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March 13, 2006
Arizona Adventures
Spring Break has come and gone, and now it's time to get back to the grind, sigh. At least the last week in Arizona was a good time, even if not much of anything went quite like we'd planned it beforehand. But hey, what's a vacation without a little added spice?
The unexpected started way back on last Saturday. After seeing Daniel off at the Pittsburgh airport, I moseyed on over to my gate to do a bit of grading while I waited for my flight to Atlanta. I didn't have to wait very long when, lo and behold, Addison strolled up. Needless to say, we were both surprised to see each other in the airport waiting for the same flight. So that was a fun diversion for awhile, talkin with him and everything; grading was getting boring anyway. ;-)
My flights to Atlanta and then to Phoenix were uneventful, and I got into Phoenix around 8pm, a half hour or so after my parents' flight from Minneapolis landed. Because my Dad's cousin Judy had just had emergency surgery that day to repair complications from her 1964 appendectomy (complications that for whatever reason decided to rear their ugly head this particular week), and was to be in the hospital for several days, we weren't able to stay with Judy & Roger over in Mesa like had been originally planned. So we'd gotten in touch with my cousins Melissa & Marci about staying at their places (their houses are literally next door to each other in Avondale), and they came by the airport to pick us up. After some adventures in trying to find the car rental place near the airport and where we could actually park so we could go rent a car (the third time was the charm), my Dad & I discovered that not having a reservation was gonna cost us at least $100 extra, and that car rental tax at the Phoenix airport is an asinine 47% (compared to a little less than 20% off airport property), we just said 'forget it' and decided to wait till Monday morning, where my Dad had a reso over in Mesa, way on the other side of Phoenix from Melissa & Marci. Meanwhile, during the hour that my Dad & I were checking with various car rental places, Melissa & Marci took my mom to go get something to eat, except they apparently went to some ghetto restaurant that shut off their lights as they drove up, haha. By the time we made it back to their places I think everyone else was wondering what was taking us so long, hehe.
My cousin Jonathan (who had been down there since Wednesday) drove my parents & I to Melissa & Jeremy's church, where the whole clan of us went that week. The unplanned thing there was that I spent most of the church service with my right thumb submerged in a cup of ice water, due to my mom accidentally slamming her car door on it (I have no idea why my hand was there, but during much jumping around in pain outside the church I at least managed not to say a bad word, hehe). But the sermon was fantastic, and both my parents and I are hoping we can get a CD of it or something. After church all of us went out to eat, and then we just went back to the houses for the afternoon to relax and everything. I joined Jonathan, Jeremy & Marc (Marci's husband) in watching the Gonzaga game in the evening, and it was fun hearing about all their connections to people in the game (Jeremy & Marc both graduated from Gonzaga, and Jonathan played high school basketball in Spokane either with or against current Gonzaga players (including Adam Morrison!)). It was just a great time catching up with my cousins, I loved it. After everyone else went to bed, Jonathan, Marci & I stayed up to watch "The Day After Tomorrow." None of us had seen it before, but I definitely loved ridiculing it for its blatant disregard for what might be even potentially physically possible, hehe.
On Monday morning Marci & Jonathan drove my parents & I over to Mesa to pick up our rental car. (Jonathan ended up not coming with my parents & I on our little trip up to the Grand Canyon, so that was another little change in plans.) We ended up spending probably an hour at Enterprise because they were busy, and they were doing everything they could to get my dad the Chrysler 300 he wanted to rent. By that point we'd had enough adventures with rental cars and everything, but more were to come later in the week, more on that in a bit. We took the afternoon lazily making our way up to Flagstaff via the gorgeous road that goes through Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. We would've probably spent a little more time poking around in those places, except since it was gonna be too cloudy to visit Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff for their night program, we just wanted to make sure we got up to our motel in Flagstaff in time to catch the back-to-back episodes of "24" that were airing that night. Yes, my parents are big fans too. :-)
My parents & I got up early Tuesday morning to make the drive up to the Grand Canyon, about an hour and a half or so north of Flagstaff. It was a nice day, at least to start, mostly sunny and 50 degrees with a stiff 25-30 mph wind when we got there shortly after 9am. My first glimpse of the Grand Canyon was at the Mather Point overlook right near the visitor center, and I must say my breath was literally stolen from me by the immensity of it. I knew it'd be big and a massive hole in the ground and everything, but no matter how many pictures or descriptions you see or hear beforehand, nothing can prepare you for just how awesome a sight the Grand Canyon is. From Grand Canyon Village we took the free shuttle bus westward on a loop to several vistas that are only accessible by the shuttle. 
