Sometimes you're the windshield..."

“Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.”
Mary Chapin Carpenter, “The Bug” from the 1992 album “Come On, Come On”

Robbery, beautiful scenery, fun excursions, hospitalization…  We had a great time this winter in Tucson, Arizona, but the beginning and ending of the trip was less than idyllic.  Typically, in our blogs, we like to focus on great adventures, natural beauty, or interesting man-made wonders – pleasant, up-beat stories that we think others would enjoy or might want to experience.  We still want that to be our focus, but once in a while, life just doesn’t work out like that. 

In Tulsa, OK, on our first night out, it was 7 degrees.  Mike was sick.  Sophie was on antibiotics and pain medication.  (The poor little thing!  We had taken her to the vet the day before to get her teeth cleaned.  To our shock, when we picked her up, the vet had extracted 18 bad teeth.)  Given the temperature, the fact that the trailer was still winterized, and how everybody felt, we opted for a hotel for the night.  We selected an area with five or six reputable chain hotels set among a number of medical office buildings on the east side of Tulsa.  The desk clerk assured us the property was safe – a security guard patrolled the lot on foot on an hourly basis, and there were multiple security cameras.  I was concerned about our bikes, strapped onto the bike rack on the back of our trailer, but not locked on.

The next morning, Mike took Sophie out for a walk around 6:00 am while I was in the shower.  A few minutes later, he stuck his head in the door to inform me “the good news is the bikes are still there.  The bad news is that the passenger side windows on the truck are smashed and everything in the truck has been stolen.”  WHAT???

Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017

Not only did they break the glass, but they
screwed up the window frames doing it

Glass everywhere

We called the police.  It must have been a busy morning in Tulsa; an officer finally arrived around 7:30.  He spoke to the desk clerk.  Unfortunately, the security cameras had caught nothing because the damage was on the blind side.  I was feeling rather foolish as we made the report.  In our haste to get everyone in and settled the previous night, and armed with the knowledge that the hotel provided ample security, we left things in the truck that we would NEVER have left under other circumstances.  I felt foolish; Mike just felt blazing anger.  Our laptop with our banking, credit card and tax information, our GPS, a substantial cache of cash, and our passports had all been stolen, AND his truck had been badly damaged.  The thieves didn’t just break the windows.  They pried them with a screwdriver or similar tool, bending the window frames in the process.

We both started making phone calls, freezing bank accounts, cancelling credit cards, informing our insurance company, and reporting the stolen passports to the US State Department.  It is amazing how many aspects of our life are linked, but how difficult it is to think about and remember who has to be notified, what steps need to be taken.  Since we have direct deposit for our retirement payments, we needed to be sure that those funds could come into our bank accounts, while nothing could go out.  But that led to another problem.  Many of our bills, including utility payments, are set up for automatic payment, and those payments were being denied by the bank, leading to late charges and, with at least with our natural gas and electric companies, threats to disconnect the service, even though we had called and explained the situation to them.  So much for thirty-plus years of faithfully paying the bills on time.  Customer service?  Compassion and understanding?  Not the utility companies!  Talk about frustrating and anger-generating…

Another immediate issue that had to be addressed was the replacement of the two broken windows.  Oklahoma and Texas (our next destination) were under the threat of ice storms, so merely putting plastic over the windows was out of the question.  Fortunately, two different glass companies in Tulsa each had one of the required windows - one had the front door glass and the other had the rear door glass.  Thank you to both glass companies for their prompt service.

The following day we continued toward our destination, having taken all the steps we could to protect our accounts and our identity.  We placed fraud alerts on all credit card accounts, froze our checking and savings accounts, and initiated fraud monitoring through the credit bureaus.  There are several US Bank branches in Tucson and we were assured that they would help us open new accounts and transfer our money from our possibly-compromised accounts.  Kudos to US Bank and their personnel…they were wonderfully helpful!

Tucson, itself, was a fabulous experience.  We liked the Lazydays KOA campground, with views of the mountains in two directions.  We had a spacious site with an orange tree on one side, a grapefruit tree on the other side, and a lemon tree right behind us.  The park encourages residents to pick the fruit, so we enjoyed fresh fruit daily.  Lazydays offered easy access to downtown Tucson and the surrounding area.  My parents came by train and spent two busy weeks with us, flying home at the end of their visit.  We’ll share some of our more pleasant Tucson adventures in future blogs.

