PHOENIX, AZ: July 24, 2002 to August 6, 2002

To celebrate the end of my Drexel career, and the beginning of my CMU one, I took a 2-week long vacation at the end of the summer after I graduated and finished my thesis. I gave my committee members a draft and set out for a real-live vacation with sun and sand (well, it is the desert...) and loafing. I stayed with my friend Jim, who lives out there now, working for Arizona State University.

07-24 Flew out from Philadelphia International Airport at 1:55pm EDT on ATA Flight #237. Had a 4-hour layover in Chicago-Midway airport which turned into a 6-hour layover due to "technical difficulties" having stranded our flight crew in NYC; Flight #209 eventually left at 9:30pm. My friend told me not to fly ATA, and, while the plane was comfortable enough and the people were friendly, 6 hours in Midway wasn't really fun. Most of the flights I heard leaving that afternoon were either delayed or cancelled and there wasn't even any inclement weather. So ATA not high on my "reliable airlines" list right now. Anyway Jim was there to pick me up at about 11:00pm when I arrived in Phoenix and we took a cab to his apartment. Didn't do much since it was so late.

07-25 Weather Report: 105.8 today, humidity 25%, bright and sunny.
Today I caught up on my email which has been sitting in my inbox for months. Got somewhat more organized. The first days of my vacations always tend to be like this, because I never have time to stay organized while I am working. I went to the development pool where Jim lives; it isn't very deep---5 ft at the deepest---but it has nice clean water and was mostly deserted. I read by the pool and did crossword puzzles while trying to get tan and taking frequent dunks. After a while I went back to the apartment and idled in front of the television set until Jim came home from work (mmm, cable). When Jim arrived, he/we cooked an excellent salmon dinner. Salmon in cream sauce with spinach & mushrooms and rice flavored with cumin and other veggies. An amazing meal. I never have time to cook like this at home. After dinner we watched a movie called Donnie Darko, which our friends had raved about. It was interesting, but I won't ruin it by discussing it here.

07-26 Weather Report: 105.8 today, humidity 20%, bright and sunny again.
Today we had plans to pick up our rental car and drive it to the Grand Canyon, but Jim had to go to work in the morning first. He had me pack us lunches for the road, which I did---salami and turkey sandwiches with swiss and mustard on seven-grain bread. Fancy. I spent some time chatting online with people stuck at work still and waited for Jim to get home. We went and picked up the rental car from the Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Tempe; the guy who waited on us, Dan, was excessively cheerful. But I'd noticed already that the people in Arizona seem much more friendly anyway; service workers actually seem happy to be there, unlike on the east coast where they act like you're lucky they exist. Anyway we got the car which was a Dodge Neon automatic; it was white. Dan offered us a red one but I absolutely hate red so we declined :) Jim and I next went back home to get our stuff, and made a stop at the Safeway on the way out of town to get supplies for the road, mostly food, but also a map (very useful). The drive to Flagstaff, where we planned to stay for the night, was about 3.5 hours long, and very uneventful. The road was all by itself in the countryside for miles and miles. We also climbed from about 1000 feet in elevation to 8000 feet in elevation by the time we made it to Flagstaff. Our little Neon had serious pick-up trouble on the mountain roads but overall it did well. We were forced to find radio stations to listen to on the long drive because the car did not have a CD player and I had forgotten my car adaptor... We didn't do very well on the way up; most stations were country..ick. We arrived in Flagstaff and found a motel to stay in overnight. We basically crashed because of the long drive and we still had an hour to go in the morning to get to the Big Hole<tm> (aka, the Grand Canyon).

