Patagonia and Black Friday

General Talk, ,

And so here we are — another Black Friday approaching — and after all these years I still don’t know what to make of it.

I know why it exists. It exists so businesses can make money. Lots of money. In a short period of time.

Is it a good thing? No, not for me. For others; I guess they have to decide for themselves.

This isn’t the first time I have written about the Black Friday phenomenon. I have shared my rants many times over the years. However, this year, I’d like to point out something different. A different company. Patagonia.

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ProPride Weight Distribution Jack Upgrade

Camper Mods, Camper Upgrades,

Recently I posted a 25,000 mile update on our ProPride trailer hitch along with some maintenance tips. This got me to thinking about something I have wanted to do for about 3 years — replace the Weight Distribution Jacks that came with the hitch. This new version, which ProPride calls the v2 WD Jack (version 2) was released about 8 years after we purchased our hitch.

ProPride now includes the v2 jacks with a new hitch. The original version 1 jacks are no longer sold by the company, although they still have repair parts for them.

Why did I wait 3 years? Because there was nothing really wrong with the originals, other than it was somewhat difficult to remove the plastic propane tank cover. The old jacks did have a couple other idiosyncrasies, but they we’re deal breakers for me.

In this post I’ll discuss the installation of these new WD Jacks, which has already been a great upgrade. It will probably only interest those owners of ProPride hitches with the original version 1 WD Jacks, but some folks may appreciate my approach to solving problems. 

But first a few preliminary comments for the uninitiated —

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Book Review: The Secret Knowledge of Water, by Craig Childs

General Talk

 

Back in September of this year I reviewed three of my favorite “desert” books. All three were written over 50 years ago. Here I review another that is worth adding to your library.

The Secret Knowledge of Water was written about 25 years ago (originally published in 2000). Like the other three books, this one is also timeless.

The cover includes a wonderful quote from the book:

There are two easy ways to die in the desert: thirst and drowning

For those of us who have lived and explored deserts extensively, this dichotomy says so much.

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Ultra-Fab (tongue jack) Customer Service for the Win!!

Camper Upgrades

 

Ultra-Fab Phoenix 5500 installed in the summer of 2020.

This is story about excellent customer service.

I spent the last 18 years of my career working with companies to improve their customer satisfaction. The biggest problem I faced was the fact that most companies do not truly believe that outstanding customer service builds consumer loyalty and retains their current customers. Nor do they truly believe outstanding customer service attracts new customers.

Most companies pay lip service to customer service and simply pretend they take care of their customers. I know this for a fact. I spent 18 years working to convince companies that great customer service is the road to success and company growth. Too many companies just don’t get it.

Ultra-Fab gets it!!

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ProPride Hitch 25,000 Mile Update and Maintenance Tips

Camper Upgrades

Gosh, how time flies. We’ve had our ProPride Hitch for 11 years and it is the best investment we have made for towing. The best being defined as safety and convenience. 

On our last camping trip we past the 25,000 mile mark with our ProPride trailer hitch. 

For a detailed explanation of how this hitch works, see my ProPride 20,000 Mile Update post back in 2021.

You might observe that in three years we have only towed 5,000 miles. It doesn’t seem like much, but most of our trips are around 300 miles round trip. Given that we camp a minimum of 2 weeks, and usually camp for a month at a time, we are averaging 3 months of camping per year since we retired. 

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The Weatherman vs. Fall Camping (part 2)

Camping,

After two weeks in the Sequoia National Forest we packed up for the second leg of our month of camping.

We still had over 50 gallons of fresh water on board. After hooking up the trailer to our truck, we drove a short distance to a water spigot in the campground and topped off the fresh water tanks. To off-load our black and gray water holding tanks, we had to drive about 30 miles to a dump station in the town of Isabella. We also stopped at a super market to get some fresh vegetables and other food items. A final stop, at a gas station to fill up the Ford F-250 and one of our propane tanks, completed our pre-trip tasks.

Destination: the Mojave Desert about 300 miles southeast of our first campsite.

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The Weatherman vs. Fall Camping (part 1)

Camping

We enjoy camping in the fall better than any other season, with the exception of those desert wildflower “super bloom” spring-time years. We especially like to camp in the fall in areas that are popular in summer, but usually mostly empty in the fall. After Labor Day the crowds in these areas mostly disappear and the weather is still nice.

We left home a couple weeks after Labor Day and headed to the lower elevations of the Southern Sierra Nevada in the Sequoia National Forest. There is a US Forest Service campground we like that sees few people this time of year. The campground is in a transition zone where high desert meets fir and pine trees.

The weatherman forecasted daytime highs in the low 80° F range and declining into the lower 70s in his 10-day forecast.

He was wrong.

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Book Review: Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey

Backpacking

This is the final book review of a series of three books that influenced me to venture in to deserts. The result of my first forays into desert environs has been a 50+ year love affair in these seemingly stark and inhospitable wastelands, which they are not at all. Not only are deserts my favorite places to hike, camp and backpack; I have lived in the Lower Colorado Desert since 1977.

The two previous “desert” book reviews can be found here:

Book Review: The Thousand Mile Summer, by Colin Fletcher

Book Review: The Man Who Walked Through Time, by Colin Fletcher

Desert Solitaire is a much different work than the two books of Colin Fletcher’s I just reviewed the past couple of days. Fletcher’s are woven around two long-distance hikes. The hikes set a structure for his prose, but in the end, he has to finish the walks. A multi-week or multi-month walk injects a schedule, or maybe better put, a focus on completing the trip itself where observations of nature must, at times, become secondary. Many of Fletcher’s books were about how to survive in the wilderness; Abbey’s is more about how to help nature and wilderness survive mankind.

Before we delve into Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, there are some comments and perceptions of the man himself we need to address.

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Book Review: The Man Who Walked Through Time, by Colin Fletcher

Backpacking, Book Review, ,

Yesterday I posted a book review of The Thousand Mile Summer the first book written by Colin Fletcher. In that post I shared that three books influenced me to consider venturing into deserts and I moved to a desert in 1977, where I still live. Each of these books have stood the test of time, and I have read them several times over the decades. Over this time I have changed as I matured, society has changed. The deserts have changed too. Deserts are constantly changing.

In Colin Fletcher’s second book, The Man Who Walked Through Time, we get a close up view of a changing desert as viewed through his eyes. The geological record in the canyon walls, abandoned ruins of cliff side houses built centuries ago, a river that has been tamed by man, invasive species such has equines introduced by early European adventurers, and more.

Just like Thousand Mile Summer, this book reflects an inner transformation of the author that comes with being immersed in nature.

The Man Who Walked Through Time by Colin Fletcher and published in 1968 is a thoughtful and skillfully crafted account of his 1963 journey through the Grand Canyon.

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Book Review: The Thousand Mile Summer, by Colin Fletcher

Backpacking, Book Review, , , , , ,

Over 50 years ago, on a hot summer day, I helped one of my brothers move to the Mojave Desert where he was starting college. The heat was like a blast furnance. His car overheated several times, resulting in a blown head gasket. After unloading his belongings and a fitful night of sleep, I left, hitch-hiking back to LA.

I vowed to never enter a desert again.

Six years later, I moved to the desert. A different desert. A hotter desert. Why would I do such a crazy thing?

In the time, between my vow to never visit a desert again and my relocation to the desert, I read three of my now favorite books. They piqued my interest, and I began to visit, hike, and backpack in desert environs. The first book I read was, The Thousand Mile Summer, by Colin Fletcher.

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