Jeep Burns

My old 2004 Jeep Liberty/Renegade died on me a couple weeks back.  A heartbreaker for me, I loved that machine despite its never-ending issues.  The transmission went on it, so I took it in and paid the shop $800 to take it all apart to properly diagnose the issues.  The service manager described it as very nearly a catastrophic failure, a sheared valve and all its metal pieces were inside the machinery.  The oil pan was completely rusted through as well.  They told me the cheap fixup with rebuild parts would be around $4600 range.  To fix it properly with new parts would have been in the $6000-$7000 range, and there were still and other rust-associated problems lurking.  It had lived in New Jersey the first 10yrs of its life so rust was becoming an issue.  It was a great little machine though, I loved it.  

Great story behind it too.  We bought it off a male dancer/bodybuilder, who had just came off tour with Pink.  When I met him I thought he had to be an athlete or rockstar or something, just the vibe and the build of this guy.  His girlfriend told Tanya while I was out on the test ride that he had just gotten home from a year long tour as the lead dancer on Pink's tour.  We looked him up when we got home and there he was, the lead man in Pink's video 'Try'!  I just bought this guy's jeep!  Very cool!  Anything associated with Pink has got to have great mojo, cause she's a top notch Lady.  I kept my promise to keep her name, Lady Liberty.

I was in a tough spot.  The Jeep was apart at the dealership, I couldn't fathom the money and the time I would have to spend without a vehicle looking for someone to fix it cheaper, and it couldn't be driven, so I had to let 'er go.  Lady Liberty was gone.  The wreckers paid me $400 for it.  A total loss. That was really heartbreaking.

One week later, I was driving around in a rental on a sweltering Saturday of car searching.  After looking at a whole bunch of really crappy vehicles in the $3000 range, the Universe responded. 

I refreshed the Craigslist search for one last time and turned up a newly posted 2006 Jeep Liberty!  Black, just like the one I had lost.  2 years newer than my old one and only 125,000miles for $2800.  I could not deny the Universe had placed this squarely before me, so I bought it on the spot.  Pretty cheap Jeep, and very obviously not very well taken care of.  In my excitement about this find, I didn't bother checking the oil or tire pressure before bringing it home.  The next day, it would take 3.5quarts of oil to reach the 'safe' zone on the dipper.  The tires had about 20psi pressure, where they should have been at 35psi. 

The jury is still out on whether this was a worthy purchase, or if I'm an idiot with a big red Dunce Cap on my head for purchasing the same freakin' money-pit vehicle that I poured everything into maintaining for the last 3 years.  This one is in pretty rough shape, and dirty like no vehicle I've ever seen, but no rust.  It has been a Las Vegas vehicle all its life, dry as a bone and creaky.  The paint is completely eaten through on the roof and hood from 11years of baking in the sun. They had kids, and a dog, and he was most likely a contractor or some other dirty job, because the interior is, in my opinion unsalvageable.  It has a crazy amount of dirt, oil, and whatnot soiled into the seats.  There are crayons melted into the back seat fabric.  I have already steam cleaned the seats, but most of that stuff will not come out.  I think the seats need to come out to be cleaned properly.

I knew there'd be costs associated with getting this thing in good running order.  The first thing was the brakes and tires.  There were no brake pads left, and that caused a lot of damage.  So a full brake job was done, and the guys at BrakeMasters informed me that my front shocks were leaking, and the stabilizer bar was broken off.  I knew something was not right with the vehicle cause it felt like a tent on wheels on the highway.  I OK'd them to fix all of it, and went even further and told them to go ahead and do a full fluids flush.  Knowing that the previous owners didn't take care of this vehicle, I wanted to start as fresh and as safe as possible.  That was a very expensive garage visit, hitting me just over $2800 in repairs.  Four new all-terrain tires cost me $800, plus other parts and stuff the Jeep needed are now around the $4000 mark.  Jeez, I'm really feeling the sting of that Dunce Cap right now.  This has effectively put me in the poor house until January, and it has killed my plans for a trip East this fall.  Was it worth it?

My early assessment was that I may have made a wrong decision.  Perhaps an emotional one.  I am a very emotional decision maker, which lately has been wrong a lot of the time.  But what was I to do?  The Universe put this Same-Black-Jeep before me and said "Here y'go Troy, we can't watch your torment any more."  You just gotta listen to the Universe when it speaks to you like that, right?  I mean, what are the chance that this Jeep comes back to me like that?  I always follow an obvious sign like that for better or worse.  You never know how it will turn out.  Maybe these initial major fixups will be it and Number2 and I will live to see 225000miles together.  I really hope so.

At its most basic level, I love this vehicle.  The size is nice and compact, the ride is stable and whippy, very responsive and very powerful, and its ability to actually do some off road stuff and get out there is pure freedom.  I was not ready to give up that freedom, not just yet anyway.  But you pay for that freedom, it comes at a cost.  

So last Saturday, I had to know if it was worthy or not.  I had to test it.  So on my new tires, new shocks, new stabilizers, I decided to take it for a test ride in the desert to shake the livin' shit out of it!  Give it some good punishment to make it fail if it was gonna fail.  The destination was Primm, Nevada, which sits on the California-Nevada border.  The goal was to go to the Lotto-Store on the California side of the border to purchase a Powerball ticket, which was up to $68 million for Saturday night's draw.  

I took the old Las Vegas Blvd highway out of town, and promptly got off the pave and onto the dirt trail that runs along the old highway.  If anything went wrong here, it wouldn't be a long walk to the road to get help.  I got the 4WD in control and started picking my way along.  The tests came all day long for Number2 and the little Jeep kept on winning!  The clearance is a little low, so the deflection plate on the bottom took some good abuse, but once I knew what I could and couldn't go over I was better able to plan my route, or just get out and move the big rocks out of the way.  The 4WD was awesome!  I love that.

I so wish I would have taken my camera, but I forgot it.  I also forgot my cellphone, which was really stupid.  I picked my way all the way out to Jean along this dirt road, and then crossed the major highway to the other side and picked up another trail out to Primm.  These roads crisscross the deserts all over the place and aren't maintained.  Its very rough in places, and challenging in some.  You have to be careful.  It took me 3.5hrs to get out to Primm, normally a 30min drive.  

