It’s a fact that Arizona Summers are sizzling hot and, as a rule, most sane people will spend the next six months in a mall or on their couch in air-conditioned comfort in front of their Big Screen.

Not Bikers. Bikers are always breaking the rules.

Few things in life will keep one from riding. They’re like those mail carriers who brag:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stay us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds”

Bikers? They have a different motto.

“Whatever it is, it’s better in the wind.”

So, this summer, long after the last of the winter visitors have left for cooler climes, and even lizards have disappeared under their rocks to get away from the heat, we’ve designed a Summer Road Tour for The Children of the Wind.

Five and Dive Summer Tour 2010

We call it the Five and Dive and we hope to heat things up (economically) this summer while offering you some cool reasons to ride our roads, meet our people, drink our beer and have a good time. We’re offering up specials to help you save money – while spending money; good causes to help you add to your lifetime-karma points; and clues, riddles and scavenger hunts to introduce you to things you never knew you wanted to know about us – but now you do.

We initially called the tour the Five and Dime which was a nod to our incredible array of cheap thrills and lo-cost fun throughout this region. It also tied in with our feature on Woolworths. (One of those things you’ll want to pay attention to because it is the answer to a clue)

The Open Road at Roosevelt

But then one of our friends suggested the Five and Dive, over beers at The Huddle. And aren’t all ideas better with beer?  It’s seemed tailor-made for what we were putting together. Of course, I now have to pay Gerry royalties for coming up with the idea. (You can help me out by stopping by Pinal Lumber this summer and picking up a few nails, screws, wood, paint,… whatever you can fit on the bike.)

So, back to the meaning of the Five and Dive.

Did you know the spiritual meaning of number Five deals with travel, adventure, and motion?

According to this woman who runs a site, whats-your-sign.com, she goes on to say that Five “draws our attention to the wonder of life, and beckons us to appreciate the perception of chaos all around us. Five has wild vibrations: primitive and erratic.”

There has got to be a FIVE hidden inside every biker.

Really. Just log on and take a look at what the number two means for instance. You’ll see clearly why TWO does not work here. We could not have a Two and Dive Tour. Wouldn’t work.

And Dive? Well, I don’t have to explain that right?

So, now that I have your attention… let me explain how the Tour works.

It includes a punch card with over 30 merchants and local events throughout this region who invite you to stop in this summer. They have each come up with a special promo just for Tour Riders with punch cards and in exchange for dropping some cash along the way – remember this is an economic stimulus plan – you’ll get your card stamped, a big welcome from these merchants and a good reason to ride!  OK, maybe more – but you’ll have to do the Tour to discover what it is.

The Road Map at Superstition Harley Davidson

As for the clues and the scavenger hunts, we’re going to give you FIVE chances each week to solve a clue, riddle or scavenger hunt which will require some collective brain power. Solving these will result in earning our cool wooden nickels (don’t believe what your father said about not taking wooden nickels.*) worth points towards raffle tickets. Plus, as an added bonus, you’ll discover the inside jokes, arcane facts and local lore which will put you one step closer to being
“one of us.”

(*Even if you don’t “tweet”, check out the hottest Twitter account about Father’s advice. The account is Sh** My Dad Says. The author is a 29 year old, living with his 74 year old dad, who just started tweeting the things he said. He has now published a book & been on Larry King. Here is one from last week: “No. Humans will die out. We’re weak. Dinosaurs survived on rotten flesh. You got diarrhea last week from a Wendy’s.”)

OK, back to the Tour.

To begin, you can pick up the Tour Punch Cards at these FIVE locations beginning June 15th. Cards are $5….
(OMG – there is that number 5 again. Must be a sign!). Superstition Harley is waiving the fee for any riders who come into the Dealership to pick up the card!

Ohter locations include:

The Huddle Sports Bar, The Drift Inn, or 2 Lanes Saloon in Globe,

The Butcher Hook, or Jakes Corner up in Tonto Basin.

You can get your weekly CLUES/RIDDLES by going to globemiamitimes.com

Here you’ll find our EVENTS PAGE  and a link to our FACEBOOK PAGE.
Your first tip of the Tour…..  Bookmark these pages.

Since Globe Miami Times is sponsoring this Tour, we have designed it so you will read the paper, check out the website and – get to know us better during the Five and Dive.  You’ll discover answers to clues by looking at the ads in this summer’s edition, reading the stories and following the links on our website. Interesting Mr. Watson. Is this a plot to corrupt the mind? You decide.

Overlook of the Valley between Globe and Miami

Now for the pay off.  Yes, there will be prizes and good things given away to the deserving. But remember what Robert Pirsig said, in his cult classic, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycling”

“The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.”
See you this Summer!

