A few of you have axed me on the air about our trip last summer to see Art and Ramona. I don’t usually talk about it for more than a couple of minutes, because the peanut gallery hates it – I suppose because it’s ass-kissing, or showing off, or whatever. So, if you choose to read on, you may be exposed to senseless acts kindness in my remarks about the Bells. If that sickens you, please hit the back button on your browser. Fair warning.

This story will be told in installments.

OUR TRIP TO SEE ART AND RAMONA

The mission to visit the Bells started nine years ago, when I first axed out Becky Zed. She had been a student of mine, and talked to me a lot after class during the semester, and brought me coffee and such before class. So, after the course ended, I decided to ax her out. I didn’t know what the pitch should be, but after the final exam, I simply blurted out, “I know Art Bell. Do you want to go out?” Well, her legs buckled, I caught her, and she said “yes.” Trouble was, I didn’t know Art Bell. But it was plausible – Art and I were both hams. Otherwise, I don’t know if she would have bought it.

As the years went by, she didn’t press me to prove I knew Art, but it came up occasionally. And I always told her I could talk to him on the “ham” (the way BZ refers to any radio or piece of radio related gear), or drop by the Pahrump house any time I felt like it. Eventually, she said that she was beginning to feel that the years with me were a waste of time if she was never going to get to meet Art. She even began to doubt that I knew him. Something had to be done.

I had never even heard Art on the ham radio before, and had no idea where to find him, but I got lucky. I hadn’t been active for a long time on the radio, in fact I didn’t even own a modern radio. So I bought an Icom 746, and got on the air. After only a few weeks of casual monitoring, I just stumbled onto the famous voice one night.

Well, that bought me some time with BZ. At least now I could conjure Art’s voice from the ham radio. I did a lot of listening, and BZ did come to listen to Art once in a while, but she finally did want to hear me talking to Art. Why wasn’t I talking to him if I did indeed know him, and had a standing invitation to drop by the Pahrump pad anytime I wanted? I had a good answer for that one. I explained that I was only a General class ham, but Art was hanging out in the Advanced class portion of the band. I told her that when Art and I had talked, it was when he was operating in the General portion. Well, that was all fine and good, but she wanted some QSOing with Art pretty soon, and a night on the $3000.00 guesthouse mattress, or she was going to leave me.

The next step was obvious, get my Extra, and then join Art’s group. So I bought a book, studied it, and drove over to the VEC in neighboring El Cajon to take the test. Wow, there were a lot of volunteer examiners standing around with nothing to do. A lot of them were trying to participate in some way in my examination. A lot of people were watching me, like I was going to cheat. I was the only person in the room, except for all these VE’s who kept up a regular changing of the guard. So, I knocked out my 100%, got my temp Extra, and was ready to get the hell outta Dodge. But before I left, a really nice old VE who had helped to administer my exam, started chatting me up. I really didn’t care to talk much, but he seemed to need to talk. So I listened and nodded. He was an Extra-lite VE, among mostly Advanced class VE’s, at the VEC. He seemed a little defensive about his level of knowledge, even though I certainly was not challenging him about anything. I just wanted to be polite, and then get outta El Cajon. It’s a hellhole. I guess his Advanced class buddies knew a lot more shit, and maybe he was feeling guilty, or feeling like a fraud, for holding a higher class of license than his superior buds held, and he needed to get it off his chest. Who knows? So, I reassured him that he probably didn’t know much about radio, shook his hand, and left. He seemed very relieved.

I was still WB6ESN at that point, and I am still very sentimentally attached to that call, but I’ve always wanted a four-character call, so I applied for my KN6Z vanity call. Next problem was how to get the group to pay any attention to me. It’s not easy to join a group, on OR off the radio. What do you say to a bunch of strangers? “Say, Art, can I come over?” Shit. No effin’ way. And my little antenna was crappy. I needed to be louder. So I put up a decent dipole at a decent height. Good audio was also important for getting noticed, but I didn’t know it at the time. In those days I was oblivious to ESSB. I expected that I sounded as good as Art, and as good as anybody else on frequency, but I really didn’t care. Wasn’t even thinking about audio at all. I just needed to figure out something to say. I guess in the beginning, I just started identifying with everybody, every ten minutes. That was a way to at least say something. When I did begin making remarks, I always said, “This is KN6Z, Glenn, in San Diego, blah, blah, blah.” I really needed to work on being SOMEBODY, not just part of the Art Bell peanut gallery.

