Oct
22
2009

Home - In Tempe Arizona

(Add / View Comments) (1)Thursday, October 22, 2009 - 09:30:11 pm
(Posted Under: Operation Desert Rock)
Today has been a long day. And it is the first day in which I call Tempe, Arizona home. It's felt that way for quite a while, but as of today, it official is.

Photobox ImageThe day started out in Holbrook Arizona. Last night's sleep was glorious. We were up just after 6, ready to rock. The view on the balcony of the Days Inn was fairly spectacular, the desert sun rising over the plains of northern Arizona, with mist along the horizon. We packed up, got our free continental breakfast, and we're on the road at exactly 7:04am. Every day of this trip, except for the first, which didn't have a hard and fast schedule set, we were 100% on schedule, which is a lot more than can be said for the earlier trip we took out here - not that it effected things at all. All the same, I'm pretty proud of how well we kept the schedule this time around!

Photobox ImageIt was really nice driving through Holbrook this morning. Not long past it I got resumed my in the Slash book, determined to get it finished before we hit Phoenix. Hence, I didn't come up for air much. Which in some way, for me, that is surprising, but the fact that we drove her and back only a month ago made it possible. And the fact that Arizona is now my home - I don't have to be concerned too much about missing anything, since I now live here. And besides, I was on a mission! One thing I took away from today's reading was - well, not really anything I didn't already think - more a confirmation - that Axl Rose is a weird douchebag. Reading a first hand account of what went on with Guns that I was more or less oblivious to the actual details at the time, was pretty disgusting. But that's a whole different blog post I guess! [wink]

Photobox ImageI did come up from air through Payson, and through the woodsy section of Tonto National Forest which was an awesome view of a mist in front of the mountainy backdrop. Despite Pepe being so loaded down, we opted for the drive through Tonto, rather than over to Flagstaff and south to Phoenix. At the end of the day, I don't think it was any more hilly, nor put any more stress on Pepe than taking the 17 south would have. And besides, it takes is straight to Mesa, rather than having to deal with north Phoenix.

I surrendered the Slash book a little bit before we hit the Salt River. I was close to finishing the book, but knew I wouldn't quite get there before hitting Tempe and given that, I really owed it to myself to savor my grand entrance to Tempe. Still, I was pissed that I feel 30 or pages short!

As a result of my conscious being wrapped up in the book, naming our fish had gone by the wayside. Unlike with Pepe, when we set out with him, I announced that we needed to be on top of naming him, especially since we kept having to refer to him so often - particular to check up on how well the poor sucker was going on this cross country trip in the front compartment of the car. So I'd fallen down on my duty of that, being so focused on reading this trip. At the bank in Tempe the fact dawned on me, and I came up with Otis. Not incredible imaginative at all, but all the same, it seemed to really work for me. Once Katie joined me at the car she suggested Delmontico - and that was that. It worked for me as well as Otis did, but is a little more obscure and unique. Delmontico he now is. He should be lucky, he got named a lot quicker than Pepe did!

With that sorted out, we headed down to our apartment, and checked in which was quite efficient. The brilliance in the plan to make it a 3 day trip was obvious - it was 10:45am Arizona time, and we were walking into our apartment. Beautiful. After a little bit of enjoyment, and dispelling potential issues about the size that had come up when I second guessed myself in Warsaw about going with 1 bedroom, we started unloading the car. With that done, we took a bit of a breather, before also unloading the clothes from the roof.

Surprisingly, the clothes bag suffered some very slight damage and some water had gotten in over the last 2 days. A minor problem, but I'm pretty surprised for it. With that said, it was an awesome investment, I can not state enough just how much extra that has allowed us to get down here. And hopefully we can get it replaced under warranty. Either way, that thing really was the best $50 odd that we ever spent. And to be honest, if that's the worse thing that happened with that bag, I'm happy. It didn't bust open and send our wardrobe flying all over the highway anyway, it's all good.

After getting everything into the apartment, there wasn't much more to do but wait for the guy from Cox to come out and set up our Internet service. There was actually a whole lot to do, just nothing that we cared to (everything that we did care to do involved leaving the apartment - hence needing to wait until the internet setup was done). It was kind of frustrating, although we were both kinda exhausted (hence didn't have much interest in doing anything that wasn't critical), I was kind of pumped up to get the other shit we had to do done. Part of that drive was having absolutely no furniture to speak of. It's kind of a - weird feeling. Trying to move stuff from the floor, having a reflex reaction to temporarily move it to a bed or a table or a chair, and then your senses reminding you that you don't actually have one to do so. Hence, the idea of getting some stuff out of storage and to also go shopping was certainly a motivational force. But we really needed to just wait around for the internet installation to be done. I was going to be pissed if it didn't happen and we'd wasted that time. But the guy came around 2:15pm and got things set up pretty smoothly. To be honest, despite my desire to get onto the other stuff, the time we killed laying around on the floor and chillaxing was probably a blessing in disguise!

Once he left, we headed out to pick up some basic necessities, and then went down to Ikea to try to address the furniture issue. At the end of the day, it turned out to be a fact finding mission, rather than a spending spree, but all the while quite productive and worthwhile. On the way down there, we heard from Aaron and arranged to meet up at Four Peaks for dinner. Considering our diets while being on the road, this was probably another blessing. We'd actually planned to do some grocery shopping and cook for ourselves, but Four Peaks sounded great, particularly since I'd thought about it earlier today - and how nice it would be to go down there - chow down on some more substantial food than potato chips and plan our life - but alas, we were tied down to the apartment until the internet as setup.

We headed over to Target to at least get a chair, since we only had one other one in storage. My wife's brilliant plan to get an outdoor portable chair (ala what we watched all of Andrew's baseball games from in Missouri) which would double as such long after we properly sort out our furniture situation was - well, brilliant! [wink]

With that taken care of, we headed down to Four Peaks. Crossing over 8th Street I thought I heard familiar music, which I couldn't really place, and was kind of too tired (in that really worn way) to give it any thought - which is really saying something for me (though, my frail mind was considering it was Scotty Johnson sounding). But as we got out in front of the brewery, I noticed that not only was it familiar, but it was Little Hung Over You by Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers. Despite my feelings about the band these days, that was pretty fucking cool.

Dinner was really nice, I had my usual 8th Street Chicken Strips and hanging out with Aaron and Will was fun. After dinner we headed over to the storage unit and picked up a load of stuff - importantly a chair, table, lamps, and tank for Delmontico, and then back to the apartment.

And that's where we are right now. I can not express how good the basic wonders of having chairs is.

The other thing to note at this point it something I learned once we got back here. Here I am - finally, living in Tempe. And on of the cool things about this apartment is that it's located about an equal distance from Yucca Tap Room and Last Exit Bar & Grill, which seemed so cool. The evil twist is that I just read news that the new ownership of Last Exit failed, and it closed some time last week. While it's not the most surprising news of all time, it does fucking suck - and the timing is just ironically terrible to me!

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