Mexican Train

How do traveling people entertain themselves? Prior to hitting the road, the game of Mexican Train was unknown to me. The Dutchman, however soon introduced it to us. It is a bizarre game that has more variations than I do excuses. One of the variations is called "Chicken foot". I think we are of the Chicken foot school.The word Kadizzled actually came during one of these train sessions. If you cannot play your turn, you are kadizzled. The rules of the game seem to change every time it is played. It is what I would call a sorting game. You sort domino's. If you analyze most card games, that is all you are really doing is sorting cards. Since the winner results from a combination of skill, and the random draw, it does resemble life. When you win, you attribute it to skill, when you loose, you say it was just bad luck. At the end of the game it is best to get out some vanilla ice cream and put a few dabs of raspberry jam on it. Sometimes people play faster knowing what the results will be. One of the strange things that frequently occurr, is that Cissie and Ed acuse me of cheating. They claim I do not draw enough tiles to begin with, or I randomly place tiles back in the pile. I am a consistant looser, which seems strange if I am cheating. Now, if I cheat, and still loose, that is the mother of all insults about my ability, perhaps that is the message they are trying to get across.

Kadizzled Weather

The weather has not really been bad, but we are waiting for the right weather to go on to the Havasui Falls. Wind is the main culprit. The band of gypsies may move back to Miss Patty's and wait for the weather window. So laundry, and book keeping will be on the agenda

Lord Windischmeer Heads for Sun City

Perry and Mona headed back to Sun City. Patty came down to Cottonwood, and we had a nice meal at the Mexican Returaunt. Perry and Mona went to some Indian sites with us and also took a short hike in Sedona. Ed gave a recital in his Casita for the visitors from Sun City. Next on the agenda is Death Valley, after a stop at Havasupi Falls.

Paul Boomer is alive

Word has come into Kadizzled that Paul Boomer survived the outhouse explosion. Pictured above is Boomer with his trainers discussing a rematch with Lord Windischmeer. Should this materialize it will be one of the great rematches of history. I checked on Google and if you put Paul Boomer in the search engine, you can get a free audio of the original match.

Lord Windischmeer at Dead Horse Ranch

Either you know this part of American History or you don’t. Prior to World War two, a famous match occurred between Lord Windiscmheer, and Paul Boomer. Many people have since enjoyed the recording of the match, which was, originally broadcast over radio. Paul Boomer as you may remember worked his way to this country from Australia on a cabbage boat. Lord Windiscmheer came over from England. They agreed to meet in a neutral country because of the importance of the match. If my recollection is correct Lord Windeschmeer lost the close match when he fouled out at the pole.

Now, as Paul Harvey would say, for the rest of the story. Many people have wondered what happened to both Paul Boomer, and Lord Windischmeer. Paul Boomer died in an outhouse explosion within a year of the match. After years of investigation by William T. Butcher and Associates, Lord Windiscmheer was tracked down in Canada, living under the alias Perry Foster. Tired of being hounded by the paparazzi the Lord decided to lead a simpler life. I have become friends with Lord Windischmeer through pheasant hunting connections, and graciously his Lordship agreed to join us at the Dead Horse Ranch in Cottownwood, Arizona. His Lordship drove up in the royal carriage from his winter home in Sun City. His Lordship is enjoying a comfortable retirement with the proceeds from a successful book on his sport. I can faithfully report his Lordship is still windy, but the wind is now coming from a different direction. He has an elaborate collection of stories and jokes, which keep his friends entertained late into the night

A gathering of Eagles at Dead Horse Ranch

It is going to be a perfect day. The stars were out as bright as possible last night. One amazing thing about a lot of towns around here is the fact that they delibrately prohibit a lot of street lighting, and other extranous lighting. The cities do it to help the telescopes in the area. If the rest of the country would adopt this policy we would be well on our way to less pollution, and massive energy saving. I see no downside to it. The whole atmosphere at night is so much nicer. I doubt there is any difference in crime or anything else because millions of unesscessary lights don't burn all night. Think of the tax dollars that go into needless street lighting.

Back to the eagles. Ed in his Casita, featured above, moved to Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood. Perry is coming up with Mona from Sun City on Friday to Dead Horse. The plan is to explore the area together and have a small get together. Perry is a good hunting friend from Canada. We will move to Dead Horse tomorrow.