Each one offered something new, but towards the end of the loop everything started looking more or less the same, I think I was on a bit of visual overload by then. But that was probably fine anyway, because by the time we got back to the Village it was 1:30 and about to start drizzling. We sure managed to pick the right time to see it! I'd definitely love to go back to the Grand Canyon again, though next time I'd for sure like to go down into the canyon to get a bit of a different perspective and everything. Though I'm not sure that taking a ride down on one of those Grand Canyon burros is a very comforting thought... After we got back to Flagstaff (where it was snowing, sigh), we took a jaunt up to Sunset Crater, a cool area with an extinct volcano and 900-year old lava flows and such. A very surreal landscape, and very worth seeing, I'd say.
Wednesday morning we woke up to two inches of slushy snow on our car, with more coming down. I definitely wasn't coming to Arizona to see the snow, but oh well. Some of the people in the motel lobby were looking at me rather strangely when I walked out in the falling snow in just shorts and a t-shirt, but it actually was quite nice out, I didn't mind it. We had lunch in Phoenix with Jonathan, Marci & Marc, and I was quite glad we got the chance to see them one more time while we were down there. We dropped Jonathan off at the airport on our way to Tucson, as he was headed back to Spokane. Once we got down to Tucson, my parents & I met up with my friend Cory for dinner at a place called Gentle Ben's right next to the University of Arizona campus. After that my parents went back to the motel, and Cory showed me around campus a bit, giving me a tour of the various optics labs he does research in as a grad student, and then showing me a couple of other cool places near campus. While I didn't really get to meet many of his friends, it was still really cool to get to see his new place down there and what all he's up to at Arizona.
Cory had class Thursday morning, so I got up and did some grading down at the student union for a bit. The plan had been for Cory then to take me hiking for a couple hours in the afternoon before he had to drive up to Phoenix to catch a flight for his Spring Break, but at lunch he informed me that one of the lasers was misbehaving, and that he had to get it working before he could leave, meaning that there wasn't time to go hiking with him out amongst the saguaro. Sigh. So I got in touch with my parents, and they came back into Tucson from where they were west of town to pick me up. We spent some time at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which was quite fascinating. There were over 300 different species of animals there, not to mention a stunning variety of desert plants. 
It's definitely well worth the price of admission. After that we went back to a scenic overlook on the way to the museum so that we could get a nice shot of whatever sunset there might be. I climbed up the hill a fair bit to try to get a better view of everything, but it was so cloudy the sunset was appearing to be a bit of a dud, so I decided to climb/scramble back down while there was still at least a little light. Well, much to my chagrin, a couple times during my nervous climb back down I took a peek over my shoulder, and wouldn't you know it, the sunset had suddenly set the sky ablaze rather surprisingly. Unfortunately I wasn't in any position to take a decent picture of it until after it'd really faded away quite a bit, bummer. But my parents, who stayed put at the overlook while I climbed, said it was certainly spectacular.
Friday morning we spent entirely in Saguaro National Park, driving around, walking a trail or two and enjoying the sights of the giant cacti that were literally everywhere in that part of the desert, it was quite a sight. It was very different from anything I'd ever seen before, that's for sure. It was quite literally a forest of saguaro, they were that thick in some places. We went back to Tucson for lunch, where we ate at a Waffle House. 
I thought they were only in the Southeast, so I was surprised to find them in Arizona. I was actually kinda excited to see one, particularly after hearing Daniel rave about it ever since we got to Penn State last fall. I liked it, though I had to text Daniel to find out what would taste good on grits, hehe. I even made sure to get a picture outside the Waffle House with the cacti in front of the restaurant. The people driving by may have thought I was weird, but whatever.
