Latest / Arizona Unscripted / Episode 2: 🌵 Arizona Unscripted – America! 250 Years & Counting!
Transcript
- Arizona Unscripted: Yeah. Welcome back to another episode of the Arizona Unscripted Podcast. I am Bart Sullivan and I'm joined here today with Diane, who is my co-host from Mojave County, I believe. Right? Diane, tell me all about that. Hello, Bart. Yes. Over here in Mojave County. Nice and warm. Nice and warm. I bet it's getting warmer too. It is. It was a low toast yesterday. We're gonna be over a hundred here in a few days for a stretch. So yes. Awesome. And I believe today we also have A good friend, ⁓ Jim Price gone on board with us today as a as a guest. Yes. Hey Jim, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Ready to go. That sounds great. Well, Diane, you and I were talking earlier about this upcoming celebration, the 250 year celebration, right? And there's some things happening, ⁓ at least in the area. You want to lead us through some of your thoughts on that? Sure. Well, we're really excited about this. We did have the traveling museum that came through with The ⁓ Liberty Bell that will be hung at the ⁓ state capitol. And also there's just so many really great celebrations that are coming in barbecue that's coming up. So I'm all about the barbecue. We can get a team together to go and check that out. But yeah, it's a great way to look and see what's happening across the state and For all of those that like to do road trips, we love to go out and check out the other counties. I bet you barbecue's gotta be a fairly popular thing in the in the county, right? I will always show up for a barbecue. Any invite, I will say yes. And I believe I heard something you had a secret recipe for like barb some kind of some kind of barb smoke barbecue flavored water or something. Is that what I Yes. You can smoke your water on the Traeger and then freeze that into ice cube for smoked ⁓ ice cubes and you can have Smoke lemonade. That's gotta be delicious. I mean, the tri I ⁓ my son-a-la a traeger and I I can I'm gonna try that. I think that's an awesome idea. Especially if they get that certain smoke flavor. ⁓ yeah, definitely. Yeah. ⁓ I know is it Laughlin Spring? It's coming up, right? That's that's one coming up soon, I believe. Yes, that is coming up soon. I don't have that date right in front of me. I think that I'll look it real quick here. I think it looks like on the date eighth or the ninth. I think I chose I I find the ninth, ⁓ eight to eight a.m. to two p.m. and then classic cars. And by the way, I'm I'm kind of a classic car guy sometimes. I like to we just had a classic car here in my area. It was fun to see that. And ⁓ wow. I mean classic cars to me and barbecue. Right? It doesn't get much better than that. That's pretty America right there. Yeah, the the 66 Mustang is my dream car. Really? Then why is a 66 Mustang? What's going on with the 66? It's the best one. It's so gorgeous. It's got so much power and beauty. I love it. ⁓ my gosh, that's great. Now have you had have you had Mustangs before? Have you ever had I have, but I haven't had a 66 yet, but I will. And will it well here's a question. If you as a from a classic part point of view, are you gonna keep it stock? Are you gonna would you would you rev it up? What would you do? You know what? That is the classic question. ⁓ I think at this point in my life, if I can get a 66 Mustang, I'm gonna let her. ⁓ have all the power to stretch her legs that she wants to have so and is there any f favorite areas you'd like to we would like to drive in ⁓ that sixty six Mustang Route sixty six I'm gonna connect with these other counties. We're gonna do this Route sixty six travel that would be really cool. ⁓ my god that's fantastic great. Jim what about you? Are you ⁓ are you a barbecue fan? You ⁓ Yeah I am and I I got a twenty seventeen Mustang Yes, and it brooms. And it is fast. It it brooms? Like it does it like really like big headers and stuff on it. Is it all in your soul? It's all stock, but it's fast. I I've had it at the drag strip a couple times and it it's pretty good. I used to have old cars too. I had a 69 GTX Plymouth GTX when I was in high school. ⁓ that thing's fast. Those are fast cars. Yeah, th it was dangerous for a sixteen year old kid. I think we're you know, on the podcast we're gonna have to do a future episode on Route sixty six, right? Do something fun with it, right? Figure it figure it out. 'Cause there's gotta be some great stories going on, especially in the in that along the routes there. ⁓ well, let's see. Talking about ⁓ I know, talking about cars and gas. Any comments? Will that cut will this gas prices cause a problem coming up? Yeah, that's a problem with my that Mustang doesn't get very good gas mileage. I think my I think my dad had one. It cost me fifty bucks to fill up. Fifty bucks. Yeah. That's nothing. I filled my tank up ⁓ last week and it was seventy five dollars to fill a little tank up. So there's Catherine's popping. Hey Catherine. Nice to see you. Yeah, hi. Hi, Kathleen Amanti here from Lake Avasu City. And yeah, the the gas prices are getting to the point where normally I just go to my usual gas station and get gas. But now I kind of shop around town and try to find something that's a little bit cheaper, even thinking about using cash instead of credit to save 10 cents a gallon. ⁓ I'm supposed to actually I've got a bunch of trips planned for the rest of this year. And I'm actually kind of rethinking them and making sure that it's what I want to do because it's gonna cost me probably twice as much in gas to make these trips. So is this like incentivize incentivize you to like look at maybe getting s having solar unless you already have solar and ⁓ electric car? Yes, it would incentivize me if only I had the money to buy another car. But I'm really kind of hoping that the car I have lasts me for the rest of my life. So ⁓ yeah, if I was in the market for a a new car, I would definitely