I got some food at the station at Primm, and lots of water for the return trip.  I'd seen this other road further up the landscape which was closer to the mountain's edge, and I wanted to take that one back.  By now I was fully confident in the vehicle, and super happy about that and just feeling a little euphoric that maybe this wasn't a bad purchase at all.  The Lotto store had several hundred people in the lineup for tickets, so I said fuckit and headed back out.  I climbed a nice little mountain overlook and parked to eat, have a beer, listen to the wind whip through the power lines and watch the thousands of cars pass far down below on the highway.  

I had a good sunburn on my 'window' arm, and now the sun was in the late afternoon came in the exact same way it had in the morning, so I needed to keep my arm out of the sun.  I also had a piece of meat or peppercorn or something stuck in between two molars in the back which I could not for the life of me dislodge, and that  bugged the hell out of me for the next 3hrs of slow, desert picking!  Dental floss is now in the Jeep-kit.

This road was a service road for underground wires, or lines or something.  It was slow going the entire way, as these roads aren't really maintained so you never really knew when a surprise washout trench would claim your front tires.  It had a lot more technical considerations, places where deep washout ruts were cut through the path, which probably wouldn't have been a problem for bigger, higher clearance vehicles.  In several places I needed to get out and build up my line with rocks to get over it.  

And then came the ultimate Sign... the Universe speaking to me again.  I saw it long before I got to it,  this bright orange sign out in the middle of nowhere, a marker on the service road line that is of great significance to me.  There it was, the bright orange sign that read '575'.

Here's a weird little tidbit about me.  The number 57 has been a recurring number throughout my entire life.  I know this, because I have been actively keeping a journal for the past 30yrs to study the Life of Jones.  This number has presented itself in so many odd situations that it can no longer be considered coincidence.  I've come to see this as some sort of Universal signpost, a sign that I am somehow on the right path.  That's what I believe anyway.

A bizarre example, I joined a hockey team in Ottawa.  As a new player to the group, I was given the only available set of shirts that they had... the number 57.  It became a pretty funny dressing room joke before every game when the officials came in to get everyone's name and number for the scoresheet.  They went around the room, everyone had normal hockey numbers until they hit me.  Around they went: Josh Blah-Blah #10, Jim Blah-Blah #16, Jake Blah-Blah #4... Troy Jones #57, which always drew amusement from the room because it was so out of sync with everything.  Somehow, there was football player who had chosen this number back in the day, and now it became mine.  At this point in time, I had already recognized this recurring number in my life, but those hockey jerseys really hammered it home that this was no longer a coincidence.  It continues to happen.  A more recent example, I was given a random sign-in code when I started working at my high security job: #575.  The list goes on and on.

And here it was again, way out there in the middle of nowhere, the Universal roadsign, 575.  And no camera to document it.  Ah well, its for me to know anyway.

I finally made it to Jean, fully sun bleached and dry, the Jeep covered in fine desert sand.  I'd had enough of the desert for the day, just about 100miles I think.  I called Tanya from the gas station to check in with her.  She was OK with me going down to Mickey's to shoot some pool and have a couple beers to bask in the afterglow, so I headed back into town for some suds.  What a great day!  

I am so friggin' happy that the Jeep was so awesome in the desert.  It still has a few issues that I need to deal with, but I think (I Hope) we are done with the major fixes for now.  She is trail worthy and that was very important to me.  Now, will she stand the test of time.  Please, please do.... 

Thanks for reading.

TRJ

The Return of the Silver Surfer

My bike got stolen, and I languished over that for long time, but I never gave up the hunt.  I thought that it was gone and I was OK with it but still, I kept a picture of it in my pocket and continually scoured the pawnshops wherever they may be, which is a pretty common tendency for me, I cannot resist the fantasy of the pawn shops.  Guitars mainly, but there's always a good array of stuff to wet the whistle.

The Silver Surfer is a hybrid road bike.  The Trek 7700FX, with a weird spoke design, and a weird shifting mechanism.  The seller told me this thing was an amazing bike, "It was built for climbing hills! ", he said.  I'd never owned a higher end road bike, but I needed a really good bike to tackle the road between Home and Mickeys Cues & Brews.

The test ride confirmed, the geometrics of this bike bike were spot on for a shortass like me, so I bought it for $350.  I hadn't owned a road bike since the ol' Roadmaster model of 1986, the days when I used to strap a hockey stick to it and pedal the 10kms all the way down to Flatlands to play ball hockey.  I even biked to Campbellton twice.  I put a lot of hard kilometers on that 10 speed.  And this... this Trek was something entirely new!  A newfound power!

When you push your weight into this bike, it pushes back in propulsion.  And I know that might seem obvious to the layman, but it RESPONDS in propulsion.  And on these skinny little street tires this thing fuckin' SKATES across the pavement.  It's exciting, and it  is the best bike I've ever had for sure.

So, you will know when I tell you that I came out of the Pool Hall one night, and there it was...  GONE.  Lock and all, gone.  Just gone.

Let me tell you a little more about me.  I wear my heart on my sleeve.  Sometimes that's ugly, and I had a little meltdown right there at Mickeys.  I got over it after a bit, but that was rough.  I got myself another very cool Trek which I liked, but it wasn't the Silver Surfer.

The thing was, I never stopped looking.  I love pawn shops anyway, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to hit even more pawn shops to keep up the search.  But I figured it was long gone.

Then one day, 4 months later, I go in to the local pawn shop AND THERE IT IS!  Hanging on display  right in the lobby!  I took it off the rack and exclaimed to the next man in line that this was my bike and showed him the picture and everything,  I was so excited.  That was unbelievable, of anyplace that bike could have been, that it came back to me.

The pawn shop wouldn't release it to me without having the Police involved, so I called them up and arranged for the transaction.  I had a whole bunch of pictures I'd taken of the bike when I'd originally gotten it, so I could prove that it was mine.   The officer took all my evidence, and went in to talk to the pawn shop guys for a while, and when he came out he said, "Mr. Jones, that is not your bike."

