Hanging in Yuma, Arizona…

Forgot to publish this back when I wrote it. It’s been languishing in ‘Drafts’ ever since. Not sure it will generate any notifications to readers when I publish and too lazy to find out.

I have wanted to go to San Diego for a very long time because back in ’66 when I went to boot camp here, I never felt I’d had enough time to really get a feel for the town. As expected when you’re at boot camp. The regular Navy boot camp facility on the Navy Base was undergoing renovation so the Navy put us (a thousand or so recruits I think) at the Navy Amphibious Base across the harbor, at an older facility on Coronado Island. When we had time off, you could stand on the shore and look across the bay at all the WWII mothballed ships over at the Navy base. Some were being refurbish for more service but most of them were just boarded up.

Some of the things that happened in those short two weeks I was there:

• I learned I am flat footed and so got excused duty whenever there was any marching over a 1,000 yard distance. Learned this at the pool when we were getting our water survival training. I think the drill master had noticed my very flat wet foot print on the pool walkway and told my Master-At-Arms so when he saw me limping after a march he  sent me to sick bay. I was limping from all the blisters I’d developed. The Navy isn’t like the Army in this regard. I got to stay in the Navy because sailors don’t do a lot of marching at sea whereas an Army guy gets a medical discharge. I just got excused duty. Pretty cool.
• Because this was the US Naval Reserve, we didn’t have a super strict boot camp like a regular Navy guy. It was pretty strict like any boot camp but we had plenty of time off every evening, and the first weekend we got to go ashore. The regular boot camp is 9 weeks and it’s tough, no shore leave. Glad I enlisted in the reserves.
• We only had to march with guns (actually just sticks of wood) called ‘pieces’ one day. And then for only 1/2 hour. The drill master found it repugnant that he had to make us do it at all because it was stupid. But it was a requirement. Probably insisted on by the NRA.
• Even with the easy training, two guys really wanted out after the first week so concocted a ruse where they climbed into the same rack together early one morning. I and several others over heard them plotting as they weren’t quiet about it. The Master-At-Arms was informed at reveille and those guys were immediately dishonorably discharged. Pretty stupid if you ask me.
• Another couple guys also wanted out, so they purposely wet the bed because they’d heard that was an easy way to get out. Medical discharges. Also stupid. And I was thinking the entire time, “Gah, you dummies, it’s only two weeks!”
• Learned that in the two weeks we were at Navy boot camp, 10 Marines at the Marine boot camp across the bay attempted suicide. Three successfully, in just 2 weeks. Many more went AWOL. That’s how tough it is on young guys in the Marines. This made most of us really appreciate how easy we had it in Navy boot camp. Our drill master told us those stories about the Marines…probably as an object lesson and because even as easy as our boot camp was, there were still at least 5 guys out of 50 who did their best to get out.

But I digress. In the times I’d been to SD while in the Navy, I came to appreciate what a great city it is. So many interesting things to see and do there. Excellent weather too. So I wanted an excuse to travel there and I got my reason back in November when I was up in Pahrump.

I had this Hughes satellite dish setup for internet. I’d long ago stopped using the equipment but was still hanging onto it. It had cost me $1300 back in ’05, I’d used it up to ’09, but the reason for it had slowly changed over the years. RV parks back then weren’t too keen on installing another service for their clients, but the pressure from campers became very strong so they basically had to if they wanted to compete with those that did install wifi. Many times I’d find RV parks with wifi available ONLY in their office so my satellite setup was pretty handy. Eventually though, nearly all parks I went to had better wifi than my satellite could provide, and was free, where I was paying $70/month. And Hughes changed the satellite foot print so I couldn’t use it in most of Mexico! Eventually, I wasn’t using it enough so I dropped the service and stored the equipment in one of my basement compartments. So I had that equipment taking up room. Couldn’t bare to just toss it all though. I did check several times over the years about reinstating the service, but it never worked out to be economical.

Here’s most of the setup…the 0.9 meter dish, the horn, the custom bracket for azimuth and other adjustments, the surveyors tripod (worth $600 back when I bought it – I checked, now they’re made in China and sell for $125), the 25′ of dual coax cable, and the triangle that goes on the ground and the tripod legs stick into the corners nice and stable like.

Not shown is a device that is splayed out under the tripod inside of that triangle on the ground after the dish is set up and then spikes are driven through holes in the legs of the device into the ground. Than a ratcheting strap is hooked to an eye at the apex of that device, is strung up to the bottom of the tripod and hooks into that eye you can see in the picture below. When tightened the antenna assembly is tightened to the ground. So the assembly is fairly windproof. Using it, you don’t have to use cement blocks or jugs of water weighing down the antenna to hold it in place like you see with many large ground mounted antennas. I was able to use it around 70% of the time when I set up the antenna.

Then there’s this little device that helps with pointing and peaking the antenna on the satellite. The modem that this all plugs into was obsolete so I tossed that. What I had planned on doing was to advertise it on eBay and try to sell it through that site. I didn’t really like that idea because I’d have to ship everything, and pay eBay if it sold. There were others selling nearly the same setup so I did get an idea what mine was worth. Anyway, I weighed and measured everything and then figured out how much it would cost to ship it all. And it came to $125 minimum. Plus all the work that would come with packaging it all so it’s not damaged in shipment. Went ahead and did my best to find shipping boxes and packing material for all those odd sizes and shapes for the equipment just in case.

Meanwhile I checked the internet for sales info on a satellite wifi forum. I needed to know what my system was worth considering it is 12 years old and the tech may have changed so I was looking for someone else selling theirs. The forum I used had a small ‘For Sale’ page so I was reading through there and found a guy who had asked if anyone was selling their Hughes dish setup of the type I have. The posting was 2 years old, but I took the chance and em’ed the guy. And damned if he wasn’t still looking. He uses his system all the time along the Baja coast and the salt air was ruining his second setup, the first set had corroded away. Everything was all rusty on his second setup. And he was a west coast person so my shipping costs would be lower. Better yet, he was a San Diego native and I could drive there on one of my trips and deliver the system myself, than visit SD.

Eventually, he and I struck a deal, where he’d send me $100 to not advertise it anymore, than I’d meet him in San Diego later on in the spring (late March, early April), and give him the rest of the equipment for another $200. So $300 for the entire setup. Yea!

So now I had a great excuse to travel to San Diego. But first, I needed to burn up some time waiting for the guy to return from Chile where he was living at the time. Seems he divides his time between Chile, the Baja, and short stays in San Diego. Interesting life the guy has.

And the next few posts will be about my wait here in Yuma for the San Diego trip. Gave me ample time to get a sense of this huge retirement area. There’s 10’s of thousands of retirees here living in the many RV parks, the many trailer courts, and the many manufactured home communities. All with their different rules and regs. Most without much in the way of shade. Not to mention the many many upscale homes built here. Gates everywhere but not as many as there could be…plenty of the retirement courts were security loose too, with defunct gates you have to navigate around, or other difficulties for the casual visitor.

The area does have an ancient history and I spent some time exploring but it wasn’t long after I got here that the heat reared it’s ugly head and basically forced me to stay inside my nice air conditioned RV most days after 11 AM. Did all my shopping between 8-11. Even though I have A/C in my car, it’s still not comfortable outside an air conditioned space for very long.

So just hanging out around Yuma wasn’t all that fun, but it had it’s moments. There were several excellent shopping opportunities, and there’s a large multiplex theater I enjoyed watching a movie at, but overall, I have hundreds of other choices where to live that wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure.