"We were rhyming things with things" and More Things to Do in the South West: Part 2

Thanks for being back. So where were we?

Ah, yes: Friday morning.

After a few good hours of sleep, we bravely decided it was time to take our freak show of stupid on the road. "Let's see what is so grand about a canyon anyway!", we shouted. And just like that, it was off to more adventure.

I learned something about Arizona that day. I'm pretty sure some idiot part of my brain already knew this from all the geology specials I watch (I'm not joking), but it's not until you experience it first hand that you truly appreciate the significance behind it: The grand canyon is many thousands of feet above sea level. Many, many thousands.

We leave Phoenix around 11:30 or so and after a quick brunch, we were on the road. June in Phoenix, at noon, is a hot place to be. We were singing the desert mantra - T-shirt and shorts for everyone; pass the sun screen, I'm getting burned through my shirt - you know, all the familiar refrains until we got about 3000 feet above sea level. Then, it started getting cloudy.

What the hell is going on here? It was about 95 in Phoenix (give or take 10 meaningless degrees that did nothing to change the feel of the place) and now it was low 80s if we were lucky (and at this point, 10 degrees started making a difference). No problem with that though, still a beautiful day, if not a little overcast. Goddamn though, these hills just keep on coming. It was like that famous line from Ghostbusters ("Where do these stairs go?" in case you were wondering which famous line from Ghostbusters).

And up and up they went. 5000 feet. 6000 feet. 7000 feet.

In a lesser vehicle, this might have been a perilous drive; but when you have a vehicle with honest to god testicles, well, you can go as fast as you please no matter what the gradient. We went fast. After much cursing at the seemingly unending uphill nature of Arizona, we finally approach the south rim of the grand canyon.

After a brief but confusing discussion with the gate ranger at Grand Canyon National Park ("May I see your yearly park pass? Thank you. Hey, this says Christina. Ok. You'll need to sign it to if I'm going to pretend to believe it's yours. Thank you. Off you go.") we were in. We're driving, we're driving, we're seeing cars parked next to signs that read "No Parking on Shoulder" and we're seeing people walking away from cars they just parked by said signs. It then occurred to us that this might be a good place to park as well.

And boy, was it.

Beautiful. Breath taking. Magnificent. What a glorious hole!

With that formality out of the way, it was off to find a camp site. For future reference, if you want to stay in the park in early June, a reservation is probably a must. If you couldn't be bothered with such formality, there's a perfectly suitable place just seven miles away. Just beware the rocky outcroppings. More on that in a bit.

Time for a plan: we get a camp set up, buy supplies (drinks, ice, and smores ingredients), and then head back to the canyon and for some awesome sunset photos. This is a good plan. And what could possibly go wrong? The camp site is seven miles outside grand canyon national park and directly behind a general store. This is perfect.

A quick stop at the general store yields a haul of beer, wine, graham crackers, chocolate, marshmellows, and a bundle of wood for our soon to be glorious camp fire. Circle round back to the camp site and the nice lady who informs us we're the only people who've committed to camping for the night. This is gonna be a sweet night.

We quickly set up camp and throw the drinks on ice. Sure, our tent wasn't going to win any awards, being held down by rocks in several crucial places, but it was good enough. We survey our domain and it is good; and with plenty of time left to return to the canyon, pick our spot and record what's shaping up to be a lovely sunset. I mean, it had been cloudy all day BUT the clouds finally broke 45 minutes before sunset. This was gonna be pretty!

"Catherine, do us the honor of driving back to the canyon."
"...ok."

We jump in the car, ease back about 8 feet and then...stop moving. Hmm. Well, this probably isn't good. In order to spare you 1000 of my words, here's a photo to best illustrate the situation:



You really need to look close to realize how boned this situation is. Remember those rocky outcroppings I mentioned above? Well, there you go. The low clearance of a mustang frame is awesome for going fast on desert highways but not so much when trying to free yourself from rocks. And if you look closer, you'll notice there's no way to get a jack under there either. Sweet.

Now, I have to give Catherine credit: this was a one in a hundred shot. A few inches to the left, it's a non-issue. A few to the right and we hear the scrape and reverse course with no harm done. But in this particular instance, it's bonesville.

She managed to drive off this particular rock in such a way that we were good and stuck. No sunset for us. But when life closes a door, it opens a window...

