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Friday, August 22, 2003
[Monday] Hot day again. I bought the paper and was not surprised to find that Sunday had broken a 70 year heat record for that day. A sweltering 116. And I thought I was being wimpy. Monday was *only* to be 112. We checked in on Marie. She’d been admitted to a room now. Nothing eventful, which was a good thing, but the hospital had no way of knowing if something was going to happen until they had a sort of baseline on some blood work. This required more time in the hospital and it was becoming clear where she would be spending her vacation. She urged us to go ahead to Flagstaff and meet up with his brother. There really wasn’t much we could do anyway, so we did. First grabbed lunch and got her several books, the paper, and left her a deck of cards, said our goodbyes and headed out. The drive was one of those totally boring drives to anyone that has driven it before. Being a visitor, any difference from your own home is interesting. Already we’d observed the Phoenix area, full of stucco buildings, rock landscaping, heat tolerant plants, and bad signage. The drive to Flagstaff is literally a drive up several thousand feet in elevation through nowhere, and starts off with scattered cacti -- like the cacti you see in cartoons that are 8 feet tall and have “arms” sticking out the side. I noticed many of them had holes and I’d heard before cacti were in danger because people liked to shoot at them. Just like we have oak trees that are decades, well over a hundred years old, these big cacti are slow growing and pretty old. Given pop culture, I am not surprised at the bullet holes. Who hasn’t seen a cartoon where the good guy hides behind a cactus, only to have it shot out from in front of him and he’s left standing in the classic “cactus pose”? I even recall my old Atari 2600 game (Outlaw) where one of the objectives was to shoot away cacti. Soon the cacti were gone and it was mostly brush and rocks and hills. The elevation was too high. Boredom started setting in. We listened to “scan” on the radio, which was dominated by country music, Mexican music, and religious stations. Call it divine intervention, but the religious stations were mostly immune to the static. Another couple thousand feet and we started to see pine trees. The poor car was not meant for such a climb and we had to sweet talk it to get us there. The only relief was it was cooler at the higher elevation and we were finally able to turn off the air conditioner. In fact, it looked like rain... After what seemed like a long, long time, we pulled up to the hotel and found his brother & the family. It was good to see them and the kids (2 of them). We were starving and didn’t want to wait for dinner so we grabbed a snack at a nearby Wendy’s, drove around and got acclimated. Just as in Pheonix, we were made to feel right at home with all the chain stores and restaurants. Disappointing actually if you're trying to get away from your normal surroundings. Dinner, was at Black Bart’s. Sounds scary, but in fact, was totally benign and had local college students singing show tunes throughout dinner. Weird. Great piano player. The food was pretty good and it was nice to spend some quality time. Then it was off to the Lowell Observatory, home of one of the largest telescopes in the world, famous for discovering Pluto. Now it’s used for education. Sadly it threatened rain and they wouldn’t open the dome to look through the scope. But it was still cool to see. Too bad really, especially with Mars so close right now. Off to bed to rest up for the Grand Canyon. Time to finally capture our small vacation to Arizona and the Grand Canyon. It was a 4 day trip total. J.T., his mom and I flew out and met up with his brother’s family who drove up from southern California. [Sunday] Our plane took off around 10:30am. We got to the airport early, which was good, so J.T. could get stopped at the security check for trying to pack his Swiss army knife in his carry on. They’re pretty uptight about knives and weapons these days. They escorted him back to baggage check and he checked the bag. And another new pet peeve of mine is taking off the shoes. I don’t mind doing it, but as you’re plopping your bags on the x-ray, there are no signs saying you must, and the dude says “it’s recommended”. I’m sorry, but make me do it or don’t. So you get up to the walk-through x-ray and then the guy on the other side makes you take them off anyway. Make up your mind people. Otherwise, the ride was uneventful. Had to concentrate real hard to not get sick, but that’s typically during landings. The Phoenix airport has lots of hot air currants so it’s particularly bumpy. We rented a Hyundai. I was surprised how many of these cars were on the road. I don’t know what part of Phoenix we were in, but overall there were not many nice cars on the road. It’s after noon now and really heating up. We headed north towards Flagstaff, but stopped at the Anthem outlet mall about a half hour out to grab some food. It’s about a 2 hour drive total through empty terrain. After lunch, it was time for the unplanned adventure. J.T.’s mom was not feeling well, and in fact wasn’t sure if she was having heart attack symptoms. She had an angioplasty about 7 years ago so she has to be careful. We decided it would be better to go back to Phoenix now, rather than something happen in the middle of nowhere. The next several hours were spent in the nearby hospital ER. It was a small adventure to get the this ER, as the 411 information operator tried to send us to an animal hospital. But the 911 operator was kind enough to put us through to the local fire department, which gave us detailed directions and stayed on the phone until we arrived at the hospital – even offered to have a truck go meet us. After some time it was clear she’d be staying the night, so we went to dinner and found an Inn across the street. Dinner at least was great; a local Mexican restaurant called Macayos. Strong margaritas… and cool, cheesy "his and hers" souvenir glasses (Senor Bob and Cha Cha!). Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Just got home from the California State Fair, a several year running tradition for myself, and the 150 anniversary of the fair (it's only a few years younger than the state). California is known for so many high-tech and celebrity things, but the fair is rooted in agriculture. Every year you can see calves and pigs being born, lots of livestock like sheep, goats, cows, pigs mostly. Lots of local ranchers enter contests with their livestock and you can walk down all the stalls and see rows and rows of big ol' smelly animals. Kind of grounds you to see a bunch of real farmers making a living. The fair was a little disappointing last year, but it more than made up for that this year. We arrived around noonish and were pleased with the less-than-100-degree weather. Low 90's - cools for August. We did a bit of walking around first and headed to the wine tasting tent. There's lots of wine made in California and the fair hosts a big wine competition every year. All the gold winners are available to taste and buy. I had a Gewuerztraminer (sp?) and J.T. tried a Merlot (which the dude pronounced "mer-loT" - *sigh*). Then a quick snack of deep fried food. A fair isn't a fair without fried food. Artichoke hearts and zucchini, not so typical. Also not typical was J.T.'s roast lamb sandwich. I still haven't tasted a lamb I've liked. Then it's off to "Super Pork"! Yes, Super Pork, the 600lb trained pig that responds to dog commands like "sit", "heel", etc. He proved cooler than even the average trained dog and was quite entertaining...and dare I say cute? We walked all over the "Side Show" area which was themed after the old-time circus acts like two-headed cows and fat hairy women. It was way cool. Lots of amazing reptiles, snakes, spiders - many of which they had an albino version to compare to. They even had two sphinx cats. They just are not cute. We managed to catch a presentation on a bunch of snakes. The speaker was really knowledgeable and showed us really awesome snakes, some being poisonous but with their venom removed. The ultimate of course, was the king cobra. Just awesome. Later in the day in the same Side Show area, we saw a domino demonstration. Some people like to spend hours lining up dominos so they can be tipped over. Well these "dominolologists" spent five hours setting up ~4500 dominos in an elaborate display that ended with setting off 75 mouse traps in a cage, each with a plastic egg on it that was flung into the air. Those guys must have a lot of patience... (Indecently, other new words learned besides dominolologists were “predation”, “splendiferous” and “pestiferous”.) Other standard fare included the county exhibits, crafts and sales booths (where everything says "as seen on TV" on the box, "it dices, it slices, it cuts through tin cans"...) I *love* that stuff, though I never buy anything. Every now and then something is real popular. A few years back, everyone was carrying a mop over their shoulder. :) And let's not forget the exhibit hall, which has amazing crafts from 5 year olds on up. Architecture/CAD drawings, photos, paintings, hand made furniture, quilts, crochet, silk screens - you can really appreciate the talent. One or two of the exhibit rooms are usually themed. A couple years ago it was "Route 66" paraphernalia. This year they had a dedication to the fair and its anniversary. They also had a room of U.S. presidents - pretty neat. Some you've never heard of, simply because they didn't have much affect on history or the country. I'm sure I was taught all that president stuff in grade school, but ask me how much I cared about it then. The pinnacle, the height of the day, was the freestyle motocross (a.k.a. crazy young men that fly through the air on motorcycles doing stunts). Oh my gosh. Right out of ESPN's X Games (no, really). One 8' tall ramp propelling them ~35' in the air. And they'd do tricks called "heartattack" and "kiss of death". Yeah, well, they made my heart rate accelerate. I have to say the tricks are appropriately named. What motivates someone to fly through the air - over concrete - and throw their legs off their bike? turn the bike on its side? or practically do a hand-stand on it? only to regain control and sit back on the bike a split second before landing on the other side? I've seen this type of trick riding on TV, but nothing compares to live and close up. J.T. knew what some of the tricks were called. I was pretty impressed. He's quite the expert on an ATV PlayStation game. :) Speaking of video games, I was transported back to my childhood. One of the exhibits had a row of TVs hooked up to various video game consoles. By the look of the controllers, it was all XBox, GameCube and PlayStation. But in the corner, oh my gosh, could it be? Could it be an Atari 2600? And is that? No... YES! It's Adventure!!! Of the hundreds of Atari games, they chose this one, my all time favorite. It was such a trip! Top it off with more wine tasting and a deep fried Twinkie, and I was in heaven. Monday, August 18, 2003
I have finally seen Casablanca. What a perfect movie. And so quotable! It’s a (lesser) goal of mine to watch the AFI’s top 100 films, of which, Casablanca was #2. Friday, August 08, 2003
Ghostbusters has to be one of the greatest movies of the 80’s. It’s also Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray at their prime. And I love how pathetic Rick Moranis is. Ahhhh, good stuff. This is one of the few movies I remember seeing as a kid in the theaters. I saw it with my two cousins – I guess my mom took us. We giggled to no end when Venkman said “he slimed me”. The whole drive home my little cousin kept saying “he slimed me!” I’ll never understand why that was so funny but we were laughing until we were crying…I guess you had to be 10. |