WTF.....  I was dumbfounded.  NO, that IS my bike!  We went back inside and checked, and I looked at the serial number on the bottom of the frame, and it did not match the picture I had in my hand.  It was missing a spoke, it was covered in stickers, the seat post-ring was a different color, there were too many inconsistencies that just maybe, maybe miraculously there were two of these bikes out there.  The seed of doubt set in.

All these things would become clearer later on in the night, whilst stewing over this.  I mulled the fuck outta that.  Even it by some miracle that wasn't my bike, I still loved the bike, so it was worth the $240 to get it back in my possession.  I went and bought it back the very next morning.

I spent Sunday cleaning it up, revealing the mystery.  The scrapes on underside of the frame were bothering me.  That doesn't happen to road bikes.  Only mountain bikers and rail riders scrape down there.  That's why they put those manufacturing stickers in that spot, where they don't come off.  And when I inspected the bike closer, I noticed a barcode sticker neatly placed above the serial number.... and upon even closer inspection, I found that the sticker was OVER the original serial number.  They had stamped a new serial number into the frame and put a barcode sticker over the old one.  Well fuckee-beee Meee!  You fooled both me and the cops once, but now we got you you muthafucker!

I had to arrange the Police to come once again and oversee the transaction from the pawn shop, as I took the bike back with all my photographic evidence to get my money back for it.  And the Universal recourse for the dude who sold them the bike is that now he has a warrant out there with his name on it.  Good on you Mate!  Idiot.

Its good to have the bike back.  It is a superb machine.  Thank you Universe, you have provided for me once again.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ

























..

The ol' Green Boat

I felt like doing a little reach back to the past today, to the year 1985.  This time of year always brings back the memory of the day my brother and I put ourselves, and our little sister, in grave danger on the Restigouche River.

It was late May, early June timeframe, and I was 13 years old.  My brother was 11, and my sister was 7.  Some of you know me and where I come from, Mann's Mountain, New Brunswick, waay out there!  It isn't even recognized on any map.  The community across the river from us is called Matapedia and is in the province of Quebec.  The Matapedia River feeds into the Restigouche here and in the middle of all these river channels, right out in front of our house, sits a huge island.    

The Island!  The previous summer, my brother Trent and I had been given an old green boat which was built by my uncle when he was a kid.  Up until then, we had never had a boat, so this opened up a whole new world of exploration.  For two young boys who were expanding our horizons, being able to get over to the Island was like reaching the Moon!  And once we'd made it over there, the Island forever became our big natural playground, even as adults.  We still go over there whenever we get the chance.

The season was getting warmer and every day, we would come home on the bus and as we rounded the top of the long hill that led into our community, we were presented with a magnificent view of the valley below.  The river nestled beautifully in those rolling green hills, and the Island!  The river was still swollen from the spring runoff, but the waters were receding, getting blue'er and clearer, and ever so slowly revealing the Island and priming our excitement.  We were getting really ansy about getting the boat back in the water, but Dad warned us to wait until water levels dropped.  Til it was safe.   

But on one particular day, we crested the hill on the bus and looked down... the water was still high enough that there was a narrow stream cutting right through the middle of the island, but the headwaters looked calm and inviting.  Imaginations ran rampant, it was just too much temptation.  Imagine... we could paddle straight through the island!  In a few weeks, that stream would disappear and the chance would be missed.  We got off the bus that day and scrambled to get the boat down over the hill to the shore.  I am sure we never told Mom what we were doing.  She would have said no, so we didn't bother to ask.  We knew we'd have to go and get back quick, before Dad got home.  I figure we were playing up a little bravado too, cause we invited our little sister along with us, her first ride in the Ol' Green Boat.  

The Ol' Green Boat

Now, I should explain this boat a little more.  It was a flat bottom plywood boat, and was also flat on the sides and front, built almost like a wooden box with a slight curvature in the sides and had a keel that ran its length.  It was heavy too, from multiple layers of fibreglass patch jobs.  She was a very cumbersome boat.  I manned the front due to the cramped leg space, and I had a paddle that had about a third of the paddle part sheared off.  My brother, Trent, manned the back and had a bladeless goalie stick for a paddle.  We were very confident in our boating abilities and confident about our vessel, and assured Heidi that we knew what we were doing.  We did, we were pretty good for what we were working with.
   
We set out for our first float of the year and quickly realized the flow of the river was a lot more than we'd experienced before.  So we went up along the shoreline to give ourselves ample room to get out into the middle of the river to make the entrance at the head of the island.  We knew there was serious danger if we were to get sucked down either side of the island, because just down river from us there were still huge 3 foot swells of raging water and if we went there, god help us!  If we went there, we would have to ride it out for a long damn ways before we would be able to get safely to shore.  So getting that trajectory right was very important, which we did.  And it was awesome to be dragged into the island like that.  Like it had a tractor beam on us, faster and faster as the current sucked us in. 

It whisked us right in to the head of the island and calmed as we came out of the main flow.  We had to get out to drag the boat over the rocks to actually get into the free flowing channel and the water was extremely cold!  But once we were in that channel, it was a magical place!  Gently floating in total silence save for the birds and bugs the hum of a warm spring day bringing all that vegetation back to life.  Floating over the place where we'd normally be walking, our imaginations ran wild with excitement.  Soon the little stream started to gain steam towards its exit into the angry part of the river, so we turned around to go back.  Dad would be home soon and he would kill us if he knew we were over there.

Commanding the Trek probably looked something like this...

Once back at the head of the island, we were presented with a very ominous situation.  We had walked the boat out a ways, til we couldn't stand the pain of the icy water anymore and hopped in to start paddling.  There we were in the boat, hovering over maybe 3 feet of water, paddling for all we were worth but I could tell from watching the rocks that we were not moving much.  The current, along with our flat-fronted boat and our ill-equipped paddles, were holding us in place.  This was very bad.  We had not considered this.  We had no choice but to get out into the freezing water and walk the boat as far upstream as we possibly could, being sure to try to stay in the middle of the watershed so neither side of the island current could snag us, then we hopped in and began to paddle again.  We had to go upstream to make our long cross-trajectory to the shoreline.  We paddled for all we were worth, and very slowly we made ground but hardly enough to get us to where we needed to get to.  The river was winning and we were running out of steam.  We decided to angle the boat slightly towards the New Brunswick shoreline while keeping that upstream trajectory to cross the heavy flow that pushed down the NB side.  A neighbor in a motor boat (17foot canoe) came up past and checked in, and I think we just waved him by to let him know we were OK, but he only went a ways up and stayed there watching and waiting.