07-27 Weather Report at the Canyon: 82 today, humidity 26%, bright and sunny, scattered clouds.
Drove an hour from Flagstaff to the actual Grand Canyon in the morning. This was all high on some plateau and so the road was just plain boring. A two-lane highway surrounded by nothing... Anyway we arrived at the Canyon park entrance and paid our $20. It's $20 per vehicle for a 7-day stay, and if you pay $50 you can get a national park pass for the entire year, good at any national park. Good to know for future reference. So Jim and I found a place to park along the side of the road near Marron Point and went to the edge. I was amazed. Instant hugeness spreading out in front of you. You can see the river in spots, and it really looks so far away that it's hard to believe. Tricks of the light and shadow made the far canyon walls look almost flat, as if they were huge paintings like they use in movie backdrops. We wandered along for a while taking pictures. There were quite a few families there, but it was not terribly crowded. We drove to the east end of the canyon to see the Tusayan Pueblo ruins, the remains of a pueblo town/village from 850 years ago, which was home to about 30 people for about 30 years. An amazing place to grow up. All you could see are stone outlines of buildings now, but they are very well preserved. After walking through the ruins, we got back in the car and drove back toward the south entrance (where we had entered) and stopped at a few more lookout spots along the way. Everywhere the scenery was beautiful. Rock formations that seemed impossible to be random, birds flying high above the canyon depths, the water rushing down through the valley so far away that it looked motionless...

When we had seen enough, we left the park and returned to the tourist town called Tusayan which is just south of the south entrance to refuel and regroup. I had developed a migraine and did not feel like driving but really did not have a choice so we started for home. For the first hour to Flagstaff all I wanted to do was pull over and sleep. I thought about it several times but kept pushing myself "another 5 miles" etc. Eventually, we pulled into Flagstaff and I was now in a second wind and wide awake. Jim of course had been sleeping the whole time. I went to a McDonald's where I got ice cream and coke to stay awake. Told Jim he wasn't allowed to sleep and we drove the 3.5 hours back to Phoenix playing the celebrity name game the entire way.

When we arrived back in Phoenix we took some breathing time and then decided to go to this techno club. I took a nap to regenerate and we left around 11:30. Unfortunately, the music was not doing it for me so we decided to leave after a short time. When we returned, Jim's neighbors were having a very loud party which he went to, but I went to bed, being that I was now feeling the effects of the long drive and unable to ignore the migraine any longer.

07-28 Weather Report: 104 today, humidity 16%, bright and sunny, some clouds.
Jim slept late today due to the vast amounts of socializing he had done the night before. When he finally woke up, we decided to take advantage of still having the car and went to the Desert Botanical Gardens, which was not too far away. It was amazing, all the different kinds of cactus, and a few animals which you just don't see in NJ or PA (i.e., quail, jackrabbits, tiny lizards). Visting the gardens was really like being plopped down in the middle of the desert, as the town was not visible from the grounds. After the gardens, we did a little hunting and found this Ethiopian Restaurant which Jim had been to before and recommended highly. It was really delicious. Ethiopian etiquette requires you to take pieces of this fluffy light bread called injera and scoop up small amounts of the fillings, made of meats or vegetables, in the injera with your hands. A new experience. The food tasted slightly of Indian, but was uniquely spiced and very very delicious. After our meal, I took Jim grocery shopping, since we had the car, and also to Target for a very short 5 minutes of rapid plant- and dish-buying as the store was about to close. Finally before heading home we stopped at the Hollywood Video and rented Alien and Life as a House; we watched the former when we got home. It was my first time seeing it. It was formulaic, but I think this is because so many movies which came after it that copied its formula. All in all, I was scared.

07-29 Weather Report: 109.4 today, humidity 9%, bright and sunny, mostly cloudy.
Today I spent again at the pool, after going with Jim to drop off the car back at the rental place. While on vacation I was reading The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, which is a collection of short stories which have elements of fantasy and dreams in them. Veiled existential dilemmas; I really like Hermann Hesse. I also started my thesis defense presentation, which was the only piece of work I had to still do while on vacation. When I got bored of making slides, I played Jim's Grand Theft Auto 3 on his PlayStation2. That night, when Jim came home, we made peach pie with the peaches we had bought the night before, and watched Life as a House, which was actually pretty good, though sappy. It's a family-comes-together story based around the fact that the main character has been recently diagnosed with a terminal disease. Hayden Christiansen is in it (!) as a dark-and-angry teen; he talked too much like Anakin for me to be able to take his angst all that seriously, however.