Do something with that big belly of yours Mike!

The commander is constantly complaining about the size of my spare tire. She always says "What are you going to do about that?" and points to my big belly. So I came up with the idea below. To see it you have to click on the little play arrow button in the middle and it will play. There is sound with it. You need a big belly for this type of art. I want to do a big picture tonight so I am having a beer right now and will have a nice dinner.

My Job

Yesterday we were in Flagstaff, one of America's liberal kingdoms. The selection of bumper stickers was excellent. My favorite was "My job is to comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable. Second place went to "Who is the president of the United States. The answer is a no brainer".

Shortly after reading these I encountered one of the disturbed. God must always be trying to test me. I failed. Patty and I sat in a nice little place to eat. From out of no where an Indian woman appeared on my left shoulder. She started asking me for money. Her smell tipped me off that she was collecting money for an alcohol experiment. My first response was to pretend like I did not speak English, that didn't work. Next in English I tried to explain to her that she was dressed better than I was dressed. Of course those who know me realize that would not take much. Well, that didn't deter her either. Finally I signaled the waiter. He came over and asked what I needed. I to him "I need you to give her some spare change". He escorted her to the door and offered her some crackers. She refused the crackers. Apparently she had a very specific hunger.

Mother of All Traffic Jam/Snow mess

The Commander, Lord Kadizzle, and Miss Patty set off for Flagstaff on a simple mission yesterday. Patty needed to sell some books at Bookman's. The rest of the trip invovled checking out some of the local fribble stores, that stock such things as candles shaped like catus. Another part of the mission was to buy some MRE's. MREs are meals ready to eat, used by the military. Cissie and I ate them one nite at the Grand Canyon. They were not that bad, but the best thing is that they have a neat heating system that makes them ideal for emergencies, like wars, and hiking. We could not find the genuine item, but did find some repackaged in a sporting goods store. It is actually illegal to sell them, so that may explain part of the problem. None were bought.

Finally we headed back to Rim Rock. Now the fun began. It started to snow. Very quickly the road was covered. The road from Flagstaff to Rimrock is one giant hill. It wasn't long before a car did a spectacular spin in front of us and went in the median. Next all traffic came to a halt. We became stationary from 3:15 to 8:30. The incompetence of the Arizona Highway Patrol was beyond belief. About 2 miles in front of us,two trucks wrecked on a bridge on the interstate. Obviously,there was no organized plan with how to deal with it. Getting tow trucks and wreckers to the site was the first major problem. With an ounce of intelligence, they could have had an officer organize the stranded cars so the wrecker could get past. No such luck. I ended up going down the line on foot getting people to move their vehicles out of the way. The Highway patrol thanked me, but did not have enough sense to send two officers in a car, so they could do the same thing.

The communication system that was supposed to help motorists was useless. If you dialed 511, which was supposed to provide information, you merely were told there was a wreck. They did not even have enough sense to close the road. So traffic continued to back up for hours. There were so many simple common sense things the State could have done to make the whole mess simpler to deal with. My sister said this happens frequently. If this country is supposedly capable of dealing with terrorists, a simple wreck on the interstate would show it just ain't so.

For a while, traffic was shut off on the North bound lane. It could have been because of a wreck, or perhaps they actually engaged their brains. At 8:30 when we were finally were able to move, we could see the same mess developing on the North bound lane. Beyond belief, the Arizona Highway Patrol did not stop traffic south of the hill climb to Flagstaff, nor did they tell tractor trailers to stay off the road. Instead, they allowed another five hour traffic jam to develop on the North lane. I am 57 years old and have never seen a traffic mess of this magnitude. Cars were backed up for fifteen miles on the North bound lane, and more were driving up the hill as fast as they could to participate in the stand still. The fact that this apparently happens all the time and the State of Arizona has no communication plan to deal with it is beyond comprehension. The State actually has some of those large digital signs over the highway that can provide information. Why they don't use them is incomprehensible. The whole thing is equivalent to letting people drive off a cliff for hours and not realizing you could tell them there was a cliff ahead.

