Arizona, Desert and Deadly Snakes

We stopped at a desert recreational area and took a walk amongst the Saguaro cactus which are sometimes called the ‘desert monarch’  on account of the fact that they can be fifty feet tall and up to two hundred years old.  We walked among them a short way but became understandably nervous when we read a warning sign about rattle snakes and we remembered Mike’s gruesome stories of painful venomous deaths where blood turns to cement and you die in seconds so we didn’t stay very long.

I think Mike was exaggerating. I looked it up later.  There are about eight thousand reports of venomous snake bites every year in the USA but on average only five people die which is about twice as many in Australia.  That is about the same amount of people who die from dog attacks in the UK each year.

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Arizona, Phoenix Nights and The Rustler’s Rooste

Rustler’s Rooste served cowboy food and a sign on the door said ‘Better come hungry’; so it was a good job that we had Dave and his reliable appetite with us!  There was a fabulous menu with an extensive choice of food including rattlesnake as a starter.

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Arizona, Heil Factory Visit and the Scottsdale Stadium in Phoenix

This might sounds a bit ungrateful but I just wasn’t enjoying this part of the trip.  I preferred the Grand Canyon excursion.

But I suppose it was the real reason for the visit and I tried as best as I could to try and stay focussed and show some interest in the Rapid Rail and the  STARR system equipment, the Formula 7000 Square body and DPF Formula 7000 automated side loaders, the Formula 7000 split body co-collection automated side loaders and the DPF Half/Pack front loaders.

Finally, after what seemed a lifetime or three, the visit was over and the Managing Director gave each of us a bag of corporate gifts which included a polo shirt and baseball cap, a Swiss army knife and some unusually high quality pens.

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Arizona, Grand Canyon National Park and a Cowboy Restaurant

For an Englishman a four hundred mile trip seems a very long way to drive for a day out.

If I drove that distance in any direction from my home then I would run out of road and reach the sea.  Going east it would take only fifteen minutes.  It is a journey like this that makes you realise the immense scale of the USA.  Arizona is 115,000 square miles of emptiness and long stretches of never-ending road between towns, the UK is just less than 95,000 square miles and Arizona is bigger than forty of the fifty-one countries in Europe.  It is bigger than half the countries in the World.

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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 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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An Unexpected Travel Opportunity

Before I moved to Lincolnshire I used to work for a French waste (mis)management company called Onyx UK and I worked at a depot in Maidenhead in Berkshire and managed the Windsor contract.

The company was always losing money and as a result trying to cut costs and one day  the Managing Director 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  and tried to drag up a suitable excuse, but fortunately before I could prematurely decline, he happened to mention that the factory was in Phoenix, Arizona in the United States of America.

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

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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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Onyx UK, an Unexpected Opportunity and a Very Nasty Little Man

Even with poor financial performance the Company kept spending unnecessary money and one day in February 1997 Percy telephoned me to tell me that he had heard of a new type of refuse collection vehicle with impressive labour saving innovations that offered huge operational savings 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 refuse lorries or how they are made but fortunately, before I could decline, he happened to mention that the factory was in Phoenix, Arizona in the United States of America and as quick as a flash my lack of interest transformed into complete and total enthusiasm.  Did I want to visit Phoenix to see some dustcarts?  You bet I did!

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Arizona, Desert and Deadly Snakes

It was a glorious day and we had a lot of it at our disposal because we weren’t due to fly home until much later so after partial recovery we checked out, packed the bags into the vehicle and headed off south into the desert.  We were taking the road towards Tuscon, the Pearl Harbour Memorial Highway,  but it was a long way so we had to abandon any thoughts of getting there and back in time for our flight.

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Arizona, Phoenix Nights and The Rustler’s Rooste

After lunch Allan and Ben talked business with Mike and so wandered outside into the sunshine and tried to follow a ball game that was in progress on the field.

Scottsdale Stadium is an eleven thousand seater baseball field that was built in 1992 and although it wasn’t full there were quite a lot of spectators watching the game.  Baseball is basically primary school rounders but Americans don’t like to admit this and they have added all sorts of rules to make it completely incomprehesible to anyone who is unfamiliar with the game.

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