07-30 Weather Report: 102 today, humidity 20%, overcast and grey.
Today I spent hanging out with my father and stepmother (the latter whom I had not met before). I went to their house and met their cats, who did not seem to like me much. The three of us first went to the Challenger Space Museum. The cool thing about this place is that you can take part in simulated space missions, where everyone gets a station and has to perform their duties to make the mission a success. Unfortunately, there is obviously a lot of demand for this and we made plans too late to get reservations for one. But we took a tour of the place and learned some interesting stuff about the history of space flight and so on. After buying a few postcards, we stopped at Taco Bell for lunch on our way to the Champlin Fighter Museum. This place has two huge hangars of original planes from WWI and WII as well as reproductions. They have photos and bios of almost every single fighter ace from both wars, and tons of pictures of fighter pilots from many different countries. The museum is actually moving to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, so it's good that we got to it before the big move.

Afterwards we went to the Arizona Mills mall, a huge mall with tons of outlet stores, and an IMAX theatre. We saw a 3D movie about the space station; it really felt like we were out in space with those astronauts. It made me want to renew my investigations into how I could work for NASA someday. We wandered the mall for a while and I bought some souvenirs for me and for friends; then we went to pick up Jim from work and went to a sushi restaurant in Tempe called Ichiban. I had vegetable tempura with chicken teriyaki because to me, sushi is a snack, not a meal. Anyway we ate a lot of food and had a good time just chatting and eating.

07-31 Weather Report: 102.2 today, humidity 25%, mild overcast.
Today I finished the first draft of my thesis talk and sent it off to my advisor to be critiqued. I think it's looking pretty good so far... I went to the pool but it was too cloudy to really get any sun and the breeze made it actually a little too cool for me to want to stay out long. I only like being at the water when the sun is doing its job of baking your brains out---that way, it feels that much better when you take a dip. In the evening, I braved the bus system and met Jim down by ASU where we went to a pool hall/bar and played pool for a long time. I was miraculously capable of actually sinking some balls which amazed me, as I am normally very very bad, although I love the game. When we'd had enough pool we ordered some nachos and chatted about stuff, ultimately taking a cab home. I watched Mulholland Drive while Jim played Counterstrike. The movie was really really weird. I didn't like it very much until I read some online analyses of the plot and determined that it actually *had* one. Don't watch the movie unless you're prepared to be left with a twisted mind...

08-01 Weather Report: 105.8 today, humidity 17%, bright and sunny.
Jim played hookey from work today, the bum. I went to the pool and actually managed to get color today. Woo! I will return with a tan after all. When I got bored of doing crossword puzzles, I went back to the apartment and showered, finding Jim still playing Counterstrike. I played Oddworld on the PS2 to amuse myself, but couldn't get very far since Jim didn't have a PSX memory card and Oddworld is really a PSX game. We had my first Arizona "monsoon": kind of on the pathetic side. Not much of an eventful day: a perfect vacation day, though.

08-02 Weather Report: 102.2 today, humidity 20%, bright and sunny, scattered clouds.
I went to the pool again today while Jim was at work, but I stayed in the shade because I kind of got more burned yesterday than I had wanted to :) Tonight Jim made a really good filet mignon dinner. He's an excellent cook and does thing with veggies I'd never think of inventing myself. I feel my ability to withstand interesting vegetables is a sign of my increasing maturity... I found TNN's "Friday Night Bonus Treks" on TV and watched like 4 or 5 episodes. The problem with west coast TV is that most of the cable stations broadcast on east coast time and so the Friday night Star Trek: the Next Generation marathons that normally go from like 5pm to midnight, ended at 9pm Arizona time. Anyway, Jim and I decided to go to that club again, this time because Sandra Collins was supposed to be playing. However, we were informed that she got stuck in Florida and wouldn't be showing up :( We decided to try it anyway, but were greeted with insanely loud chaotic and bad music when we went in, as well as a horrible chloroseptic smell (due to construction, they informed us) that made the whole club smell like a dentist. Again, we didn't last long and just went home around 1am.