As we sat in the car for hours, the MREs I did not buy seemed like a good deal at seven dollars apiece. Now the biggest problem in the whole mess turned out to be women peeing. At some point this problem has to be resolved. The choices are (1) go down in the woods behind a tree (2) pee between the front door and rear door of the car (3) squat in front of a tractor trailer. Number one would not work, because if traffic started to move while you were in the woods, all cars must move. Some older ladies chose the tractor trailer route. If you use this choice remember to tell the driver so he can shut off the headligths, and not drive over you. Miss Patty, and the Commander took choice two. Choice two works pretty well unless a nit wit comes along driving on that side to head for the cut across.

Something tells me that the next time Arizona has this situation, they will learn nothing from it. Like most American problems we accept them rather than solve them. Had the highway patrol simply gone down the miles of parked cars and told everyone to move as far to the right as possible, emegency vehicles could have very quickly moved to the scene of the problem. The current system the state has developed involves emergency vehicles passing on the right for a while and then on the left if this doesn't work. The net result are hours of unnecessary delay. Also the state has the option to send the heavy tow trucks from the south in the North lane. This would be quite simple and effective, but must not have ever occurred to them.

New York Times Book Review

When The Commander can get her hands on the Sunday edition of the New York Times, it is a luxery she insist on. This morning I was reading the book reviews, because The Commander wanted the laptop. I came accross a book by John Mueller A STATE OF TERROR. The basis of the book is "A real but limited threat has been inflated to produce widespread and unjustified anxiety". Mr. Mueller has put into words something I have been thinking about for some time. He suggest that the 9/11 attacks were probably a one-time event that cannot be repeated. As Mueller explains in "Overblown," fear of flying after 9/11 led to increases in long distance driving that probably killed way more people in accidents than died on the four planes hijacked on 9/11. In his words "Which is the greater threat: terrorism, or the reaction against it?....A threat that is real but likely to prove to be of limited scope has been massively, perhaps even fancifully, inflated to produce widespread and unjustified anxiety. This process has then led to wasteful, even self-parodic expenditures and policy overreactiions."

The whole thing reminds me of the great Y2K jazz that occurred when the year 2000 came. All these dingalings predicted computer problems that would bring the world to a stand still. Billions were spent for nothing. The sad thing about the 9/11 nonsense is that Osma Bin Ladin has been able to harvest way more from his incident in terms of hurting us than he could ever have imagined. 99 percent of the damage has been due to our over reaction. Much like the great communist witch hunts this will take years to end, before people realize the whole thing was blown way out of proportion. If you ever observed little kids you would know that sometimes they enjoy being scared. I think 9/11 gave use a chance to go back to childhood idiocy.

The Commander Speaks

The day after arriving at the Phantom Ranch, Mike and I finally had a day apart. I wanted to hike up to Ribbon Falls on the North Kaibab Trail- a 12 mile roundtrip hike. Mike preferred to rest his turkeys around the Colorado River. He wanted to make me take a two radio, but I refused as it was nice being on my own for a whole day. Also, the radios would not have worked for more than one twist in the canyon walls. The hike through the earth over 5,000 ft. below the surface was a history lesson in geology and kept reminding me of the scenes on TV of molten lava flowing through rock and rising up out of the ground. This rock was now cold but still had the appearance of flowing rock. The prize at the end of the 6 miles was Ribbon Falls. The photos do not show the heighth of the falls, which was at least 150' over all. You could hike behind the falls and view the world through the falls. After this walk through time, I hiked back as quickly as possible in order to make it to the Ranch's cantina for beers before supper.

Blind Man hikes out of Grand Canyon

Anyone, who knows The Commander knows she suffers from hyperactivity, consequently I have to use special techniques when I hike with her. The Commander typically goes up the trail like a monkey with it’s tail on fire. My solution for this problem getting out of the Grand Canyon was to leave very early on the first wave of hikers headed out. The Commander would follow on the second wave. This would give me about an hour’s head start.

Breakfast is served at 5:30 for the first shift. Naturally I was first in line and first finished. Immediately against the protest of the commander, I took off in the dark. It was very dark and I began to think about the foolishness of my adventure. Most of the trail hangs on the edge of a cliff, and if you fall off death would be better than the injury you would receive.