I am sure, when Dad crested the top of that long hill that led into the community and saw that spec of a boat out there in the middle of the river, I am sure his heart must have dropped right out of his body.  And confirmation of his worst fear when 'the boys' weren't home when he drove in the yard, he must have ran like hell to get down to the beach because there he was, and there we were right in the crux of it paddling for our lives.  We were caught in the main current, and he was yelling at us from the shoreline as the river began to drag us down.  We had no choice but to go for it and dramatically increase the angle of our trajectory towards the shore to go with the flow instead of fighting it so much, using the downstream suction to help propel us into the shoreline.  We landed maybe 150feet downstream off target, way too close to the point of no return.  We'd made it!  

Dad was so angry at us.  Not only that we'd been so foolish to do something so stupid, but then taking our sister along was absolutely crazy.  Our boat was taken out of the water for a month.  I don't know what other consequences were laid on us, but we learned a valuable lesson that day.  We were always told to respect the River, and Mother Nature, because she can be deadly if you don't respect her.  We had tested her and won, but it could have gone the other way.  Had it gone that way though, I am pretty sure that nothing could have flipped that old flat bottom boat.  It would have been a hell of a ride!  Quite thankfully, that's not how the story went.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ
....

Rescue 2014: Year of the Dogs

Benny

Benny somehow got through the gates in the wee hours of the morning and snuggled himself in between Tanya and I.  We don't let any of the dogs sleep with us, usually, except for Zuma.  So hand it to Benny, he's a crafty little pudge ball!  I don't know how he did it this time, how he got through the gate and up the stairs and onto our bed to slip quietly between us without making a sound, unheard by Zuma who is usually quite attentive to movement in the house.  Earlier in the evening he'd gotten through before I'd fallen asleep so I brought him back downstairs and secured the gates.  This time, he was totally silent.  I turned over and there he was!  So I gave him his due credit for being so stealthy and allowed him to stay for the night.

Benny is our most recent rescue dog, who I am happy to report has stolen the heart of our friend CJ who was visiting from Halifax, and she is going to adopt him.  He's a real sweatheart, a chubby brown chihuahua with big brown eyes and long lashes, who loves to curl up with his people.  He is a very well balanced dog.  He was overweight when we got him, and even though we've been able to trim some fat off him but he's still a stocky, pudgy little guy.  Someone loved him at some point, but didn't bother to get him microchipped and so he wound up on death row at Lied Animal Foundation with some serious injuries.

Someone from our agency, 'A Home 4 Spot', found him there on death row, all torn up and unmedicated, waiting to die.  He had been attacked by another animal and had open wounds on both sides of his neck and his side was ripped open.  The Animal Foundation does not save animals like this.  Benny was in pain and waiting to die when a kind soul from our agency took it upon herself to pay his medical bills and save his life.  And now he is truly saved, and going to become a Maritimer!  Now to work out the logistics of getting him across the continent... I may be bringing him if things on the job front don't start looking up.

Otis & Breeze

It has been quite a year, the Year of the Dogs: 2014.  Since we started fostering, we have literally saved the lives of 14 dogs.  Two of those were rescue-fails... which is, we were fostering them, but then we ended up adopting them.  They are our two twin chee's (chihuahua's), Otis and Breeze.

Otis in his cave.  Only he can fit under the couch!

Otis impacted our family in a huge way.  We got him and his brother Troy as puppies, and once Troy (now Ziggy) was adopted, we just couldn't see Otis living anywhere other than here.  He is a whole lotta happy packed into a tiny little body, and we just needed to have him in our pack.  He is our little cheerleader!  Otis' energy is infectious, and he helps us bring around any dogs that come here and are fearful and need a friend.  Otis is friends with everyone.

Queen Breeze

Breeze is the most recent addition to our family, which brings our family pack up to 4 dogs.  They look almost the same, and they are inseperable.  They sleep together, play together, and fight like crazy!  She is a bit of a head case.  A real prima donna, drama queen.  She has been with us a long time and is not good out in public at the adoption events.  She doesn't really like strangers, and hates when her pack is seperated.  She's a screacher and whiner!  Considering the way she is out in public, and how well she and Otis get along, we decided to adopt her.  And much to our suprise, has also taken up the Alpha role in our house over Zuma!  Zuma has relented his position to her, and that is really something because Zuma has been the alpha for as long as we've had him.  But Breeze is a very needy, prissy, and jealous chihuahua.  I don't think Zuma sees her as a threat, just maybe as his whine-ass little sister.  He just lay back and said 'OK, whatever Breeze', and we've never seen him do that with any dog, ever.  She's special all right!  Our little Queen Breeze.

Miller, now called Rambo

My favorite dog this year was my little black chihuahua named Miller, now called Rambo.  Which is a fitting name, cause he's tough looking... but he's not tough at all.  He has an underbite, with a snaggletooth that juts out over his upper lip, and huge, expressive satelite-type ears and big globular brown eyes.  He never really fit into the pack, always the outsider on the fringes, watching.  He's a bit of a strange dog, very unsure of himself and was quite quickly demoted to bottom dog of the pack... except he would never accept that.  He and Zuma did not get along, and Zuma put him in his place many times before he eventually decided that Miller was no threat and began to ignore him completely.  Miller never gave up the fight though, right up til the last day he was challenging Zuma, following him around and posturing himself with threats like 'I'm gonna kill you Zuma!'  It was funny, except for the territorial battle that Miller was waging and marking his territory all over the house... including many instances of marking our bed and pillows.  So you think I'd hate him, right?  But no, he was a unique little dog, very special.  If Tim Burton had to cast a strange, halloween-cat-type-dog for a movie, Miller was it.  And even though he pissed on my pillow a couple times, I loved him and I wanted to adopt him.  He was with us for a full year, and it took a lot of rehabilitating to get him to become a social animal, to trust humans.  It took a really long time but he came around.  We didn't think he'd ever get adopted but luckily, he did.  And on our second visit to his new prospective home, he began initiating play with their crazy little dog, so we knew it was right!  We were so happy for him, we'd done a great job and Miller... Rambo would be OK!