be buying ⁓ some type of hybrid and something that would get some of those hybrids get like fifty miles a gallon or even more. Well, a daughter has it, has it? She has an electric jeep hybrid and it gets like, I don't know, twenty miles on a charge or more. And Then it goes to gas, right? So she can actually go to work and just plug it in there and plug it in at the nearest station or whatever, the nearest plug-in thing. But she never uses gas hardly at all because of the plug-in thing. It's pretty cool. Yeah, the electric vehicles are really nice now with the gas prices. Yeah, but there's nothing like that sound of that GTX though. That G or the Mustang. Those two. I mean, there's just gotta I mean because you can record that. Yeah, you can't even record it. Yeah, I I did notice when I was filling up the other day how everybody's standing there holding on to the the handle ⁓ while they're pumping gas instead of just putting it on the click and filling it all the way up, they're watching that number go up and they're stopping it, right? And so yeah, it's pretty painful. Yeah. So th those are some good tips. So people are watching the the the amount of money, right? So they can set it at a certain point. Do you guys and you have other if other tips? Di ⁓ Diane d hel anybody have tips on helping people on this situation. Cash is one. We just got to You get ten cents a gallon off if you pay cash. If you use your credit card, you're paying ten cents a gallon more. ⁓ my gosh. Which ⁓ that that can cost you over a long run. And do you guys belong to different clubs and things and and or go to certain certain gas stations that give you a better price? That that's the cheapest one in town. Yeah, Smith's grocery store. If you shop there on s on Fridays, they give you, I think, two or four times what you spend. And if you spend two hundred dollars a month at Smith's, you get ⁓ I think it's thirty cents off a gallon. So it's a good deal, but I usually don't spend that much money at Smith's, so it hasn't helped me too much. But Friday's the day to shop there. Mm. And then turn around and use your card at the gas station. That's something a lot of my friends aren't doing. Yeah. I know ⁓ we do the car wash, the monthly car wash, because there's so many bugs in the windy bullhead area here. ⁓ and then you get twenty cents off a gallon plus my membership there is twenty cents off a gallon. So that's pretty significant. Before I didn't care. Now forty cents off a gallon makes a difference of how far I go on my road trips. And I bet you plan your road trips a little bit like, you know, I'm gonna stop here along the way, you know, you kinda kinda move everything in a sort of a systematic way to save save some fuel. It's a great time to make friends and get to know your neighbor. And then you can carpool and you can share those costs and share that time and get to know somebody a little bit better who might be also feeling the ⁓ heat. Yeah. Is there any decent public transportation in the area they can use? Is there anything going on there? Nope, not that's that's that's an easy question to ask. Rural Arizona, we don't have any public transportation. I don't know what they have down in Maricopa. I know that that's been a f ongoing issue for them for a long time. But here in Lake Havasu City, they have tried I've lived here for twenty seven years. They've tried multiple times to have a bus local bus system, and they allot all this money, they buy all these. these buses and it lasts for about six months and the riders there's just not people riding. It's hard to get people to use a public transportation system when they don't have any experience with it. ⁓ the routes are kind of unknown to people. You can't just go stand on a corner and assume you're gonna get picked up someplace or when. So They've never had any luck here in Lake Havasu City with a public transport system. The closest thing that we have, it's not public at all. It's just you know, we have a lot of private cabs. I don't think we have Uber here in Havasu, but we do have an awful lot of they're called like five dollar hauler and stuff like that. Okay. There's the Las Vegas Express because the nearest airport is two and a half hours away from us. And if you're going on an extended trip, you don't wanna leave your car in the parking lot. That costs I don't know what it costs. But a lot. Yeah. And so we are fortunate to have ⁓ one, possibly two providers who will transport ⁓ via shuttle up to the airport and back. However, the schedule is very limited. Yeah. You usually have to go super early in the morning and then sit around the airport all day long. ⁓ they've also tried ⁓ to get commercial airlines here at the Lake Havasoo City Airport, which is a beautiful airport but ⁓ it's all private because they did try a few times to have public air transport, but it didn't go because for example they had a flight scheduled to go out at three in the afternoon. If by two thirty only half of the people had shown up, they canceled the flight. ⁓ gosh. Or even if only half the plane was full and everybody was there, they would cancel the flight. Again, it's hard to get people to use a transportation system that unreliable. Who's gonna reserve a a seat on a flight that you've got a fifty-fifty chance of getting canceled? Well sounds like an issue we need to work on, right? Some kind of help out in some ways, especially with be seeing these gas prices keep going up. And I don't know, maybe hitchhiking will come back in vogue now. They tried they tried that ⁓ airport thing here and and they had to guarantee American Airlines a million dollars in profits. ⁓ wow for I think one year or maybe two years, and it was seventy five bucks to fly one way to Phoenix. It wouldn't fly to Vegas. So you had to fly to Phoenix and back. And that was the only place it went. And they they got their million dollars and left. They didn't it wasn't worth it. Wow. I know that we've got Joan