As I went down the first part of the trail it occurred to me I had to pass the Ranger’s house. I was concerned the Ranger may tell me I could not continue until daylight. How to explain my stupidity was my puzzle. Then I remembered Owen’s Chihuahua joke. Owen is Bill Butcher’s grandson. The joke revolves around a blind man who discovers they gave him a Chihuahua for a Seeing Eye dog.

My plan was that if I saw any signs of the ranger, I would put on my sunglasses in the dark, and pretend like I was finding my way down the path tapping my hiking stick like a blind person. When the ranger barked out “You can’t hike this trail in the dark”, I would reply “ Those ornery roommates told me it was daylight”.

As luck would have it I made it past the Ranger’s house with no problems. In the dark ahead of me on the trail I saw what appeared to be two tiny bright red lights bouncing along the trail ahead of me. The lights did not move in tandem, like eyes, but each one went its own way, even though they stayed close together. Puzzled and with a little trepidation I kept walking toward the lights. Shortly I could make out about a three-year-old boy with his mother hiking down the trail ahead of me. The little boy’s tennis shoes had little lights on the bottom that came on every time he stepped. The mom was just taking him for a morning walk. What an experience, to be three years old hiking with your mom at five thirty beside the Colorado River at the bottom of the grand Canyon in the dark.

My plan worked and I made the five thousand foot rise to the top about forty five minutes before Winky.

Lord Kadizzle Claims Colorado River for North Dakota

Much to their surprise The Commander and Lord Kadizzle dicovered a river at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. After some discussion with the Commander, Lord Kadizzle decided to claim the River for North Dakota. With the current condition of Lake Sakakawea they thought it would be a good idea.

Cheeseburger, and Fries

To refresh your memory I will repeat that since Thanksgiving I have been carring tow turkeys right above my belt. I have named them Cheeseburger, and his friend Fries. You can see them in the picture above. When we got to the bottom of the Grand Canyon I let them walk around a bit, knowing I was going to have to break the bad news. On the way down the two birds hammered me to death. It took me a full day to recover. It was time to tell one he was history and not making the trip up the five thousand foot climb out of the Canyon. Having to choose between Cheeseburger adn Fries was tough. They had both been good to me. Both had comforted me in many times of distress. Finally I looked in Fries eyes and told him the bad news. He looked back with that expression he always gets the day before Thanksgiving.

The Commander Conquers the Canyon

As we stood on the top of the Grand Canyon I was nervous. The Commander made me stand at attention as she inspected my gear. "Look you wimp", she said "You and those two turkeys are going in, and one turkey aint commin back". Then she yelled, "Any questions?". Sheepishly, I replied "No mam, sir".

Commander planning assault

Immersed in maps and books the commander is sitting across the table plannning her assault on the Grand Canyon tomorrow. Will we need crampons? Lord Kadizzle has been trying to figure how he can make crampons from beer bottle caps and electrical wire tires, other wise we may have to buy some. The plan is to get up early drive to the canyon from Camp Verde, and begin the descent. The weather looks like it may cooperate mildly. Friday should be nice. Lord Kadizzle is concerned about lugging the two turkeys up the canyon.

Technology triumphs over Indians but barely

Yesterday, Lord Kadizzle, and The Commander set out to find some Indian petroglyphs. The Indians make them, and hide them. It is our job to find them. Being a good American that solves all problems with the most up to date technology, I first found the site on my laptop super duper computer program that gives the GPS location. There was one major flaw in the process. I asked Uncle Ned "Is this where we look?". Ned looked at the map where I had the computer pointer and said yes. So I wrote down a series of coordinates and off we went. The Commander and I hiked a mile and a half up the most rugged boulder strewn stream you can imagine. Since we are old hands at this we both gradually realized something was wrong. There were not suitable Indian blackboards in the valley. Indians always use the same rock to make petroglyphs. The Commander got the brilliant idea that we should call Uncle Ned on the cell phone and recheck our information. From the bottom of the canyon we were lucky enough to reach Ned. After I gave Ned the coordinates, he told me we were fifty miles away from the right location. Luckily we do not work for Nasa, we would be on Mars looking for the moon. It turned out Ned and I were not using the same data system. Once we were on the same page Ned reported we had passed the site by about a mile and a half.