Well, the group was into some boring shit, like audio. Talk of filters and such. Gawd, awful. I didn’t have anything to say about that, or much else. I slowly got to know people by just chronically showing up and giving my name and call. Finally, the group entered the dark ages – slow scan TV. Jeezus. Horrible. I didn’t even go to 3830 for about a year after that started. Somehow, I managed to keep putting off Becky Zed on the Art Bell thing.

When I came back to the group, everybody was talking loops. Art now had a big loop. Well, I wanted more power, and a loop. So I got a big, honking amp, and put up a 370-foot loop, about forty feet high. The new amp and antenna made me louder, and thus I stood out more, and enabled me to join in the loop comparison chat. Art was getting to know me as the latest guy with a loop. One of the most fun things about Art is his enthusiasm for what other people are doing with their stations and antennas. It’s amazing the details he can remember about what is going on with so many stations. And once you mention some improvement you might make to your station or antenna, Art is always on your butt to follow through.

The first, legitimate one-on-one I had with Art was a discussion of Dean Radin, and Radin’s book. Radin has been a guest on Art’s show. I had Art all to myself for about an hour. In addition to Radin, we talked about the loop, his latest EZNEC results, and “lurkers” who hang around outside his property, trying to steal a glimpse of a captive alien sex slave, or something. I was still running my narrow band Icom 746, and an ordinary mic.

Now, I became an audio slave not to impress Art, but because somebody made a recording of the group, and played it back for us over the air. Well, nobody sounds great under those conditions, but I sounded so bad compared to everybody else, I just couldn’t deal with it. I sounded good on the 746’s monitor, but I later learned how misleading that can be. This new interest in audio dovetailed nicely with my SETIleague project. I was learning skills that helped me with both.

I began listening to the group’s audio discussions with more interest now. I wanted to learn how to sound good. I wanted that BIG, FAT, BASEY, IN-YOUR-FACE, SPLATTERING-ALL-OVER-THE-BAND sound that Orv so enthusiastically promotes. Well, the W2IHY boxes looked like a good first bash at better audio. They process your audio before you send it into the transmitter. Most importantly, they allow you to put more power into the high and low ends. There was a slight improvement in my audio, but nobody in the group even noticed that my audio was any different. WERE THEY DEAF?! That damn stuff cost me $700.00! Problem was, I still didn’t appreciate the importance of wide transmit bandwidth, for good audio. Audio processing doesn’t do you much good with narrow transmit bandwidth. A much wider transmit bandwidth than what my 746 could manage, was called for.

After researching a number of different rigs, I got a good deal on a nice Kenwood 950 SDX. It had wide transmit bandwidth, and that famous, Kenwood low-end response. Next, I needed a great mic. I compared the MD-200 to the PR-40, head to head, but it was a virtual dead heat. If money was no object, I would have kept them both, but the PR-40 was cheaper by half, so I returned the MD-200. The PR-40, IHY, 950 SDX combo grabbed everybody’s ears, and I became known for my audio.

By this time I was rolling with the group. I knew everybody, had lots of good friends, I was loud, sounding good, and shared some interests with Art, especially audio, and consciousness. Becky Zed wasn’t even bugging me anymore about meeting Art, no doubt because she could see that I was having so much fun with this group, that I wouldn’t even notice if she left me, anyway.

We took a trip to Vegas over spring break of 2005. We drove through Pahrump either on the way to Vegas, or the way back. I can’t remember. I’ve been driving through Pahrump on Vegas trips for twenty years. It’s a kooky town, and it’s been fun watching it grow. We tracked down KNYE, which was a lot of fun. I took an artsy fartsy pic of the antenna, and put it up on hamcams. Art liked the pic, and said he wished that I had let him know we were going to be in town. I promised to let him know next time.

