Q factor

"Q factor", in cycling, is the distance between your left and right feet, width wise (approximately).

We spent the last 2 days in Quartzsite, Arizona; we took a much needed rest day there. And, as has been the case before on this trip, the place we end up needing a break, physically, is NOT the place we'd necessarily like to be, metaphysically.
But, as has also been the case on this trip, some of the places we end up that we would not necessarily have chosen to stop and put a foot down have turned out to be fun, interesting, and good in ways unimagined before our time there.
In the case of Q-town, we got out of the heat and sun (after being shut out at the "off-season" RV parks in town - "no tents!") at the Desert RV Park on the outskirts of town. We hung out in the Bingo hall there, in fact, mostly. Shade? Electricity? Running water? Awesome!
We also found a great family restaurant nearby called "3 X", as in "three times". We ate there...three times.
We met an interesting, kind woman named Dottie who was full of fun stories and helpful information. In fact, we ate our "2nd breakfast" with her and her husband in their town today at the roadside restaurant she had recommended. And now we have escaped out of the wind/blowing dust and sand (gusts to 50 mph) at a small motel (Sheffler's Motel) that she recommended, up the road another 30 miles. We ate at the restaurant across the street, the Salome Cafe. And "had to" get a beer at the bar, "Don's Cactus Bar", as our Canadian traveling partner's name is? Don.
While we were biking today we ran in to 2 guys doing the same crazy thing we are doing (approximately), and had a beer with them in the bar. Turns out they work for REI in Philly, and work with a guy I knew and worked with occasionally a hundred years ago, when I worked at the now closed New Rochelle REI. Small world.
Since we eat every 2 or 3 hours, I think I will shower, nap, patch today's three flat tubes, and then eat over at the little pizza joint that Dottie recommended...

I now think of all this good fun and people out of weird deserted desert RV towns as a new kind of "Q factor".
And I look forward to more of it over the coming miles...