Phoenix 169 Miles

Sunday, March 23rd
There are a number of logistical support requirements for moving 30 people across the desert, or across the country, that might not occur to one cursoraly thinking about it.  The obvious are food, water and a place to sleep.  Finding a place for 30 people to set up tents and to park 6 vehicles for the night is a huge challenge, and is fortunately mostly handled by our state coordinators.  That leaves the food and water to the band of marchers.  But there is also need for refrigeration (or ice), propane, gasoline and diesel.

Water was a primary concern for the previous 100+ miles coming across the Mohave Desert.  A kind supporter in Iowa donated four large plastic water tanks, 2 65-gallon,and 2 75-gallon, but we had no way to carry them.  They have to be used standing vertically like four conventional water heaters, and filled with water are very top heavy. We settled on renting a 14' U-Haul van to carry the water.  We could have easily done with a 10' van but contrary to my own recommendation, that's what we got.  So, we stood them in the front of the van, strapped them to the interior ties, and hauled a few cubic yards of unused space from Twentynine Palms, California to Parker, Arizona.

I'm parked about a mile short of the bridge across the Colorado River and Parker, and the marchers should be along in an hour or so.  We're supposed to turn in our rental truck here, but haven't even yet had a conversation about what we're going to do with the water currently in the tanks (about 160 gallons?), let alone what we're going to do with the tanks continuing easterly, nor assessed our water needs and access to it over the next 2 weeks, between here and Phoenix.

We are facing a few more puzzles.  We ordered a large, very efficient refrigerator which runs on 12 VDC.  We currently have more electrical capacity than we are using, but there isn't a simple way to hook the refrigerator to the exising power source.  The 45 Watt system on my truck is insufficient for its needs, so as we are currently configured we will have to run it from the 300 Watt trailer-mounted system have been pulling behind our gear truck.  If we put the refrigerator into the gear truck, we can string wires between the truck and trailer to power the refrigerator.  This at present looks like our easiest and most likely option.

We have been offered use of a wind generator, which might also produce sufficient power to run the refrigerator, but will have to be hooked up to batteries co-located with the refrigerator.  We have a strangely modified Isuzu truck which is sort of half RV and half flatbed.  However, the RV portion is nicely outfitted to support maybe two people, but is relatively useless in support of 30.

More to come...