Saturday, July 28, 2018

The Wild Side of Idaho.....Fluming!


Hi and welcome back. I can honestly say I hate Blogger. I either need a tutorial or a cheat sheet. I have no Idea why but if you add a video, it for some reason centers the text. But if you break into the code and "right" the video, the text goes right too. Anyway, today was kind of unplanned. The original plan got changed at 3am and then an 830am call brought back the need for a plan, but a way shorter plan then the original. Um, OK. Logan Canyon, 3 hours, back home. Didn't happen that way. But, I am not complaining. So, Kirt and I headed up Beaver Creek Canyon with the plan to take it over to Bear Lake and come home. We came down a canyon that was damn near equal to North Beach, St Charles I believe. As we neared the bottom, this huge hill presented itself with a trail to the top to overlook the lake. Old Yellow took the hill without even using the 4x4 system and made it look easy. We took some fotos and video and then went back down. This is the video going back down. We hit the bottom and it was close to lunch time so I decided that we would go north to Montpelier, eat lunch then go over the mountain and come out in Preston. Well, the guilty party decided we needed more time in the hills so we headed north towards Soda Springs. 
 We go to the outskirts and took an odd route into town. We went through the Beverly Hills of Soda Springs. Beautiful Mountain mansions with tons of wooded areas and the Bear River right in the middle. If I had the money.... So, that tour took us into downtown Soda Springs where we headed west out of town. We got out a few miles then took a left turn and headed south again. This was about the time that we lost the perfect 80° temp and it soared to the mid 90's. No problem tho, we turned on the ac and it made the journey a little bit better. Seriously, it still cools you even with no doors or windows. Its like your chest is cool and your back sweats like a mo-fo. It was along this route to Downey that Kirt mentioned how the pioneers of the valley got irrigation water to their fields. The Bear is really low in the valley altitude wise. It flows through a deep canyon so it wouldn't be easy to bring it up to the fields. Well, these dudes were smart. Up river where it doesn't go through a canyon they tunneled through the lava rock for a mile or so and where the tunnel ends is in these fotos.
So the canal is underground till it meets this gorge. They built a bridge for the canal over the river so it could be distributed to the valleys farms. They are damn proud of this engineering feat and invite you to go see it. Now, this is where "fluming" comes in. There is a trail right to where it comes out of the mountain. The water is moving fairly fast and you jump in and let the current carry you to a spot where you can exit. You climb up on top of the canal, there is a walkway, and walk back and do it again. It seems like it would be a blast. I am much to old and worn out to attempt it but if I was younger, I'd be there in a heartbeat. South of where the tunnel exits, the canal crosses the river again. We walked across, its about 80 feet high, with the canal under our feet. There were 4 kids down below using a rope swing to fly out over the water and land mid river. I have a video of these kids on my YouTube page if you care to watch. Hell, Idaho knows how to have fun. If anyone mentions a canal in Utah, It has to be covered or blocked out by a 15 foot electrified razor wire fence. 

The next stop on the tour was out in the middle of a wheat field. As you can see, its the Niter Ice cave. Sometime 1000's of years ago, the area has some active volcanoes. Mother Nature left a hollow lava tube that opens up right in the middle of a field. The state has added some railing to aid in walking into the cave and its pretty damn cool. Literally. If you blink you miss the turn off and you would never know its there. When you get into the cave a ways, there is frost on the walls. We didn't have very good flashlights so we didn't go in very far but it was so nice. What I can't figure out is why the discoverer didn't build their house right next to it. Think about it. Your very own fridge/freezer. The sign does mention that the family did store stuff in there, but the house was a ways away. Anyway, it was kinda interesting. From there it was down to the Oneida Dam on the Bear. We checked it out and decided to head for home at this point. All in all, our 4 hour trip turned into 9 hours but they were 9 good hours. I saw a bunch of new things and saw more trails to explore. Sweet, huh?  Jeep on my friends! 

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Bully's Suck Camel Huevos!

