I was quite pleased with my stay at the America's Best Value Inn in Springerville. The town itself had an interesting history as the site of the oldest Ford dealership west of the Mississippi, run by an early automotive enthusiast. Because of that it was supposed to be on the first transcontinental highway, but didn't make the cut. Route 66 went to the north and bypassed it.
After checking out I drove down the street to the local coffeeshop restaurant which had a prefect combination of good coffee, great Wi-Fi, and cheap bacon and eggs for breakfast. I put in a few solid hours of work, and then in early afternoon I left town and headed westward up through the foothills of the White Mountains.
The road climbed up a gradual slope into pine forests and beautiful meadows. There was still plenty of snow on the ground. It felt like a bit of Valhalla on the highway. I took a side road into the forest for about a dozen miles to the Sunrise Ski Resort, where I found a big hill with families sledding. I parked my car, took out my snowshoes, and got a good hour's hike in, all while wearing shorts.
In the mid afternoon I arrived in the summer resort town of Pinetop, right on the edge of the mountain forests. I had made reservations at the Super 8 and I checked in right at the stroke of 3pm.
I guess the trip can't be perfect. Nogales seemed to set a theme of surly Indian motel owners, and this was the worst yet. All was OK for most of the afternoon and evening. With the exception of dinner, I stayed indoors and put in a good days work using the passable Wi-Fi.
Then about 11 o'clock, it changed. I started hearing a loud thumping coming up through the floor. I sounded like a laundry machine tub out of whack in the spin cycle. I thought it would go away but a half hour later it was still going strong. I wasn't quite ready to hit the sack yet, but it was approaching bed time. I tried blasting the fan in the room, but when I lay on the bed, I could tell the noise was going to prevent me from any good night's sleep.
I went downstairs to the first floor and found indeed that the laundry room was below mine.
I went to the front desk, which was dark, and pressed the buzzer. The proprietor came out from the back room wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He looked as if I'd woken him up and he didn't seem happy. I told him about the problem.
He didn't seem to believe me about the noise. In fact, he got very defensive. "We don't do laundry at night," he said emphatically.
"Fine," I said. "I don't care. But I can't sleep with the noise."
To his credit, he didn't hesitate to offer me another room. It was less than ideal, given that I had to move all my stuff. But I knew it was the best thing. Nevertheless he seemed reluctant to let me have both keys at once, until I pointed out that I needed them both while moving my things.
When I went back to my room, I could still hear the thumping. It irked me that he had implied that I was imagining the problem. I was still curious about what the hell was going on. So I went back downstairs and put my ear to the door. I could hear the thumping loud and clear.
The proprietor had seen me come downstairs again. He followed me to the laundry and opened the door, showing me the laundry room with the machines still and silent.
"See," he said, as if to prove his point. Yet even as he showed me the quiet machines, the thumping noise was echoing through the room.
"But don't you hear the noise!?" I asked in frustration.
"Yes," he said. "But it's not the laundry. It's coming from in there." He pointed to a side room. "That's the water heater in there."
It was as if he was implying that because it wasn't the laundry machines, then it was OK. It wasn't his fault. In fact, he claimed he didn't know what was making the noise. "It's not the water heater. Maybe it's a fan," he said, as if the whole thing were a non-issue.
I couldn't believe his attitude. It was the kind of thing you see people venting their frustrations about, when they complain in online reviews about bad management. All he would have had to do to placate me was to say, 'Oh yes, that's terrible. It should be fixed." But his attitude was that someone it wasn't his problem, even though it was his motel.
I threw in the towel, realizing there was no point to the whole drama anymore. I went back upstairs and shifted my belongings down the hall. After I did my usual final room sweep of the old room, I went back downstairs and rang the bell one more time, not caring if I woke him again. I was determined to return the old key before going to bed, lest he claim I had used two rooms. It was the kind of outrageous thing I might have expected that I wanted to avoid.
Thankfully The new room was quiet and I slept well.
I wondered if I was the first person to complain about the noise. Sometimes I just don't get how the world works.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Under the Watchful Eye of John Wayne
During my few hours in Tombstone, I began to notice what would become a theme of this part of my trip through Arizona---there seemed to be images of John Wayne everywhere I looked. In Sierra Vista, I'd even seen a red-white-and-blue bumper sticker on the back of an SUV: "God Bless John Wayne."
Being a fan of the Duke, was born only a few miles from where I was, I didn't have any problem with the sentiment per se, but it somewhat puzzled me. Why so much of him?
That evening, after checking into the Super 8 by I-10 in the little cowtown of Willcox, I went out to dinner at BBQ restaurant inside an old railroad car and saw more images of Wayne on the wall by the cash register. The next day, after heading up through the mining town of Clifton and spending most of the daylight hours navigating the remote mountains through the national forest, I arrived in Springerville, I saw even more pictures of him. That evening in the old steakhouse, where the railing next to my table was covered with actual saddles, there were pictures of him on nearly every wall. The place seemed like a John Wayne shrine.
After a while it began to make sense to me. Many of Wayne's westerns were set in this part of Arizona, during the days of the Indian wars against the Apaches. For example, Springerville was only a few miles from Fort Apache, which is the name of one of Wayne's most famous movies (imdb), in which he plays a U.S. Calvary officer sympathetic to the Indians, but who is forced to betray his honor when ordered to do so by an intolerant and bigoted commander played by Henry Fonda.
It's one of my favorite westerns, partly because of the kind of Greek tragedy situation into which Wayne's character is thrust by this conflict.
But the reason I didn't readily associate Wayne with this area was because although many of these movies, especially the ones directed by John Ford, were set in this area of Arizona, they were actually shot elsewhere, either further north in Monument Valley, or up in Moab, Utah. Those are the places I personally associate with John Wayne.
But that's a bit of movie history not important to the locals in this part of Arizona. It became clear after a few days that Wayne was essentially a white counterpart to the ubiquity of the Native American imagery of this part of Arizona. It gave them someone to rally around, in a cultural sense. Personally I'm fine with that. Most of Wayne's movie characters had the kind of democratic nobility of personal honor that American male heroes were supposed to have back in the mid 20th Century, at least according to Hollywood.
I know people who would be fine wiping out the whole cultural segment of America that still admires Wayne. He is often reviled by liberals as a notorious stereotypical conservative throwback, with the insinuation that he must have been racist because of that. But of course in real life he was one of the most racially tolerant and accepting people of his day. I'm proud to be a fellow native Iowan.
Now I wonder where I can get one of those bumper stickers?
Being a fan of the Duke, was born only a few miles from where I was, I didn't have any problem with the sentiment per se, but it somewhat puzzled me. Why so much of him?
That evening, after checking into the Super 8 by I-10 in the little cowtown of Willcox, I went out to dinner at BBQ restaurant inside an old railroad car and saw more images of Wayne on the wall by the cash register. The next day, after heading up through the mining town of Clifton and spending most of the daylight hours navigating the remote mountains through the national forest, I arrived in Springerville, I saw even more pictures of him. That evening in the old steakhouse, where the railing next to my table was covered with actual saddles, there were pictures of him on nearly every wall. The place seemed like a John Wayne shrine.
After a while it began to make sense to me. Many of Wayne's westerns were set in this part of Arizona, during the days of the Indian wars against the Apaches. For example, Springerville was only a few miles from Fort Apache, which is the name of one of Wayne's most famous movies (imdb), in which he plays a U.S. Calvary officer sympathetic to the Indians, but who is forced to betray his honor when ordered to do so by an intolerant and bigoted commander played by Henry Fonda.
It's one of my favorite westerns, partly because of the kind of Greek tragedy situation into which Wayne's character is thrust by this conflict.
But the reason I didn't readily associate Wayne with this area was because although many of these movies, especially the ones directed by John Ford, were set in this area of Arizona, they were actually shot elsewhere, either further north in Monument Valley, or up in Moab, Utah. Those are the places I personally associate with John Wayne.
But that's a bit of movie history not important to the locals in this part of Arizona. It became clear after a few days that Wayne was essentially a white counterpart to the ubiquity of the Native American imagery of this part of Arizona. It gave them someone to rally around, in a cultural sense. Personally I'm fine with that. Most of Wayne's movie characters had the kind of democratic nobility of personal honor that American male heroes were supposed to have back in the mid 20th Century, at least according to Hollywood.
I know people who would be fine wiping out the whole cultural segment of America that still admires Wayne. He is often reviled by liberals as a notorious stereotypical conservative throwback, with the insinuation that he must have been racist because of that. But of course in real life he was one of the most racially tolerant and accepting people of his day. I'm proud to be a fellow native Iowan.
Now I wonder where I can get one of those bumper stickers?
Hypergamy in a Coffin-Themed Town
After touring downtown Nogales, I took off driving north, away from the border, along the back roads that cut through the scrub hills to the northeast. For most of the morning I had "good road," as I like to say---no one behind me and no one ahead of me. I could cruise at whatever speed I wanted, and the day was warm and beautiful.
Within a couple hours, I'd come down from the hills into the valley around Sierra Vista, an Army post town, and then cut straight east through more hills to emerge at my major sightseeing destination for the day, the famous old western tourist town of Tombstone.
It was rustic and western-themed, as one would expect. I parked near the courthouse and walked around downtown, passing actors dressed as gunfighters standing on the way to the main "western" street. There are a couple blocks of interest there, and after buying some postcards and walking the length of the blocks, past a smattering of tourists and passing stagecoaches carrying them on tours, I'd felt I'd already seen most of what there was to see.
But there were some must sees there. At the end of the block I found the Bird Cage Theatre, which purported to be a famous site. I'd never heard of it, but it turned out to be an importance place all in all. It was basically the town performance hall and bordello.
I walked in just as a woman dressed in a period costume was giving a presentation about the history of the place. As a theater, it saw performances from the likes of Eddie Foy and Lillian Russel. The woman also pointed to a huge painting on the wall of the famous stripper Fatima, also known as Little Egypt, who became world famous on her tours after getting her start at the Bird Cage.
As a bordello and saloon it was quite wild. She pointed out many bullet holes in the walls and gave a rundown of the men (and one woman) who were killed at the Bird Cage.
The most famous prostitutes of Tombstones plied their trade at the Bird Cage. The tour guide described the most noteworthy ones, and how they became the mistresses of the gunfighter-gambler-marshalls who came and went, switching their allegiance from one top alpha male to the next one. It was a beautiful lesson in the nature of sexual politics in a world stripped of all morality.
All things being equal, prettiest young women, in the bloom of their youthful beauty, tend to gravitate towards the most brutally dominant of men. It's something our society does not like to admit, but which many young men have to learn with great heartbreak. It seems a matter of instinct, just as men are drawn to youth and beauty almost beyond their ability to resist. Our society seems to acknowledge that men can be prisoners of instinct but we somehow bestow on women a higher reasoning about their choice of mates.
But in a place like Tombstone in its heyday, there was no veneer of pleasant fictions about such things. It was life and death, and all was made manifest. The law of jungle ruled.
The woman said a full tour of the place cost ten bucks. One could see the Black Mariah, the famous gold-plated hearse that carried the cowboys, courtesans, and gamblers up to Boot Hill. I decided to keep my money.
After the Bird Cage, I walked down to the other end of the street and found the OK Corral, the most famous site in Tombstone. Out in front was a coffin with the name "William Harrison Clayton" on it. I paid six bucks to go in the back lot to see the figures of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Claytons facing each other at the moment when the bullets began to fly. At the entrance was another hearse.
Afterwards I sat through the half-hour "Historama" presentation of the town history narrated by Vincent Price. It was definitely worth it, the kind of kooky figurine-based automated show that no one bothers to make anymore, but which is a delight to see (here's a snippet of the end of it). If you go to Tombstone, and you like this kind of stuff, this is a must see.
Within a couple hours, I'd come down from the hills into the valley around Sierra Vista, an Army post town, and then cut straight east through more hills to emerge at my major sightseeing destination for the day, the famous old western tourist town of Tombstone.
It was rustic and western-themed, as one would expect. I parked near the courthouse and walked around downtown, passing actors dressed as gunfighters standing on the way to the main "western" street. There are a couple blocks of interest there, and after buying some postcards and walking the length of the blocks, past a smattering of tourists and passing stagecoaches carrying them on tours, I'd felt I'd already seen most of what there was to see.
But there were some must sees there. At the end of the block I found the Bird Cage Theatre, which purported to be a famous site. I'd never heard of it, but it turned out to be an importance place all in all. It was basically the town performance hall and bordello.
I walked in just as a woman dressed in a period costume was giving a presentation about the history of the place. As a theater, it saw performances from the likes of Eddie Foy and Lillian Russel. The woman also pointed to a huge painting on the wall of the famous stripper Fatima, also known as Little Egypt, who became world famous on her tours after getting her start at the Bird Cage.
As a bordello and saloon it was quite wild. She pointed out many bullet holes in the walls and gave a rundown of the men (and one woman) who were killed at the Bird Cage.
The most famous prostitutes of Tombstones plied their trade at the Bird Cage. The tour guide described the most noteworthy ones, and how they became the mistresses of the gunfighter-gambler-marshalls who came and went, switching their allegiance from one top alpha male to the next one. It was a beautiful lesson in the nature of sexual politics in a world stripped of all morality.
All things being equal, prettiest young women, in the bloom of their youthful beauty, tend to gravitate towards the most brutally dominant of men. It's something our society does not like to admit, but which many young men have to learn with great heartbreak. It seems a matter of instinct, just as men are drawn to youth and beauty almost beyond their ability to resist. Our society seems to acknowledge that men can be prisoners of instinct but we somehow bestow on women a higher reasoning about their choice of mates.
But in a place like Tombstone in its heyday, there was no veneer of pleasant fictions about such things. It was life and death, and all was made manifest. The law of jungle ruled.
The woman said a full tour of the place cost ten bucks. One could see the Black Mariah, the famous gold-plated hearse that carried the cowboys, courtesans, and gamblers up to Boot Hill. I decided to keep my money.
After the Bird Cage, I walked down to the other end of the street and found the OK Corral, the most famous site in Tombstone. Out in front was a coffin with the name "William Harrison Clayton" on it. I paid six bucks to go in the back lot to see the figures of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Claytons facing each other at the moment when the bullets began to fly. At the entrance was another hearse.
Afterwards I sat through the half-hour "Historama" presentation of the town history narrated by Vincent Price. It was definitely worth it, the kind of kooky figurine-based automated show that no one bothers to make anymore, but which is a delight to see (here's a snippet of the end of it). If you go to Tombstone, and you like this kind of stuff, this is a must see.
Nogales, No Curtain
The lack of chain motels in Nogales had been booking an independent motel via Booking.com, my favorite site for "unflagged" accommodation. I've had pretty good luck overall, providing I stick to places that have great reviews.