AAA to the rescue, sort of. After some slight confusion over what state we were in, followed by some confusion over about our proximity to Grand Canyon National Park, the cavalry arrives.

Catherine, gosh bless her, is waiting patiently by the side of the road for the man she will eventually fall in love with. Me, I'm setting fires and drinking beers. Fuckin eh. It takes almost 2 hours (or was it 3?) for the driver to find his way to our little hole in the valley. No joke though, the fella was a life saver: he was stationed strictly to the park itself. Once my sister started crying though, his heart turned to jelly and he was willing to help us out.

And we were thusly saved.

With the car off the rock, it was time to get stupid. And not just a little.

I'm sitting quietly drinking beers, trying desperately to keep a fire burning in spite of the winds that would have otherwise dwindled out my meager blaze. Catherine comes to join me and promptly realizes (actually, she realized earlier; but for the sake of continuity, I'm going to pretend this happened later) that she has no cork screw. Some days, you can't win.

After a brief jaunt to the general store, we are both on our way to forgetting about the missed opportunities of the recently set sun. The idiocy begins in earnest.

After a few swigs of wine, my sister (the confessed pyrophobe) is looking all over camp for shit to burn. At first, potato chips satiate the beast. Then, knick knacks that we have sitting around our picnic bench. Shrubbery is no match for my sister's firey ambitions. Eventually, and to the tune of Eric Clapton's acoustic version of Layla, everything is fair game.

Food stuffs of all sorts are fed to the flames. Empty beer cans are vanquished in the fires. Empty bottle of wine? Fodder for the flames. There is nothing safe, nothing sacred (except for her purse apparently) with regard to the fire pit we've got going.

I'll spare the rest of the gory details (only because there is enough video of this to spare you my descriptions). The sun is a glimmer on the horizon and all of our expendible supplies have been given to the flames. Day two of our journey is at an end.

It pains me to admit this post took three separate sittings to complete. Fortunately for you (and me), the next post will be about our time in vegas. As we all know, what happens in vegas, stays in vegas barring a court order.

Day two is so surmised. Stay tuned for the stunning conslusion.

Rob

"We were rhyming things with things" and Other Tales of the Southwest: Part 1

So this is a tough entry to write. Last year, my sister and I take a road trip (the details of which are documented below) and it was good. No plan other than direction; no ambition other than make it at least as far as the mighty Mississippi river. Well, being we had such a good time of it, why not plan a sequel, right?

Now, mind you, we caught a fair amount of flack for driving 2000 miles with only the vaguest notion of what we were going to do. Friends, family and co-workers were all equally perplexed. The nice people of Chicago, who we spent a memorable (if fuzzy) night with were supportive but also confused. For the sequel, decided we'd see what all the fuss was about: we'd plan.

Winter turns to spring and we start making plans, and nothing is off the table. "Bobbo, let's go to the grand canyon! And let's rent a convertible!" Fine ideas both, but we can do more. After many nights in my friendly neighborhood pub, we hammered out this gem of a plan:

1) We fly to Phoenix, rent a convertible for a week.
2) Drive up to the grand canyon, camp there for a day or two
3) Hit up Vegas. (Optional: Be in Vegas by the 7th so my sister can get a tattoo in Vegas on her birthday. Cliche, but awesome)
4) Swing out to San Diego, which by most accounts has some of the nicest weather on earth
5) Drive back to Phoenix.

Mind you, we managed out trip to the mighty Mississippi and back (almost 2000 miles all told) in about 3 and a half days. This should be a cake walk. Hell, by our estimations, we'd even be able to spend a day or two in places we liked. The novelty! A few phone calls and a couple more nights at my friendly neighborhood pub later, and we're booked. Depart NY on June 4th and arrive in Phoenix (but it's a dry heat), AZ to pick up our rental 2009 Ford Mustang convertible (Yee-ha bitches!). Return to NYC 8 days later and declare victory. Simple enough, right?

We leave a cloudy and chilly NYC Thursday morning and touch down in a 104 degree dry heat around noon (gotta love when time zones work in your favor). I can't pretend to know what anyone else is thinking, but what I was thinking was "Oh shit. We just rented a convertible to drive through the desert. Hmmm. I'm gonna look like an angry lobster inside of 20 minutes." We're gonna have to play this by ear.

We pick up the car and it is CHERRY. Well, that's settled: the top goes down - temperature be damned.