KNYE Tower

I had wanted to see the ABBA musical “Mama Mia,” playing in Vegas, for some time. So we decided to go back to see it in August. I let Art know, and he sounded very pleased to invite us over for a night. We bought our tickets, and planned to do Vegas and the show for the first two nights, and then stay over with Art and Ramona on the third night. We wanted to take the Bells a gift of some kind, but what? Some more wire for the loop? Another cat? That was the next problem.

We decided on an arrangement of fresh flowers. Exotic flowers. Art can spend a million dollars, but he can’t buy fresh flowers once and for all. So we figured it was a good bet that there were no fresh flowers in their house at the time. I guess we looked up a Vegas florist in the yellow pages once we were in our hotel. We drove over to the florist the day before our visit with the Bells, to look at flowers and catalogs of arrangements. Building on something found in a catalog, we had the florist add different kinds of other cool, exotic, tropical flowers. At this point, Becky Zed and I had a minor scrape. She wanted to throw everything but the kitchen sink into the bouquet. I thought that including every flower known to man, in the bouquet, destroyed any sense of “theme.” She thought that that idea was bullshit. I pointed out that Waldorf salad is basically apples, celery, and walnuts. You can throw in every other thing you can think of, but then it is unrecognizable as Waldorf salad. She also thinks analogies are bullshit. Well, I pointed out that this mo fo was already way over budget, so she agreed not to throw in any more flowers. That night we would see “Mama Mia,” pick up the flowers the next day, and then head for Pahrump.

By the time we saw the “Mama Mia” show, I was already sleep deprived from hard Vegas-ing. We ate at a very exotic, Brazilian theme restaurant in one of the hotels. Very rich food. I had some kind of a mixture of shrimp, chicken, and other stuff, floating in creamy sauce, in a hollowed-out, pineapple half. Gawd, I was stuffed and bloated after that. I wasn’t very comfortable during the show, either. What a pig I was. Oh, man. All that pigging out on rich food also made it hard to get a good night’s sleep, and, as I said before, I was already sleep deprived. This was very bad because the very next night we were going to be staying UP all night with the Bells, playing radio, drinking fine champagne, etc. I sure didn’t want to get over to Pahrump, say, “Here’s some flowers, Art,” and go to bed.

Slept in late the next day, but I really didn’t sleep well at all. I was tired that whole day. We headed over to the florist to pick up the flowers. Jeezus, the flower arrangement was a MONSTER. Becky Zed needed to carry it on her lap in the car, but how to fit it in? The flowers definitely had do some bending, as did Becky, but we got her crammed into the seat, crunched down behind the flowers on her lap. It was only about an hour’s drive to Pahrump.

The plan was to get to Pahrump in the late afternoon, get some dinner at the Pahrump Winery restaurant, then head for the Loop. We wanted to look nice for our hosts, but I looked like someone who was coming off of two sleepless nights of hellacious Vegas-ing. I looked exhausted. I got some anti wrinkle goop at a drug store, and put it on the bags under my eyes. That made me look like a wasted casino bum, with a peculiar film under his eyes. Oh, well, at least I could have BZ even up my ponytail. So I sat outside the Pahrump Winery restaurant, with a small, plastic bottle of juice spiked with Vodka, having my ponytail trimmed. We were mostly just killing time with all this screwing around, because the Bells didn’t really get their day rolling until very late afternoon.

It was finally time to go into the restaurant. Now, I didn’t know if the Bells might want to have dinner with us or not. It seems like a natural, if you have guests arriving late in the afternoon. In the week leading up to the trip, I mentioned to Art like three times that Becky and I would have dinner, and then come over to his place. I was giving him the opportunity to invite us out to dinner. Well, he never suggested that we wait on dinner so that we could eat with them, so we ate before. What else could we do? You can’t walk into somebody’s house and say, “We’re hungry, feed us.” I had a feeling he was going to invite us out for dinner once we got there.

IMHO, the Pahrump Valley Winery Restaurant is by far the best restaurant of all I’ve tried in Pahrump. Nothing else comes close. We had a wonderful meal there. Afterward, we looked over the huge selection of very unusual jams and jellies and other stuff for sale at the winery. I called my mom to see if she wanted me to bring home any of those interesting jams. I read labels to her, and she made the picks. We tossed the jam in the back, wedged Becky Zed back into the seat, with the flowers on her lap, and headed for the Bells. I called Ramona from the restaurant, and she said to come on over, the gate to the driveway was open.