In frustration we went backwards clear to the truck where we started. On the way we searched every possible location. Nothing turned up. I got to the truck before the Commander and noticed perfect Indian message board downstream from where I was. In the meantime the Commander called Ned again and Ned gave a better description of what we should be looking for. Shortly we found the site. Of course it was within a couple hundred yards of where we go out of the truck. However, it was down stream, not up stream. If we had used intuition instead of technology, the trip would have taken one hour instead of three. The Indians were lucky they did not have GPS to guide them, or the White Man would have won sooner. Now it is easier to see how the terrorist do so well in Iraq against our technology.

Please look at the picture carefully. What you are seeing may be a petroglyph of a saber tooth tiger. This is a very rare petroglyph and archeologists are very puzzled why it is here. In our travels we have seen hundreds of sites, none has ever contained this glyph.

The Fribble Hunt

Since the weather was a little rainy yesterday the Commander and Lord Kadizzle decided to go to Sedona and entertain ourselves by wandering around the stores. We made the mistake of going into the heart of the fribble sales district. What is a fribble? Fribbles are the things you buy that have no practical use or value. For some strange reason when a person goes on vacation they feel compelled to buy some silly object that they can take home. Surely someone will come by and say "Where did you get that?". Then you reply, "When we were in Sedona, I saw this wonderful little shop...." The fribble industry is amazing. Ideally you have fribbles made from local junk. In the southwest this can be an old branding iron or whatever. I have always been amazed that just about anywhere you go in the Southwest you can buy large chunks of crystal glass. Since I am from West Virginia, I know where these come from. West Virginia makes a lot of high quality crystal. At a certain time they have to clean out the furnace that melts the glass. When they do, they end up with huge chunks of crystal, which are essentially garbage in West Virginia. However, in the Southwest fribble shops they look like huge uncut diamonds. So the fribble shops display them on a table, and make no claim as to what they are. Fribble hunters see them and pay five to ten dollars for glass that is dumped as garbage in West Virginia. So it goes. The commander and I have been thinking about getting into the fribble business. While hunting in North Dakota we noticed an old pickup truck full of partially decomposed buffalo skulls. In the Southwest we have come to find that the skulls sell for as much as $100 a piece. If you decorate them the price can approach one thousand. Following the principle that garbage in one state is treasure in another we may go into the fribble business.

Mexican fribbles drive me nuts. The commander has a weakness for Mexican fribbles. Someone in every tourist town has figured out that you can always sell Mexican fribbles. You simply go to Mexico and pick up truckloads of "art" made by starving Mexicans and bring it back to the states. When I used to do industrial work I was always amazed that Mexican junk dealers would come to North Dakota and pick up a truck load of industrial steel scrap. In the Southwest you can see what left North Dakota at $25 a ton has returned to Arizona for $25 dollars a pound as a modern art version of a Mexican playing a guitar, and we have the audacity to call these people stupid and lazy.

Without you , we are but dust

In church this morning we were sitting beside a little girl and her mother when the preacher began his sermon.

..."Dear Lord," the minister began,
with arms extended toward heaven and a rapturous look on his
upturned face. "Without you, we are but dust." He would have
continued but at that moment the little girl sitting next to me who
was listening leaned over to me and asked quite audibly in her

shrill little four year old girl voice, "Mr, what is butt dust?"

The Rapture

Not everyone has seen the show "Six feet under". It is on HBO and is about a family that runs a funeral home. This morning Patty told me about an episode we missed. I thought you might enjoy the synopsis. Keep in mind that when the rapture occurs the saved are supposed to float up to heaven.


Episode #41, "In Case of Rapture," commences with the death of Dorothy Sheedy, 40 years young, who is described as "a devoted member of the First Baptist Church of Los Angeles."

Our story begins with two workers who are busy filling up inflatable sex dolls with helium, so that they can be used for a display at an adult film awards show. After clowning around with inhaled helium, the two gents begin to transport the inflatable dolls, secured under a net in the back of their pick-up truck. Preoccupied for a moment with an X-rated adult magazine, they stop short to avoid hitting a skateboarder. The sudden stop, however, loosens the net; unbeknownst to the workers, the dolls start floating upward toward the sky.