Chris Anfang, Senior Center Director and Councilwoman, Thea Wilshire, are standing in one of two trailers which are stocked with tools - large and small- which may be 'rented' through the Library, with just your library card.

The Globe program was made available through a number of public-private partnerships. The City of Globe and numerous private citizens provided funds for tool purchase, Gila County provided funding for purchase of a 40-foot metal shipping container to serve as the tool shed, and the Historic Globe Main Street Program provided conceptual drawings to create a façade that would fit with historic district visual enhancement requirements.

Currently, the Globe TLL is housed at the Globe Senior Center where senior volunteers operate the library. Tools are checked out and tracked through the Gila County Library District (with an online catalog that includes the library’s tools). The Southern Gila County Economic Development Corporation has partnered with Globe to provide liability insurance and to help with non-profit status for additional funding opportunities.

Since the Tool Library is located within the Historic District, an effort to design a 'store front' which would be in keeping with the area, and serve to mask the utilitarian nature of the trailers, resulted in an old west 'barn motif.'

Globe City Councilmember Thea Wilshire introduced the idea of a Tool Lending Library to Globe in 2003. It took more than five years to bring the concept to fruition and now the community is enthusiastically embracing this resource. This model has been successfully implemented in many other communities and is seen as an ideal resource for the area given Globe’s rural location and extended distance to large discount stores. It also gives the city an opportunity to reduce blight, which will encourage economic growth and increase community pride.

For more information on this program and tips on how to get one started in your community, please contact Councilmember Wilshire at 928-200-8733 or DrTheaW@yahoo.com.

When the City Council established a new Parks and Rec position, they did so with the idea that the new position would help bring in revenue to the City. So, last night, a relatively new Parks & Rec Director, Matt Jankowski,  presented his proposal to the City to bring in two major bands for next year’s Cinco De Mayo celebration and take that event to the next level. Working closely with Vice Mayor, Carmen Casillas who heads up Los Vecinos Y Campanero, the proposal involves bringing two Big Name bands to Globe  for two 1-day events. The bands: Little Joe Y Familia (a Tex Mex band) and Tierra (first Latino band to have four songs on the national charts) will bring a new brand of major entertainment to the area and a promise of profits to the City and organizers if all goes according to plan.

Although the event will not take place until Spring of 2010, the City Council was asked to commit last night to  a contract- and deposit- for two big-name bands, in order to secure dates. The proposal involved a $32,000 commitment to bring in Little Joe Y Familia and  Tierra for two 1-day events to be held at the Community Center on April 30th and May 1st to celebrate Cinco De Mayo. The City’s investment is $16,000, while Los Vecinos Y Campanero will put up the other $16,000.

Jankowski explained that he had already lined up verbal agreements from 3 major sponsors totaling $15,000 “or more” to help offset the City’s investment. The sponsors include the County ($5000), Golden Eagle Distributors ($5000 plus- depending on whether they will also be providing the the liquor sales), and Three Amigos Tequila, “an up and coming tequila manufacturer in the Valley” who has agreed to provide between $5-$10,000 according to Jankowski. In addition, “I have 273 commitments for tickets right now,” said Jankowski which translates into another $13,000 plus.

Both the City and Los Vecinos Y Campanero’s will recoup their investment if the event makes at least $32,000. If the event does much better than that, and Jankowski and Casillas believe it will, the City will take any profits above and beyond the costs, while Campanero’s will simply recoup their initial investment.

The tickets which are estimated to run $30 for a one-day pass and $50 for a two-day pass will be sold on-line through an agency and it is hoped people might even buy tickets to give as Christmas.presents. Councilman Lerry Alderman brought up the question of whether there would be any opportunity for people to attend portions of the event for free as they have been used to doing in the past, and while Jankowski said he would look into it, the logistics of splitting the event and managing the crowd who was attending for free and those paying for each day’s event makes that prospect highly unlikely. What is more likely is establishing lower ticket prices for kids under 12.

The event is expected to bring in 4-5000 people and do close to $200,000 in ticket sales according to the organizers.

This excerpt takes place during Burnham’s early years in Globe – sometime late 1800’s

…

Captain of Scouts

Globe had many ups and downs and colorful events in  those days and only needed a Mark Twain or a Kipling to make its happenings treasures of literature. Like the neighboring camp of Tombstone, it had in its history all the elements of comedy melodrama and too often the grimmest tragedy. Life was lived intensely, and the lure of silver, gold, and copper, drew the strong and adventurous youth of a lusty young nation. As I remember it, we were all perennially on the crest of some little mining boom or else all dead broke and waiting for capital and a railroad to come along and develop the vast copper mines we knew existed but where were of no profit to us so long as we had only oxen and mules for transportation and our pics and shovels as tools. Whenever the Indians became active, all the miners and prospectors for miles around were made society, such as it was. Globe was the only place where youth could find any social amusement, and when a few hundred miners arrived in camp after months of ceaseless toil, they felt it was up to the town dwellers to assist them in celebrating the holiday.