My most enduring memory of Miller was his fascination with my guitar playing.  The other dogs scatter when I plug into the amp to play, and that was Miller's queu to come to my feet with a toy and want to play.  That was our time.  On occasion, the amp would really arouse his curiousity and he'd stare into it while I played... and he would turn to me and sing along!  I swear it!  He'd turn around to look at me, put his ears back and howl softly with his little outstretched 'O' shaped mouth!  Incredible!  Not only that, but if I was sitting and playing acoustic, he'd come right up beside me and stare up at me with those big brown eyes, listening intently.  A few times he even put his paw on my strumming hand and mimicked my movements.  He was fascinated by music.

Miller and I had a deep connection, I was his human and I took him under my wing to make sure that he knew he was part of my pack, even if he didn't quite fit in with the other dogs.  I'm glad Tanya talked me out of adopting him though, the territorial battle was too much to deal with.

Sophie LOVED the pool!

My biggest challenge of the year was the boxer/pitbull Sophie, whom I've written about here.  She caused a lot of chaos in our pack and turned our house on its end.  She'd never really had any stability of any kind, having been in the system for so long as a puppy.  She was special.  The bad kind of special, and needed a ton of training.  I have since come to know all kinds of boxers and pitbulls at the boarding/daycare facility where I work, so I now know I was ill-equipped to deal with her.  Some of those breeds have a predisposition for having a screw loose and need special consideration, and she exploited my inexperience pretty quickly and our house fell into chaos.  She was very needy and demanding, and as the biggest, strongest, and loudest dog in the house, I was a little afraid of what might come of it because the other dogs did not like having her here, especially Zuma.  After she bit my friend, we no longer felt safe in having anyone over to the house, so we were in social lockdown for a few months.  I went to a trainer to help me try to understand, and with that knowledge I set about a training program with her.  Lots and lots of exercise, and lots of things to keep her mind occupied all the time.  Luckily I had the time to deal with all this, because it took a lot of energy to keep her anxieties under control.  We worked together and found some common ground, and we eventually found a good family for her who promised to continue to work out her issues.  Last I heard, they had finally, FINALLY taken my advice and brought her to the trainer with whom I had worked, after she had bitten the husband.  Beautiful animal though.

I have been very fortunate to have the freedom of time to do all this volunteer work with 'A Home 4 Spot'.  It is very rewarding to take in these broken, discarded animals and rehabilitate them, give them back their dignity and confidence so they can feel happy and safe in our pack, and help find their forever homes.  When we hear the stories and get pictures of our fosters with their new families, that's what its all about!

Nice work, Joneseses!  And nice work to all you other volunteers and families out there who choose to adopt instead of supporting the Pets-for-Sale industry.  Those animals you see in the windows of pet stores will eventually end up on the kill-list if they are not taken, at which point organizations like ours will try to save them.  We can't save them all, but we should at least be trying to fix the problem and stem the bleeding, and shut down the storefront industry completely.  Pets are not commodities to be bought and sold and discarded when they're past their due date.  There are just too many people trying to make easy money off the lives of the innocents and flooding the market with unwanted animals.  It has to stop.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ

Pack Jones:  (clockwise)  Tanya, Zuma, Benny, Clancy, Miller, Otis, Breeze

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Troy & Steve's Grand Canyon Adventure!

Ahh a new year of adventure is upon us.  I am still collecting my stories and writing lots, but its been awhile since I've posted anything so I wanted to get this going again.

My good friend Steve came into town last fall with plans to go on an epic hiking adventure.  He invited me along and luckily, it worked out that I had the time and was able to join him on his trek.  Steve and I go way back, our friendship was forged in the ring of music and our connection runs deep.  He is an Adventure Racer (check out his site at ActiveSteve.com), and he came to Nevada in between races to do some hiking in the back country of Zion National Park.  He is a super-fit, highly capable and motivated individual.  I am fortunate to have friends like Steve to guide me in this life and push me to do things beyond my expectations.  He is my brother, and as such I feel it my duty to keep one elbow firmly implanted in his ribs at all times.  I love to pick on Steve!

We spent a few days planning the fine details of our adventure over many beers by the poolside.  If you are back country camping and carrying what you will need to consume for 3 or 4 days, you'd better plan that well.  Steve was in charge of the plan, I provided the comic relief.  We also warmed up for the big hike by doing little day hikes around Vegas to make sure these old bones were in good hiking condition.  I was worried about my knee, which got tweaked on my adventure to Mt. Charleston and made for a long day.  But all was good, all systems go!  We got out to do a hike at Red Rock and took a ride out to Death Valley.

We had a really weird experience out at Death Valley.  We were lucky it was a cloudy day so it wasn't nearly as hot as it should have been.  We got off the beaten path a bit when we spied a slot canyon carved out of the mountainside that we wanted to see up close.  We walked up the wide floodplain towards it, but there was a growing sense that this was a bad place to be.  The sky was darkening and heavy purple clouds were gathering over the mountain above us.  There was a spittle in the air, and all the hairs on Steve's arms went up.  It would have been really cool to see that slot canyon explode with water, but truth is, it was a dangerous place to be.  People die all the time like that here because they are unaware of the threat of floodwater in the desert.  And here we are standing in its floodplain, staring up at the hole in the rock where all the water is going to come blasting out of.  We got our pics and got out of there.

Looking down on Badwater from Dante's View, 5475' elevation

We made our way from the valley floor around the back of the mountain where we caught the storm, and then climbed out of it to the peak.  We watched as the storm rained on the valley where we had just been.  There were lightning strikes too, going down from where we stood!  Very cool.  Another system moved over us and then it started to hail!  Death Valley... the hottest place on the planet and we're getting pounded with ice balls!  That was a wild experience.

