the Saints out of the game, in fact probably the worst Super Bowl that I can remember, and I can remember a lot of them.

Especially when you remember back when the game was the big event, not the half time show, not the commercials, not an extra week of build up, when we wanted to see “The Game” not this dragged out two weeks before the game, of nothing but commercialization of every possible thing. Think of the players that have trained and worked hard to earn a coveted spot in the big game, to spend two weeks with every press conference being asked the same question over and over by some reporter that doesn’t know shyt about you or the game, but was lucky enough to get a press pass and is now trying to impress someone with the perfect interview question.

The Kansas City Chiefs vs the San Francisco 49ers, a pair of young arms as quarterbacks, and from what I have seen it has the making of a real good matchup. I personally just glad it’s any body other than the Patriots, especially after the fiasco last year. We watched from Florida last year with friends at Oak Grove, the year before we watched by ourselves from The Oasis RV park in Las Vegas, and this year from Quartzsite the pinnacle of viewing locations. This year it will just be Miss Laurie and I again with a big dish of chicken wing dip, that I don’t have to share with our friends, we will watch from the comfort of the coach and if it ends up being another Super Bore we will just watch something else…you can’t do that with a crowd, because there is always that one guy who thinks his team is going to defy the odds and come back to victory, and I can’t wear my pyjamas when we are out in public, apparently I need to be a few years older to pull that one off.

While I’m just really hopping for a good game, I guess I have to hope for the Chiefs as it’s been fifty years since their last Super Bowl win, and even though they are favoured today that whole 50 year thing has to loom large. While the 49ers have been one of the winningest teams in the league they are on a bit of a Super Bowl drought of their own, here is my prediction for the big game….

Joshua Tree National Park

January 31st 2020

Well it is a crisp Friday morning here in Quartzsite, 41 or 5 degrees at 7 o’clock, I just turned the boiler on to warm the coach. We are excited because we are heading to Joshua Tree today, we are picking up the Bob and Shari in Ehrenberg at 9:00 on our way by, Joshua Tree is a hour and a half west on I-10 over the state line in California. We are expecting the temperature to be 67 or 20 degrees by this afternoon, but could be in the fifties when we arrive, once we cross the state line there is an hour time difference, the gate we are entering opens at 8:30 so well before our arrival. Miss Laurie has her camera ready, I will try to get a shot or two with my phone. We are looking forward to the park and also a visit with Shari and Bob, we last seen them in late November in Phoenix.

Wow is about the best way to describe what we explored today, there where many different things to keep us interested, this is an area in California where two deserts meet so there are many areas very unique and different as we drove through the park we moved through multiple different sections of plant life, rock formations, elevations, and topography. We seen so much more than we expected! We had seen videos of the area done by Less Junk More Journey but it is kind of like the Grand Canyon, photos and videos just can’t capture the beauty of the area and just can’t do it justice. Standing at Keys lookout, seeing the Sultan Sea, overlooking Palm Springs, Indigo, and San Bernardino, in fact on a day when the California smog is less you can see the Mexican border some ninety plus miles away, beyond the Sultan sea. The cactus garden, the Joshua trees, the rock formations, all in different areas, almost as if planted by man.

We stopped for lunch at one of the many picnic spots throughout the park, we got up close to some of the rock formations, this area seemed alive with wild life, there were lots of acorns from some oak trees, which attracted squirrels and birds, the rock formations while looking smooth are very rough to the touch, and the signs of erosion are obvious, there were a variety of cactus as well as a few Joshua trees, it was a welcome stop, and a great lunch provided by the Bannon’s. There are a number of ridges through the park with Keys outlook being 5190 feet close to a mile high, there we snow covered peaks in the distance a few ridges over and there are areas of the park that do get the occasional snow fall, in fact the Joshua Tree like the cooler temperatures that are gained by the altitude. But apparently snow is one of the contributing factors of the trees being knocked over by the weight. The Joshua Tree life can be on the two hundred year range, and depends on a moth for pollution, Miss Laurie is quite concerned because the Ranger told us that the trees are not being regenerated as fast as they are falling from natural causes.

We basically just drove through the park, with a few stops for photos, it is a large park with multiple hiking trails, we just touched on a few of the spots, there are three entrances and we travelled from the South Gate to the North, approximately eighty miles, I can see revisiting Joshua Tree again, and I can see it being the source of a number of adventures.

We finish our road trip by driving through parts of Palm Springs, just to see how the other half of the world live, with beautiful palm lined roads, lots of shopping and restaurants, but what was most amazing was the change in temperature with 27 or 86 degrees in Palm Springs as compared to 18 or 68 at Joshua Tree.

A quick stop at Costco for some more Baileys, for our coffee and we are headed home, we stopped in Ehrenberg for a fish and chip dinner at the River Run bar before saying good night to the Bannon’s and heading off to the desert and Mr. Sam.

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