I remember one Fourth of July when the principal mines were shut down and the merchants especially hard up. The town seemed stone dead. There was no firing of cannon, no dancing or speech-making, and no parades or picnics had been planned. Down the gulch just below Burns’s blacksmith shop stood a big cottonwood tree which had not infrequently been used as a gallows to assist certain undesirable citizens out of their troubles. Some wag suggested that we all go down to the cottonwood tree and hang ourselves as a protest to the dead-in-the-shell and unpatriotic townspeople of Globe. We compromised by spending a couple of hours trying to honor our great national holiday by mock-heroic speeches, wrestlin’, and horseplay, all in a spirit of boyish fun. But one of our number, a husky young miner named Dick Bilderback, took himself very seriously. After absorbing a bottle or two of red liquid, he got hold of a twenty-five-pound box of dynamite and a lot of fuses and caps which he carefully attached to the sticks of powder, and then proceeded to have a Fourth of July celebration of his own.  Walking up the main street of town he nonchalantly tossed his charges behind him in the middle of the road. each shot, as it went off, tore a considerable hole in the ground and raised a tremendous lot of dust, besides rocking every store and shack in the place.

The local policemen were not over anxious to arrest a man holding in his hand a sizzling fuse attached to a stick of dynamite , especially as Dick solemnly threatened to blow up the whole box and himself along with it if any one interfered with him. By the time the third charge had gone off, most of the population had fled to the hills, but we youngsters realized that some of the irate citizens had taken their guns and might kill Dick from afar, so we formed ourselves into a committee of the whole to keep him from being shot while he shot up the town, but when I saw Benbrook, a cool deputy sheriff, striding down the street Winchester in hand, I thought Dick as good as dead. Just at that instant, a white-haired old woman steeped briskly toward Dick. She was the Irish landlady of a miner’s boarding house and feared no man.

Dick shouted to her to keep back or he would blow her to Kingdom Come.

“Yis!” she retorted, “an’ the whol worruld wud be sayn’ ye did it to kape from payin’ me the week’s board ye are afther owin me! An’ me your partner in a silver claim wid yersilf an’ the Chilson boys over in Richmond basin, “ etc., etc. Her tongue flew fast, always putting Dick in the wrong and on the defensive, until finally he suggest that they talk it all over. Then she asked him if he would be “afther kapin’ a lady shtandin’ in the middle av the strate in the blazin’ sun- now wud he?” – and at that Dick stepped with her into the shade of a near-by porch where he put down his box of dynamite, keeping the fuses and the burning candle in his hands.

The old lady promptly sat down on the dynamite, covering the box entirely with her ample form and wide skirts. Dick was now like the pirate captain in the “Houseboat on the Styx”; he could not proceed with his plans without insulting a lady. Soon the gallant Irishwoman took the opportunity to blow out Dick’s candle, and so his celebration of the Glorious Fourth came to a peaceful end. But the incident seemed to wake up the whole burg, and that night everybody celebrated in quite the regular old-fashioned way, and we boys felt that the day was saved.

***********

Frederick Burnham lived in the Globe area in the late 1880’s where he learned how to survive from old scouts who taught him skills he would use throughout his life. He went on to distinguish himself on two continents as a man of integrity and great skills in the art of war..and scouting. He was also an accomplished story teller and even Theodore Roosevelt read his book “with enthralled interest.”

Burnham writes about his entanglement in the famous Tonto Basin Feud, his friendship with the “Editor of the Arizona SilverBelt (Judge Hackney) , his employment with McLeod, one of most successful smugglers in the southwest, and his life as Chief of Scouts during the Boer War in South Africa.

See: Maj.Frederick Burnham

By: Linda Gross

The Globe City Council  voted last month, 3-2 to install photo radar in the city of Globe. The vote came after hearing public comment which ranged from concerns about Big Brother , and a perception that the cameras represent a violation of rights… to destroying the quality of small town life. Despite the emotions which ran high at the meeting, the effort of the Mayor and Council to stay the course and move forward with the contract to Redflex is grounded in a belief that a limited number of photo radar units will actually serve to protect small town life by making streets and roads safer for all who live and work in the area, as well as visitors who come here. They point to such dangerous stretches of road as the curve on Hwy 60 near DeMarcos where people pulling out into traffic have to compete with poor visibility and drivers going – on average- 20 miles over the 45mph posted limit.

Redflex Stationary Camera

According to Police Chief Dan Melvin there have been 585 accidents, 231 injuries and 4 deaths. And on Ash Street alone, where the High School borders the Highway there have been 123 accidents and 32 injuries. This is especially problematic since most people driving through our community are not aware of the High School and the likelihood of student pedestrian traffic.