It only took about ten minutes to drive from the restaurant to the Bells. The 100-foot tower can be seen for a long way before you get to their house. As you approach, you start seeing a whole bunch of sixty something-foot masts. Those are the thirteen masts that hold up the ginormous loop. Just about all the buildings on the property are a nice light blue color. A very peaceful look.

As soon as we were parked in the driveway, Art was out on his porch with his high definition video camera. So, I tried to ham it up for the camera a little, while extricating Becky Zed from the flower-seat belt-car tangle. The Bells make you feel like a celebrity, right down to following you around with a camera. I carried the flowers up onto the porch, with BZ bringing up the rear. When you reach the Bell’s front door, you are confronted by “the heads.” Creepy, but you just tip

The Heads

toe past them, and hopefully they won’t notice you. We maneuvered the flower arrangement into the living room, and plopped it down unceremoniously onto a big table. I was relieved not to have to think about those flowers any more. They were in the Bell’s hands. Because of the cats, Art put the flowers up onto the highest shelf in the house.

Art and Ramona had some very nice gifts waiting for US. How neat I thought that was, a completely spontaneous, non-obligatory gift exchange, so different from what most of us are used to. They didn’t know we were bringing them anything, and we didn’t know they were waiting with presents for us. Ramona and Art presented us with a bottle of Moet et Chandon champagne, and a nice sock to put it in (the champagne is long gone, of course, but I still like to wear the sock, occasionally). In addition, they gave us KNYE hats, KNYE bags, insulated KNYE mugs, and really cool little postage stamp-sized FM radios with headsets. They didn’t want us to use up our champagne on the spot, so they fed us at least a couple of bottles more while we were there.

I knew immediately that it was going to be a nice, relaxing visit. The Bells put you at ease right away. They do not do a formal sit down and stare and try to keep up stiff conversation. You just become part of the family for a few hours, to do what you want. You have the run of the house, to raid the kitchen, watch high def TV, play radio with Art, play with the cats, play on the computer with Ramona, whatever. Very pleasant. And I hardly noticed any smoke in the house. I don’t know how they did that. Air cleaners and powerful AC? Art really does keep that AC cranked. The place really smelled good. There were ashtrays around, but they were kept pretty clean. I did manage to swipe a few butts, though, to sell on Ebay.

Once the gifts were exchanged, and we’d been introduced to all the cats, Art axed us about the “Mama Mia show.” So we told him a little about it. Then he axed us if we wanted to go out to eat. OF COURSE. I knew it. Well, I had to tell him that we just had had a major feed at the Pahrump Valley Winery restaurant. He just said, “Hmm.” Ramona heated up some frozen pizza for Art, later, but I wound up eating some of it myself. There was talk of going over to KNYE, which I totally wanted to do, but the light was going fast, and I wanted a tour of the grounds. I wanted a tour of The Loop, and I wanted to see all of Art’s cool stuff. So, off we went with W6OBB, into the desert twilight.

We walked around inspecting The Loop. We discussed the construction with Art, and had a close up look at the installation of one of the thirteen masts. We got the tour of the RV (full of computers, radios, and plasma TVs), the satellite dishes, the solar power station, the big gel storage batteries, the cars, the racket ball court (with a beautiful, $20K wooden floor), the Jacuzzi, sauna, and assorted other stuff. It was a rush tour because we were running out of light, but it was fun. I wanted to see stuff, and Art delivered. When darkness fell over the desert, the tour ended. It was now time for some errands with the Bells.

Tower, the little bird Art rescued, needed some baby food. So, we were all off to Wallmart to get the goop. Mr. and Mrs. Bell took one of the Trans Ams, and Becky and I followed in Becky’s Honda Civic. Art walks very fast, but none of us could keep up with Ramona, in Wallmart. Somehow we all fell together at the check stand. Ramona had the bird supplies. Next stop, KNYE.

