An unfinished story from last week's post. We had mentioned the location of Organ Pipe National Monument as running next to the Mexican border. We noticed a lot of helicopter activity which left us wondering what was up. At the Friday Amphitheatre show in the evening the ranger was asked what had been going on in the area. Her reply was "I'm at the bottom of the totem pole - they don't tell me anything." But she did tell us the border crossing had been closed for hours. The next day we heard news reports that 23 arrests had been made of drug cartel members by a combined effort of the Mexican and US police. We were located about five miles away from this action.
We had applied at Adaptation Station for volunteer positions about a month prior and will be volunteering here every Monday and Tuesday. Here they build furniture and sew helps for handicapped people as requested by occupational therapists. Monday turned out to be a busy day with about 10 volunteers and Tuesday there were only the two of us volunteering.
Jim with his first project completed. A table with adjustable height.
Annette zigzagging the canvas edges for preparation of making weighted blankets for children with autism.
Wednesday and Thursday we served at the Community Food Bank in Tucson. This large operation receives, stores and distributes food hampers. Our main responsibility was filling grocery carts with products as per size of household; 1-3, 4-6, or 7 & over persons. Other duties were bagging celery and citrus that had been gleaned in yards throughout the city. These two days the clients kept coming from 9:00 in the morning till we quit at 3:00, with a few slow downs during the day. We soon realized how many people are needing help for some reason or other. We went home tired but it felt good knowing that many families had food for their table.
On Saturday Jim participated in the construction of an office addition for Community Home Repair of Arizona (CHRPA). Their office is located on the same yard where our trailer is parked. Most of the framing work was completed shortly after lunch.
As they began putting the sheeting up Jim was marking the location of the studs on the outside edge of the concrete. This work was halted abruptly when he backed into a Prickly Pear cactus and received numerous spines on his butt. He felt lucky to be close to our RV where Annette was able to help with the removal of the spines.
The long spines (about 1 1/2") are easier to remove than the fine 3/4" long spines. No picture of the spine extraction is available.
