Just Stuff

Have four Starlinis in now. Where as on it's best Day Hughes Net might get you 30 and 19 up and down, my worst Starlink gets me 150 up and 20 down. You can only get three residential Starlinks at one address. The fourth one I bought is expensive but even faster than the others with a little wider range you can use it from with about 200 and 25, but the dish is $2,750 and $125 per month. Without draining the pond I don't think I'll ever get all the growth out of there.

Hiking with Kobae again. Most every day. When evening started to approach I was sitting in the shade with Jax and Kobae. I petted Kobae for ten minutes or so and said it was time to go home. I don't want to fight with you. Let's just have a nice hike. He stared at me, stood up, headed for the road and we hiked back to the lodge with no incident.

I love the days. Mostly caught up on work. Moab 240 running race comes through here at our first aid station on Friday the 13th of October. Saturday Oct 14th is the Eclipse. They guess 65,000 people will come to Moab. We'll be about 90 to 95% covered.

It looks like they are putting some even uglier tents or something where the domes use to be. Unbelievable.

Again, So Soon

A couple of nights ago a two seater side by side shows up at O dark thirty. There friends in another two seater are broke down out at Jackson Hole. He pinned it for me and shows me on his phone map. I know exactly where that is. We call a couple off road wreckers and find one that thinks they have a part and can fix it tomorrow. I tell the two guys to head to town, get your vehicle. Ford 150 it turns out, and head back this way. Jax and I will go out to Jackson Hole, in the dark, and find your friends.

Again, the night sky was incredible. Was a little more dicey on the road. Some of the ups and downs aren't quite as defined. For my six seaters it's hard to do that trail without hitting bottom. I hit bottom twice on the Jackson Hole rollover last week and twice more on this one. Hard hits. For what they usually tip me it's not going to come close when I actually sustain real damage, but the night, oh boy. Unbelievable. Twice Jax and I stopped to listen and see if we could hear voices at intersections to know which way to go. We don't know if they are at the vehicle or if they decided to hike back with the possibility of two different ways back. I turn the lights back on and there aren't any foot prints or fresh tire marks. They must be coming around from the other way on Jackson Loop.

Gonna have to pull out the satellite phone and dust it off. One of these nights Jax and I will be by ourselves out doing a rescue and it will be us that breaksdown. On this night it would have been a six mile hike back. I brought two head lamps, probably should have brought more. We're at the intersection of turning off to Jackson Ladder I hiked back from here a year or two with no head lamps and the only light was two planets. I don't think they would have gone to Jackson Ladder and I don't see any human or side by side tracks going that way. I turn the lights off and yell. I don't get a response. I yell again. I hear something, maybe it's help, but whatever it is it's straight ahead. I almost hate to turn the vehicle back on. I kind of want to sleep here it's so beautiful. I'll rescue them in the morning.

I start up the engine and turn the lights back on and Jax and I move forward. In a minute or so we see lights. They've turned their lights on giving us a beacon to where they are. I pull up, don't say a word, flipa t turn, and one guy says "Are we suppose to go with you?" I say "You are." They thought they heard a vehicle and then figured it was a side by side so turned their lights on hoping I would head their way. I'm focused on the road on the way back but hit bottom hard one time anyway. I call the lodge on the walkie when I get to the abandoned oil well and ask if they see lights coming down Hurrah. They don't so best to keep going.

The truck is not at the top and I don't see lights in the valley coming this way but do run into them about three turns from the bottom. I hit hard one time on the way down. There are a couple little lights on at Base Camp for walking around the stairs and decks. Very faint, but after the nights doing the rescues it seems like civilization of sorts.

Across the River

They must have met some success with investors as for the third day in a row there was grading or clearning by equipment where the domes used to be. Then it culminated with a weenie and marshmellow roast apparently.

Hiking with Kobae

Kobade headed up the hill towards the mud huts. Jax and I looked at each other figuring we were going on a hike to the Wind Caves.

When we got to the Wind Caves turn off Kobae kept going straight. I called the lodge and ask Jess and Jake for a Kobae Uber ride and they came out and picked us up in the truck. Kobae was pissed. He rammed the bed door so many times it won't open anymore.

Jax

Jax had a bad night. His night job is to keep the raccoons from stealing the fox hot dogs and the fox from stealing the raccoons hot dogs. He's so good at it, doesn't happen anymore. So after a few minutes without any of the little people screwing up he falls asleep on the side walk. He's there if I need him though. Most nights I throw him the ceremonial first hot dog of the night shich starts the festivities. Then a gray fox will venture down the hill. Jax will chase him back up the hill then triumphantly turn around and walk back down the hill with the gray fox following about 20 feet behind. The evening feeding has started.

Most nights Jax will eat the cerremonial first hot dog. Then he'll come lick my ankle and I'll throw a second one out there. He's not going to eat it he's going to use it as bait hoping a little person will screw up so he can chase it. When he's really bored and looking for trouble he'll come up on the porch and slowly, sneakily kind of, drift down the porch where the two raccoon bowls are and walk over and start to eat out of whichever bowl has the most raccoons eating out of it forcing them to back up a little because nobody wants to deal with Jax. They have never stood up to him. The Padres are pitching a no hitter going into the ninth inning so I going back and forth from the feeding to the Padres game on tv in the living room. I hear the fight and Jax screaming for help. I grab a broom as I run out on the porch and there are three raccoons on Jax. They jump off the porch seeing me coming as Jax runs by me going the other way. I check him and he's got a nice wound down his stomach and two puncture marks but he's not limping or anything so I don't think he's really injured other than his maybe he's not the bad ass he thought he was. Usually I sleep on one side of the bed and he gets the other by the air condtioner. The last two nights he's slept on my pillow right next to me and while he's always followed me whenever I go someplace but now he does it quickly. Time heals all wounds.

