Brief Update

It's really impossible to do any house repairs when located 300 miles north of the house. But this is the way I thought would earn me some money and blah blah blah, get me in a position to do some work on the house. I recently made a long trip back to the house that involved several police encounters. It's aggravating as fuck to be routinely molested and fucked with by law enforcement. The van is a cop magnet so I bought an '83 GS850 motorcycle. The speedometer has 145 mph as a top speed so I'm thinking I can leave the cops in the dust.

Oggy overlooking a volcanic cinder field. His sweet '83 GS850GL sits behind him.

I ask myself, maybe too often, "Am I writing my own story?" and a lot of the time the answer is no, fuck no! Sometimes I am writing my own story but the trees and the forest become blurred so I think I'm not. Other times I really am just a pawn being pushed around a board pointlessly, going through the motions like some hired cock, looking forward to some distant day in the future when I will take control of my life again. Then I think, 'Why wait?" and I quit whatever I'm doing because, why not? why wait? I'm definitely at an age in life when I think, "If not now, then when?"

Like with this house, I was thinking that if I don't buy a house now then is there some other distant time when it will be more appropriate or timely? If not now, then when? I tried to buy a house in Mexico back in 2015 but the stars didn't align.

Same goes for a transcontinental motorcycle trip. If not this Fall, then when? Exactly what time will work for that kind of trip, if not immediately? I'm not getting any younger and if I were indeed younger I would likely not have the wisdom to make the trip a success. So, this is the time to do it. Now. Today. Well, that's another story.

I did return to the house because I knew the rains were on the march and I knew at least one leak still existed in the house and I was also getting a bit nervous about having the gas and the water and the electricity on in a house that had been neglected for so long. So I drove way down toward Mexico with a small jack hammer, a weed wacker and a ladder and an electric dryer (for future use)

At home, destroying a crappy piece of plywood that hides...

...a totally uninsulated roof. No wonder it's so hot. It's just a porch awning with a low ceiling.

This single nail that sunk below the rolled asphalt roofing is the cause of the one leak in the roof. I really scrutinized the roof but did not cover this hole with the elastomeric coating which covers the seam next to it.. You can see that I missed the nail by half an inch in favor of getting the seam....but the nail was more important. This time, I used the real asphalt patch so now this hole will not leak.

Looking north over the metal shed roofs to the copper gap.

A fruit tree? Maybe apricot, maybe peach. Not sure yet.

The garage roof looked to be in good shape but it had not rained much since I left. It doesn't rain in Arizona....it pours. It's like the monsoon season of Costa Rica. The rain is epic when it comes, like a hurricane.

That's all for now.