We travelled early on a monday morning to Zion National Park and ended up waiting in a long traffic jam just to get in to the park, and then we got snaggled in another traffic jam when we got to the campground.  So much for solitude away from the masses of tourists.  It took a lot of our morning only to find out that the campground was booked solid, and that they were making a makeshift campground for the overflow.  Then we found out the unfortunate news that in order to book a back country hiking permit, you would need to put your name on the waiting list THE MORNING OF THE DAY BEFORE you want to leave on your hike.  Only so many permits are allowed and everyone wants one, so you have to sign up a whole day in advance.  This gutted all of our plans.  We decided to cut and run and high tailed it for the north rim of the Grand Canyon to start all over from there.

We first secured a campsite at DeMott Campground for the night and set up our tent, then sought out the park ranger's office to forge a new plan of attack.  This is where we met Ranger Steve Bridgehouse.  Steve is a really great guy, very passionate about his job and the hiking lifestyle in general.  He enthusiastically helped us forge a new battleplan and lifted our spirits.  Most importantly, he informed us that we do not need to camp in any campground, that we were allowed to camp ANYWHERE on public lands!  He showed us all the service roads on the maps surrounding the canyon and recommended what he thought were the best places to camp, and even back at Zion where we'd go back to in a couple days.  He also told us the best hikes we should be doing.  Meeting him was the best thing that could have happened.  Steve was now informed and excited about our new plans.  We did a quick tour of the area and were anxious to get away from the tourists, so we foraged for as much firewood as would fit in the trunk of the rental and retreated back to the campsite.

Evening came in quick and cold and damp!  The fire did very little to warm us as the temperature dropped to freezing very quickly.  Steve had gotten us provisions of freeze dried meals for the week, along with carefully measured portions of trail food, so we enjoyed a delicious steaming bag of beef stroganoff for supper, which was very welcoming.  It was a really cold night!  It was tough to keep the ground cold out, sleeping on a foam mat in a sleeping bag.  I wore my earmuff'd hat and gloves and had to keep turning over all night long less the frost get me.

Chilly morning for adventuring

In the middle of the night all hell broke loose when a pack of coyotes exploded into revellry.  They must have been celebrating a kill or something.  I recognized the yips and yelps of happy play from my own dogs' vocabulary, but this was much more intense!  The coyotes were having a blast at whatever it was they were doing, and it sounded like a lot of them too, really close to us.  A little un-nerving, but really cool.  I believe that was our spirit-animals who'd come to welcome us to the canyon.

In the morning our car was covered in frost.  We didn't bother packing up anything proper, we broke camp as quick as possible and just stuffed it all into the trunk to deal with later.  The seat heaters in the car were heaven while we waited for the frost to unthaw off the windshield.  Then we made our way to our first real trek, a decent into the Grand Canyon along the North Kaibob Trail.

Jones on the edge

Steve on the edge

Now, I didn't really know how my fear of heights would be, trekking with Steve.  He's a professional, and I knew I wouldn't be able to travel with him on all his hikes.  But I resolved to go as far as I could with him and find out where that line was for me.  The North Kaibab Trail decended 3000 feet over 4.7 miles into the canyon to Roaring Springs.  It was a mule trail for the first while, and from there it was a meandering mountainside trail hanging on the cliffs and carved out of the rock wall in some places.  It was a really well maintained trail and despite the height and the amazing views I never lost my nerve.  The scenery was breathtaking.  The morning was beautiful too, a cool sunny morning with just Steve and I and nature, singing random tunes that came along.  Frank Zappa's "It can't happen here" was the soundbite of the week.  We finally felt like we'd broken away from the tourists and found the solice we were seeking.  Peace and tranquility, and a gorge of super-massive scale.  Wow!  Its tough to describe.  We decended for 3 hours to Roaring Springs, through layers and layers, billions of years of the earth's history.  I've never seen so many fossils!

We could see and hear Roaring Springs a long time before we got there and unfortunately, we found out that we couldn't actually GET THERE!  There was no trail to it, it was just a very tall waterfall coming out of an underground pool of water far up on the opposite mountainside.  That was disappointing.  We took a quick breather and powered up with food and drinks before we started the long ascent.  The hiking poles were invaluable for this kind of trekking.  The sun beat on us relentlessly on the way up but it was still a really nice day with a gentle breeze every now and again.  We made really good time going back up too, which took about 4.5 hours.

Sunset overlooking the Grand Canyon

Our destination for the evening was North Timp, to camp on the edge of the canyon.  We hit a local store and bought two big beers for the evening and one big roadie for me as we jetted off onto the service road through the woods for 45 minutes to get out to the rim.  The service roads were really well maintained too, so we cruised like a rally car over the dirt and tested out our rental, dodging deer along the way.  What an amazing area!  Right out to the edge of the Grand Canyon!  We set up camp amongst the pines and I gathered wood for the evening's fire.  We met two other fellows who'd been mountain biking all day and were spending the evening there as well, a Brit and a New Zealander, both were pilots who were off on their own adventure.  We enjoyed the sunset with them over beers and a giddiness of where we were and what we were witnessing.  That night Steve and I had our first real good fire!  I love bonfires, and I miss that alot.  We had a much more comfortable sleep too, on the soft pine tree gound and the warm canyon air wafting up over us from below.

The Grand Canyon is so super-massive, that I have to say you kinda lose perspective a bit.  Your eyes can see it, but the scale and definition is lost because it is so vast.  In my opinion, it isn't as spectacular as Bryce Canyon.  I told Steve that he needed to see Bryce and the spectacular colors and rock formations there, so we made that part of our plan and headed there the next morning.  We cut through the woods again on the service road for about an hour and a half, and then stopped for a good breakfast sandwich at Subway before continuing on to Bryce.

Bryce Canyon

We were now heading back into the throngs of tourists.  Traffic jams at the edge of the wilderness, our solice was over.  Bryce is crazy busy with tourists.  It is spectacular, and the hiking is easier too so it attracts everyone.  They have a bus system to get people in and out of the area, but people still take their cars in and create havoc in the parking lots.  There's nowhere you can go at Bryce without running into throngs of people.  We spent the day hiking and it was once again, an amazing experience to see it all again.

