Another Friday Just Like Last Friday

It was another day to work at the quail facility and was almost identical to our last day there, last Friday including the trip to Gadsen Coffee where the same motorcyclists were enjoying a cup of joe. Checked that the quail had feed and water, made a trip to Amado to pick up the rest of the seed, had lunch, did the same rebuild work as last week on another brooder cage, stopped for milk, and came back to the refuge for dinner.

The only excitement was the trip to Amado to get another pallet of quail food. When we picked up the first one last week, the pallet was wrapped in plastic, so all they did was load it into the truck bed and we added a couple of tie-downs to keep it from shipping and all was well.

This week, they brought out the other pallet but had removed the plastic which held all the bags in place. They loaded the pallet onto the truck. Half the pile of bags extended above the truck bed sides and even over the top of the cab, so this was a bit precarious. We put on twice as many tie-down straps, hoping that the bags wouldn't shift. We headed back to Arivaca. It soon became clear that this was not going to work as Ellen noticed that the space between some of the bags in the middle of the load was beginning to get wider. If they slid out far enough, the load would collapse, the tie-down straps would go slack and we'd have the better part of 1,200 pounds of expensive quail food all over the road, as had happened a while ago to one of the staff.

We found a flat spot by the road to stop (not an easy find on this road) and took the pile apart. We had to fit 40 pound bags of food into the bed around the front and sides of the pallet. Fortunately, we were able to fit enough in to just reduce the pile so that it was below the sides of the bed. We put the tie-down straps back on and safely made it to the quail facility. This includes the access road which is about two and a half miles of rough, pot-holed dirt after leaving the main road.



We are now off for the weekend. It's supposed to rain overnight, but we are hoping to get to the Desert Museum and/or the Saguaro National Park, before bringing Speedy back to the Dodge dealer on Monday morning.