Kathryn Said

Kathryn, a guest, said this magnetic picture would look good on my fridge and she was right.

Again? So Soon? Twice?

Kobae has his own refrigerator next door at the big garage. He eats so much it's necessary. Jax and I are coming back on the side by side from getting Kobae food. There's a guy walking in front of us looking very injured. I stop, he gets in, "I think my ribs are broken. Rolled the side by side. I think my girlfriend is up ahead of us. I round the corner, stop, she gets in and we go up to the lodge. Guests are always curious when you leave with nobody and come back with somebodies, so they are gathering around. "Rolled the side by side. Need help getting it standing up again." Jesse take the side by side and Jax and I the truck. There is a difficult spot to get over and this way at least one of us will get to the side by side in case the other get high centered on the sideways tilt step on the way out. We both make it. Hook up tow straps an put his side by side right side up. This should let the gas and old drain back to where they are suppose to be and then they catch a ride back tomorrow and hopefull it starts. Two of the tires have come off the beads as well. I give him a ride back to the lodge.

We load up in the side by side and in the darkness I drive them back to the end of the pavement where their friends and vehicles are. As we cross over Hurrah Pass my female passenger says there's a guy on the side of the road. I look over and he's just built a tent and is crawling inside with a bicycle lying down next to the tent. Me: "You ok?" Him: "No." Me:"Want a ride to town?" Him: "No. I got nothing left. Can't move. I almost died I took the wrong trail down Lockhart Basin and barely ade it out." Me: "I'll be coming back thru at 8:15 am if you want a ride." Him: "Ok, bring me some water."

At 8am Jax and I are down the driveway in the truck. He's not on top of Hurrah when we get there but we find him not too far from the bottom of Hurrah. I pull up next to him and he says "Your offer for a ride to town still good?" I says "It is." He put his bike in the back and gets in the front seat. He says "I'm Gunner." I say "I'm Tom." He says "I wrote a book. You want a copy? I say "No. I'm good." He says "It's going to change the world." He says "You been out here a long time?" I say "I have." He says "I bet you've learned a lot." I say "It's true. I have." I take him to town and drop him off at the stop sign as I have to go left. He says "Just riding my bike until they find me. He says "Going to change the world. It's up to you and me, Einstein, and Oppenheimer." Then he hands me a tear off piece of paper with his web site on it. Says "My name is Gunner." A few hours later I've done all my errands and Jax and I pull into Village Market and there he is with his bike sitting in the shade. I say "What's up." He says "Do I know you?"Here's where you go to change the world. https://lifeasip.com/

Hundreds are Gone, Nineties are Here

The days have cooled and Jax and I are doing a lot of hiking with Kobae.

After cheering the demise of the ugly domes that were across the river now a bunch of even uglier tents have cropped up a little further inland. Thinking he had at least learned the lesson taught by the river earlier this year then for the last two days I've heard grading going on at the same locations that they had the domes on last time right up again the river and now there's an ad in the paper looking for investors to build geo-domes by the river.

Years ago very close to where these next pictures are taken, first Kobae, then Linny and about seven or eight years old reading a book, and then me, really old reading a book were walking down the dirt road. When we get

to this spot there's a guy in a rental jeep with his front tires on the sand stairs and his wife out front guiding him a little to the right a little to the left. Kobae walks by and up the stairs and into the canyon. Linny walks over to the Jeep and trying to be helpful says "You want me to drive that up for you." The guy loudly says "No." Linny says "I was just trying to help." Then I walk up next and say "How we doing today?" They guy says "First I got passed by a turtle, then a little girl wanted to drive for me. Ain't feeling much like a man today." I said "Don't feel bad. They both grew up out here and they been in four wheel drive their whole lives."

Even More Decisions

For Wifi I've had Hughes Net forever. It's worked ok but Starlink changed the game. It's five to ten times as fast, you have unlimited amount of wifi you can use where Hughes Net restricted the amount available and once you used it up they slowed you way down or you had to purchase more data. I put Starlink in the lodge and it worked great so I did it in each of the houses also. I kept Hughes Net for a year after Starlink paying almost $200 a month for each of the three locations to make sure there weren't any issues with Starlink. I disconnected three Hughes Net that had Starlink also at the location and shortly after Starlink went out at one of the locations. Starlink sent a new cable right away but it didn't work either.

Turns out Starlink will only provide three standard units (residential) to one location. I ordered a commerercial one, almost $3,000 for the dish alone. It's mobile and you can take it around the country with you. When the residential one went out it was a good backup and we moved it down to the residential while waiting for Starlink to deliver another cable for the standard. It worked great and then went out after four days so another standard and premium cable are on their way, no charge. I'll probably wind up with the premiums that can be moved around so I don't have this issue again. All into back up systems.

I have a new computer enroute already set up and will use it in the future, way more memory, and I'll use the one I have now as a backup. Here's the two things I don't want a back up of.

Meanwhile in San Diego Linny's baby is two months old.