here on the call with us, and she made a note that there is some federally subsid subsidized like Havasu City Direct and Paratransit. And I know in Bullhead I saw a little Community transit that would just take you like down the river and back. So there's that. But you know what I would love? I would love to hear from our listeners. ⁓ what are you doing to help offset these just rapidly rising costs? And we would love to discuss that in future podcasts and share with each other different ways that we can try to make a difference for each other. Yeah, besides siphoning gas from your neighbor's car, can we Yeah, probably not that That's when it starts happening. Over four dollars a gallon. But ⁓ yeah, please yeah, let us know. You know, because it's ⁓ Arizona Inscripted at gmail.com. Send us a send us an email. We'd love to hear from you or in the comment section of Spotify. Feel free to comment in and tell us what you think. ⁓ gosh, is well back to the sub I guess back to the celebration. Even though we have all these issues going on with gas and stuff, it still sounds like it's a fun thing to do when it comes when it comes in your area if you're able to see it, right, Diane? Yes. And it's a great way if you like to explore to look at what's happening across the state. We have Daniel from Graham County that is here on the call with us now. And I'm looking forward to doing a road trip out to Graham County. Hey Daniel. Hey. I'm looking forward to you actually being here. So ⁓ one of the things I do to help with the cost since it's twenty mile round trip to the grocery store here. Wow. Is every time I decide I need something or I want something, I ⁓ will question it. And I will often decide, you know, I'll have to do that later. But I don't have any neighbors that I have tried doing this with or close friends in the area, but I do have relatives and anytime one of us is going into town we send a text and say, Hey, would you like to go? Would do you need to get I'm going to the store great idea. Yeah. So this is a group effort. Yeah. And I it's I still remember in the city when the women friends I had would decide to have shopping. ⁓ trips together and they why not do it at the grocery store? Why yeah and and s you can save four or five cars going to the same place if you go together. And how far how far from you are how far would they s how much would they save on gas when they do that? How much how many miles is it between the two well if it's twenty miles around trip. Yeah. you know a typical truck around here, I get twenty two miles per gallon in my van. So that saves me five bucks every time I ride with them. Like I'm gonna go in with a birthday party and I'm gonna ride with them. And that's gonna save me five bucks for the birthday party. And you get a chance to hang out with them a little bit in the car too. You know, that's ⁓ sometimes that's the worst part of it. But it's but so so if we if we think outside our own little box. And we think about a neighbor, why not ask him, Hey, I go every Fridays to the store. Do you need anything? Do you want to go? You know, to save that. I I've seen some neighbors they drive into Pima and go to the dollar store four or five times a day. ⁓ wow. That's that's ⁓ my gosh. That's a four mile round trip each time because they decide they want milk. But they they One at a time. And I'm thinking, man, I do not want to pay for their gas. Maybe helping people with some planning and collaborating up with other people is a good idea. I know when we take a trip to Henderson, we always call, say, Hey, does anybody need something from this big box store? And we just take those lists in and try to do the shopping for them. So just just a part of what's happening is everybody is still thinking of this as a short term problem and it's not because even when gas is only three dollars and sixty cents a gallon, ⁓ that's still a big chunk of my social security income. So I it doesn't go away. Right. Yeah. Yep. Well might be a good business Barb and Jim are good friends of mine. And Barb was like, Hey, you know, they have senior days at the grocery store. I'm like, wait, what? Okay, what day is that? So you can, you know, starting to do some strategic planning for all of the ways to save some money right now. Yeah, it's a good idea. Excellent. Well, tell you what, we'll ⁓ this is a wonderful discussion and help helpful for people. I hope people get out for that celebration, Dan. I hope they get out in any way in their area or with their friends and family. Maybe do a backyard. Barbecue would be really good. Yes, yes, we're absolutely about the barbecue. And yeah, if people go on to the America250az.org, I think we can put that in the chat on our podcast thing, but you can do the different passports and it will share, you know, fun things from the different counties. And they have a night excursion one and they have guided hikes and All kinds of things accessible even for people with mobility issues. So highly recommend going there and taking a look at all of the activities that are still coming up. Great. Well, thank you so much, Diane, for this wonderful thank you for the to our guests coming on, popping in there and hanging out with us. And until we see you or listen to you guys in the future, we'll see you back on the podcast and we'll also be able to give you a lot more stuff going on in Arizona coming down. And what was our again, Dan, what was our next ⁓ next county we're going to be? It's focusing on again. Well, we aren't certain yet. ⁓ it's going to be a surprise. ⁓ but we are looking at the two fifty that exhibit they're, you know, traveling around in different, you know, right, right. In different areas. So we will have ⁓ guest speakers with us again next week and we will be talking about what's going on in their area. Great. Well that sounds fun wonderful. Thanks so much, everybody. And have a great rest of your day. See you next time. See you next time. Okay. Cheers.