We get out of Dodge - well Phoenix actually!

I visited my cardiologist yesterday for my hospital follow up and got the all clear to travel.

I have been feeling pretty good since I got out of hospital and although panicking slightly at every chest twinge when we are out walking around local landmarks

and sweet factories. We were told this might just be my heart revelling in its new and improved blood supply.










I was feeling slightly miffed about all this as I had asked for a heart check up just before leaving the UK but found this;

“According to American Heart Association data, published 2004, for about 65% of men and 47% of women, the first symptom of cardiovascular disease is heart attack or sudden death (death within one hour of symptom onset). Yet the evidence is that stress tests, even if they were performed shortly prior to these events, would not detect that these events were about to happen for most of the individuals who were about to have events.” so you might still be at risk even after the best test!

Anyway we are back on the road and heading to Quartzsite today for a big classic car show and the mineral extravaganza that goes on at Q all the time.
Carol has always been interested in jewellery making and I had a look at lapidary while we were at the big park in December where they had specialist shops for working with stone.

I even made a clock, inlaying the hours with turquoise before polishing it flat. We might do something along these lines on the boat but who knows.

BRRR BRRR!!

Looking at the UK weather forecast you guys back home are in for an icy blast this weekend. Keep warm.

John and Carol [ enjoying the Arizona sunshine and preparing for the Super Bowl (me) and Puppy Bowl (Carol) ]

Before my helicopter trip we visited a quiet and peaceful state park just outside Phoenix

WHITE TANKS on JANUARY 6TH

We stayed at White Tanks State Park, the largest park in the system, for a couple of days. It was great to get away from the continuous traffic noise of Phoenix and enjoy the peace of a campsite out in the boonies.



In a place where annual rainfall is less than 10 inches a year and summer temperatures will be above 100o degrees for weeks, water is important. These mountains have been a reliable source of water to people for thousands of years.

We walked up to the site of one such source, marveling at the bone white rocks in the stream beds that give the park its name. The violent monsoon rains scrub the boulders clean and the gentle rains trickling down through the rock layers keep the top pools [or tanks ] fed year round. At first the stream bed was dry, even though we have had more rain than usual for this time of year, but soon we saw some small pools and then as we got to the top there we heard the trickle of running water from pool to pool and finally at the top we saw the drizzle of water running down the cliff face and filling the top pool.

It was a short hike and we were glad that there was something to see at the end of the trail but as we stood there at the pool, gray and dusty images flickered at the edges of our vision as thirsty travelers, from the past, in loin clothes or buckskins or denim flung themselves into the pool and drank deeply knowing that they would not die of thirst that day.

In hindsight the minor chest discomfort on the hike, which went away when I coughed up some mucus was in fact the start of my heart problem. The crushing chest pain I had always heard about was just not there. It was just like having a chest infction and a cough. Many other people in the area were reporting such infections.

I get to ride in a helicopter and visit the DynoRod man.

.

It all got a bit exciting last Sunday. I had had what I thought was a chest infection for about a week and although I managed the White Tanks and the pioneer cemetery hikes plus changing house batteries on the Trek during the week it turns out I was 7 days into a heart attack.

Carol drove me to the hospital in Wickenburg where they too think, to begin with, I might have pneumonia but soon work out that I have blocked heart arteries and that I am in real trouble. They call the chopper ambulance and get the DynoRod team on stand by at the cardiac unit 70 miles away in Phoenix as they load me in to the chopper.

We land on the roof of the hospital and minutes later they are shoving a large tube into my groin. I do not know what tranquiliser they were feeding me but it was pretty good stuff because I felt pretty unconcerned about it all. They took care of two of my three obstructed arteries on Sunday then the other on Wednesday and I was discharged on Thursday with a big book on how to look after my heart.

The good folks at the Escapees Park helped Carol drive the Trek down to Phoenix and the hospital car park has a section for RVs with hook ups so she was able to stay there and walk over to visit every day.

We have to hang around near the hospital for a couple of weeks as my heart may get a little out of control with all this extra blood supply.

Carol has cleared the larder of all the bad stuff I used to eat like bacon and crisps and we went shopping for fat free and low salt groceries like celery and shredded wheat today.

I feel fine today and the sun is shining here in Phoenix so we will be out getting my exercise and thinking about what might have been. It was a close call. However the cardiac nurse who looked after me seems to think I should be able to get back to a normal life in a few weeks.

Agility dog show in Phoenix

AKC dog show.
Carol’s bit

The rules for AKC ( American kennel club) are a bit different to ours, and the ultimate goal is the Nationals as the British is Crufts.