"OK, we've got the car. Now what?"
"I say we get a room and hang out in Phoenix for the night. We need to buy supplies for the canyon anyway so we may as well pace ourselves."
"Sounds like a plan!"

We hit up a Walmart (which still hurts my heart) and stock up. OK, we need a tent, a cooler, some water (a helpful bus driver informed us that when in doubt, 'Glug, glug, glug' water while in the desert). I need a bathing suit, a super cool hat so that my head doesn't burn up, maybe some bandannas for when I don't want to wear the hat. My lovely sister has a few must get items of her own and Walmart lives up to it's "We have everything cheap" motto with the notable caveat being when you buy a lot of cheap things, it still costs a fair amount of money. No concern there though. We're on vacation.

It's now back to the hotel where our next task involves finding a bar within walking distance (after a swim in one of the grossest pools I've ever been in). I ain't fuckin around with a rental that we declined the optional insurance for. Turns out people don't walk in Phoenix. It also turns out, a GPS tuned for driving is lousy at giving walking directions. Nearest bar is across the highway from us, we can practically see it: 1.5 miles away. We'll deal with that particular problem when we're drunk and have to get back.

After 20 minutes of walking (and being called an asshole by someone in a car for no discernible reason), we hit pay dirt and it looks like a real shit hole. Works for me. Grab a seat and order a drink. A few weird things about drinking in Phoenix: they won't sell regular pitchers of beer when only one person is obviously drinking from that pitcher, but they will sell incredibly cheap half pitchers to that same person as often as he asks. Clearly, consumption is not their primary concern. We get our drinks and notice that there is not a drop of perspiration on the glasses, bottles, nothing. You don't see that in New York on a hot day. But the drinks are really cheap and we're on vacation, let's keep this going.

I had never really heard of the hospitality of the people of Phoenix and I'm pretty sure I know why now. It's not that they were hostile or any such thing. It's more that they just weren't very receptive to friendly conversation. Now, anyone who's met me knows I'm a bit of an asshole, but I swear that I was just trying to be social. Catherine too. No bites. Maybe it's just me, but when I meet a stranger in my town (especially if they're leaving in the near future), I'm happy to shoot the breeze and compare notes. Not Phoenixonians. Not how they roll. So without that kind of fun camaraderie that we came to appreciate in Chicago, all there was to do in Phoenix was get really drunk on cheap beer. Works for me.

Now seems a good time to bring up one of the...what's the word? Ill-conceived? Ambitious? Ill-combitious? Whatever the word, here was our plan and you can be the judge of its merits: While on west coast time, if we had time to kill, we'd start drinking as if it was eastern standard time, so as to remain on EST throughout our trip and minimize jet lag when we got home. The primary reason (excuse) for this behavior is my sister's stunning inability to read a calendar.

I'll spare you the story about her just getting the day off from work on the day we were scheduled to leave NY, but I can't spare you the details of our intended return trip. While booking the flights, she tells me to just go ahead and book for a full 8 days. She's got the time, she assures me. So I do. Turns out, she misjudged just how much time she had. We were booked to return to NY on Friday the 12th at 11:30PM. My dear sister had work Saturday morning at 7AM. Smooth. So now our EST intentions can be put into some kind of context.

Where was I? Right.

So we get to the bar in Phoenix around 6PM...EST. Hey, fuck it. We're on vacation. After untold hours (a prime side effect of daytime drinking using different time zones is lost hours) of drinking on the cheap, it was time to make our way back to the hotel. After much cursing and a couple of unexplained detours, we finally stumbled into the hotel lobby where we were greeted by 3 dudes sitting in the lobby pounding beers. Here's the hospitality we were hoping for. It figures these gents were from Houston, somewhere/nowhere upstate New York and Boston. Close enough.

Another nice thing about Phoenix bars is they let you buy beers to go, which I did. This part gets fuzzy so I'll just say we talked to those fellas for a few hours about this, that and the other thing. Turns out they were/are more of less living in the hotel for a year now due to some contract job they were on, the poor souls. $DIETY knows how they can do that without killing every one around them, but clearly, they were getting paid so I guess that makes it easier. Nice fellas though.

And then off to bed and on to day 2.

That's where I'm gonna stop this particular chapter. I'll be sure to pick it up tomorrow or some such day. If you've read this far, gee, thanks. More soon.

Rob