I wasn't as lucky in Nogales at the Siesta Inn. The Indian (from India) proprietress greeted me in Spanish then switched to English when she realized I was Anglo. So many of the independent motels are owned by people from India. I have nothing against them, but some of them seem to, well, dislike their clientelle. It comes across as an attitude. I suppose I'd have the same kind of attitude if I ran a motel, but that's one reason I'd never want to be an innkeeper.
The room was decent enough and clean---that plus security (door locks, etc.) are absolute musts. I've had good luck with that so far.
But the Wi-Fi turned out to be awful. I seemed to be able to load only one page every ten minutes and had to keep reconnecting. It was the worst Internet connection I've had in living memory. Given that there was no Starbucks or apparent Internet cafe in town, this was doubly bad and frustrating.
The television reception was lousy as well. Needless to say, no TCM, but even trying to watch NCIS reruns, the sound was fuzzy and crackly.
There was no shower curtain---an incredible oversight by housekeeping. Actually one appeared the next morning after I came back from breakfast. Housekeeping had already decided to start stripping my room even though I had not yet checked out and had a few hours left before checkout time. So much for lying on the bed and meditating before I hit the road, as I like to do.
But like I've said, I've had good luck with motels. Sometimes it doesn't work out perfectly.
And Nogales is the kind of place one would expect luck to bottom out. It really is a shabby little border town. The downtown has that musty flea market feeling like Mexican towns do.
Before I left town I walked down the border, which cuts right through downtown. The border fence goes up the hill and one can see the stark division. On the left, a barren American street with windows border up in sanitary fashion like a fortress. On the right, the shanty-like structures of the Mexican city. It's the view I'd come to see. I'm bizarrely fascinated by such contrasts.
I wasn't as lucky in Nogales at the Siesta Inn. The Indian (from India) proprietress greeted me in Spanish then switched to English when she realized I was Anglo. So many of the independent motels are owned by people from India. I have nothing against them, but some of them seem to, well, dislike their clientelle. It comes across as an attitude. I suppose I'd have the same kind of attitude if I ran a motel, but that's one reason I'd never want to be an innkeeper.
The room was decent enough and clean---that plus security (door locks, etc.) are absolute musts. I've had good luck with that so far.
But the Wi-Fi turned out to be awful. I seemed to be able to load only one page every ten minutes and had to keep reconnecting. It was the worst Internet connection I've had in living memory. Given that there was no Starbucks or apparent Internet cafe in town, this was doubly bad and frustrating.
The television reception was lousy as well. Needless to say, no TCM, but even trying to watch NCIS reruns, the sound was fuzzy and crackly.
There was no shower curtain---an incredible oversight by housekeeping. Actually one appeared the next morning after I came back from breakfast. Housekeeping had already decided to start stripping my room even though I had not yet checked out and had a few hours left before checkout time. So much for lying on the bed and meditating before I hit the road, as I like to do.
But like I've said, I've had good luck with motels. Sometimes it doesn't work out perfectly.
And Nogales is the kind of place one would expect luck to bottom out. It really is a shabby little border town. The downtown has that musty flea market feeling like Mexican towns do.
Before I left town I walked down the border, which cuts right through downtown. The border fence goes up the hill and one can see the stark division. On the left, a barren American street with windows border up in sanitary fashion like a fortress. On the right, the shanty-like structures of the Mexican city. It's the view I'd come to see. I'm bizarrely fascinated by such contrasts.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
The Boy and His Telescopes
On Tuesday morning I finally was able to pack up and check out of the Super 8. After a morning conference call to New York, I went online and made a reservation that evening for an independent motel about eighty miles south in Nogales, on the Mexican border. I knew I wouldn't feel like going far that day. I'd want an easy day on the road. And I figured I'd go down to the border again for no particular reason at all.
South of Tucson, where I-19 cuts off from I-10, the mile markers turn into kilometer markers, as if preparing one for Mexico. I wonder if they make their signs in miles on the other side, out of reciprocity.
A few miles south of Tucson I make a spontaneous decision, to get off on the highway west throught the desert through the Indian reservation. It's the road out to the Kitt Peak National Observatory. My uncle had suggested I go. It would be an hour's drive each way. I had time. There was no reason not to. It seemed like a shame not to go.
There was a time in my life when observational astronomy was the coolest thing to me. In seventh grade I was fascinated by the study of stars and planets. I looked over catalogues of telescopes and dreamed of building and owning one.
The interest gave way to other things, but survived in some form up through my undergraduate years at Willamette. It helped drive my interest in physics, especially celestial mechanics. But I had become more interested in theory than the gritty work of experiment. One learns these things about oneself.
In fact it was exactly twenty-five years ago this spring, while at Willamette, that I did my most extensive sky observations with a telescope. My physics adviser, who was the department chairman, had told his students that the department owned an 8-inch reflector that students could use with permission. I wanted to use it, so I got permission, which included a semester-long pass signed by campus security. About half a dozen times that spring I went up to the top of Collins Hall on campus and wheeled the telescope out on the roof to look at Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets. I was probably one of the few students who ever asked for the privilege of using it. My professors thought I was an odd duck, I'm sure.
By graduate school, I realized that in the great division of labor that makes science, working in observatories was the task for other people. My old interest in telescopes seemed a quaint relic of boyhood.
In the flatness of desert, the white domes of the observatory were visible on top of the mountain for over twenty miles away. A cutoff road from the main highway winds up along the mountainside---closed at night for obvious reasons of preventing the contamination of headlights.
Four thousand feet above the desert floor, the road makes one last hairpin turn around the giant four meter telescope that crowns the highest summit of the peak. I parked by the visitor's center and walked towards the visitor center. There was a large sign greeting visitors and listing the universities all over the country that participate in funding and operating the facility.
I went inside the visitor's center to pick up a map for a self-guided tour. There were over a dozen telescopes in various buildings on the mountaintop, three of which were open to the public during the day.
There was a flattened penny machine right by the door. It's my little fun habit---the one thing I collect that is purely frivolous---flattened pennies. It's cheap---universally fifty-one cents, including the penny itself. I cranked the large wheel, turning it to the design I wanted. As I did, a flattened penny that had been left in the machine by the previous user felt into the slot with a clank. It was the first freebie of my collection. My lucky day, no doubt.
I took the walking tour, first heading back to the 4-meter telescope, the largest one of the facility. An elevator takes one up four stories. Then you climb a couple flights of stairs to a gallery that lets you look into the telescope area. The dome was closed and the facility was dark. Of course it was off hours. There were no astronomers present. It was impressive. I lingered letting my eyes run over the contours of the giant device, discerning the function of various parts. There were displays on the wall describing the history and construction in the late 1960s.
Like all scientific experimental facilities, it had a typical spartan industrial feel. Scientific labs in movies and television are always busy and warm. Real ones feel like power plants or factories.
After the 4-meter scope, I walked back to the visitor center and up the small hill to the 2-meter scope. It was the original telescope on the mountain, built in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Curiously it went into operation in 1962, the same year as the Titan II missile silo I'd visited (and the same year as that Route 66 episode shot in Tucson). The building had a similar feel to the silo, from a time in history when America was obsessed and excelled with pure functionality. On the way up the stairs I mused about the parallels and anti-parallels between the two facilities, one buried deep in the ground, the other as exposed as possible on top of a mountain.
When I got the top of the stairs, where the gallery lets one see into the scope, my eyes fell upon the enormous metal base and my mind was filled with a sudden disorientation of time and space. Written in large cursive script, within a circle a foot in diameter was the word Willamette.
I put my face up to the glass to a closer look and make out the smaller text: "Willamette Iron and Steel Works, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A." The name is fairly common in Oregon, as it happens, but it's rare to find it elsewhere in the country (I later discovered that the shipyards remained in operation until 1990).
The last stop on the tour was the solar observatory, which is a large diagonal shaft into the mountain that collects sunlight from a rotating mirror. It's perhaps the facility for which Kitt Peak is best known, one of the finest in the world for solar astronomy.
Walking up to the large diagonal structure, I passed a small building with a sign indicating courtesy of quiet, since there might be people sleeping inside during the day. The building looked original from the late 1950s, the kind one sees at many facilities from that era. Nearby was an ancient basketball court, the hoop missing a net, and the pavement cracked. I could picture generations of scientists playing pick up games there. I wondered if anyone still used it. Fifty years ago, in the boom of postwar expansion, scientific work was a young man's game, supervised by old men. I suspect the average age of those working at Kitt Peak has increased over the years.
Unlike the other telescopes, the solar observatory was of course in use during the day. One could look into the long shaft, and also peak into the darkened lab where a row of lights indicated instruments in operation. On the wall were a series of posters indicating the size of the Sun compared to other known stars in the Galaxy, all the way up to VV Cephei, compared to which the Sun is vanishingly small (see this, for example).
There is something so compelling about solar astronomy, and the theory of stellar structure. If I had a chance to study it again, I'd jump at the chance. But I had desire to be of the busy hands operating the telescope. That work of gathering data is left to those with a passion for it.
South of Tucson, where I-19 cuts off from I-10, the mile markers turn into kilometer markers, as if preparing one for Mexico. I wonder if they make their signs in miles on the other side, out of reciprocity.
A few miles south of Tucson I make a spontaneous decision, to get off on the highway west throught the desert through the Indian reservation. It's the road out to the Kitt Peak National Observatory. My uncle had suggested I go. It would be an hour's drive each way. I had time. There was no reason not to. It seemed like a shame not to go.
There was a time in my life when observational astronomy was the coolest thing to me. In seventh grade I was fascinated by the study of stars and planets. I looked over catalogues of telescopes and dreamed of building and owning one.
The interest gave way to other things, but survived in some form up through my undergraduate years at Willamette. It helped drive my interest in physics, especially celestial mechanics. But I had become more interested in theory than the gritty work of experiment. One learns these things about oneself.
In fact it was exactly twenty-five years ago this spring, while at Willamette, that I did my most extensive sky observations with a telescope. My physics adviser, who was the department chairman, had told his students that the department owned an 8-inch reflector that students could use with permission. I wanted to use it, so I got permission, which included a semester-long pass signed by campus security. About half a dozen times that spring I went up to the top of Collins Hall on campus and wheeled the telescope out on the roof to look at Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets. I was probably one of the few students who ever asked for the privilege of using it. My professors thought I was an odd duck, I'm sure.
By graduate school, I realized that in the great division of labor that makes science, working in observatories was the task for other people. My old interest in telescopes seemed a quaint relic of boyhood.
In the flatness of desert, the white domes of the observatory were visible on top of the mountain for over twenty miles away. A cutoff road from the main highway winds up along the mountainside---closed at night for obvious reasons of preventing the contamination of headlights.
Four thousand feet above the desert floor, the road makes one last hairpin turn around the giant four meter telescope that crowns the highest summit of the peak. I parked by the visitor's center and walked towards the visitor center. There was a large sign greeting visitors and listing the universities all over the country that participate in funding and operating the facility.
I went inside the visitor's center to pick up a map for a self-guided tour. There were over a dozen telescopes in various buildings on the mountaintop, three of which were open to the public during the day.
There was a flattened penny machine right by the door. It's my little fun habit---the one thing I collect that is purely frivolous---flattened pennies. It's cheap---universally fifty-one cents, including the penny itself. I cranked the large wheel, turning it to the design I wanted. As I did, a flattened penny that had been left in the machine by the previous user felt into the slot with a clank. It was the first freebie of my collection. My lucky day, no doubt.
I took the walking tour, first heading back to the 4-meter telescope, the largest one of the facility. An elevator takes one up four stories. Then you climb a couple flights of stairs to a gallery that lets you look into the telescope area. The dome was closed and the facility was dark. Of course it was off hours. There were no astronomers present. It was impressive. I lingered letting my eyes run over the contours of the giant device, discerning the function of various parts. There were displays on the wall describing the history and construction in the late 1960s.
Like all scientific experimental facilities, it had a typical spartan industrial feel. Scientific labs in movies and television are always busy and warm. Real ones feel like power plants or factories.
After the 4-meter scope, I walked back to the visitor center and up the small hill to the 2-meter scope. It was the original telescope on the mountain, built in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Curiously it went into operation in 1962, the same year as the Titan II missile silo I'd visited (and the same year as that Route 66 episode shot in Tucson). The building had a similar feel to the silo, from a time in history when America was obsessed and excelled with pure functionality. On the way up the stairs I mused about the parallels and anti-parallels between the two facilities, one buried deep in the ground, the other as exposed as possible on top of a mountain.
When I got the top of the stairs, where the gallery lets one see into the scope, my eyes fell upon the enormous metal base and my mind was filled with a sudden disorientation of time and space. Written in large cursive script, within a circle a foot in diameter was the word Willamette.
I put my face up to the glass to a closer look and make out the smaller text: "Willamette Iron and Steel Works, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A." The name is fairly common in Oregon, as it happens, but it's rare to find it elsewhere in the country (I later discovered that the shipyards remained in operation until 1990).
The last stop on the tour was the solar observatory, which is a large diagonal shaft into the mountain that collects sunlight from a rotating mirror. It's perhaps the facility for which Kitt Peak is best known, one of the finest in the world for solar astronomy.
Walking up to the large diagonal structure, I passed a small building with a sign indicating courtesy of quiet, since there might be people sleeping inside during the day. The building looked original from the late 1950s, the kind one sees at many facilities from that era. Nearby was an ancient basketball court, the hoop missing a net, and the pavement cracked. I could picture generations of scientists playing pick up games there. I wondered if anyone still used it. Fifty years ago, in the boom of postwar expansion, scientific work was a young man's game, supervised by old men. I suspect the average age of those working at Kitt Peak has increased over the years.
Unlike the other telescopes, the solar observatory was of course in use during the day. One could look into the long shaft, and also peak into the darkened lab where a row of lights indicated instruments in operation. On the wall were a series of posters indicating the size of the Sun compared to other known stars in the Galaxy, all the way up to VV Cephei, compared to which the Sun is vanishingly small (see this, for example).
There is something so compelling about solar astronomy, and the theory of stellar structure. If I had a chance to study it again, I'd jump at the chance. But I had desire to be of the busy hands operating the telescope. That work of gathering data is left to those with a passion for it.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Monday, March 11, 2013
The Other Shoe Drops on the Bimmer
By Saturday evening, after the author session on campus and one last dinner with my uncle, I was definitely ready to get back on the road.
It had been an awesome two weeks in Tucson. I'd been able to pack in a tremendous amount of work, and had not only wrapped up a phase of project exactly on the original projected completion date, but had proceeded to tick off a list of other wish list things for the system that the company had entrusted to me. There had been all manner of horrible patches of code that were causing miserable inefficiencies for the growing list of editors and authors using it.
