The main focus of the trip was to attend the Night Sky Festival which I’d bought tickets to months ago. Unfortunately we missed most of it because we got there so late - we arrived Saturday afternoon and missed all the lectures, so all we got to do was look through telescopes at the observatory, which, while mildly interesting, probably wasn’t worth it. It was a lot of stumbling around in the dark to wait on long lines to see the same blurry image of Saturn or Jupiter over and over. Theo was exhausted and bored. Again, if we’d planned better and spent more time at it it might have been worth it, but I doubt I’d spring for it again.
The reason we were late on Saturday and didn’t come in Friday night as was originally planned was we had to pick up this 1800s cowboy tub from am eBay seller in Rancho Cucamonga Saturday morning. I’ve wanted one of these since I saw one at the Rose Bowl some months ago - they’re super light (30 lbs) so can be easily stored and then dragged out to the middle of the desert, filled with water, and then you can enjoy a cool or warm bath out in the open, dump it out, and drag it back to storage. I figure it’s the only way to have a bathtub out there without worrying about it getting stolen or vandalized. So we picked that up in a Bass Pros parking lot and ferried it to our shipping container.
Sunday we went for brunch at the Palms and had the serendipitous experience of meeting a woman who’s YouTube videos we’ve been following - she’s another neighbor, just north of us, and a) was the woman we saw walk by our place on our cameras on our wedding day, b) also has a contractor boyfriend we may be able to hire, and c) had all kinds of useful tips for us about power and water and heating, the most interesting being she recently bought a drill to dig a well and is looking to dig wells for friends. I got her number.
We had a blast teaching the kids to play pool at the Palms. Pool was a huge part of my misspent youth - I spent a couple of summers playing 9 ball with Chinese gangs at Tekk Billiards on Christopher St in NY when I was 15 & 16 - so the idea of getting the kids into it is very cool. Bobby was a natural.
Then we went to an artist’s pop up mini golf course in which you could paint an abandoned house after - despite the extreme heat, it was a blast. I painted a Bowie portrait (the same one that’s on my phone case).
Later we checked out a local bowling alley - old school and cheap - and as we drove out the following day, we finally visited a musician friend who lives out there and did what we want to do, rehab an old shack for living purposes. He showed us his whole set up for solar and water and sewer. While we can’t do all the things he did - he’s hooked up to city water and has septic - we got some good tips.
We came back from the desert with a renewed sense of purpose and a surprising return to our original concept after weighing other options; I’m glad we’re of like minds about this stuff. At the moment I am considering a return to a wood burning stove for heating, and a traditional wooden outhouse rather than having the bathroom in the container. Now that we know that the place is not, in fact, rife with criminals trying to steal our stuff (while that element is for sure there and something to be wary of, five months of security cameras tells me pretty much nobody goes out there), I’m less worried about having a small break-in-able bathroom than I used to be. And the H is ok with an old school pit toilet if it’s not in a container with other things stored in it that could get contaminated. So, now we just have to get that going somehow! I feel like we could conceivably build it ourselves - it’s just a tiny shed - it’s the digging the pit I’m concerned about. Maybe we can recruit this new guy to do it for us.
I’m on the hunt for a vintage parlor stove like the one my friend has used for the last couple of years to heat his place. I’m worried about fires and carbon monoxide poisoning - but the lady we met also heats her place with wood, and has had no issues. I also spent a long Connecticut winter in a house heated entirely by a single wood burning stove and was toasty all season and none of us died of carbon monoxide. So maybe I’m being overly cautious. Some detectors placed strategically is probably the way to go.
The woman we met at the Palms said everyone comes out here thinking they can throw a cheap place together in weeks and just be done, but that it never works out like that; it always takes years, and that’s to be expected. Makes me feel a little better about what a roller coaster this place has been. I’m ok with a long-term project, especially if we can still use it in the meantime.
We finally got some quality family time, which reminds me of why I wanted this place - without it, the H would literally work around the clock seven days a week. His insane schedule has always been a huge bone of contention for me, and it falls under the same category as managing his adhd - how much of this is just inevitable (he has to make money and in his industry this is the only way) and how much of it is his “fault” (allowing himself to be exploited, not being efficient, being addicted to hard work). It’s easy for me to sit here with my cush setup and judge others for their shitty work situations - and nearly everyone I know has issues with coworkers, bosses, company policies, etc etc - when I’ve been the boss since I was 26 and can no longer conceive of a time when my destiny was under someone else’s control. The fact is, people are really struggling out there, and he’s one of them. He’s basically working two full time jobs just to make a basic existence, running himself ragged so that when he is around he’s exhausted and stressed. But when I force him to take these trips - and he’s always apprehensive about not getting to work all weekend - you can see this whole other side to him. And I know he’s grateful (during my crunch time, I’m always glad I have a family to give me something else to focus on. I used to be annoyed by the distraction, but now I realize it’s important for my mental health). I’m aiming for one, maybe two trips out there next month, and one in November. Have not heard from our neighbor contractor so I’ll try him again this week. But he might be back by then.
Our hotel meeting wasn’t bad but wasn’t great. I accomplished the goal of being assigned a new contact person, which I knew wouldn’t be an issue. But the extra charges will stay, and the $10,000 bill will be north of $20,000, in fact, since as I suspected, the initial bill I got was missing a bunch of stuff. I kind of knew it was too good to be true, but I’m still pretty gutted. Consensus among my hotel venue renting friends is that the industry is just terrible right now - hotels are scrambling to make up for lost revenue, and they don’t give a fuck. The GM even said most of the contracts they have now they would never agree to in this environment…which says to me when it’s time to renew in a couple of years, I could be in for a rude awakening. We pointed out the failures on their end - the many ceiling leaks, the downed systems, things that in the past would have earned me an apology and credits off my bill - and they were like, “yeah”. And…that was it. So I think at this point I should just count my blessings, raise my prices, and hope I can clear 1000+ people every year, because that’s what it’s going to take to make an even basic living from now on.
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