Lazydays KOA, Tucson, AZ with the Santa Catalina Mountains in the background

Orange tree on our site

Arriving and starting to set up

All set up and ready for our Tucson adventures

Afternoon happy hour

Roses for Valentine's Day, and fresh fruit from our "orchard"

A winter sunset in Tucson.  Evenings were cool in January

Bushes starting to flower next to one of the two pools.
This pool was next door to the Desert Oasis Cantina.

Sunset in early March.  The roof-like structure is the
"power parasol", huge solar panels that generate
enough electricity to run the entire campground.

Nearly-full moon rising in early March

But I did open with the fact that the beginning and the end of the trip were rough.

Mike said he would drive a thousand miles out of his way to avoid Tulsa, and so we opted to follow US 54 all the way home from Alamagordo, NM.  We camped in Wichita, KS on a Saturday night.  According to Mike, when I woke up on Sunday, I was complaining of severe abdominal pain, and said I thought I might need to see a doctor.  By 9:30, I had become disoriented and couldn’t remember the three previous days.  Mike drove me to an urgent care facility, where they took one look at me and decided I needed to go to an emergency room, so off we went to the hospital, with our fifth wheel still in tow. 

I spent most of Sunday in the ER.  My symptoms mimicked those of a stroke patient, and my blood pressure was sky-high, so the ER doctors conducted a whole series of tests looking for signs of a stroke.  While they were doing a head CT scan, they also decided to do one on my abdomen, and discovered the source of the pain there was a kidney stone, but they still could not identify the cause of the memory loss and confusion, so they decided to admit me.  I don’t remember the eight-mile ambulance ride from the hospital’s remote ER facility to the main hospital campus.

By Sunday evening, with medication, my blood pressure was starting to come down and my memory was slowly returning.  The previous three days were returning to focus, although, to this day, that entire Sunday is a blank.  I spent Monday and Tuesday in the hospital, undergoing more testing for possible stroke.  Armed with several prescriptions and instructions to follow up with my Primary Care Physician as soon as we got home, I was released from Wesley Medical Center at 6:00 pm on Tuesday.  I appreciate the conscientious and thorough doctors and medical staff.  And, finally, “thank you” to Mike who, just like five years ago on another RV trip, was there by my side taking care of the details when I ended up in the hospital.

Fast forward another week…we are now home and I have seen my own doctor, who has reviewed all of the test results and clinical notes from the hospital.  He tells me that the two medical issues – the kidney stone and the loss of memory – are not connected.  He hands me an article from the latest issue of “The Mayo Clinic Review” that contains a report on a just-completed twenty-five year study on Temporal Global Amnesia.  He feels that study explains my symptoms, takes me off of the high blood pressure medication, and puts me on a preventive medication.  He explains that this condition occurs in only 3 out of 100,000 people, with a minimal chance of a re-occurrence.  I feel relieved and lucky.  On the way home from the doctor’s office, I buy a lottery ticket.

I prefer happy endings and pretty pictures, so to end on a positive note, we want to share some photos of the Sonora Desert Museum.

Tourists take close-up pictures of an owl at the Raptor Free-Flight exhibition

Bobcats grooming one another

Teddy Bear Cholla, a cactus species native to northern Mexico and the southwest US

Javelina.  Although they look similar to pigs, they are "peccary", not swine.  Pigs
existed in the "old world". These animals are native to the "new world."

Ocelot

Grey Fox

Elf Owl, the smallest (15 cm) and lightest owl in the world.
Native to Mexico and the southwest US, they live in
holes in Saguaro cactus made by woodpeckers

Fishhook Barrel Cactus just starting to bloom (March)

Bighorn Sheep on a warm March day at the Sonora Desert Museum.
The cacti above them are Engelmann Prickly Pear cacti.

Coatimundi.  Coatis are social animals, living in bands of 20 to 30.  They
are most active early mornings and at dusk, and sleep in trees at night

After a lot of rain this winter, the desert was beautiful
as it sprang into bloom in early March.

Sonora Desert Museum, March 2017

So, that’s the tale of our rough beginning and ending.   “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes, you’re the bug” but, always, there are interesting ROAD STORIES.