I knew that it meant I'd have plenty of slack going forward in the next few weeks. But my mind simply couldn't slow down. Unable to slow down from the work frenzy, I'd entered into some kind of workaholic mania, jackhammering up sections of the system and refactoring them all in one evening to suit myself, completely under my own direction and authorization, and checking the code into source control. I'd even had time to perform some fine stitching of the using interface, the kind of stylistic garnishing that usually outside my purview, and which no one would possibly expect me to do.
My soul seemed to be crying out for the relief of the road. I wanted nothing more than to pack up and get going. But there was one problem---I was stuck for the next few days.
On Friday evening, after coming back from dinner, while walking in back of the car, I had noticed that the left rear shock absorber was hanging down beside the muffler. I knew immediately that it was almost certainly a consequence of the incident on Grant Street. I hadn't gotten away as cleanly as I thought.
I crawled under the car to inspect it. It appeared that the shock itself was intact, as was the mount. It appeared that the bolt had simply snapped, perhaps from one of the many potholes in Tucson (there are more than one would think), having been weakened by the accident.
I always like to take some kind of immediate action in these cases, just to get the ball rolling. I Googled Big O Tires, since I'd recently bought a set of radials there and wanted to have them rotated anyway. I called the nearest one and explained the situation. They said they'd be able to take care of it, most likely, but not until Monday when they could get the parts. That meant I'd be stuck in Tucson at least two more days.
Stuck--yes. Two days was nothing, but when it is not by choice, it takes on a different tenor. All day Sunday, between poking on yet more things on the system for work, I paced around my hotel room like a caged cheetah, trying to distract myself with episodes of NCIS that I had already seen three times in the last couple months.
After sunset, I grew apprehensive about the car, wondering if maybe there were more serious issues that I hadn't seen. I questioned myself over having not filed a claim yet. Maybe I should go ahead and do that, in case I needed to shell out more for undiscovered critical repairs.
For a while I contemplated fixing the bolt myself, and even called the local BMW dealership. The parts department reported that the bolt was minimal in cost, but they would have to order it. It would be there on Wednesday at the earliest. They wouldn't or couldn't give me any info on the bolt itself. I could take the other one off to compare, but that might turn into a fiasco. In a desparate pinch, it would have been an option, but with time and money, fixing it myself didn't seem like the thing to do.
So I decided that it would be Big O on Monday, as planned. On Sunday night, expecting perhaps that I might be stuck in Tucson for multiple days while the car was in the shop, I unloaded most of gear from the trunk, dropping it in a heap by the door.
On Monday morning, I drove to the shop with great apprehension driven by uncertainty. How long until I get going again? How much would it cost? Would I have to track down Abdul (the guy who hit me) and shake his girlfriend's insurance info out of him?
The friendly manager at Big O listened to my situation and then put the car up on the lift. I could see that almost immediately the technicians began trying out bolts from their stash in a drawer, to see which one might work. A couple minutes later the manager came back and told me that it turned out that both rear shocks were leaking and needed replacing. He showed me where the fluid was leaking down.
This was not a consequence of the accident---just routine maintenance that I had somewhat expected, given how much I carry in the trunk while on the road. He gave me a quote--seventy dollars for the pair plus labor. "Go for it," I told him eagerly.
I sat in a nearby donut shop for the forty-five minutes and then came back just as they were finishing. The car was already sitting in the parking lot, its back end riding high from the replacements. The total bill was 145 dollars---pretty much nothing. They charged me eight bucks for the bolt, which they had to special order for immediate delivery. That turned out to be the total cost so far out of pocket for the accident.
Driving away down Alvernon Avenue, I almost felt like taking to the road immediately. It was bright sunny day, perfect for driving. My contact colleague in New York had said he wanted to chat the next day about the next phase of the project. There was hardly anything do until then.
But I'd already paid for another night at the Super 8. I'd have to think of how I might kill another day in Tucson. My aunt had told me about a favorite diner that her son and daughter-in-law liked, so I went there and ordered my usual of three scrambled eggs and a side of bacon. She also mentioned a favorite local used bookstore chain, so I went there and perused their foreign language section looking for verb books I might not yet own.
Then in the late afternoon, finally able to let go of work for a few hours, I sat down and hammered out five blog entries in a row while reclining on my hotel bed. It's good to be in Tucson.
Ah heck, I just remembered about the laundry I need to do.
It had been an awesome two weeks in Tucson. I'd been able to pack in a tremendous amount of work, and had not only wrapped up a phase of project exactly on the original projected completion date, but had proceeded to tick off a list of other wish list things for the system that the company had entrusted to me. There had been all manner of horrible patches of code that were causing miserable inefficiencies for the growing list of editors and authors using it.
I knew that it meant I'd have plenty of slack going forward in the next few weeks. But my mind simply couldn't slow down. Unable to slow down from the work frenzy, I'd entered into some kind of workaholic mania, jackhammering up sections of the system and refactoring them all in one evening to suit myself, completely under my own direction and authorization, and checking the code into source control. I'd even had time to perform some fine stitching of the using interface, the kind of stylistic garnishing that usually outside my purview, and which no one would possibly expect me to do.
My soul seemed to be crying out for the relief of the road. I wanted nothing more than to pack up and get going. But there was one problem---I was stuck for the next few days.
On Friday evening, after coming back from dinner, while walking in back of the car, I had noticed that the left rear shock absorber was hanging down beside the muffler. I knew immediately that it was almost certainly a consequence of the incident on Grant Street. I hadn't gotten away as cleanly as I thought.
I crawled under the car to inspect it. It appeared that the shock itself was intact, as was the mount. It appeared that the bolt had simply snapped, perhaps from one of the many potholes in Tucson (there are more than one would think), having been weakened by the accident.
I always like to take some kind of immediate action in these cases, just to get the ball rolling. I Googled Big O Tires, since I'd recently bought a set of radials there and wanted to have them rotated anyway. I called the nearest one and explained the situation. They said they'd be able to take care of it, most likely, but not until Monday when they could get the parts. That meant I'd be stuck in Tucson at least two more days.
Stuck--yes. Two days was nothing, but when it is not by choice, it takes on a different tenor. All day Sunday, between poking on yet more things on the system for work, I paced around my hotel room like a caged cheetah, trying to distract myself with episodes of NCIS that I had already seen three times in the last couple months.
After sunset, I grew apprehensive about the car, wondering if maybe there were more serious issues that I hadn't seen. I questioned myself over having not filed a claim yet. Maybe I should go ahead and do that, in case I needed to shell out more for undiscovered critical repairs.
For a while I contemplated fixing the bolt myself, and even called the local BMW dealership. The parts department reported that the bolt was minimal in cost, but they would have to order it. It would be there on Wednesday at the earliest. They wouldn't or couldn't give me any info on the bolt itself. I could take the other one off to compare, but that might turn into a fiasco. In a desparate pinch, it would have been an option, but with time and money, fixing it myself didn't seem like the thing to do.
So I decided that it would be Big O on Monday, as planned. On Sunday night, expecting perhaps that I might be stuck in Tucson for multiple days while the car was in the shop, I unloaded most of gear from the trunk, dropping it in a heap by the door.
On Monday morning, I drove to the shop with great apprehension driven by uncertainty. How long until I get going again? How much would it cost? Would I have to track down Abdul (the guy who hit me) and shake his girlfriend's insurance info out of him?
The friendly manager at Big O listened to my situation and then put the car up on the lift. I could see that almost immediately the technicians began trying out bolts from their stash in a drawer, to see which one might work. A couple minutes later the manager came back and told me that it turned out that both rear shocks were leaking and needed replacing. He showed me where the fluid was leaking down.
This was not a consequence of the accident---just routine maintenance that I had somewhat expected, given how much I carry in the trunk while on the road. He gave me a quote--seventy dollars for the pair plus labor. "Go for it," I told him eagerly.
I sat in a nearby donut shop for the forty-five minutes and then came back just as they were finishing. The car was already sitting in the parking lot, its back end riding high from the replacements. The total bill was 145 dollars---pretty much nothing. They charged me eight bucks for the bolt, which they had to special order for immediate delivery. That turned out to be the total cost so far out of pocket for the accident.
Driving away down Alvernon Avenue, I almost felt like taking to the road immediately. It was bright sunny day, perfect for driving. My contact colleague in New York had said he wanted to chat the next day about the next phase of the project. There was hardly anything do until then.
But I'd already paid for another night at the Super 8. I'd have to think of how I might kill another day in Tucson. My aunt had told me about a favorite diner that her son and daughter-in-law liked, so I went there and ordered my usual of three scrambled eggs and a side of bacon. She also mentioned a favorite local used bookstore chain, so I went there and perused their foreign language section looking for verb books I might not yet own.
Then in the late afternoon, finally able to let go of work for a few hours, I sat down and hammered out five blog entries in a row while reclining on my hotel bed. It's good to be in Tucson.
Ah heck, I just remembered about the laundry I need to do.
The Wisdom of the Priestesses of the Bestseller List
I had originally planned to stay in a Tucson a week, although I knew in advance that I might stay longer, as I often do, since I have no fixed schedule on my travels.
During the first dinner at my aunt and uncle's house, my aunt had told me about the upcoming Tucson Festival of Books, which she always enjoyed attending each year, but which she knew she would have to miss this time because of her trip to be with her daughter during the birth of the new baby.
She really talked it up, telling me how much I would enjoy it. Although it meant extending my stay at least five more nights, I rather easily began to contemplate the idea of going, based simply on curiosity and the fact that I tend to take up suggestions like this rather easily, out of almost a spiritual sense of being guided by serendipity along my path.
I told my aunt that it was ironic, since I often described my unorthodox lifestyle as being like "an unpublished author on a phantom book tour." She liked that one.
My aunt gave me the extensive guide to the festival from the local paper. I put it in my backpack and didn't take it out until the night before the opening day of the festival, which was a Saturday. By that time my aunt had already left for Wisconsin.
I figured it was time to do a little recon if I was going to see anything at the festival, which was held on the campus of the University of Arizona. When I cracked open the guide, I was surprised to see that there were over a hundred different authors giving lectures and presentations on various themes of writing at locations all over campus. It was much bigger event than I realized.
I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I recognized almost none of the names of authors, outside of a few famous Hollywood actor-authors who were attending. I decided I didn't want to see them, since they would certainly be crowded.
Somewhat randomly I picked out an author from the list---Lisa Genova, who had written a novel that had made the New York Times bestseller list. I'd never heard of her, or her book, but the theme of her 1:00 PM talk, "Mixing Fact and Fiction," somewhat intrigued me.
Around noon on Saturday I drove towards campus and parked in location where I knew I could find a space. When I got to the main mall area, I found it packed and swarming with a huge crowd of people streaming between the many white tents set up outside as temporary book stalls and author-signing booths. The C-SPAN bookmobile was parked nearby, beside the palm trees in front of the modern languages building where Genova's lecture was to be held.
I had imagined being in a small classroom, but the lecture turned out to be a multi-author panel discussion in a large lecture auditorium. I arrived five minutes beforehand and squeezed into one of the last remaining seats.
Genova was a Ph.D. neurologist from Harvard who had written a previous novel about alzeimer's disease. On the panel she was plugging her latest novel, which was about a boy with autism. The other two authors were both women: Caroline Leavitt, whose book Pictures of You was about a woman who had killed someone in a car accident, and Barbara Shapiro, who latest novel was a young woman painter who is lured into becoming an art forger.
Shapiro's book is based partly on the still-unsolved theft of several famous painters from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. She gave me one of the comments that made an impression on me: It can be hard to write about a crime that hasn't been solved yet, she said. That's something I think about a lot, as it happens.
A couple other mental notes I carried away from the panel discussion. Genova, in responding to a question about how to know when you have done enough research: "You reach a point where you start hearing the same things over and over," she said.
I reminded me of something I'd discovered along the way, that if you're trying to figure out something that happened, say if you're trying to solve a historical crime, you know you're on the right path because the additional facts you pick up start falling into place more easily. Or as I often say, using the language of higher mathematics, the truth converges.
Leavitt emphasized the importance of just plowing through your first draft. That one's fairly universal, and one I'm still working on. I'm running out of excuses.
I got a kick out of Genova talking about her writing habits. She said she has to get out of the house to write---too many distractions there, including laundry and the refrigerator. "I usually write in Starbucks," she said.
"I'm surprised I haven't run into her yet," I thought. But then I haven't been out to Cape Cod lately.
During the first dinner at my aunt and uncle's house, my aunt had told me about the upcoming Tucson Festival of Books, which she always enjoyed attending each year, but which she knew she would have to miss this time because of her trip to be with her daughter during the birth of the new baby.
She really talked it up, telling me how much I would enjoy it. Although it meant extending my stay at least five more nights, I rather easily began to contemplate the idea of going, based simply on curiosity and the fact that I tend to take up suggestions like this rather easily, out of almost a spiritual sense of being guided by serendipity along my path.
I told my aunt that it was ironic, since I often described my unorthodox lifestyle as being like "an unpublished author on a phantom book tour." She liked that one.
My aunt gave me the extensive guide to the festival from the local paper. I put it in my backpack and didn't take it out until the night before the opening day of the festival, which was a Saturday. By that time my aunt had already left for Wisconsin.
I figured it was time to do a little recon if I was going to see anything at the festival, which was held on the campus of the University of Arizona. When I cracked open the guide, I was surprised to see that there were over a hundred different authors giving lectures and presentations on various themes of writing at locations all over campus. It was much bigger event than I realized.
I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I recognized almost none of the names of authors, outside of a few famous Hollywood actor-authors who were attending. I decided I didn't want to see them, since they would certainly be crowded.
Somewhat randomly I picked out an author from the list---Lisa Genova, who had written a novel that had made the New York Times bestseller list. I'd never heard of her, or her book, but the theme of her 1:00 PM talk, "Mixing Fact and Fiction," somewhat intrigued me.
Around noon on Saturday I drove towards campus and parked in location where I knew I could find a space. When I got to the main mall area, I found it packed and swarming with a huge crowd of people streaming between the many white tents set up outside as temporary book stalls and author-signing booths. The C-SPAN bookmobile was parked nearby, beside the palm trees in front of the modern languages building where Genova's lecture was to be held.
I had imagined being in a small classroom, but the lecture turned out to be a multi-author panel discussion in a large lecture auditorium. I arrived five minutes beforehand and squeezed into one of the last remaining seats.
Genova was a Ph.D. neurologist from Harvard who had written a previous novel about alzeimer's disease. On the panel she was plugging her latest novel, which was about a boy with autism. The other two authors were both women: Caroline Leavitt, whose book Pictures of You was about a woman who had killed someone in a car accident, and Barbara Shapiro, who latest novel was a young woman painter who is lured into becoming an art forger.