We took Steve Bridgehouse's suggestion again and found a back country campsite for the evening and just as he promised, this site he suggested was really impressive.  We were off the beaten path in a little valley, lots of firewood, and the coolest forest of downed trees I think I've ever seen!  We climbed atop one of the cliffs overlooking the valley to have our supper and watch the sunset.  Then we explored the bizarre landscape and foraged for good fire poking sticks.  The rolling hills were dark orange and were streaked with silver, contorted, dead and downed trees.  I could have spent a whole weekend right there.  We had an even bigger bonfire that night to appease my firebug, and a selection of 4 beers each.  I will return to this campsite again.

The path to Angel's Landing

Our last destination was back to Zion, and we had to get there by 8am to try and secure a campsite for the evening.  There are no public lands surrounding Zion, so our off the grid camping nights were done.  I'm not a big fan of campgrounds.  We got a site, left the car on it and geared up for our next hike.  Steve's ultimate destination on this trip was Angel's Landing, and I knew we'd be parting ways on this one.  The brochures warned anyone afraid of heights should not do this trail, and I was OK with that.  I went along with him for the beginning, and found that the trail up was actually paved... and that the tourist traffic was insane!!!  It might as well have been any steep downtown city sidewalk with the amount of pedestrian traffic flowing in both directions.  This was not for me.  I let Steve go on his own and found my own adventure meandering back to camp.  He told me later that there were a lot of pedestrians all the way to the top, and a lot of people on the trail that really had no business being up there.  I had my own adventure which fulfilled my day.  Then it was back to camp to set up the tent on the hard packed ground.  My body was done!

Steve on Angel's Landing, 1488' elevation

I decided that I should go find some firewood for the evening, and get us some beer.  It was the last night so I thought we should have a good selection of at least 6 each, on ice for when Steve returned.  Also, eating freeze dried food and nuts and granola for three days fueled a killer craving for a cheezeburger.  I drove all the way to Hurricane, 25miles both ways, to get wood and beers and find a cheezeburger, and let me tell you that that was a damn'd good burger!

Steve arrived almost the same time I returned and he wanted to wash up so he took a little plunge in the Virgin River.  Its hard to believe that this meek little trickle of a river has carved out this entire valley.

We settled in for another evening of beer tasting and fire poking.  Sometime in the wee hours of the morning the wind kicked up really strong and began to pummel our tent.  The warm air rising from the canyon created a very powerful wind tunnel through the campground and our little tent was rocking like a freakin' jet engine.  We awoke all chalky mouthed and stuffed up from the dust storm blowing through our tent.  Steve just got up and started getting ready for his last day of hiking, while I hunkered in to try and get some more sleep, but the wind was relentless and it began to get lighter out so sleeping was impossible.  I got up and enjoyed one more freeze dried breakfast, scrambled eggs and ham, and packed up camp.  While I was waiting for Steve to get back I embarked on one last hike along Watchman's Trail to overlook the valley.  The tourists!  By gawds what a beautiful country, just chock full of people!

What it must have been like for those early explorers, seeing all this grandeur for the first time.  They were probably paranoid about being killed by the natives, but still in absolute awe of the spectacle before them.  Its heart wrenching sometimes.  Where we are, who we are and how lucky we are to be here and have this time.  Seeing the Grand Canyon like that, hiking into her great belly, camping on her edge.  What an adventure!  And that's only one little piece of it all.  So much yet to see and do.

I am a lucky guy!  Thanks for reading.

TRJ

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Sophie's Adoption! Thank you Universe!

Thank You, universe, for bringing me Sophie's 'Forever Family'!  The story of Sophie is a good one.  There is no way to tell this story in a convenient little package, so I will tell it in full.

Sophie was a dog we rescued for 'A Home 4 Spot', one of the many canine rescue agencies here in Las Vegas.  Usually we take in small dogs, but Sophie was special.  She had special needs and thus, came with a whole bunch of baggage that I had no idea how to handle.  I fell in love with her the first time I saw her and said to Tanya, "If we had the space, I would adopt that dog."

And then, the universe threw us a bit of a curve ball when Sophie's fostering needs became desperate, the organization needed someone to take her in.  We had already babysat her for a week so we knew her, and although we were apprehensive about having SIX dogs in the house, we decided that she had been in the care of 'the system' too long already.  We wanted to help rehabilitate her and find her forever family.

That became a 4 month ordeal for me.  I'm not sure I was ready for it but there it was.  Sophie's baggage was heavy, and I had to seek professional help in order to help me help her.  But in doing so, I more importantly realized that I needed to fix ME before I would be able to help HER.  I was part of her problem, and it just wasn't working.  We were unravelling each other.  It did begin to work in the end.  We both kind of stabalized together as the kinks got worked out, and I was finally able to reach her and bring us to a better working place.

Sophie and Otis

Still, since none of the conventional methods of meet and greets were working to find Sophie's forever family, I decided to write this blog (posted below), and throw the word out into the universe to pull them in.  I wrote this on September 5, 2014.... but I never posted it!  I didn't have any good pictures of her so I waited for a few days and it never got posted.

Of course, there were other balls in motion to find Sophie's family, but within a week of me writing the blog that I never posted, we had 2 solid hits.  The first one didn't work out, but the second one did!  A young couple who fit the profile of what we were looking for, and we happily handed Sophie over to begin her new life on September 16th, 2014.

Thank you, universe!  And thank YOU, to all of you who help us save the lives of these unfortunate animals.

Please see original blog below...

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From the desk of the Mountain Man...
September 5th, 2014

Hello Good People.  I am submitting this to the Internet Universe in hopes of finding a special someone who is looking to adopt our foster dog Sophie.  Conventional methods of meet and greets have not worked, nor has word of mouth, or anything... and she is such a beautiful, eager to please animal, I would desperately like to find her a forever family while she is still in her formative training years.  So I am submitting this you, Youniverse, please help me find Sophie's forever family.

I fell in love with her the first time I saw her.  She is a sleek muscled, 40 pound, all-white boxer-lab-pitbull mix, short haired, with fawn colored freckles all over her body.  She is a very athletic 10 month old puppy with a lot of anxious energy, and she is extremely smart.  She is also a bit goofy looking with her big square head and jawline, widespread cockeyes and one bent ear.  Her voice is ranged from piercing high pitched (the anxiety overload pitch), to her deep, menacing growl when she's playing.  She is a very sweet, affectionate dog, and she loves her people and her pack.

