Arizona, Breakfast at the Roadrunner Saloon

Thoughtfully the organizers of the trip thought we might need a day to rest after our long flight so the next day was free of any official engagements and ours to do as we pleased with so Allan decided that we would drive to the two hundred mile journey to the far north of the State to see the Grand Canyon.

This seemed a very good idea but did involve a very early start and less than four hours after crawling into bed and before it even got light we were off and away before I had time to check to see if I had a hangover and even before the breakfast bar was open in the restaurant. Dave wasn’t happy about that.

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Car Hire Misadventures – Grand Canyon, 1996

Before I moved to Lincolnshire I used to work for a French waste (mis)management company called Onyx UK that had an optimistic business plan to take over refuse collection services in the UK and I worked at a depot in Maidenhead in Berkshire and managed the Windsor contract.

The company was always trying to cut costs and one day in February 1996 the Managing Director, a man called Percy Powell, telephoned me to tell me that he had heard of a new type of refuse collection vehicle with impressive labour saving innovations that offered potentially huge operational efficiencies and that he was interested in finding out more.  He asked me if I would be prepared to visit the factory where they were manufactured and give him my opinion.

To be honest I had very little interest in bincarts or how they are made but fortunately, before I could prematurely decline, he quickly happened to mention that the factory was in Phoenix, Arizona in the United States of America and almost instantaneously my lack of interest transformed lack a volcanic eruption, like an accident in a firework factory, like a nuclear explosion experiment, into complete and total enthusiasm.

Did I want to visit Phoenix to see some dustcarts?  You bet I did!

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Arizona, Breakfast at the Roadrunner Saloon

Thoughtfully the organizers of the trip thought we might need a day to rest after our long flight so the next day was free of any official engagements and ours to do as we pleased with so Allan decided that we would drive to the two hundred mile journey to the far north of the State to see the Grand Canyon.  This seemed a good idea but involved a very early start before it even got light and we were off and away before I had time to check to see if I had a hangover and even before the breakfast bar was open in the restaurant.

Read the full story…