Shapiro's book is based partly on the still-unsolved theft of several famous painters from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. She gave me one of the comments that made an impression on me: It can be hard to write about a crime that hasn't been solved yet, she said. That's something I think about a lot, as it happens.
A couple other mental notes I carried away from the panel discussion. Genova, in responding to a question about how to know when you have done enough research: "You reach a point where you start hearing the same things over and over," she said.
I reminded me of something I'd discovered along the way, that if you're trying to figure out something that happened, say if you're trying to solve a historical crime, you know you're on the right path because the additional facts you pick up start falling into place more easily. Or as I often say, using the language of higher mathematics, the truth converges.
Leavitt emphasized the importance of just plowing through your first draft. That one's fairly universal, and one I'm still working on. I'm running out of excuses.
I got a kick out of Genova talking about her writing habits. She said she has to get out of the house to write---too many distractions there, including laundry and the refrigerator. "I usually write in Starbucks," she said.
"I'm surprised I haven't run into her yet," I thought. But then I haven't been out to Cape Cod lately.
Scooped by a Different Kind of Launch
I thought I'd had a pretty good day, all in all, between the missile museum and the mission. I could hardly wait to tell my aunt and uncle when I saw them at their house for dinner that evening. I knew they'd be pleased that I'd had a chance to visit both places.
When I phoned them from my motel room that afternoon, they immediately told me some important big news. Their daughter, my cousin, had gone into labor, a week ahead of schedule. My aunt, who was already planning on flying to Wisconsin for the birth, had pushed her flight up to the next morning.
On the way over to their house I bought not only a bottle of red wine, which I had brought on the previous two dinners at their house on my visit, but a bottle of champagne.
By the time I got their, they had received updated news: the baby girl had already arrived. So the dinner was a bit of a celebration.
Visiting them this time in their new house had been very fun. We had talked for hours each time about politics, physics, history, art, and cinema. We had even watched a University of Arizona basketball game on television together.
I had told them about my weird lifestyle, and even about the television show Route 66, and my ideas of how America had changed, and hadn't, since the early 1960s. I told them that my all-time favorite episode, "How Much a Pound for Albatross?" (Season 2, Episode 18), had been set and filmed in Tucson, and featured interesting period cinematography of the city from that era. So my visit was a bit of pilgrimage in a way.*
It was particularly fun to talk to my uncle, who is my dad's younger brother. He's in the age rane between my father and me, and has been an electronics engineer most of his life. He proudly showed off his skills in their backyard at night with a green laser pointer, which could reach the slopes of nearby mountains (green stays coherent over a longer range than red). He even rigged up a contraption to point the laser pointer on a telescope to extend its range, the of makeshift device that my grandfather (his father) was famous for cooking up.
When I left at the end of the third evening, I insisted on taking their picture. They weren't enthusiastic about it, but I told them it was "so your granddaughter can see what her grandparents looked like on the day she was born." They went for that one.
* I just found the opening few minutes of this episode on Youtube. The first shot is of Julie Newmar's character riding a motorcycle past the San Xavier mission---I knew there was a reason I had to go there.
When I phoned them from my motel room that afternoon, they immediately told me some important big news. Their daughter, my cousin, had gone into labor, a week ahead of schedule. My aunt, who was already planning on flying to Wisconsin for the birth, had pushed her flight up to the next morning.
On the way over to their house I bought not only a bottle of red wine, which I had brought on the previous two dinners at their house on my visit, but a bottle of champagne.
By the time I got their, they had received updated news: the baby girl had already arrived. So the dinner was a bit of a celebration.
Visiting them this time in their new house had been very fun. We had talked for hours each time about politics, physics, history, art, and cinema. We had even watched a University of Arizona basketball game on television together.
I had told them about my weird lifestyle, and even about the television show Route 66, and my ideas of how America had changed, and hadn't, since the early 1960s. I told them that my all-time favorite episode, "How Much a Pound for Albatross?" (Season 2, Episode 18), had been set and filmed in Tucson, and featured interesting period cinematography of the city from that era. So my visit was a bit of pilgrimage in a way.*
It was particularly fun to talk to my uncle, who is my dad's younger brother. He's in the age rane between my father and me, and has been an electronics engineer most of his life. He proudly showed off his skills in their backyard at night with a green laser pointer, which could reach the slopes of nearby mountains (green stays coherent over a longer range than red). He even rigged up a contraption to point the laser pointer on a telescope to extend its range, the of makeshift device that my grandfather (his father) was famous for cooking up.
When I left at the end of the third evening, I insisted on taking their picture. They weren't enthusiastic about it, but I told them it was "so your granddaughter can see what her grandparents looked like on the day she was born." They went for that one.
* I just found the opening few minutes of this episode on Youtube. The first shot is of Julie Newmar's character riding a motorcycle past the San Xavier mission---I knew there was a reason I had to go there.
In the Shrine of the Patron Saint of Spies
Having played nuclear missile commander with such fervor, and having been driven to contemplate such weighty matters as the end of life on earth, I decided to follow up my visit to the Titan Missile Museum by visiting the San Xavier Mission on the way back to Tucson.
I took the back roads through the desert, past a huge mine in the mountains and across the Indian reservation until I saw the white structure in the small Indian town beside the Interstate.
I'd read it was the oldest extant Euroepean structure in Arizona. The mission had been founded in 1692 by the Jesuits. The current structure dates from the 1790s. Visiting this kind of historical landmark is always something I make a priority of doing, as my friends David and Betty can testify, when I forced them to take me to the old mission that is the oldest structure in San Francisco.
The parking lot was half full with tourists, including a few buses. Before going in I ate lunch by buying an "Arizona fry bread" from one of the Indian women selling them below the makeshift ramadas alongside the parking lot. The fry breads are basically deep fried tortillas wrapped arond beans, cheese, and meat.
The missile museum had been a palace of science and rationality. It had been overwhelming to absorb the beautiful functionality of all its working parts, all from the age of analog electronics. Now I was inside a shrine of faith, although which a fun twist.
San Xavier refers to Francis Xavier, the founder of the Jesuit order, which functioned from its beginnings as the foreign intelligence arm of the Vatican. It is not accident that Georgetown University, the pre-eminent Jesuit institution in the United States, is located amidst the heaviest "spook" area of D.C., and is a CIA factory. It also happens to be located on the highest hill overlooking the Capitol and the White House.
In a way the old mission felt like some kind of bizarro counterpart to the missile museum. As I entered a tour was in progress. I sat in the pews and absorbed the ornate interior. The domelike apse was not unlike the "birdcage" structure that housed the command facility of the missile facility.
I took the back roads through the desert, past a huge mine in the mountains and across the Indian reservation until I saw the white structure in the small Indian town beside the Interstate.
I'd read it was the oldest extant Euroepean structure in Arizona. The mission had been founded in 1692 by the Jesuits. The current structure dates from the 1790s. Visiting this kind of historical landmark is always something I make a priority of doing, as my friends David and Betty can testify, when I forced them to take me to the old mission that is the oldest structure in San Francisco.
The parking lot was half full with tourists, including a few buses. Before going in I ate lunch by buying an "Arizona fry bread" from one of the Indian women selling them below the makeshift ramadas alongside the parking lot. The fry breads are basically deep fried tortillas wrapped arond beans, cheese, and meat.
The missile museum had been a palace of science and rationality. It had been overwhelming to absorb the beautiful functionality of all its working parts, all from the age of analog electronics. Now I was inside a shrine of faith, although which a fun twist.
San Xavier refers to Francis Xavier, the founder of the Jesuit order, which functioned from its beginnings as the foreign intelligence arm of the Vatican. It is not accident that Georgetown University, the pre-eminent Jesuit institution in the United States, is located amidst the heaviest "spook" area of D.C., and is a CIA factory. It also happens to be located on the highest hill overlooking the Capitol and the White House.
In a way the old mission felt like some kind of bizarro counterpart to the missile museum. As I entered a tour was in progress. I sat in the pews and absorbed the ornate interior. The domelike apse was not unlike the "birdcage" structure that housed the command facility of the missile facility.
In Which I Turn the Key To Destroy the World
With all the time I had in Tucson, I knew I had to see some of the traditional tourist sights. I often get tied up with a work, and the days goes by, just as if I were a local. But if I leave a place without having seen some of the "must see" things, it feels as if I missed the essence of being there.
When looking on the map of the area, I noticed the Titan Missile Museum a few miles south of town on the Interstate. It is basically a preserved nuclear missile silo. The last time I had taught college physics, I had used the history of rocketry as a theme. This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.
My uncle, who is an engineer at a well-known electronics manufacturer, readily endorsed the choice, telling me that he had taken my grandfather there, and that "it was like being back in the 1950s."
After having spent most of Sunday working in my hotel room, I allowed myself to take Monday afternoon off. I drove south on the Interstate a few miles to the exit in the small town where the museum was.
The visitor center was small plain building. I paid nine fifty for the entrance. I was just in time for the tour. I took a seat in small room where man was giving a lecture about the history of the facility. Of the two dozen people in the room, I looked to be the youngest by many years.
The Titan II missile program, I learned, had been started in the early 1960s to replace the earlier generation of Titan I and Atlas missiles. That earlier generation had used liquid oxygen as a propellent. Although it functions great as rocket fuel, it is highly unstable, and had to be stored outside the engine, until launch. Loading it required almost an hour---an eternity in a nuclear attack. so the Titan II was designed with a more stable propellant. The missile could be launched in less than a minute.
I learned that the facility was one of 54 Titan II sites spread out over three locations in Arkansas, Kansas, and Arizona, and operated by the Air Force They had been decommissioned in 1982 by the Reagan administration so that the funds could be used for a newer program, the Minuteman III. Hearing about all this brought back memories to high school, when all of this was in the process of happening, especially the MX program that Reagan wanted but which never happened because of lack of funding. My fascination with the Cold War nuclear strategy was one of the reasons I went to Georgetown.
A video tape told us about the security procedures of how the crew checked in for each 24-hour "alert," as they were called. At each stage, one had to pick up and phone and get clearance from the crew inside. It all seemed quaint and old-fashioned by today's security standards--yet it worked. We also learned about the "tipsies," the scoop-like security devices around the silo cover that sent invisible laser beams back and forth, and which alerted the crew to any security breach on the ground.
Afterwards, the volunteer giving us our briefing told me to put on a blue hard hat, since I was over five foot ten. He led us outside and down a flight of metal stairs past the "Beware of Rattlesnakes" signs. It was an issue out of the desert, he said, especially when no one used the stairs for twenty four hours.
We entered through the thick steel door that guaranteed temporary survival from a nearby hit, and passed the light fixtures suspended from springs, and into the underground control room that turned out to be a suspended within its shell by huge springs to absorb the shock of an attack, in order to allow the crew to launch the missile according to any orders received.
My uncle had been right. It was like a trip back in time. The control room was lined by banks of period electronics, gauges, and dials. The shelves were full of three-ring binders of checklists and manuals.
Our tour guide inside the solo was a woman who had been the first female commander of a Titan II installation, during the last few years of the program in the 1980s. She explained what all the computers were for---guide systems, targets and status monitors. The crew never knew what the target actually was, she said. All they knew was whether the burst would happen in the air above the target or at ground level.
She explained how the launch orders came (or didn't come, as it happened), via a radio alert followed by a long series of letters and numbers that the two crew members had to copy down simultaneously and then compare. Then they went to a safe that had to be unlocked by both of them, to retrieve the correct paper envelope. Inside the envelope was a verification key to be compared with the numbers and letters they received. This would verify that the order to launch had come from the president.
Then each of the two crew members had to turn and hold their keys at the same time. The keyholes were located such that no one person could reach them both at the same time. It was a complicated procedure, in way, yet very simple---the only thing standing between the world and nuclear war.
After explaining how it worked, she asked for a volunteer to play "commander" for a launch simulation. When no one else volunteered, I stepped forward and raised my hand. She told me to sit in the commander's chair in front of the control monitor.
She was to play the deputy. She told me to give a countdown to launch, which I did in crisp military fashion. Then we both turned our keys and held them in position for four seconds. At that point series of lights on the control panel started to go on, indicating that had this been a real scenario, the rocket engines were powering up, and the silo cover was being pulled back. After 58 seconds, like clockwork, the launch light came. At that point, there would have no way in the world to recall or disarm the missile. The fate of the world would have been sealed.
A few minutes later, our guide led us down a long tight science-fictionesque hallway to the silo. Through several small windows. one could see the missile itself, one of the few remaining in existence from the program. It was enormous and gloriously beautiful in dull metallic silver and black, with the words US AIR FORCE on the side. The Titan II missiles had been adapted for the Gemini space program in 1965-1966, and seeing one of them brought back flashes to memories from early childhood. I always felt privileged to have grown up them, amidst all that incredible optimism and spirit of adventure.
The tour lasted about an hour until we were above ground again. It was definitely one of the highlights of my tour. Such an awesome facility, and needless to say, so much more awesome that it never had to be used for its intended purpose.
When looking on the map of the area, I noticed the Titan Missile Museum a few miles south of town on the Interstate. It is basically a preserved nuclear missile silo. The last time I had taught college physics, I had used the history of rocketry as a theme. This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.
My uncle, who is an engineer at a well-known electronics manufacturer, readily endorsed the choice, telling me that he had taken my grandfather there, and that "it was like being back in the 1950s."
After having spent most of Sunday working in my hotel room, I allowed myself to take Monday afternoon off. I drove south on the Interstate a few miles to the exit in the small town where the museum was.
The visitor center was small plain building. I paid nine fifty for the entrance. I was just in time for the tour. I took a seat in small room where man was giving a lecture about the history of the facility. Of the two dozen people in the room, I looked to be the youngest by many years.
The Titan II missile program, I learned, had been started in the early 1960s to replace the earlier generation of Titan I and Atlas missiles. That earlier generation had used liquid oxygen as a propellent. Although it functions great as rocket fuel, it is highly unstable, and had to be stored outside the engine, until launch. Loading it required almost an hour---an eternity in a nuclear attack. so the Titan II was designed with a more stable propellant. The missile could be launched in less than a minute.
I learned that the facility was one of 54 Titan II sites spread out over three locations in Arkansas, Kansas, and Arizona, and operated by the Air Force They had been decommissioned in 1982 by the Reagan administration so that the funds could be used for a newer program, the Minuteman III. Hearing about all this brought back memories to high school, when all of this was in the process of happening, especially the MX program that Reagan wanted but which never happened because of lack of funding. My fascination with the Cold War nuclear strategy was one of the reasons I went to Georgetown.