Otis and Sophie Playing

We didn't really want to foster large dogs with all our little dogs, so Sophie was never on our radar as a foster.  But then through a turn of events we ended up taking her in, which expanded our pack to 6 dogs (!!!), 3 of our own and 3 foster dogs.  And as dogs do, they work it out in sometimes less-than-friendly fashion until each one knows their place in the pack.  Sophie tested them all and now resides somewhere in the middle of our pack, respectful of even the wee chihuahuas when they warn her to back off.  And for her size, Sophie's 40 pounds of muscle against a 4 pound chihuahua, they still play quite rough and get along very well.  She knows her place within the pack and is perfectly fine with that.

She has been in 'the System' since she was given up for adoption as a 3 month old puppy.  She has been bounced around alot, from the kennels to fosters and 2 failed adoption trials.  One of those fails was due to a cat that we never did a proper 'meet and greet' with, and the other one failed because not all the family was on board with adopting her.  No doubt, this dog will need work and time invested in stabilizing her energies to keep her balanced.  She needs proper training and she needs to be in a stable environment with good leadership from her owners, and a lot of exercise and mental stimulation.  

Other than the last 4 months she's spent with us, Sophie has never really lived in a stable environment nor has had any opportunity to really develop a good trust and bond relationship with humans, and I think that has greatly contributed to her anxiety and tension issues.  We learned quite quickly that those issues can be volatile.  There have been three occasions on my watch where she has randomly struck out at people on the end of her leash without warning and that raised the red flags for me.  And then one very unfortunate occasion where she bit my friend.

I mention this dog bite because I feel it needs to be mentioned, but it was my own damn'd fault for setting the conditions for her to fail.  Dumbass, human error.  I am not a trained dog-trainer, and I have never had a dog with these kinds of anxiety and trust issues.  And I KNEW that she didn't like my friend for whatever reason from other times he'd been over to the house.  But I was confident we could work her through it, and he was willing to help.  At the time, I felt I had the tools at my disposal to help her and get her to like him, so I had him over for a BBQ and beers on a friday night and set it up.  She was extremely uncomfortable with him being there and I should have listened to her because she gave us plenty of warning.  I was cocky about it.  Bless him for putting in his time in this uncomfortable situation, but it failed and he paid the price.  It wasn't a big bite, just a quick strike that never, ever should have happened.  She's just unsure of herself and without good, stable leadership, bad things can happen.  I underestimated her, and overestimated my abilities.

After that event I sought professional help to help me deal with her anxiety, and we stopped having friends over to the house.  Pam Watson of 'Paws-A-tive Dog Training' was kind enough to donate her time to me, and the agency, to help train me in order to reach this animal.  From then on, 9 weeks ago, Sophie's training became my full time job.  I need to know that the dog I am handing off to someone else is not a dangerous animal.  And I don't believe Sophie is, but she needs special attention to make sure she's at ease and not on guard.

Zuma, the Ten Pound Pom!

I am a believer that these things come along in life to help you.  Why I was attracted to her in the first place, who knows.  Sophie revealed things about me that I try to keep wraps on, that I myself am a bit unstable and volatile.  She came into this house and threw the harmonious balance totally out of whack for a few weeks until it all got worked out, and for a while there, I was out of my head.  She undermined my mental stability because I had no idea how to communicate with her and deal with her anxieties.  I didn't have the tools that Pam took the time to show me.  And unfortunately, she suffered my wicked side in those first few weeks and caught a lot of the blame for the chaos that was erupting as the biggest, gruffest voice in the dog fight.  I mean, she could easily kill any of the dogs here, and I just wasn't sure what kind of animal she was.  But upon further contemplation of the situation, I realized it was more of an alpha Pomeranian issue than anything else.  Our 'Ten Pound Pom', the professional instigator.  This is Zuma's house, and he doesn't like Sophie being here.  He ratchets the tension level to 11 in a heartbeat and the whole house explodes!  We now know that Zuma is the one we have to control and the rest will fall in line.

So Sophie has experienced my aggressive nature, and I don't really know if that has hurt our trust-relationship or not.  I learned one thing, that if I am to reach this dog, I can't be an aggressive person and expect to connect with her as her trusted leader.  I have wanted to give up on her several times, unsure whether I was the right person to be trying to help her.  But Pam really helped me get centered, and helped me get to a better working place with her.  I really do love her and I want to help her be a better balanced dog and find her forever home, so I have needed to be better balanced too.  Right now, no one knows this dog as much as I do and I am the most stable environment she's ever known.  So I am it for her, I can't give up.

We work on our relationship daily with walks and leash training.  She still pulls on me more than I'd like, but I am perhaps looking for more than she's willing to give me.  She's gotten so much better since I started training with Pam.  In the past few weeks she has really started to be a lot calmer in the house and I now know how to deal with her anxieties.  Even Zuma the Ten Pound Pom has occasionally started to come around and initiate play with her, now that he knows she's not a big vicious beast.  I have worked constantly at keeping her energies entertained when she starts asking, either working her physically or working her mind with commands and simple challenges to get her thinking.  She trusts me and loves to be with me, and has even begun to follow my lead into the pool for a swim which she just loves!

I am also happy to report that we have had company here this week for the first time in over 2 months.  Sophie was a little apprehensive about her at first, but after our guest showed Sophie that she was the 'treat lady', Sophie became her best friend.  We are working to build these positive relationships, and always working to help her be calm and stable to control her anxieties.  We have seen a great improvement in her, but she still has these uncontainable eruptions of excitement in the form of high pitched yelping, and that still drives me mad.  I have yet to find a way to snap her head back into balance.  She, and I, are still works in progress.

Sophie is a lot of dog, and she is a wonderful animal worthy of someone's time and efforts.  She needs an owner who will be willing to take her to dog training to establish a solid, stable environment, and foster a trusting relationship with her so she never needs to be on gaurd duty.  She requires regular exercise to work out her anxieties, deep massages to aleviate her inner tensions and trust issues, and she needs a lot of things to chew on to keep her mind occupied.  She is a very intelligent dog and wants nothing more than to please her humans.

So I am submitting this you, Youniverse, please help me find Sophie's forever family.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ
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