It was a long month. Every week the "distance learning" gets more and more ridiculous for the teachers and just useless for so many students. Every week Christian gets new oppressive marching orders for a new or additional way they want information reported, or something new they want to make the students do that they should not be able to dictate to the teachers in their individual classes. The state have mired the teachers in so much red tape and reporting that they no longer have time or energy to actually teach. It is so ridiculous. One of the teachers in Christian's staff meeting broke down crying because she was just so overwhelmed with the crap they keep demanding from them.
If we had options and didn't owe so much money from him going back to school to get his teaching credential, Christian would have quit by now. No one is getting anything from all this idiocy. More than half his students are failing and apparently, all the other teachers in his school or district is experiencing the same thing. The students are not motivated to learn or do anything in this atmosphere. Christian is at his wits end and is ready to explode. He still spends time trying to get his students to get their grades up but when the students have little motivation and the computer doesn't ever even work like it's supposed to and their home environments are not conducive to learning, it is fighting an uphill battle. I'm sure he will end up with less failing students than many other teachers but it may come as a cost as he won't have time to jump through all the states' new hoops. We don't know what the consequences of all that will be but a person only has so much time and energy in a day.
Christian sits at his computer working on this stuff 12 to 14 hours a day. And when he's not, he's still thinking of what he needs to do and trying to come up with lesson plans which he needs to make up as he goes.
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Speaking of technology not working as it is supposed to, our internet provider sent us a new modem and forced us to install it in order to continue our service with them. That led to two weeks of stress and dropped internet services, sometimes during classes and meetings. After many phone calls, wasted time and energy, they finally sent a technician to come look into it. He fixed it, or at least we think so, as we have not had any further problems this week. We had to have Caitlyn e-mail her teachers as well so that they knew what was going on.
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Because of all the stress Christian has been under and the lack of sun and fresh air Caitlyn never gets anymore, we've been forcing everyone to walk away for a bit of R&R. Caitlyn is just pale doesn't have the energy she used to. The new phone/computer culture has really ruined her. We thought it was bad before, but now with the new distance learning, she is just a shut-in.
So, the first chance we got, we headed back out to the Mojave desert in search of Cadiz Road. We made our first attempt back when Emily was still here with us. Alas, we still did not find it.
We did, however, find a neat area to scramble around on the rocks. It also offered a, somewhat off-the-beaten-path, camping area good for a get-a-way weekend.
We also found an interesting area we wanted to explore more of. We ran into some more turkey vultures watering in the aqueduct and a beautiful sunset.
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The next time we went out, we went to explore a way up to the Arica Mountain range that we saw last time. It is a really neat rock formation so we drove around to see what was a good way to get there. We found several roads on the map that was supposed to take you a good way up. We first explored some of the surrounding area before heading up the trail.
Unfortunately, once we picked a trail to get up, as we drove out of a wash and headed up into the rock formation, the road under us crumbled and we got stuck in this pit of the finest silt.
We had one tire entirely up in the air on one side, the back tire on the same side was kind of teetering barely touching the ground, the other back tire was sunk in the silt so we really only had the other front passenger tire that was actually engaged. It was super precarious. Christian was driving. Caitlyn was in the front passenger seat and I was in the back. Caitlyn had to get out and hang off the driver's door so that Christian could scoot out while I got into the driver's seat. It was totally crazy and scary. After testing it, we were able to keep it from tipping over with me sitting there while keeping the door swung out and open to balance it. Caitlyn took videos and pictures while Christian tried various methods to get us out.
None of it was working. Every time I would try to drive out, it dug us in further. We had to disengage the sway bar which got the front driver's side to almost touch the ground. Christian said a prayer and had be back out a bit and we were finally able to drive out.
Of course, that left us with what to do from there. We considered driving forward to see if we can find another way down. The hole made when the road collapsed on itself was way too big to fill in. We looked for a different approach that we might be able to ford, but there were drop-offs in every direction. Caitlyn walked up several hills but could not see another way off of the road we were heading up. We figured that it was starting to get late and we were running out of time. Christian finally decided to move the road over about half the width of a car and started digging to level the ground. It was a lot of work but when he was finished, the road looked totally drivable and headed back the way we came with no problems.
Even though it looked fine, we had to hit the road at exactly the right way or it might knock us into the sandy area and tip the vehicle over for real this time. We also wanted to be far enough over so that more of the road didn't collapse under us. It was still stressful.
As we made it back to the main road, the sun was setting and we had to air-up the tires to get back down the road towards home. It was late, we were thirsty and hungry and still a ways away from civilization.
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We were able to actually go into church one week. It was shortened and a bit weird. Our new organ was finally completed. Now we need to try to work organ practice back into our schedule. Caitlyn started off the summer doing piano pretty well but by the end of summer, she barely touched it again. With her school schedule, we had to try to make her continue, albeit slowly, making progress.
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On Halloween, we went out and finally made it to Cadiz Road. We found some old salt mines off of there.
We tried to drive across the dry riverbed but there were too many rabbit warrens and other hazards that we had to worry about.
From Cadiz Road, we went in search of the road that we lead us to the Old Woman. It is supposed to be a nice pinnacle with good climbing routes in the middle of nowhere. We saw the mountain range it was supposed to be on, but we could not find a road that would lead us to it. After several false starts, we decided to end the day at the Cadiz Sand Dunes instead.
Unfortunately, there was another car load full of people ahead of us. They were really loud and had a drone. We headed in a different direction but they were in all our shots of the sunset, so we decided to just Photoshop them out and left early to head home. It was really beautiful out there and the dunes were a lot bigger than I thought they would be but unfortunately, not peaceful. Another car arrived as we headed out.
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We published Terry's
short story this month. We have been trying to get the word out with limited success. We are still working on his main story to come out shortly.
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Emily is doing well in Idaho. She really likes one of her roommates. They have a lot in common and she is meeting people and having fun. It's been cold there and she has even had a couple of snow days but they have not lasted too long. She joined an intramural soccer team. Hopefully, she is keeping up with her school work. She does not have any really interesting classes so hopefully she is slogging through it.
After the grueling drive with the added expense in gas to drop Emily off in Idaho, we realized that we could not afford to go visit her during Thanksgiving and then arrange for her to come back just several weeks later at the end of her quarter. She does not have classes this winter and will return in the Spring. She got invited to her roommate's house for Thanksgiving though. Her family lives in Northern Utah, so it is a bit of a drive but not insurmountable. They seem excited about the prospect and we are glad for that.