 Hi there and welcome to another post where the fotos really aren't from today. Again, I can do this because this is my blog! Let's do something new, sorta......
6:15am Awakened by my bladder.
6:20am Phone rings. Caller ID says Sam.  Hello? Dad I called the ambulance. I cant walk and I am in Pain. OK I will leave now. Text me when you know where they are taking you. ok
6:35am Hop in yellow Jeep and head south to be with my daughter. Received a text saying she went to a hospital(nameless).
7:45am Arrive at hospital and go into the ER. They send me back to room 9 where no one or no bed is. Nurse says patient went for MRI. Begin to read paper.
8:02am Patient returns to room in a lot of pain. Asks for more pain meds and is finally given some. 
9isham Dr comes in and says the MRI says there is nothing wrong with patient and she will be processed to leave. This begins a long 1 sided conversation where the Dr berates and bullies the patient with questions like "What do we have to do to get you out of here?" After roughly 25 minutes of this, he leaves the room and the patient crying. I then leave the room and call the front desk and ask for the head honcho of "said" hospital. I get a manager on the phone and begin a short conversation on how totally fucking rude their employee is and how someone had better get down here before it gets ugly. Within 5 minutes, Dr appears at doorway and asks if there is a problem. I tell him no conversation will  be had till some management is in the room. Finally a lady shows up and the conversation begins. I proceed to tell him that  Asking a patient what she has to do to get out of there in the tone he did was unacceptable. Then I explained how he is a Dr and we are paying patients. We are there because she is in pain and cannot move her leg at all.
"Well the MRI shows nothing! What do you want me to do?"
You are the Dr... we are paying you to find out. 
Out pop more excuses blah blah blah. Finally I was at the blowup point. 
You are a big mean bully! Do you bully all of the other patients. I mean we all know you did it to Sam on a previous visit. 
"What do you mean?" 
Sam tells the story of her first visit there 6 months ago where he did the same thing to her as well as when he called her PCP and hung up on her as well. 
At this point he apologizes to patient and leaves the room. Now the 2nd manager is in the room and she is able to calm me down. She says we will work this out and there is no way she will be sent home unable to walk. Oh and get this, they called Security on me!
Some time passes and 1st manager comes back whining like a 2 year old about how its so hard to admit someone when the MRI says they are OK. I'm like "does she look ok to you?"  Point taken. she leaves and comes back after a while saying we are admitting you under pain management and your insurance probably wont pay for it. Blah blah blah. By now its probably 10:20 and they send a nurse in to say we are waiting on a room upstairs. About noon, the 1st manager returns and does an inventory or Sam's belongings and finally transports her to room 4#*. Things should be better now...... by the way, we never saw the ER Dr again. 

Our patient is finally getting settled. The nurse comes in and is very polite. They give her more pain meds and life looks better. I go to lunch and come back to the room. A GREAT physical therapist named Joe comes in and does an evaluation on her and shows her some exercises she can do in bed to begin the healing process. He answered all the questions and was awesome. He leaves and a few minutes later in comes another therapist. She is not as nice. Fact of the matter, she was and probably still is a rude bitch! She begins to berate Sam like the ER Dr did. Blah blah blah. Her last sentence out of her mouth was "well, if you don't feel better, we will have to ship you to a group home because you obviously can't take care of yourself".  She then stormed out of the room. Sam turned and looked at me and shook her head. I then told her nice nurse that this type of treatment is unacceptable. You don't tell a patient that unless they get better they are going off to some rehab center. PEOPLE....WE ARE AT A HOSPITAL TO FIGURE OUT WHAT IS WRONG.... YOUR JOB IS TO DO THAT!!!!!  Just after that spout off, the floor manager came in. Our reputation had followed us. I told her she should have been in there 5 minutes earlier. She apologized and said she would talk with the therapist. Needless to say, we didn't see her again. The floor manager made sure we were ok and even got me a donut. Yes, she was that good. So, a bit of time passes and the floor Dr comes in. She is from Venezuela and was extremely helpful and kind. She said what the plan was and made sure Sam was ok with it and left. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful, thank heavens. I ran into the security guard a few times and chatted with him. I apologized that they had to call him but explained the situation. He was cool. We had dinner and at 6:30pm I checked out. I feel bad not being able to stay the night but without my drugs, it would be an ugly night.  Needless to say, this was an interesting day. We had a couple of Dr Jekyll's and quite a few Mr Hyde's. I just don't understand how a Dr with such shitty bedside manners can keep a job??? Seriously...The ER was dead. No one was there. Yet he tried his damnedest to kick her out the door as fast as he could. I look back on my visit to the Tooele ER and how slammed that Dr was. He didn't try to shove my ass out the door. He made sure I was ok and understood there were some serious cases ahead of me. I knew it and said its great, no problem. Today I learned that if i happen to need a hospital when I am near that certain town.... I'll go on to Salt Lake. Jeep on my friends!