We followed Ramona and her husband over to KNYE. It’s the coolest looking little station, with the transmitter and tower right there on site. I guess the building was a manufactured home at one time. We all went on in. Art and Ramona gave us a brief tour, and then started taking care of some station bidness. BZ and I wandered around, taking pix of the station, each other, and each other with Art. Art turned on the big light under the tower for us, the same kind of light used at the top of the Luxor in Vegas. Art spared

KNYE’s Tower of Power

no expense on KNYE. He explained that it would have made better bidness sense to settle for less, but he wanted to build something first class, just for the joy and satisfaction of doing it.

The KNYE kitchen

W6OBB and KN6Z

Ready to go on the air.

Becky Zed at KNYE

The KNYE tour was really fun. We got some more KNYE stuff while we were there. When it was time to go, everybody piled into cars, and took off for The Loop Zone. Out on the open road, Art put the Trans Am through its paces. In a flash, they disappeared into the night. I floored the old Honda, and impressed some rabbits on the side of the road.

When we got back to the Bell’s place, Art gave us a set of keys to the guesthouse, and to the front gate. He and Ramona escorted us over to our digs, next door. It was really dark. The guesthouse has a nice little path up to the porch, bordered by little blue lights, reminiscent of an airport taxiway. Art tried to turn on the lights, but the wires connecting the lights had been eaten through by rodents. Ramona brought some dykes and electrical tape back from the main house, and Art had the lights fixed up in no time. They really add a nice touch to the front of the guesthouse.

Art took us into the guesthouse, and showed us around. First class all the way. It had a beautiful master bedroom and bath, a very nice extra bedroom with a nice computer, a nice entertainment center with a fairly extensive library of videos and DVDs, a well-stocked kitchen and refrigerator, a wet bar, a washer and dryer, and powerhouse AC, fully cranked, of course. The bed in the spare room was piled high with brand new stuffed animals, tags still on. Seemed like we were supposed to take one, but we didn’t know, so we didn’t.

Ramona had returned to the main house after Art did the splice job out front, but she came hustling back over to tell us that Peter Jennings had died. So, we all watched some news about Jennings on the guesthouse TV. Mr. and Mrs. Bell then left us to ourselves to settle in. Art returned after a short while to insure we understood that we were invited back to the main house for a night of fun, whenever we felt like coming over. Art was very polite whenever he came to our door. He always knocked, never just barged into his own guesthouse, and always hung back from the door for the sake of our privacy. That was a really good thing, because I would have hated for him to see any of the bizarre shit we had going on in there.

I was so whipped. I was seriously short on sleep from too much Vegas, but I still wanted to have a night of fun next door. Becky Zed sat on the couch, and I put my head in her lap. She stroked my head while I closed my eyes for a while. I dreamed a dream of finally getting my voice out over The Loop, and that my life would thus assume a slightly greater than zero value. After about a half hour of that, we marched with purpose out into the night, toward Art, Ramona, radio, cats, Tower the bird, Tower the tower (I named it Tower), coffee, champagne, Big Brother on the computer, and more picture taking.

Back at the main house, I started taking pictures, hoping I was not being rude. Art and Ramona didn’t seem to mind at all. They were always happy to pose with/for us. My mom most definitely wanted pix of the inside of the house. So, I took pix of the cats, BZ with cats, Art with cats, the radio room, some of Art’s awards, Tower the bird, whatever. It was fun. We had time for pix and TV and fooling around, before playing radio, because there were lightning storms about until fairly late, and Art was keeping The Loop grounded until the lightning cleared up. We hung out on the front porch with Art for a long time, watching the lightning. He had his hi-def video camera, and was getting some shots of the lightning.

It was well after midnight by the time the lightning cleared up enough to commune with The Loop. Art and I QSO’d with some of the regulars. It was lots of fun. In those days, everyone was still pretending to like one another. Becky Zed and Ramona were in the next room, watching internet Big Brother. Big Brother is a reality TV show, but you can watch a live internet version, permitting you to see everything, not just the little bit selected for the TV show. BZ and Ramona were at that all night, drinking Moet & Chandon the whole way. Sometimes Becky Zed and I would encounter each other outside our respective play rooms. I’d give her a gulp of my coffee, and she’d give me a swig of her champagne.

Becky Zed is stalked by creepy aliens.

KN6Z and W6OBB play radio. Art is a tall dude, but he’s sitting in a little chair.