On our drive up to Phoenix we encountered a couple of dust storms and saw a bunch of dust devils, even some pretty big ones. We were almost to Phoenix on Interstate 10, just south of the 202 loop, when traffic suddenly slowed way down, and as I discovered, down to a complete stop. So I slammed on my brakes and was breathing a sigh of relief that I was about to stop in time to avoid hitting the pickup in front of me, when all of a sudden -- SLAM! -- we were rear-ended. That pushed us into the truck in front of us, and then we were rear-ended again. All three collisions happened in about a second, it was bang-bang-bang. Long story short, we were car #3 in a five-car pile-up on a stretch of Interstate 10 that's ranked as the most dangerous part of freeway in the entire United States. Lovely. Thankfully it appeared that everyone was okay, and the first four vehicles were all able to drive away after the police came and talked to everyone. The last truck wasn't so lucky though. He slammed into the back of the fourth vehicle at about 25-30 mph probably, which pushed everyone else into each other ahead of him. His airbags deployed and the front of his truck was smashed in really good -- he had to be towed away. And he only has liability insurance, not collision, so this is gonna definitely hurt him financially. It sure doesn't pay not to have insurance... The damage to the 300 wasn't too too bad, some minor dents on the back bumper, and then the front grill was busted (part of it was actually on the trailer hitch of the pickup in front of us), and one of the headlights was askew.
So all that excitement delayed us about an hour in getting up to Mesa to visit my great aunt Mae (98 years old), Roger & Judy and their daughters Kristin & Linda. We all went to the hospital to visit with Judy for a couple hours, and we were all very glad to see that she's doing well and recovering nicely from the surgery. After that Mae took us all out (plus Roger & Judy's son David and his wife Arlinda) to eat at a buffet called Souper Salad (I bet y'all can guess what sort of food was there). It was good to acquaint/reacquaint myself with all of them, it'd been a dozen years or so since I'd seen most of them. We spent the night at Roger & Judy's house, and after having to wake up after far too few hours of sleep, Linda & Kristin drove me to the Phoenix airport so I could catch my 7am flight to Atlanta. It was even raining in Phoenix that morning before I left, the first measurable rain there since Oct 18 of last year. Talk about an incredible dry spell.
My flights to Atlanta and Pittsburgh were fairly uneventful, except for the cold that I was developing caused my ears to be in a lot of pain during the descents of both flights. Even for the whole 3-hour drive back to State College with Daniel, my right ear felt like there was a giant pillow or earmuff inside, I really couldn't hear all that well. My ears were even popping all day yesterday, it was crazy.
I was too miserable from my cold to go to church yesterday, so instead I went out and bought some meds. I definitely don't need to be feeling crappy this week, I've got too much to do. I managed to finish the Dynamics assignment yesterday afternoon, though it took longer than I was hoping. I still have about 20 labs to grade by Thursday, in addition to Wednesday evening's Dynamics midterm and Friday morning's Mesoscale midterm. Be afraid, very afraid.
Some interesting links I found over the last week... The sun's next solar cycle will likely be significantly stronger than the previous one, which could cause heaps of problems for communications, satellites and astronauts. Stay tuned. And in further "proof" of global warming, Algeria -- Algeria!! -- had over two feet of snow last week. Crazy stuff. Judging from the response to a fan-held sign at a game in the World Baseball Classic last week, Cuba still doesn't understand the concept of free speech. And finally, a Kansas preacher is shamefully protesting at the funerals of Iraqi war veterans, with signs such as "thank God for dead soldiers." Doing that is most definitely very crass, inappropriate, and certainly very un-Christian. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like he or his group will be stopping their outrageous protests anytime soon. Sigh.
And in one final item, I found out over break last week that two of the five photos I submitted to last fall's campus photo contest at Gustavus placed in two different categories -- one ("2005 Physics Seniors," a circle picture at the picnic) won a 1st place, and another ("Ten-Person Toboggan") won 2nd, while my other three were finalists or honorable mention. Since I didn't have the Grand Prize winning photo I didn't win the iPod Nano, but a little cash will still be very nice. :-) If you want to view the winning photos and other finalists, click here.
Well, time for me to hit the books. This is gonna suck...
Posted by Jared at March 13, 2006 01:42 PM