Coming from another direction, Sheedy is driving her car, with its "I Brake for the Rapture" bumper sticker. She’s listening to a Christian radio broadcast on marital relations, uttering "Praise the Lord," as she nods her head in agreement with the talk-show host. Suddenly, Sheedy stops her car. She can hardly believe the sight before her eyes. Seeing the dolls floating toward the heavens, she mistakes them for actual angelic human beings, heaven-bound, as part of the foretold Rapture, when Christ removes all the right-believing Christians from the Earth to spare them the onslaught of the End of Days. It’s a little piece of religious eschatology, justified by certain Protestant sects with references to books of the Old and New Testament.

"Oh My Lord, Sweet Jesus," Sheedy exclaims. She cannot contain her joy as a witness to the heavenly vanishing. Moving toward the imagined Rapture, her arms outstretched toward the clouds, she walks into the road, and gets hit—and killed—by an oncoming car.

At the funeral home of the Fishers, her widower husband appears to fully accept his wife’s death as the Will of God. Clearly, her time had come.

Hygiene on the road

Every so often we have to do laundry. We have been lucky so far and been able to stop with friends and get er done. You can see what happens in the picture above if you let the laundry over ripen.

Problems with the gene pool.

Frequently the commander tells me I am not normal, or right, or something to that effect. Lord Kadizzle will have to admit there are some aberrations in our gene pool. I am not the only one in the family with DNA gone astray. My sister Kate thinks DNA stands for Does Not Apply. We are not sure if she has any, but it scares me that we may share some. Today she sent me the following problem.

You are driving in a car at a constant speed. On your left side is a drop off (The ground is 18-20 inches below the level you are traveling on), and on your right side is a fire engine traveling at the same speed as you. In front of you is a galloping horse which is the same size as your car and you cannot overtake it. Behind you is another galloping horse. Both horses are also traveling at the same speed as you. What must you do to safely get out of this highly dangerous situation?

It turned out the answer was "Get your drunk ass off the merrygoround". I think Kate must have solved this problem at one time or another.

What if you treed one of these? Would you know what to do?

Back to Sedona today. It seems like the commander and I have covered just about every major trail in Sedona. The hiking is excellent there, and it is easy to see why the wealthy have purchased the town. One of the biggest things our goverment has ever done right is to preserve public land, otherwise common people would be excluded from every nice part of the county. The commander is excited about trying to hike down into the Grand Canyon. Currently we are scheduled to make the treck on the 16th. In fact she also plans to go later to Havasupi falls from the Peach Springs area.

Ed meets up with Wagon Train

We spent two nights with our old friend Ed. Of course we played Mexican Train. On the second night battery problems forced us to play with headlamps on our heads. Anyone observing from outside must have thought some kind of mentally deficient group was having a meeting. Today Ed headed to Congress where ever that is, and The Commander and I returned to sister Patty's. Things are deluxe now at Patty's. The wifi was just installed today, so we can sit in our camper beside their house and use the laptop in Bed. The commander is preparing the coffee for morning at this moment, oh it smells so good, I am going to go to sleep, just so I can get up and drink it.

Scrabble under the Pale Verde

We finally met up with Ed. We went to Alamo Lake, but did not like it so we returned to Vulture Peak. We hiked Vulture Peak again yesterday and spent about two hours up there just gazing around. In the next couple days we will go back to Cottonwood to see Patty. Cissie is getting a strong notion to hike the Grand Canyon, so I feel that is coming up soon.

Big Hike

Yesterday we went up Vulture Peak, another one of those hikes with the first mile easy, and the last quater mile straight up. We found a very nice place for the camper near the peak. This is near Wickenburg AZ. This blasted library will not let you upload pictures. We have decided to stay here another day, and then go to Almo Lake. We cannot mannage to hook up with Ed. Today may be bike riding.

The Heard Museum

We drove with Perry and his GPS, which he has named Gladdis to the Heard Museum. Gladdis tells you every turn to make and even chides you when you are speeding. Since it was a rainy day, the trip was a good plan. The Heard Museum is one of the Southwest's premier Indian museums. I am beginning to feel that if an Indian made something, or built something, it is our mission in life to see it. We will probably be involved in the next Indian census.

Today we are going to leave Perry and Mona's for points to the Northwest. They have been gracious host and we are considering a career of just traveling the country bumming from old friends. Perry has a nice place on the golf course, and you can just walk to the clubhouse for lunch if need be. Life is good in Sun City, and Cissie and I have met the minimum age requirements.