A video tape told us about the security procedures of how the crew checked in for each 24-hour "alert," as they were called. At each stage, one had to pick up and phone and get clearance from the crew inside. It all seemed quaint and old-fashioned by today's security standards--yet it worked. We also learned about the "tipsies," the scoop-like security devices around the silo cover that sent invisible laser beams back and forth, and which alerted the crew to any security breach on the ground.
Afterwards, the volunteer giving us our briefing told me to put on a blue hard hat, since I was over five foot ten. He led us outside and down a flight of metal stairs past the "Beware of Rattlesnakes" signs. It was an issue out of the desert, he said, especially when no one used the stairs for twenty four hours.
We entered through the thick steel door that guaranteed temporary survival from a nearby hit, and passed the light fixtures suspended from springs, and into the underground control room that turned out to be a suspended within its shell by huge springs to absorb the shock of an attack, in order to allow the crew to launch the missile according to any orders received.
My uncle had been right. It was like a trip back in time. The control room was lined by banks of period electronics, gauges, and dials. The shelves were full of three-ring binders of checklists and manuals.
Our tour guide inside the solo was a woman who had been the first female commander of a Titan II installation, during the last few years of the program in the 1980s. She explained what all the computers were for---guide systems, targets and status monitors. The crew never knew what the target actually was, she said. All they knew was whether the burst would happen in the air above the target or at ground level.
She explained how the launch orders came (or didn't come, as it happened), via a radio alert followed by a long series of letters and numbers that the two crew members had to copy down simultaneously and then compare. Then they went to a safe that had to be unlocked by both of them, to retrieve the correct paper envelope. Inside the envelope was a verification key to be compared with the numbers and letters they received. This would verify that the order to launch had come from the president.
Then each of the two crew members had to turn and hold their keys at the same time. The keyholes were located such that no one person could reach them both at the same time. It was a complicated procedure, in way, yet very simple---the only thing standing between the world and nuclear war.
After explaining how it worked, she asked for a volunteer to play "commander" for a launch simulation. When no one else volunteered, I stepped forward and raised my hand. She told me to sit in the commander's chair in front of the control monitor.
She was to play the deputy. She told me to give a countdown to launch, which I did in crisp military fashion. Then we both turned our keys and held them in position for four seconds. At that point series of lights on the control panel started to go on, indicating that had this been a real scenario, the rocket engines were powering up, and the silo cover was being pulled back. After 58 seconds, like clockwork, the launch light came. At that point, there would have no way in the world to recall or disarm the missile. The fate of the world would have been sealed.
A few minutes later, our guide led us down a long tight science-fictionesque hallway to the silo. Through several small windows. one could see the missile itself, one of the few remaining in existence from the program. It was enormous and gloriously beautiful in dull metallic silver and black, with the words US AIR FORCE on the side. The Titan II missiles had been adapted for the Gemini space program in 1965-1966, and seeing one of them brought back flashes to memories from early childhood. I always felt privileged to have grown up them, amidst all that incredible optimism and spirit of adventure.
The tour lasted about an hour until we were above ground again. It was definitely one of the highlights of my tour. Such an awesome facility, and needless to say, so much more awesome that it never had to be used for its intended purpose.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Slipping and Sliding Above the Saguaros
The car accident left me a bit rattled for the rest of the day. It was hard to believe my good consequence. Something in me had a hard time accepting that everything was OK.
I spent the rest of the afternoon working at the Starbucks on Broadway and Campbell. Ironically the conference Skype call that had prompted my haste never materialized. Every couple minutes I kept being distracted by how lucky I'd been. When I went out and started the car in the late afternoon, it still surprised me that I could start it up and drive it away, as if nothing had happened.
The next day---Saturday---I had planned to finally do some snowshoeing. As far south as Tucson is, there is actually a ski area atop nearby Mount Lemmon. The freak storm from the week before had actually left snow on Tucson itself, forcing the postponement of a golf tournament. I wanted to get up to the top of the mountain while the going was still good. Even if the snow wasn't top notch, at least I could say that I snowshoed in southern Arizona.
On the map, the road up the mountain was a series of switchbacks going up over six thousand feet. The idea of taking my car up the road gave me jitters. But it occurred to me that it would be good way of testing it out. If anything was wrong with it, it would probably show up on the trip up the mountain.
I set off in mid morning. From tDown in Tucson it was sunny and warm, a beautiful clear spring day. Right as the road came to the foot of the mountain there was a sign saying it was 23 miles to the ski area. For the first couple miles going up hill, the road was lined with more saguaros than one could imagine seeing in one eyeshot. Then at almost exactly 4000 feet, they abruptly stopped and gave way to less picturesque desert scrub.
At around 6500 feet, I began to see signs of snow on the north sides of the slopes. After a couple more miles, there was plenty of snow alongside the road, but it wasn't the very deep, and with many bare spots.
The car did perfectly the whole way, cruising uphill while swishing back and forth and the constant curves. There wasn't the slightest indication of the incident from the day before.
After forty minutes I reached the parking lot of the small ski area. It was not a big area---just a few steep runs. But they were covered with snow view down the mountain the valley below was spectacular.
It was still warm in the parking lot, but I geared up with a couple layers, just in case. I carried my snowshoes across the snowless parking lot to the lodge at the base of the first run. On the way I saw a sign saying "No walking on the slopes." From the look of things, I did not get the impression that snowshoers were welcome.
I asked the guy at the ski patrol hut about good snowshoeing. He suggested I go to a nearby place called Bear Wallow, a couple miles back down the road. But his directions left me confused.
I tried to follow them, but turn a wrong turn into the community of Summerhaven. On the outskirts of town I found a trailhead that led up the mountainside in an area of remnants from a forest fire in recent years.
The day was beautiful, but the landscape was less than inspiring. Moreover the trail was less than idea for snowshoeing. In summer it was obviously a narrow easy hiking trail up the mountain with many switchbacks and a gradual slope.
The recent snowfall, partially melted, had covered the narrow trail making traverses rather difficult. It was the kind of snow that was perfect for snowball fights but on the edge of becoming too mushy for snowshoeing. In many places, each time I planted my downhill foot it began to slide down the hill. The MSRs have great traction but there is not much you can do when the snow itself begins to give way below you.
Moreover the barren winter trail was lined with thorny bushes that grabbed and held my jacket repeatedly. I fight like I was really fighting the conditions to get a good hike in. About half hour in, I decided I no longer wanted to fight the sliding snow on the traverses. The landscape was simply not appealing enough. I'd gotten a good enough workout for the day. It was definitely enough to say that I'd legitimately snowshoed outside of Tucson.
On the way down the mountain I passed the sign for Bear Wallow that the ranger mentioned and saw that it was a flat forest road winding away from the road---the perfect kind of snowshoe trail. But I was already spent by then.
I thought perhaps I'd gotten the last good snowshoe weekend in for the season. But the weather forecast is calling for another storm this weekend. The sky to the west is already menacing. I might have to make another trip up the mountain after all. The car seems ready.
I spent the rest of the afternoon working at the Starbucks on Broadway and Campbell. Ironically the conference Skype call that had prompted my haste never materialized. Every couple minutes I kept being distracted by how lucky I'd been. When I went out and started the car in the late afternoon, it still surprised me that I could start it up and drive it away, as if nothing had happened.
The next day---Saturday---I had planned to finally do some snowshoeing. As far south as Tucson is, there is actually a ski area atop nearby Mount Lemmon. The freak storm from the week before had actually left snow on Tucson itself, forcing the postponement of a golf tournament. I wanted to get up to the top of the mountain while the going was still good. Even if the snow wasn't top notch, at least I could say that I snowshoed in southern Arizona.
On the map, the road up the mountain was a series of switchbacks going up over six thousand feet. The idea of taking my car up the road gave me jitters. But it occurred to me that it would be good way of testing it out. If anything was wrong with it, it would probably show up on the trip up the mountain.
I set off in mid morning. From tDown in Tucson it was sunny and warm, a beautiful clear spring day. Right as the road came to the foot of the mountain there was a sign saying it was 23 miles to the ski area. For the first couple miles going up hill, the road was lined with more saguaros than one could imagine seeing in one eyeshot. Then at almost exactly 4000 feet, they abruptly stopped and gave way to less picturesque desert scrub.
At around 6500 feet, I began to see signs of snow on the north sides of the slopes. After a couple more miles, there was plenty of snow alongside the road, but it wasn't the very deep, and with many bare spots.
The car did perfectly the whole way, cruising uphill while swishing back and forth and the constant curves. There wasn't the slightest indication of the incident from the day before.
After forty minutes I reached the parking lot of the small ski area. It was not a big area---just a few steep runs. But they were covered with snow view down the mountain the valley below was spectacular.
It was still warm in the parking lot, but I geared up with a couple layers, just in case. I carried my snowshoes across the snowless parking lot to the lodge at the base of the first run. On the way I saw a sign saying "No walking on the slopes." From the look of things, I did not get the impression that snowshoers were welcome.
I asked the guy at the ski patrol hut about good snowshoeing. He suggested I go to a nearby place called Bear Wallow, a couple miles back down the road. But his directions left me confused.
I tried to follow them, but turn a wrong turn into the community of Summerhaven. On the outskirts of town I found a trailhead that led up the mountainside in an area of remnants from a forest fire in recent years.
The day was beautiful, but the landscape was less than inspiring. Moreover the trail was less than idea for snowshoeing. In summer it was obviously a narrow easy hiking trail up the mountain with many switchbacks and a gradual slope.
The recent snowfall, partially melted, had covered the narrow trail making traverses rather difficult. It was the kind of snow that was perfect for snowball fights but on the edge of becoming too mushy for snowshoeing. In many places, each time I planted my downhill foot it began to slide down the hill. The MSRs have great traction but there is not much you can do when the snow itself begins to give way below you.
Moreover the barren winter trail was lined with thorny bushes that grabbed and held my jacket repeatedly. I fight like I was really fighting the conditions to get a good hike in. About half hour in, I decided I no longer wanted to fight the sliding snow on the traverses. The landscape was simply not appealing enough. I'd gotten a good enough workout for the day. It was definitely enough to say that I'd legitimately snowshoed outside of Tucson.
On the way down the mountain I passed the sign for Bear Wallow that the ranger mentioned and saw that it was a flat forest road winding away from the road---the perfect kind of snowshoe trail. But I was already spent by then.
I thought perhaps I'd gotten the last good snowshoe weekend in for the season. But the weather forecast is calling for another storm this weekend. The sky to the west is already menacing. I might have to make another trip up the mountain after all. The car seems ready.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
The Bimmer Takes a Hit
I'd been in Tucson for three days, having spent most of the days working. It was a busy week at work and I had only a little time to see any of the local sights.
My aunt had suggested a few local eating establishments I might like, including a diner on Grant Street, a few miles down from my hotel, that was a favorite of her daughter's.
he
On Friday morning I looked up the address online and drove there for a late breakfast. It was a classic old-time kind of place, just like in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, with a counter and round stools, where I took a seat and ordered scrambled eggs and bacon without toast, as is my custom.
It was a little past eleven when I finished. I had a conference Skype call scheduled with some co-workers at noon, so I paid the bill and left the restaurant, with the intention of getting to a nearby Starbucks by the U of A campus in time for the call.
I was heading west on the bumpy asphalt of Grant (the streets in Tucson all seem torn up). The traffic was moving along at about 40 mph. I was in the left lane, with the intention of taking a left when I got to Campbell.
All at once I saw the traffic in front of me come to a quick halt. The right lane was clear but the left lane was blocked. So I jammed on the brakes hard, and after a split second of wondering what might happen, I realized I was going to stop with plenty of room to spare.
Then I instantly looked up into the rear view mirror, where it was a different story altogether. I could see the red car coming in the lane towards me. It was slowing but the equationless extrapolation in my head told me immediately: he's not going to make it. I realized I was going to be hit.
The red car's brakes squealed in the last instant, and then BAMMMM!! I felt the hard jolt rock the car.
I was unharmed, it seemed. There was manifestly no issue about that. But I was I was filled instantly with a cocktail of wild emotions. Immediately I felt the great mixture of sadness and anger that my car was probably severely damaged. For a car this old, any major body damage is basically a mortal wound. My day, my week, my month were all about to get very complicated. The road trip as I knew it, and my current lifestyle, was certainly finished.
I sprang from the car almost immediately, filled not with this sadness-anger, but instead somewhat elated by a counter emotion: it wasn't my fault! I knew from driver's ed that in this time of collision it is always the fault of the person who hits from behind. Just knowing that made me feel like I was as light as a clould.
The driver of the red car, a 2006 Toyota as it happened, had already gotten out of his car as well, in the middle of Grant Street. He was dark skinned, about twenty years old. I figured he was Hispanic. The traffic was whizzing by us. A whole line of car were stopped behind us.
As I walked back alongside my car on the driver's side, I saw the front of the red Toyota. It looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it for a few minutes. The grill was mangled and lying on the ground.
I mentally braced myself for what the back of my car would look like. I pictured the rear end bent in, and the trunk door pried open. If I were lucky it would still be driveable.
But when I got the space between our cars and looked at mine, I was filled with overwhelming happy relief. From all appearances, my car looked as if it hadn't incurred even a scratch from the whole incident. The bumper was as straight and level as before. The only indication that my car had even been in an accident were the red shards of the other car sitting on the bumper of my own. BMW 1, Toyota 0.
But my happiness was tempered with caution? What about internal injuries? My car has probably 300,000 miles on it at this point (the odometer broke last year at 254K). A jolt as hard it sustained might have damaged the drive train or the suspension.
The driver of the Toyota looked at my and said hopefully, "looks like your car is OK."
"I don't know that yet," I said back curtly. Whenever I am in this kind of incident, I tend to get very tight-lipped and business-like, out of a fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. I had ever right to this caution, of course.
I asked him if he had insurance. He said yes, but that he didn't have it with him. His girlfriend had it, because it was her car. Hell, this is not going to be good, I thought.
He suggested moving the cars out of traffic. I balked at this at first, not wanting to be buffaloed into doing anything wrong.
While this was happening, several people had come up to help, or just to watch. A guy called out to be from across the street. He was the employee of auto body shop there.
"It's all on camera," he said, pointing back to the building. "In case you need it." I told him thanks.
After thinking about few seconds more, I realized moving the cars was the best thing to do.
It was the dire moment of truth, when I turned the key. The car started up fine. I put it in gear and steered it a few feet away to the parking lot of a lumber yard on the right hand side of the road. I half expected the other driver just to split, but he followed me and parked beside me.
He told me that he would get his insurance info and call me, and that I could even follow him to his girlfriend's house if I wanted. I told him just to give me his contact info. I got my clipboard out of my backpack and handed him my pen.