Melvin acknowledged that he was initially against photo radar for some of the same reasons cited by local citizens; invasion of privacy, Big Brother etc. However. once he took a tour of the Redflex headquarters in Phoenix and did some additional research on the issue, he became supportive of the cameras. “Just consider the value to a local merchant of security cameras in his store. If someone steals merchandise, he has it on camera. We don’t consider that invasion of privacy. How is it that we consider cameras on public roads to catch speeders and red-light runners an “invasion of privacy?”

As for the argument that the cameras “make people guilty before they are tried, Melvin explains that the two options you have when handed a ticket by an officer is (1) pay the ticket as it stands or (2) go to court and argue your case. Drivers will have exactly the same options with tickets issued by photo radar. The term “reasonable and prudent” is used in applying the law and refers to the idea that if it is two in the morning and you are clocked at 60 instead of 45, it might be the reasonable and prudent thing to ignore the “violation.” The discretion of those reviewing the “violation” will be viewed the same whether it is photo radar or a uniformed police office which clocks you at 2am.

Melvin points to statistics which show accidents have decreased in areas which have photo radar. That, plus freeing up officers to pursue other issues which truly require one-on-one intervention from domestic violence calls to drug busts.

Globe Mayor, Fernando Shipley initiated the review of Photo Radar for the city after talking with the mayor of Star Valley, a relatively new community in Northern Gila County. Mayor Bill Rappaport reported a drastic reduction in speed on one stretch of highway which had a posted speed limit of 45. Prior to radar being installed the average speed on this stretch was 82 mph and there had been 8-12 accidents. Rappaport said after the cameras went in the average speed dropped to 43 and accidents fell by half. The community also receives revenue from the tickets which was another hot items in the public debate. Some felt the city was doing this just for the money.

While the income stream was not overlooked in reviewing the program for the local area, the program was first and foremost initiated because of its ability to reduce accidents and force people to slow down when going through our community.

City Manager, Kane Graves, negotiated a five year contract with Redflex with a one year “easy out”, whereby the City has the option of backing out of the contract with no penalties should they feel the program did not meet their expectations for any reason. This caveat gives both detractors and supporters of photo radar one full year to review the real-time data collected by Redflex on the local area instead of relying on stats from other communities (like Star Valley).

Since the mere mention of  Photo Radar conjures up such a love/hate battleground where successes and failures are held up by both sides as proof-positive that they are right and the opposition is wrong, the advantage of a year long trial basis – which is what the one-year “easy out” option- really is all about, gives some breathing room to both sides to get some much-needed facts on how the program works in our community.

Here is how it will work:

On the issue of Safety:

The Globe Police department has identified the most dangerous sections of road in the area. They include the stretch of Ash/Hwy 60 which borders Globe High School, the intersection at Hwy 60 and Main (Oak Realty), the intersection at Hwy 60 and State Rte 188 (Judy’s Cookhouse), the intersection of Hwy 60/70 and the entrance to the Historic District at Ash & Broad Street. (Entrance at the train trestle) and Hwy 60/70. Photo Radar will be installed at four of these locations and a fifth- mobile unit- will be moved around and used to address other problem areas as needed.

On the issue of Citations & Enforcement

The cameras will only record drivers going 11 miles or more over the posted speed limit. The tape on all “possible citations” will first be reviewed by three Redflex employees to determine extenuating circumstances such as “Did the driver have to accelerate to pass a large truck? Or did construction in the area obscure signs” etc. After the tapes are reviewed and approved by Redflex, they are sent to the City to be reviewed. The process will be handled by a Globe police officer or a trained and deputized individual. If the City approves the evidence submitted only  then will Redflex send out citations to the drivers. Tickets will be based on the existing rate structure – ie, higher fines for higher speeds- but Redflex takes $35 (or about 25%) and the balance of the citation is divided between city,county and state – as are all court fees. The monies received by the City for this program “will go into the general fund and be prioritized in addressing the needs of the community.”

On the contract and upfront costs

Redflex will incur all upfront costs of the program including (5) cameras and all administrative and field personnel required to maintain and manage the program. The costs of each camera is estimated at $150,000 and with the added overhead of personnel and oversight of the program it is estimated that the company will put out nearly $1 million the first year with no guarantee the contract will make it past that time period.

Redflex, which is an Australian company, has operated in the United States for nearly 20 years and employees over 400 people at their headquarters in Phoenix. According to their website, they have provided photo radar services to 240 communities in 21 states throughout the United States and hold the contract with Star Valley which was negotiated through the County two years ago. The contract which the City of Globe negotiated with Redflex drew on a joint agreement between the County and City which allows the City to take advantage of contracts negotiated by the County. This meant City Manager, Kane Graves, could “tag on” to the county agreement which has a preferred rate over any current rates.