This was agility, from basic level to some pretty serious experienced dogs.
Most of the dogs were border collies as usual, because without a doubt they are the fastest workers, not always the most accurate though. Going at that speed they can end up with injuries, and over shoot the object. The handler has to be one jump ahead all the time to point to the next challenge. Even so if the dog takes the corner too fast they can cause some pretty serious injury that may be permanent. Charro did basic agility and I decided it wasn’t worth the risk, he had perfect hips until the day he died, although an injury just chasing a ball, caused a permanent contracture in the groin muscle when he slipped and did the splits.

Although most of the dogs enjoy the excitement, some do not. These competitions can be about the handlers, and I saw a couple of them with dogs that made mistakes
walk a way from the dog in disgust, leaving the dog standing, wagging it’s tail, not knowing what it had done wrong. The dogs are under their handlers control, and they are responsible for the dog’s m
istakes.
Mostly though everyone seemed to enjoy the day and we were accepted as part of the day, even without a dog. There was a stall selling doggie things, always a big mistake going to look at these, the handlers buy things for their dogs, and the dog probably never even looks at most them.




One of the competitors ,Judy was in a turbo charged wheelchair
and took her border collie bitch Peek round the course faster than some of those on foot. Peek is a rescue dog and has very unusual markings for a border. She responded very well to the wheelchair and kept well out way of the wheels, I don’t see why an event for competitors that are disabled, shouldn’t be included as part of the agility programme here and throughout the dog agility world.

Thanks to Judy for her help in making us feel welcome and settling us in.

WE GO TO JAIL

Happy New year from sunny Arizona.

After a few days of rain and cloud the blue skies and warm sunshine returns to our corner of southern Arizona. So we were back in the outdoor pool and with a little help from a modified neck pillow Carol is making good progress with swimming. A width is now easy and we are working on breathing .

I wish I could say the same about my progress on the poker table but the local sharks are treating me like a fish and taking my money!


JANUARY 2 Our visit to Tent City Jail.

We checked in to jail at 2 pm on Friday not sure what to expect. We had heard of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his tent jail but here we were in Maricopa county to see how it was in real life. After a brief introduction we were soon at the gate in the razor wire fence with the next step we were inside. The clunks of the locks signified we were inside, what some inmates call, the toughest jail in the USA.

It reaches 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and drops below zero in the winter.
But rain, hail, sun or snow the inmates sleep in bunks in tents. Male or female they wear pink socks and pink underwear. There is no privacy as the tents sleep 50 or so and in summer they are near capacity. But Joe keeps the VACANCY sign burning high above the jail on an unused watchtower and says he will always find space for lawbreakers. This is important in Maricopa county as, unlike most of the rest of the states, here if you are caught driving drunk you go to jail

We only expected to see an empty cell or tent but much to our surprise we actually were walked through the woman’s facility and right through the common room which was air conditioned and into the tent city. Everywhere there were woman in striped clothes some chatting some reading but many just lying on their bunks just ‘ stacking time ‘. As many of these woman had not seen a man for a while I felt pretty uneasy and more than a little vulnerable as we walked through within touching distance of the inmates.

We were not allowed to speak to or take any pictures of the prisoners but the jailors who showed us around filled us in on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s use of chain gangs[

APPROVED PIC!]

to provide labour for burial of the unclaimed dead, road clean up and workers in his animal rehabilitation center. { The chains are off for the last one. But for the rest they are in leg irons. }

Some of stories about the jail turned out to be urban myths. They are not fed green out of date meat, They do have access to TV, but only 4 educational channels and no football. But there is no smoking, newspapers, coffee and the food is very very bland.

The jailors showed us the sort of things that were confiscated and amongst the home made knives, was a home made tattoo machine, a set of nunchucks and saddest of all, a pink teddy bear made from towels.

We were both very happy to hear the outer gate open for us and as we walked out into the Arizona sunshine we decided we would definitely avoid finishing up in the pink tent city jail.

John needn’t have worried about being eaten alive by sex starved women, they were too busy picking up clean towels. The ones outside couldn’t be bothered to stir off of their bunks. These bunks looked like metal market stalls with a foam mattress on top.
Anyway he grabbed my hand for protection and shuffled along side. I must admit to an uneasy feeling as we were told we were going in with the inmates. I think I would rather be dead than shut in a prison, albeit an open one like this one.

The sheriff that runs this prison is an animal rights supporter and runs a service that looks after pets for the inmates while they are serving their time. The service also includes animals seized pending cruelty charges and are then put up for re-homing.
Didn’t go there, haven’t got room for a kennel full of abused pets desperately wanting someone to love them, and I’m not strong enough to walk away.