08-03 Weather Report: 105.8 today, humidity 20%, overcast.
Today is Saturday and Jim has to go to work to get some stuff done for his boss. So I went along to see where he works and what he does all day. We took the bus; the sun seemed to be beating down on us with an almost cruel purposefulness. It was Hot. I worked a lot on my vacation diary entry for this trip and took some pictures of the cool Mars stuff that Jim's workplace is affiliated with. We left to go to dinner and a movie in downtown Tempe, which is actually really neat. They have all sorts of bars, restaurants, stores, etc, and it's really very well maintained and clean and stuff. We went to the Gordon Biersch microbrewery/restaurant where I actually ordered a beer! I hate beer as a rule, but this actually tasted not so bad. It had a pine nut kind of taste to it; I think it was a light wheat beer. Unfortunately I forget the name of it. Anyway, after dinner, which was awesome by the way and I had goat cheese and mushroom ravioli, we went to see M. Night Shyamalan's new movie Signs. I have to say I was disappointed. But then, I didn't like Unbreakable either. After the movie it was only like 8:45pm so we went to go play pool for a bit, but since it was a Saturday night it was really crowded, and the people next to us were being quite obnoxious, so we left and wandered the streets until I saw an ice cream shop, called the Cold Stone Creamery and forced Jim to stop there. After I ate my pistachio icea cream with macademia nuts and coconut, we went home and watched High Fidelity, which I think I disliked solely because I identified too much with the main character's obsession with his recent ex and his pattern of rejection. The problem is, he gets the girl in the end, which doesn't happen in real life.

08-04 Weather Report: 91.4 today, humidity 45%, overcast.
Jim and I had plans today to see Kitaro with Dad and Lesa. We both woke up kind of late and I did some laundry so I'd have something presentable to wear to the concert. They picked us up at 4:15pm and we went to eat at Ruby Tuesday. I had a salad bar and baked potato. It was 2-for-1 Long Island Iced Teas so I ended up drinking 2.5, since Jim stole one of mine and I wanted to order a 2nd, but had to get 2 more instead of just one more. Very confusing. I also ordered a "strawberry tallcake" for dessert. Warning: they're a lot bigger than they look on the menu! Dinner was really delicious, however, and the place was relatively quiet since it was still rather early. The concert was at the Celebrity Theatre, which was pretty nondescript from the outside. We had some drinks while waiting for the doors to open and saw a really brilliant rainbow (it had been raining a little earlier). The concert was really breathtaking; his backup band seemed to be really enjoying themselves, especially the electric violin player, who couldn't seem to stop grinning. For those who don't know, Kitaro is a Japanese New Age synthesizer artist who also uses guitar, violin and massive amounts of traditional Japanese percussion intruments. It's New Age with character. I was waiting the whole concert for him to play my favorite song "Matsuri", but it didn't look like he was going to... Just before the last song he spoke to us for a few minutes, thanking us for coming, and other typical artist-like concert comments. Then he said, "And now the last song we will play is Matsuri, it is my favorite song, it is the Festival." Go figure! We have the same favorite song! :)

08-05 Weather Report: 98.6 today, humidity 40%, overcast and rainy off and on.
My last day of vacation... Spent it off-roading with my father outside of Phoenix. We went to the Horseshoe Lake Dam on the Verde River, and then made the 3-hour drive to the Sheep Bridge on the Verde River, just north of Horseshoe Lake, but we had to take the long way due to fire dangers. This was some serious off-roading. The roads in some places were just pure rocky mountain paths and who knows when the last time anyone passed by them was. In places, I'd swear the incline was almost 45 degrees. We got some awesome pictures of the Bridge, though, and then drove the long, hard drive back. Off-roading is tiring, even though it's the car (and driver) doing all the work. Dad dropped me off at Jim's place so I could pack up and finish some stuff I needed to do with my thesis defense talk. Jim and I watched Amelie and Casablanca, my 6th time seeing the former, and first time seeing the latter.

08-06 Flew out from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport at 12:50pm on ATA's Flight #572, minus a few delays in powering up the aircraft; then caught Flight #238 out of Midway back to good ol' PHX. Dad and Lesa dropped me off at the airport in the morning. I had a great vacation overall. I'm really glad I got to unwind a bit before my defense, and before starting up school anew at CMU. I'm also glad I chose to go to Phoenix. I had a great time visiting with Jim and also with my father and stepmother. But now, back to the grindstone! Until next time...