Not just when you’re having fun, either. It’s been a bit chilly here in Quartzsite, to the point of not even wanting to go outside in the morning until it warms up outside. After that, there are only a few hours of daylight until the sun goes down, and it instantly gets cold again. I shouldn’t complain — it’s nowhere near as cold as my former home of New England — but it’s still a bit cooler than I’d prefer. There aren’t many places in the continental US I can go where it will be much warmer, though.
I took a drive up to Parker today. It’s been a while since I did grocery shopping at a real grocery store, and it was time to stock up on some things I can’t get in Quartzsite. But the main purpose of my trip was to register the V-Strom, still on its dealer temporary plate which got destroyed by the unexpected rain we had over the past two days. I worked in the morning, then left with enough time to hit the Arizona DOT office, do an online meeting, and get groceries, in that order.
Of course, as I was about to leave the north side of Quartzsite, I realized that I forgot a piece of paperwork I thought I’d need. There goes half an hour to go back, get it, and backtrack to where I turned around. That threw the rest of my schedule off. I didn’t have enough time to hit the DOT office before my meeting, and I needed lunch. So I hit Taco Bell (I am under no illusion that this is Mexican food, especially so close to Mexico — that Cheesy Gordita Crunch, though…), then did my meeting. I was on the other side of the Safeway parking lot anyway, so I did my grocery shopping, then hit the DOT office on my way out of town. I felt a bit discombobulated, but I got everything done, just in a different order.
After all that, my DOT visit turned out to be completely unnecessary. The dealer I bought the V-Strom from had already registered and titled the bike for me,. They didn’t tell me they were doing this. They also gave me no information whatsoever on how to make my loan payments, but I figured this out on my own. (I didn’t need a loan to afford the bike, but I decided to finance some of it to help rebuild some credit after losing my house a few years ago.) Hooray for getting out of there without spending anything.
Because I’d mentioned in passing that my dealer plate got wrecked in the rain, they even printed me a new temporary plate — this time my own completely unremarkable plate number — to hold me until the real one arrives in the mail in another week or two. It’s a good thing I hadn’t intended to get any kind of special plate or transfer the KLR’s (including its off-road permit) over to the V-Strom anyway.
By the time I got back to camp, the day was over. It was only a quick run to the next town over, but it takes 45 minutes one way to drive there (plus the half hour I wasted backtracking for my forgotten paperwork), and despite breezing through all my stops about as quickly as I could have, it still took all of the short day. We’re about a week out from the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. So I’ll only have to put up with this for a couple more weeks until the days slowly start getting longer again. It’s frustrating and slightly stressful, but this, too, shall pass.
Smokey Da Van 