His named turned out to be Arab instead of Hispanic. He kept repeating how he would call me as soon as he got home. The more he insisted, the more I assumed that I was never going to hear from him.
I wrote down the license plate of his car---it had an NFL Arizona Cardinals theme. At his suggestion, I took pictures of both of our cars with my smartphone.
By this time I was eager to get rid of him, so we parted ways. I drove off into traffic and brought the car up to speed as I approached Campbell, then turned left, following my original plan.
I kept expecting to hear some dreadful noise of scraping of whomping from the undercarriage, to have the car pull off to an angle from a screwed-up alignment.
But all seemed utterly normal. It seemed almost too perfect, to have gotten away from the incident with absolutely no consequence. I even had time to make my Skype conference call.
My aunt had suggested a few local eating establishments I might like, including a diner on Grant Street, a few miles down from my hotel, that was a favorite of her daughter's.
he
On Friday morning I looked up the address online and drove there for a late breakfast. It was a classic old-time kind of place, just like in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, with a counter and round stools, where I took a seat and ordered scrambled eggs and bacon without toast, as is my custom.
It was a little past eleven when I finished. I had a conference Skype call scheduled with some co-workers at noon, so I paid the bill and left the restaurant, with the intention of getting to a nearby Starbucks by the U of A campus in time for the call.
I was heading west on the bumpy asphalt of Grant (the streets in Tucson all seem torn up). The traffic was moving along at about 40 mph. I was in the left lane, with the intention of taking a left when I got to Campbell.
All at once I saw the traffic in front of me come to a quick halt. The right lane was clear but the left lane was blocked. So I jammed on the brakes hard, and after a split second of wondering what might happen, I realized I was going to stop with plenty of room to spare.
Then I instantly looked up into the rear view mirror, where it was a different story altogether. I could see the red car coming in the lane towards me. It was slowing but the equationless extrapolation in my head told me immediately: he's not going to make it. I realized I was going to be hit.
The red car's brakes squealed in the last instant, and then BAMMMM!! I felt the hard jolt rock the car.
I was unharmed, it seemed. There was manifestly no issue about that. But I was I was filled instantly with a cocktail of wild emotions. Immediately I felt the great mixture of sadness and anger that my car was probably severely damaged. For a car this old, any major body damage is basically a mortal wound. My day, my week, my month were all about to get very complicated. The road trip as I knew it, and my current lifestyle, was certainly finished.
I sprang from the car almost immediately, filled not with this sadness-anger, but instead somewhat elated by a counter emotion: it wasn't my fault! I knew from driver's ed that in this time of collision it is always the fault of the person who hits from behind. Just knowing that made me feel like I was as light as a clould.
The driver of the red car, a 2006 Toyota as it happened, had already gotten out of his car as well, in the middle of Grant Street. He was dark skinned, about twenty years old. I figured he was Hispanic. The traffic was whizzing by us. A whole line of car were stopped behind us.
As I walked back alongside my car on the driver's side, I saw the front of the red Toyota. It looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it for a few minutes. The grill was mangled and lying on the ground.
I mentally braced myself for what the back of my car would look like. I pictured the rear end bent in, and the trunk door pried open. If I were lucky it would still be driveable.
But when I got the space between our cars and looked at mine, I was filled with overwhelming happy relief. From all appearances, my car looked as if it hadn't incurred even a scratch from the whole incident. The bumper was as straight and level as before. The only indication that my car had even been in an accident were the red shards of the other car sitting on the bumper of my own. BMW 1, Toyota 0.
But my happiness was tempered with caution? What about internal injuries? My car has probably 300,000 miles on it at this point (the odometer broke last year at 254K). A jolt as hard it sustained might have damaged the drive train or the suspension.
The driver of the Toyota looked at my and said hopefully, "looks like your car is OK."
"I don't know that yet," I said back curtly. Whenever I am in this kind of incident, I tend to get very tight-lipped and business-like, out of a fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. I had ever right to this caution, of course.
I asked him if he had insurance. He said yes, but that he didn't have it with him. His girlfriend had it, because it was her car. Hell, this is not going to be good, I thought.
He suggested moving the cars out of traffic. I balked at this at first, not wanting to be buffaloed into doing anything wrong.
While this was happening, several people had come up to help, or just to watch. A guy called out to be from across the street. He was the employee of auto body shop there.
"It's all on camera," he said, pointing back to the building. "In case you need it." I told him thanks.
After thinking about few seconds more, I realized moving the cars was the best thing to do.
It was the dire moment of truth, when I turned the key. The car started up fine. I put it in gear and steered it a few feet away to the parking lot of a lumber yard on the right hand side of the road. I half expected the other driver just to split, but he followed me and parked beside me.
He told me that he would get his insurance info and call me, and that I could even follow him to his girlfriend's house if I wanted. I told him just to give me his contact info. I got my clipboard out of my backpack and handed him my pen.
His named turned out to be Arab instead of Hispanic. He kept repeating how he would call me as soon as he got home. The more he insisted, the more I assumed that I was never going to hear from him.
I wrote down the license plate of his car---it had an NFL Arizona Cardinals theme. At his suggestion, I took pictures of both of our cars with my smartphone.
By this time I was eager to get rid of him, so we parted ways. I drove off into traffic and brought the car up to speed as I approached Campbell, then turned left, following my original plan.
I kept expecting to hear some dreadful noise of scraping of whomping from the undercarriage, to have the car pull off to an angle from a screwed-up alignment.
But all seemed utterly normal. It seemed almost too perfect, to have gotten away from the incident with absolutely no consequence. I even had time to make my Skype conference call.
Across Twenty-Four Springtimes in Tucson
I'd been to Tucson once before in my life, literally half my lifetime ago, when I was 24 years old.
It was May of 1989. I had just been to the graduate physics program at the University of Texas with a teaching position that I knew would allow me to support myself there. I had driven down from Colorado to Austin in the Renault Fuego, white with black interior, that I owned then, to drop off some possessions at the house of a high school friend who had moved to Austin a couple years before that, and who had graciously allowed to store my stuff in his garage for the summer.
The heat of Texas was overwhelming, and I wanted to be inside the air conditioning all the time, but I was dazzled by being in a completely new and blank-slate place, and to be starting not just another chapter in my life, I thought, but a whole new series of chapters.
I felt free of the past. My undergraduate years in Oregon, and the emotional turmoil of the previous summer, suddenly seemed it had happened a decade before, belonging to chapters now closed and finished.
Ironically I was on my way to Oregon, having driven west from Austin across Texas and southern New Mexico to reach Tucson. I was on my way to Salem for the commencement exercises of my graduation. I had officially graduated the previous semester, but Willamette, being a small college, held the ceremony only once a year in May.
My aunt and uncle were living in a different house then, one that was also set in the rugged hills amidst cacti. Their two children still lived at home with them. I shared a room with my cousin Mark, my junior by eighteen years, who was studying karate and enjoyed practicing it in a very rambunctious manner.
It was still spring but it was hotter than heck in Tucson. My aunt and uncle introduced me to their cooling system---a swamp cooler, that was adapted to desert climates. They suggested I visit the nearby Desert Museum, which I drove to in one afternoon. I walked around for a couple hours then went back to my car, the sun still high in the sky. The black interior of the car had heated up so much that I couldn't touch the steering wheel or the gear shift at all. With no working air conditioning in the vehicle, I thought I was going to have wait until the sun went down, but somehow I used a towel to gingerly start and steer the car until I could stand to grasp the wheel.
I stayed in Tucson a couple nights before heading up to Phoenix to visit my high school friend Randy S. who was studying architectural design at ASU. Then drove out to L.A to visit another friend, then up U.S. 101 through Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo to the Bay Area, to visit my friend David C.
When I got to Oregon it was the mid May, the most beautiful and rich time of the year to be there, one I rarely got to experience much, since I always left at the end of the spring semester. I stayed with a college friend in the Portland suburb of West Linn, only going back to Salem for a couple hours. I went to the library and watched as students walked along the Mill Stream, feeling so much not a part of that place anymore, and knowing it was time to let it all go.
Then I went back to my car, donned my graduation robe and walk over to the football stadium for the ceremony.
I was done with all of that. I lingered in West Linn a few days then looped up through western Washington and down through Idaho back towards Colorado. I was joyful, and carefree, in the most direct sense of that word. My future was blooming before my eyes.
It would be tempting to say that coming back here has brought back that state of mind, but I know it doesn't work that way. If you've ever tried to recapture a feeling you had in a place by going back there, you will almost always be very disappointed.
I felt then like I was in the springtime of my life. To say that I feel that way now again is not exactly correct. The facts of life are that I am no longer twenty-four years old. Some things are privilege of youth that age cannot retain, no matter how much we wish so such.
Yet something inside me struggles to feel that newness again, or to allow myself to feel that way, against all reason that I shouldn't be able to now. It's so trite to say just go with it, you're as young as you feel, but there are few spectacles more disgusting that watching someone try to falsely preserve or capture an adolescent state of mind.
This is the crux of the struggle, the pain of allowing oneself to tap into what you convince yourself is the fountain of eternal renewal. Let go of the past, others can say to you so blithely and easily, as if all it takes it opening your fingers and releasing the taut line of a kite that is pulling you backwards.
Against this is the craving to give meaning to past pain by lingering on it, as if the only way to justify experience is by brooding over it sufficiently. Is all growth simply a bathing in the waters of memory oblivion?
It was May of 1989. I had just been to the graduate physics program at the University of Texas with a teaching position that I knew would allow me to support myself there. I had driven down from Colorado to Austin in the Renault Fuego, white with black interior, that I owned then, to drop off some possessions at the house of a high school friend who had moved to Austin a couple years before that, and who had graciously allowed to store my stuff in his garage for the summer.
The heat of Texas was overwhelming, and I wanted to be inside the air conditioning all the time, but I was dazzled by being in a completely new and blank-slate place, and to be starting not just another chapter in my life, I thought, but a whole new series of chapters.
I felt free of the past. My undergraduate years in Oregon, and the emotional turmoil of the previous summer, suddenly seemed it had happened a decade before, belonging to chapters now closed and finished.
Ironically I was on my way to Oregon, having driven west from Austin across Texas and southern New Mexico to reach Tucson. I was on my way to Salem for the commencement exercises of my graduation. I had officially graduated the previous semester, but Willamette, being a small college, held the ceremony only once a year in May.
My aunt and uncle were living in a different house then, one that was also set in the rugged hills amidst cacti. Their two children still lived at home with them. I shared a room with my cousin Mark, my junior by eighteen years, who was studying karate and enjoyed practicing it in a very rambunctious manner.
It was still spring but it was hotter than heck in Tucson. My aunt and uncle introduced me to their cooling system---a swamp cooler, that was adapted to desert climates. They suggested I visit the nearby Desert Museum, which I drove to in one afternoon. I walked around for a couple hours then went back to my car, the sun still high in the sky. The black interior of the car had heated up so much that I couldn't touch the steering wheel or the gear shift at all. With no working air conditioning in the vehicle, I thought I was going to have wait until the sun went down, but somehow I used a towel to gingerly start and steer the car until I could stand to grasp the wheel.
I stayed in Tucson a couple nights before heading up to Phoenix to visit my high school friend Randy S. who was studying architectural design at ASU. Then drove out to L.A to visit another friend, then up U.S. 101 through Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo to the Bay Area, to visit my friend David C.
When I got to Oregon it was the mid May, the most beautiful and rich time of the year to be there, one I rarely got to experience much, since I always left at the end of the spring semester. I stayed with a college friend in the Portland suburb of West Linn, only going back to Salem for a couple hours. I went to the library and watched as students walked along the Mill Stream, feeling so much not a part of that place anymore, and knowing it was time to let it all go.
Then I went back to my car, donned my graduation robe and walk over to the football stadium for the ceremony.
I was done with all of that. I lingered in West Linn a few days then looped up through western Washington and down through Idaho back towards Colorado. I was joyful, and carefree, in the most direct sense of that word. My future was blooming before my eyes.
It would be tempting to say that coming back here has brought back that state of mind, but I know it doesn't work that way. If you've ever tried to recapture a feeling you had in a place by going back there, you will almost always be very disappointed.
I felt then like I was in the springtime of my life. To say that I feel that way now again is not exactly correct. The facts of life are that I am no longer twenty-four years old. Some things are privilege of youth that age cannot retain, no matter how much we wish so such.
Yet something inside me struggles to feel that newness again, or to allow myself to feel that way, against all reason that I shouldn't be able to now. It's so trite to say just go with it, you're as young as you feel, but there are few spectacles more disgusting that watching someone try to falsely preserve or capture an adolescent state of mind.
This is the crux of the struggle, the pain of allowing oneself to tap into what you convince yourself is the fountain of eternal renewal. Let go of the past, others can say to you so blithely and easily, as if all it takes it opening your fingers and releasing the taut line of a kite that is pulling you backwards.
Against this is the craving to give meaning to past pain by lingering on it, as if the only way to justify experience is by brooding over it sufficiently. Is all growth simply a bathing in the waters of memory oblivion?
Friday, March 1, 2013
Suddenly Saguaros
After an hour along Interstate 17, I took a break at a rest area where I walked down to the observation deck over a nearby canyon. Only a few more miles south, the road started to descend from the mountains and all at once beside the road there were saguaro cacti, the very emblem of Arizona. There is something so comically stereotypical about seeing them. I couldn't help but smile a big smile.
In mid afternoon I piloted the car through the early rush hour of the freeways of Phoenix, then was out in the bare desert again, zipping southeast on I-10 past Picacho Peak. With an hour of daylight to spare, I reached Tucson, my destination, where I'd already booked a week at the Super 8 just off the freeway on Grant Road.
I'd chosen the location because it was nearby to my aunt and uncle's house in the hills on the west edge of Tucson. It was the primary purpose of my visit--to see them. But it would also be a chance to get to know Tucson, and to have some fun in the area as well.
Improbably, Tucson had recently received snow, in the same storm that left my car buried outside the motel in Flagstaff. If I could get to the top of nearby Mount Lemmon in time, I might actually get in some more snowshoeing.
In mid afternoon I piloted the car through the early rush hour of the freeways of Phoenix, then was out in the bare desert again, zipping southeast on I-10 past Picacho Peak. With an hour of daylight to spare, I reached Tucson, my destination, where I'd already booked a week at the Super 8 just off the freeway on Grant Road.
I'd chosen the location because it was nearby to my aunt and uncle's house in the hills on the west edge of Tucson. It was the primary purpose of my visit--to see them. But it would also be a chance to get to know Tucson, and to have some fun in the area as well.
