Coveys Great Adventure: #77 – February 2021

February 2021 – Benson AZ

Sunset from the coach

February 15^th marked a turning point for us: we got our first shots! I had been trying to get appointments for several weeks, but the best I could do was mid- March, over a month away. I was tired of following the rules, so that morning I decided to call every vaccination site in the county. The third call was to a pharmacy in Wilcox, about 35 miles away. The guy that answered the phone made my day. He said, “How soon can you get here? We just had a cancellation.” Forty-five minutes later we were rolling up our sleeves.

I was surprised at how emotional it was to me. We had been living in fear for a year, doing everything we could to avoid becoming infected. We had made and scrapped multiple plans. We had postponed seeing very close friends, not sure if we would all survive this scourge to finally see each other again. We hadn’t eaten in a restaurant since June, or gotten together with people around a campfire in a year. We were even worried about seeing Liesa and Cory, who were just as scared of giving Covid to us. To begin to see an end to that life was pretty special.

Security guard at Zarpara Vineyard

After staying close to home for a couple of months, we were both getting a little stir-crazy. Our outings had become trips to Tucson for medical appointments and trips to Sierra Vista to shop for flooring. We’d had enough! We decided to see if we could safely visit a couple of local wineries, fully prepared to walk away if we felt uncomfortable. Well, safety wasn’t an issue because we were the only visitors at the two we picked. It must be lean times for wine tasting because the owners of both vineyards served us. Zarpara Vineyard delivered a lovely, deep rich blend called Odisea, and Birds and Barrels Vineyard served a very nice Petite Sirah.

Turns out she really can bleed brakes

Some of my jobs start out, "well, that looks odd..." The disk brake rotors on the dolly will show surface rust after a couple of days off the road, but the pads quickly buff off the rust the first time we apply the brakes. So, it peaked my curiosity when I noticed that the rotors were still rusty when we pulled into Benson in December. That would mean that the brakes weren't working at all. Yup, that was the case. To make a long story short, I had to replace the master cylinder and both caliper assemblies. Kayeanne helped too, she quickly learned how to bleed brakes.

The week of Feb 15^th was notable for another accomplishment, albeit nothing like as momentous as getting shots: I finally finished the casita floors. That job has been hanging over my head like a suspended sword for two years. The breakthrough finally came when we got the quotes for carpet and realized that there was no way that we were going to spend $1,700 on a place we only used 3 or 4 months a year! That epiphany freed us up to revisit laminate flooring for the living room, and I found a solution for the shop/storage in an unlikely place. The money we saved on the shop floor let us spend a little more on the living room area. Excellent!

With help and guidance from one of our neighbors, John Hahn, the vinyl plank flooring went down in a few hours with no errors or drama. If I’d known it was that easy to do, I’d have done it last year. John’s experience certainly paid off; we didn’t ruin a single plank. Trimming it out required adding shoe molding because I was adamant that I wasn’t going to remove the new baseboards I installed last year, but that took a couple of hours, at most.

The shop floor solution was pure serendipity. I was cruising Amazon one night looking for something unrelated to flooring and interlocking foam floor tile popped up. These are commonly used in home gyms, as yoga mats and as playroom padding, but one of the pictures showed a whole room done in tiles printed with a marble pattern. Hmmm… At $1 per square foot, delivered, the price was right, too. Kayeanne gave her approval and I ordered enough to do the shop. Four days later the floor was down, and I have to say it looks great. That stuff was easy to work with and it took me just a few hours to finish the whole room.

We decided to hang a couple of bird feeders on the big tree in front of the casita and have been treated to quite a show every day. Quail, doves, several different kinds of finches, cardinals and just plain birds mow through three cups of seed a day. Even today, with a steady 20 mph wind and frequent gusts over 45 mph, the birds came to the feeders

The platform feeder I knocked together is the most popular. I’ve seen as many as 10 birds at a time scoffing down seed as fast as they can. A lot of the seed gets kicked out and the ground under the feeder sometimes has twenty or thirty birds culling seeds from the gravel. I’ve always liked birds in a somewhat abstract way, but my interest is more personal, now. Great fun.

Kathryn Homel picked up John Sanford’s Bloody Genius after I mentioned it and really liked it. Jay Homel sent me a copy of Matt Goldman’s first novel Gone to Dust which I really enjoyed; I just got the second volume of the series. I’m always looking for new protagonists, and Goldman’s Nils Shapiro is a good one.

We’ve enjoyed several new wines this month, in particular Denada Cellars 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile that we discovered at Trader Joe’s, and Zarpara Vineyards 2017 Graciano that we bought at the vineyard in Wilcox, AZ. Zarpara will ship, and I think Total Wines carries it, too.

We plan to leave Benson early next month and wind our way to New England where we’ll spend much of the summer.

More soon,

Bob