Somewhere along the line, Art showed us some video he shot with his new, hi-def video camera. It was a mix of this and that, including BZ and I tumbling out of the car with the flowers, and making our way up the driveway. Anyway, he had taken some video on his recent trip to the Yaesu factory to have some work done on his FT-9000. He was hanging out in the parking lot, early in the morning, waiting for Yaesu to open. A guy in a Mini Cooper drove into the parking lot, so Art walked over to do a video interview. I love those cars, and almost said so. Art might have politely replied, “Yeah they’re great,” but who knows? Anyway, Art remarked in the video that those Mini Coopers are ugly-ass cars. It would have been funny and awkward if I had just finished saying how much I loved them. (God, that was a long way to go for not very much.)

The Bells had some frogs around the property, and they were all named “Froggy.” I like descriptive, functional names. That’s why I named the tower, “Tower.” Anyhow, Art took me out onto the back patio to meet Froggy. Yeti managed to slip out through the door with us. Before anyone even knew that Yeti was outside with us, Yeti pounced on Froggy, and then Art pounced on Yeti. Art was really mad. I’ve never heard him truly angry before, or since. He unceremoniously dumped Yeti, like a sack of potatoes, back through the door, and into the kitchen.

Well, now Art and Yeti were on the outs. Art wasn’t speaking to Yeti, and Yeti was spreading rumors that Art was telling the other cats not to meow to Yeti. God, it was just a mess. But in no time, Art and Yeti had made up, and Art was affectionately cuddling Yeti in the big, radio chair.

Froggy nearly buys the farm.

Pool table cats, Dusty and Yeti.

Present from Rush Limbaugh

Becky Zed and Shadow share some quality time.

Besides ham radio, Art showed me some other radio fun in the studio/ham shack. He showed me how he controlled some aspects of KNYE via the internet, from his home. He recorded a KNYE weather report while I sat next to him, he fouled it up, and then did a second take. He called out to Becky Zed and Ramona to shut the hell up for a minute so that he could make the recording. I got a private performance of the “thunder clap” that is frequently heard on Art’s Coast to Coast broadcast. There was entertaining stuff to do everywhere. The ham shack/studio is MUCH smaller than it looks in pictures.

At one with The Loop.

By about 4 a.m., Mr. and Mrs. Bell were ready for bed. It had really been a blast, but we were all tired. We thanked our hosts and said goodbye, then headed next door to the guesthouse. Becky Zed went straight to bed. I was kind of hungry, so I scrounged around the kitchen for a while. I found a can of Progresso chicken soup. God, that hit the spot. Canned soup never tasted so good. I cleaned up my mess, went into the master bedroom, and climbed up onto that very high, elegant bed. BZ was already fast asleep.

We got up about 11 a.m., I guess. I was still really tired, but I just couldn’t sleep any longer. We showered, did a last look-around and clean up of the guesthouse, put the keys on the kitchen table, and left. We shot some video of the whole place on the way out.

Epilogue

Becky Zed just can’t bear to see a road trip end, so she insisted we spend the night in Barstow instead of driving straight home. Whoa, daddy! They do some seriously bad living in Barstow. There are more liquor stores per city block in Barstow than I have seen anywhere. It’s no wonder.

Ramona and Becky Zed really hit it off; Ramona had BZ lined up for a series of future Pahrump adventures. But the week before we were due for our second visit, Ramona left us. We only got to know her for a few hours that first visit, but she really made an impression on us. I’m glad for the time we had with her.

Well, there you have it. I’ve managed to stretch a one-paragraph story into a colossal waste of time. And now I bet you chumps are wondering what, if anything, really happened in this story. Ok, see below, “Key to the Bullshit.”

Key to the Bullshit

1. Art Bell never had anything to do with my relationship with Becky Zed.

2. There was never any long-range plan to visit Art, although I did upgrade my ticket so that I could join his group and talk to him.

3. Orv K6UEY does not like wide, basey audio.

4. I never swiped any cigarette butts from Art’s house.

5. I did not dream about talking on the loop.

6. Yeti did not spread any rumors that Art was telling the other cats not to meow to Yeti.

7. Art politely axed Ramona and Becky Zed to stay quiet while he made a recording; he never told anybody to “shut the hell up.”

FANS ONLY