Improbably, Tucson had recently received snow, in the same storm that left my car buried outside the motel in Flagstaff. If I could get to the top of nearby Mount Lemmon in time, I might actually get in some more snowshoeing.
My Zenlike Arizona Mind
Sedona was so nice that I stayed a third night. The Estonian woman at the Super 8 joked about making me ask for another day in my room in her native language. I called her bluff, and asked her sincerely what I should say, but she waved me off with a laugh.
On the last morning, after putting in a few hours work, I took a short break with a two-hour hike up the trail to Brinn's Mesa, which afforded a splendid view over the valley and the town.
By early afternoon I was on the road southward on Interstate 17, following the valley of the Verde River and up over the mountains in the Prescott National Forest, a place for which I'd once authored the Wikipedia article years ago, during my intense Wikipedia phase.
The feeling of great peace mixed with youthful excitement about the unknown that lies ahead along the road that has first overtaken me outside Las Vegas, and which had been amplified among the rocks of Sedona, lingered with me.
Among the reasons I had embarked on this round of a road tripping, almost a year ago, was the explicit desire to rid myself of a ennui of stagnation and regret. I suppose I believed that it was a fool's mission, that all I would prove to myself was the impossible at this stage of my life of using travel to accomplish this type of transformation. I don't think I expected it would work, even temporarily.
As one learns as one grows older, recapturing the excitement of youth is at times possible but it has consequences. One tends forget that this excitement was blended with an anxiety of one's identity and place in the world that was not always pleasant. To touch again upon that youthful excitement seemed to always evoke that concomitant anxiety without exception. The dividends of the identity-security that come with age is an often overlooked treasure.
Yet I felt none of that anxiety. Traveling down the Interstate, free of worries, it was as if I were traveling the knife-edge of some equilibrium of both the excitement and uncertainty of the future but without the anxiety.
Maybe it was just the road trip kicking in, after so many months. Maybe it was Arizona. It had occurred to me that despite the seeming arbitrary nature of border lines on a map, that each State of Union seemed to bring to me a different State of Being, somehow, perhaps because I gave myself license to feel differently.
Arizona---was it the fact that I had no virtually no personal history here? I'd passed through a couple times, years ago, and each visit was brief and pleasant. For the most part, this place was a blank slate to me, I kept being carried back to the spring I first went to Texas, a whole new state to me then, when so much of my past (up until then) seemed irrelevant and far away.
On the last morning, after putting in a few hours work, I took a short break with a two-hour hike up the trail to Brinn's Mesa, which afforded a splendid view over the valley and the town.
By early afternoon I was on the road southward on Interstate 17, following the valley of the Verde River and up over the mountains in the Prescott National Forest, a place for which I'd once authored the Wikipedia article years ago, during my intense Wikipedia phase.
The feeling of great peace mixed with youthful excitement about the unknown that lies ahead along the road that has first overtaken me outside Las Vegas, and which had been amplified among the rocks of Sedona, lingered with me.
Among the reasons I had embarked on this round of a road tripping, almost a year ago, was the explicit desire to rid myself of a ennui of stagnation and regret. I suppose I believed that it was a fool's mission, that all I would prove to myself was the impossible at this stage of my life of using travel to accomplish this type of transformation. I don't think I expected it would work, even temporarily.
As one learns as one grows older, recapturing the excitement of youth is at times possible but it has consequences. One tends forget that this excitement was blended with an anxiety of one's identity and place in the world that was not always pleasant. To touch again upon that youthful excitement seemed to always evoke that concomitant anxiety without exception. The dividends of the identity-security that come with age is an often overlooked treasure.
Yet I felt none of that anxiety. Traveling down the Interstate, free of worries, it was as if I were traveling the knife-edge of some equilibrium of both the excitement and uncertainty of the future but without the anxiety.
Maybe it was just the road trip kicking in, after so many months. Maybe it was Arizona. It had occurred to me that despite the seeming arbitrary nature of border lines on a map, that each State of Union seemed to bring to me a different State of Being, somehow, perhaps because I gave myself license to feel differently.
Arizona---was it the fact that I had no virtually no personal history here? I'd passed through a couple times, years ago, and each visit was brief and pleasant. For the most part, this place was a blank slate to me, I kept being carried back to the spring I first went to Texas, a whole new state to me then, when so much of my past (up until then) seemed irrelevant and far away.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
The Magnetic Power of Sedona
A couple months ago I was in the secluded hills above Berkeley, having one of those only-in-California experiences. In the sprawling backyard behind the house, on the steep mountainside, four of us were sitting in a hot tub, watching the sunset over the San Francisco Bay towards the Marin headlands and the Golden Gate.
One of the women in the tub, a resident of Santa Cruz, was waxing about her recent travels. She mentioned having gone to Sedona, Arizona, where she had stayed several days while seeking out the locations of the "energy vortices" there.
I listened with somewhat detached bemusement. I'd never heard of the vortices. But I'm not one to judge how and where other people find inspiration and spiritual uplifting, even if it's not my thing.
Yet it did make me put Sedona on my list of places to visit. To be fair, I probably would have gone there anyway, since my aunt in Tucson insisted that I do while I was in Arizona, but I'm also fascinated by the places that other people find fascinating, for whatever reason. I'll use just about anything for an excuse for a mini-pilgrimmage. It makes for more interesting road trips, to pretend to give a damn about things.
Before leaving Flagstaff, I'd booked a couple nights at the Super 8 in Sedona. After coming down from my snowshoeing adventure on Humphreys Peak, I drove through Flagstaff one last time and guided the BMW onto the Interstate heading south for a few miles until exiting to follow the cutoff that heads through the mountains about thirty miles to Sedona.
I was not prepared for how quickly the road dropped in altitude, a couple thousand feet over the course of a couple miles of switchbacks. I could feel myself getting warmer in the car as I descended. Winter was receding in my rear view mirror quickly.
The road along the river valley into town reminded me so much of Boulder Canyon, I kept expecting to see Boulder itself emerge at any moment.
The comparison between Boulder and Sedona is not too strained, actually, on several counts. Once out of the canyon in Sedona, one is greeted by the spectacular site of the magnificent towering red rock formations that ring the town. As with the Flatirons in Boulder, it was immediately clear why many found in Sedona a center of mystical energy of some kind.
On the way through the little downtown I was amused at the names of the businesses. Every other building seemed to house a therapist of some kind---massage, yoga, psychic, crystal healing, etc.
My hotel was on the west edge of town, along the strip of traditional businesses that line the highway. All the signs for these various businesses were styled, by ordinance no doubt, to blend in to the colors of the landscape. The 'M' of the McDonalds was turquoise.
The Super 8 turned out to be a gem of a place. Not for nothing is it listed on the website as one of the "Pride of Super 8" locations. The Estonian woman at the front desk gave me a splendid room on the third floor, perhaps because I delighed her by knowing a little Estonian. The room reminded me of some of the better Best Western Plus rooms, and with a gorgeous view out towards the rock formations north of town. It even had TCM!
But just prove that "no room is perfect," the room was in the unfortunate category of having all its power outlets, save the one in the bathroom, devilishly concealed behind large pieces of furniture---a holdover from the days before ubiquitous laptops and smartphones. After the next renovation, the rooms will no doubt have the new style of lamps with convenient outlets in the base, but for now I found myself awkwardly climbing below a heavy table trying to get my laptop cord into the just-out-of-reach power strip behind the television cabinet.
As for Sedona itself, i was surprised at much I found myself enjoying it right from the start. Before arriving, I'd been reminded by Wikipedia about the "Harmonic Convergence" of 1987. Whether it was just my general feeling of well-being lately on the trip, or the energy vortices (for which one can buy maps around town), I was filled during my entire visit with a peaceful equilibrium, a warm tingling subtle excitement as if I were exactly where I was supposed to be.
Part of it was certainly that it was the off season for tourists. A film festival had just begun, bringing in extra crowds, but for the most part the town was very relaxed during my visit.
Without a Starbucks in town, I had to find a substitute location for work. The web directed me a local favorite coffee shop where I quickly found the same good table each morning with a power outlet. My table was right next to a ring of couches that were always full with people conversing, and it was during a morning of work that I had a quintessential Sedona experience.
I mostly tuned out what was going on around me, but during a moment's pause in work, I overhead one of the men at the couch telling a couple women something about the use of magnets. Given my background and expertise in electromagnetism, I couldn't help but eavesdrop a little.
"The best way to do it," he said, "is to put four magnets around in a ring. That's the best way to align the chakras."
Perfect, I thought. This is really Sedona.
If only there were a hot tub nearby.
One of the women in the tub, a resident of Santa Cruz, was waxing about her recent travels. She mentioned having gone to Sedona, Arizona, where she had stayed several days while seeking out the locations of the "energy vortices" there.
I listened with somewhat detached bemusement. I'd never heard of the vortices. But I'm not one to judge how and where other people find inspiration and spiritual uplifting, even if it's not my thing.
Yet it did make me put Sedona on my list of places to visit. To be fair, I probably would have gone there anyway, since my aunt in Tucson insisted that I do while I was in Arizona, but I'm also fascinated by the places that other people find fascinating, for whatever reason. I'll use just about anything for an excuse for a mini-pilgrimmage. It makes for more interesting road trips, to pretend to give a damn about things.
Before leaving Flagstaff, I'd booked a couple nights at the Super 8 in Sedona. After coming down from my snowshoeing adventure on Humphreys Peak, I drove through Flagstaff one last time and guided the BMW onto the Interstate heading south for a few miles until exiting to follow the cutoff that heads through the mountains about thirty miles to Sedona.
I was not prepared for how quickly the road dropped in altitude, a couple thousand feet over the course of a couple miles of switchbacks. I could feel myself getting warmer in the car as I descended. Winter was receding in my rear view mirror quickly.
The road along the river valley into town reminded me so much of Boulder Canyon, I kept expecting to see Boulder itself emerge at any moment.
The comparison between Boulder and Sedona is not too strained, actually, on several counts. Once out of the canyon in Sedona, one is greeted by the spectacular site of the magnificent towering red rock formations that ring the town. As with the Flatirons in Boulder, it was immediately clear why many found in Sedona a center of mystical energy of some kind.
On the way through the little downtown I was amused at the names of the businesses. Every other building seemed to house a therapist of some kind---massage, yoga, psychic, crystal healing, etc.
My hotel was on the west edge of town, along the strip of traditional businesses that line the highway. All the signs for these various businesses were styled, by ordinance no doubt, to blend in to the colors of the landscape. The 'M' of the McDonalds was turquoise.
The Super 8 turned out to be a gem of a place. Not for nothing is it listed on the website as one of the "Pride of Super 8" locations. The Estonian woman at the front desk gave me a splendid room on the third floor, perhaps because I delighed her by knowing a little Estonian. The room reminded me of some of the better Best Western Plus rooms, and with a gorgeous view out towards the rock formations north of town. It even had TCM!
But just prove that "no room is perfect," the room was in the unfortunate category of having all its power outlets, save the one in the bathroom, devilishly concealed behind large pieces of furniture---a holdover from the days before ubiquitous laptops and smartphones. After the next renovation, the rooms will no doubt have the new style of lamps with convenient outlets in the base, but for now I found myself awkwardly climbing below a heavy table trying to get my laptop cord into the just-out-of-reach power strip behind the television cabinet.
As for Sedona itself, i was surprised at much I found myself enjoying it right from the start. Before arriving, I'd been reminded by Wikipedia about the "Harmonic Convergence" of 1987. Whether it was just my general feeling of well-being lately on the trip, or the energy vortices (for which one can buy maps around town), I was filled during my entire visit with a peaceful equilibrium, a warm tingling subtle excitement as if I were exactly where I was supposed to be.
Part of it was certainly that it was the off season for tourists. A film festival had just begun, bringing in extra crowds, but for the most part the town was very relaxed during my visit.
Without a Starbucks in town, I had to find a substitute location for work. The web directed me a local favorite coffee shop where I quickly found the same good table each morning with a power outlet. My table was right next to a ring of couches that were always full with people conversing, and it was during a morning of work that I had a quintessential Sedona experience.
I mostly tuned out what was going on around me, but during a moment's pause in work, I overhead one of the men at the couch telling a couple women something about the use of magnets. Given my background and expertise in electromagnetism, I couldn't help but eavesdrop a little.
"The best way to do it," he said, "is to put four magnets around in a ring. That's the best way to align the chakras."
Perfect, I thought. This is really Sedona.
If only there were a hot tub nearby.
Almost To the Summit of Arizona
On Saturday morning I checked out of the Flagstaff Days Inn after four nights, but I wasn't done yet with fun in the area.
After packing up the car, I threaded through town again, retracing my steps from the day before, and heading north on the highway, this time in full day light.
But I went only a couple miles this time before turning on the side road up to the Arizona Snowbowl, the ski area at the base of Humphreys Peak, the highest mountain in Arizona, in the cluster of small volcanic range that towers majestically above Flagstaff and the surrounding plateau.
After patiently waiting in the long line of cars to enter the gravel parking lot, I got waved into a spot by the attendant in an orange vest. I got out of my car amidst a hundred other people, all of whom were in the process of donning ski clothes, or taking their skis or snowboards off racks on their vehicles or from the backs of their pick-up trucks.
I felt a bit out-of-place when I took out my snowshoes and collapsible trekking poles from trunk. But there was some kind of pride in walking past them carrying my gear, and following the road further uphill to the Agassiz Lodge at the base of one of the ski runs.
From my research the night before, the trail up to the summit of Humphreys Peak went from the lodge across the face of one of the ski runs and into the wilderness area of the Coconino National Forest.
It was a brilliant sunny day, perfect for climbing in snow. I put on my snowshoes and starting walking down one of the side trails of the resort, then across the face of the wide ski run, as snowboarders and skiers whizzed past me. Given the number of amateur snowboarders flopped down in the middle of the slope while taking lessons, I couldn't have been much of a hazard as I crossed.
On the other side of the run, I located what I thought was the trailhead into the forest. I soon found myself in very deep powder in the thick forest, blazing my own trail through the recent snowfall. It was hard to believe that I could be the first one to be on the trail.
It turns out I wasn't. After about twenty minutes of very going around the trees, I stumbled on the obvious trail, which was well beaten down and easy to traverse. It was quite a relief to be out of the heavy-duty trekking in virgin powder. But in the process I learned that the MSR Lightning Ascents had plenty of flotation for my body weight.
I followed the trail through the trees along a gentle uphill slope until I reached the bottom of Dutchman's Glade, a long steep open field of snow that went directly upwards on the mountain. According to the trail directions I'd found, in summer this was an impassable rock slide area. It was usable as an ascent trail of the mountain only in winter, allowing one to shave off several miles of switchbacks on the official trail.
There were already a smattering of tracks up the steep glade in front of me, as well as sets of swishing ski tracks coming downward. A pair of college-age guys had passed me earlier in the forest trail and were already about halfway up the glade when I reached the bottom.
The path looked daunting. It was like climbing a very long set of steep stairs. But the MSRs, designed for exactly this type of slope, performed perfectly with their traction.
The only limitation was my energy reserve. Unfortunately the side trip through the deep forest powder had already left me worn out. Moreover I had stupidly forgotten to eat a hearty breakfast. Thankfully I had least packed a small Toblerone chocolate bar to replenish myself.
It took me over a half hour in shifts of climbing and heavy breathing to ascend the glade and begin following the trail further up the mountain into the forest. I stopped above the glade to finish off the chocolate while sitting on a rock. By the that time the college-age guys had already skied down the glade and had climbed back up to my position, on their way to the summit of the mountain.
The view out over the plateau was marvelous. Exhausted I found myself just wanting to linger and meditate. I had less than two miles to go to reach the summit above the tree line, but it was almost all straight upward on the mountain. After considering the day ahead, the little voice inside me said that my energy stores were too depleted to reach the summit that day. I knew I'd be risking some foolish injury if I continued. I'd already begun tripping on my snowshoes in my tired state.
So with a bit of regret, I started heading back down the trail, then down the steep glade along the path I'd followed coming up. I discovered it was in many ways more difficult to descend a steep slope in snowshoes than to ascend it. I kept having to remind myself to be careful and take it slow. I was in no hurry at this point.
In an all too short time, giving the effort of climbing, I was back at the Agassiz Lodge, tramping around the long lines of skiers and snowboarders waiting for the chairlift. Within ten minutes more I was back at my car and stripping off my snow pants and outer layers.
I'd given myself a good hike, but of course I couldn't escape the mild feeling of defeat. I would have been so good to stand on the peak that day, but reaching the summit of Arizona would have to wait until another time. I resolved to return and finish the task one day.
But it had been quite a victory in the sense of testing out the limits of my new snowshoes. They would surely cope with nearly any snowy terrain. I loved the feeling of flexibility that would give me.
Moreover, I'd been able to add Arizona to places where I'd snowshoed, something I didn't anticipate even a month ago.
After packing up the car, I threaded through town again, retracing my steps from the day before, and heading north on the highway, this time in full day light.
But I went only a couple miles this time before turning on the side road up to the Arizona Snowbowl, the ski area at the base of Humphreys Peak, the highest mountain in Arizona, in the cluster of small volcanic range that towers majestically above Flagstaff and the surrounding plateau.
After patiently waiting in the long line of cars to enter the gravel parking lot, I got waved into a spot by the attendant in an orange vest. I got out of my car amidst a hundred other people, all of whom were in the process of donning ski clothes, or taking their skis or snowboards off racks on their vehicles or from the backs of their pick-up trucks.
I felt a bit out-of-place when I took out my snowshoes and collapsible trekking poles from trunk. But there was some kind of pride in walking past them carrying my gear, and following the road further uphill to the Agassiz Lodge at the base of one of the ski runs.
From my research the night before, the trail up to the summit of Humphreys Peak went from the lodge across the face of one of the ski runs and into the wilderness area of the Coconino National Forest.
It was a brilliant sunny day, perfect for climbing in snow. I put on my snowshoes and starting walking down one of the side trails of the resort, then across the face of the wide ski run, as snowboarders and skiers whizzed past me. Given the number of amateur snowboarders flopped down in the middle of the slope while taking lessons, I couldn't have been much of a hazard as I crossed.
On the other side of the run, I located what I thought was the trailhead into the forest. I soon found myself in very deep powder in the thick forest, blazing my own trail through the recent snowfall. It was hard to believe that I could be the first one to be on the trail.
It turns out I wasn't. After about twenty minutes of very going around the trees, I stumbled on the obvious trail, which was well beaten down and easy to traverse. It was quite a relief to be out of the heavy-duty trekking in virgin powder. But in the process I learned that the MSR Lightning Ascents had plenty of flotation for my body weight.
I followed the trail through the trees along a gentle uphill slope until I reached the bottom of Dutchman's Glade, a long steep open field of snow that went directly upwards on the mountain. According to the trail directions I'd found, in summer this was an impassable rock slide area. It was usable as an ascent trail of the mountain only in winter, allowing one to shave off several miles of switchbacks on the official trail.
There were already a smattering of tracks up the steep glade in front of me, as well as sets of swishing ski tracks coming downward. A pair of college-age guys had passed me earlier in the forest trail and were already about halfway up the glade when I reached the bottom.
The path looked daunting. It was like climbing a very long set of steep stairs. But the MSRs, designed for exactly this type of slope, performed perfectly with their traction.
The only limitation was my energy reserve. Unfortunately the side trip through the deep forest powder had already left me worn out. Moreover I had stupidly forgotten to eat a hearty breakfast. Thankfully I had least packed a small Toblerone chocolate bar to replenish myself.
It took me over a half hour in shifts of climbing and heavy breathing to ascend the glade and begin following the trail further up the mountain into the forest. I stopped above the glade to finish off the chocolate while sitting on a rock. By the that time the college-age guys had already skied down the glade and had climbed back up to my position, on their way to the summit of the mountain.
The view out over the plateau was marvelous. Exhausted I found myself just wanting to linger and meditate. I had less than two miles to go to reach the summit above the tree line, but it was almost all straight upward on the mountain. After considering the day ahead, the little voice inside me said that my energy stores were too depleted to reach the summit that day. I knew I'd be risking some foolish injury if I continued. I'd already begun tripping on my snowshoes in my tired state.
So with a bit of regret, I started heading back down the trail, then down the steep glade along the path I'd followed coming up. I discovered it was in many ways more difficult to descend a steep slope in snowshoes than to ascend it. I kept having to remind myself to be careful and take it slow. I was in no hurry at this point.
In an all too short time, giving the effort of climbing, I was back at the Agassiz Lodge, tramping around the long lines of skiers and snowboarders waiting for the chairlift. Within ten minutes more I was back at my car and stripping off my snow pants and outer layers.
I'd given myself a good hike, but of course I couldn't escape the mild feeling of defeat. I would have been so good to stand on the peak that day, but reaching the summit of Arizona would have to wait until another time. I resolved to return and finish the task one day.
But it had been quite a victory in the sense of testing out the limits of my new snowshoes. They would surely cope with nearly any snowy terrain. I loved the feeling of flexibility that would give me.
Moreover, I'd been able to add Arizona to places where I'd snowshoed, something I didn't anticipate even a month ago.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Scouting the Grand Canyon at Sunrise
A couple solid days of work in Flagstaff allowed me the luxury of taking off most of Friday for the reward of a day trip. It was finally time to see the Grand Canyon, one of the last great American tourist destinations to escape me.
I wanted to go on a weekday to avoid any possible crowds, and to get there as early as possible. I was informed on Facebook that sunrise was a great time to see the canyon. Greg had called me from Memphis and told me that the canyon walls would be glistening right after a snowstorm. Everything was aligned for a perfect day.
With the idea of getting up there before dawn, I set my alarm for 0430 and prepared the car the night before by brushing off all the snow that had been sitting on it for three days. By ten minutes after five I was on the road, winding through the silent, empty streets of Flagstaff and then heading out into the pitch black on the two-lane highway heading north.
After a half hour I noticed how the dark sky was filled with stars, the kind of brilliant clear rich night where the galaxy is out in all its splendor and you seem to see ten time more stars than normal. Off to the right the stars were blotted out by the void of Humphreys Peak. There are things more ominously beautiful than the the dark outline of a mountain against the sky at night.
My early start paid off when I got to the gate of the park, with only a single other vehicle behind me. I asked the Native American woman ranger about a good place to watch the sunrise, and she pointed to a nearby overlook on the map. I noted the location but she didn't say the name, so I had to get out and hold the map in front of my headlights to find it.
I parked and followed a short trail to the overlook, at the very rim of the dark canyon, with a smattering of a dawn glow off to the east. There were about a dozen other already there, mostly Japanese tourists.
Even bundled up as I was in layers, I was soon freezing, standing in the snow, and had to withdraw my fingers into a fist in my gloves.
The sun seemed to take forever to come up, and when it did I quickly concluded that I had come needlessly early. "Sunrise" is a relative concept at the Grand Canyon. The official sunrise is of course only when the sun is visible from the rim. The recesses of the canyon stayed well dark for another hour or two.
By that time I had driven down the road to Hermit's Rest---the road being open to cars in the winter. The gift shop there had opened and I bought a mocha and warmed myself inside by the fire.
I had thought about doing some day hiking but decided to make it a driving day, skipping from one overlook to another along the South Rim, all the way down to Desert View and the tower there than affords one of the best views of the canyon in the mid morning.
The crowds were wonderfully sparse, both on the roads and on the overlook. At several, I was all by myself. At one, I find myself accompanied only by a young Japanese man who insisted we swap smartphones to self-portraits. Given the perfect clarity of the skies, it was probably the best possible day to visit the Canyon.
I was intrigued by how it is not just a "canyon," but a layered series of canyons. From many overlooks, it was clear that below the rim itself, there were several tiers of deeper and more narrowing "canyons with canyons," and then finally a narrow plunging gorge cut down to the river itself.
Of course it was overwhelming experience. I found myself simply trying to gather it in as a first approximation of appreciation, closing myself and taking mental photographs to burn into my memory, with a resolution to come back at a later day to hike down to the river.
I wanted to go on a weekday to avoid any possible crowds, and to get there as early as possible. I was informed on Facebook that sunrise was a great time to see the canyon. Greg had called me from Memphis and told me that the canyon walls would be glistening right after a snowstorm. Everything was aligned for a perfect day.
With the idea of getting up there before dawn, I set my alarm for 0430 and prepared the car the night before by brushing off all the snow that had been sitting on it for three days. By ten minutes after five I was on the road, winding through the silent, empty streets of Flagstaff and then heading out into the pitch black on the two-lane highway heading north.
After a half hour I noticed how the dark sky was filled with stars, the kind of brilliant clear rich night where the galaxy is out in all its splendor and you seem to see ten time more stars than normal. Off to the right the stars were blotted out by the void of Humphreys Peak. There are things more ominously beautiful than the the dark outline of a mountain against the sky at night.
My early start paid off when I got to the gate of the park, with only a single other vehicle behind me. I asked the Native American woman ranger about a good place to watch the sunrise, and she pointed to a nearby overlook on the map. I noted the location but she didn't say the name, so I had to get out and hold the map in front of my headlights to find it.
I parked and followed a short trail to the overlook, at the very rim of the dark canyon, with a smattering of a dawn glow off to the east. There were about a dozen other already there, mostly Japanese tourists.
Even bundled up as I was in layers, I was soon freezing, standing in the snow, and had to withdraw my fingers into a fist in my gloves.
The sun seemed to take forever to come up, and when it did I quickly concluded that I had come needlessly early. "Sunrise" is a relative concept at the Grand Canyon. The official sunrise is of course only when the sun is visible from the rim. The recesses of the canyon stayed well dark for another hour or two.
By that time I had driven down the road to Hermit's Rest---the road being open to cars in the winter. The gift shop there had opened and I bought a mocha and warmed myself inside by the fire.
I had thought about doing some day hiking but decided to make it a driving day, skipping from one overlook to another along the South Rim, all the way down to Desert View and the tower there than affords one of the best views of the canyon in the mid morning.
The crowds were wonderfully sparse, both on the roads and on the overlook. At several, I was all by myself. At one, I find myself accompanied only by a young Japanese man who insisted we swap smartphones to self-portraits. Given the perfect clarity of the skies, it was probably the best possible day to visit the Canyon.
I was intrigued by how it is not just a "canyon," but a layered series of canyons. From many overlooks, it was clear that below the rim itself, there were several tiers of deeper and more narrowing "canyons with canyons," and then finally a narrow plunging gorge cut down to the river itself.
Of course it was overwhelming experience. I found myself simply trying to gather it in as a first approximation of appreciation, closing myself and taking mental photographs to burn into my memory, with a resolution to come back at a later day to hike down to the river.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Winter Cometh to Flagstaff
After two days in Williams I checked out of the Super 8 and headed east on I-40, as there was no more Route 66 to follow for now.
The interstate climbed up further into the mountains, over the Arizona divide, and by the time I got into Flagstaff and checked into the Days Inn (on Route 66 again), I found myself surrounded by snow as if I were back in Colorado.
That night we got even more. When I woke up and opened the curtains, I was greeted by pure whiteness in the motel courtyard, with more flakes coming down. The tarp over the swimming sagged from the weight of the snow on it.
I once hated winter, but I was quite happy to see all the snow. Even though California had been chillier than I expected, I hadn't gotten any "real winter" for over a year except for detours up into the mountains for snowshoeing, and I was beginning to miss it a bit.
The nice, warm feeling lasted until I saw came downstairs outside and saw my car heaped with six inches of snow. I realized my scraper was buried deep in the trunk below my gear. The last thing I wanted to do was fish it out.
Fortunately I had no reason to use the car that day. A Starbucks, as well as many restaurants, were within walking distance, and it gave me a chance to wear the cold-weather boots I had recently picked up in REI in Reno. Having the right outfit and gear is definitely a huge prerequisite for my enjoying winter. I still hate being cold.
And being able to cope with sudden changes of plans, and to seamlessly adapt to new circumstances and carry on without missing a beat---any time I get a chance to do that makes me feel like I'm living in the real groove of life.
The interstate climbed up further into the mountains, over the Arizona divide, and by the time I got into Flagstaff and checked into the Days Inn (on Route 66 again), I found myself surrounded by snow as if I were back in Colorado.
That night we got even more. When I woke up and opened the curtains, I was greeted by pure whiteness in the motel courtyard, with more flakes coming down. The tarp over the swimming sagged from the weight of the snow on it.
I once hated winter, but I was quite happy to see all the snow. Even though California had been chillier than I expected, I hadn't gotten any "real winter" for over a year except for detours up into the mountains for snowshoeing, and I was beginning to miss it a bit.
The nice, warm feeling lasted until I saw came downstairs outside and saw my car heaped with six inches of snow. I realized my scraper was buried deep in the trunk below my gear. The last thing I wanted to do was fish it out.
Fortunately I had no reason to use the car that day. A Starbucks, as well as many restaurants, were within walking distance, and it gave me a chance to wear the cold-weather boots I had recently picked up in REI in Reno. Having the right outfit and gear is definitely a huge prerequisite for my enjoying winter. I still hate being cold.
And being able to cope with sudden changes of plans, and to seamlessly adapt to new circumstances and carry on without missing a beat---any time I get a chance to do that makes me feel like I'm living in the real groove of life.
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