Where's winter? (Arizona, day one)

I bought this killer super-heating sleeping bag, packed every insulating material I own, and where the hell is winter? That's right, it's fully summer here! Or at least what passes for summer in California - I don't think I want to know what real Arizona summer is like.

So. Made Marina wake up early this morning to drive me and three big bags of camping gear to the airport. I still can't believe I actually went here on my own and left her home to study. I'm just so bad.

The Southwest flight was fun, as usual, and then I picked up my Cherokee (woohoo!) and drove off to spend some time in Phoenix traffic.

Monterey Bay from about 10km up


After living in Silicon Valley, Phoenix is a little weird on the eye. The buildings are farther apart, and it gives the city an unfinished feel, like it's just a first sketch. Not much green around the streets, unsurprisingly, and they put these big cacti everywhere. The best description of Phoenix I can come up with is "Try to imagine the I-5 passing through Eilat. And eternally congested." Enough of this chit chat! Let's spend two hours looking for the AAA office (if you find it, please let me know how), another hour in traffic, and hit the road!

Cacti is what I came to see, and I wasn't disappointed! I took this on my first of many many stops on the side of the highway.


You start seeing these 6m-tall suckers all around you once you get out of the city. And they do go well with sunsets, don't they?


I'm writing this in my sleeping bag in Catalina State Park (just north of Tuscon) and temperatures are beginning to drop. I forgot about desert nights. Suddenly I am less concerned about my -5 Fahrenheit sleeping bag being a waste of money, and more worried that it might not be quite as warm as advertised. I'll let you know tomorrow, if I survive.

On the way, Ron called me from Israel to get improvised lecture about AJAX ("Where am I catching you? Arizona? Cool. Listen, I'm giving an AJAX lecture tomorrow. So. What the hell is AJAX?"). I had to stop in mid-lecture to take some pictures of the sunset. For some reason, the colors only came out right if I included a bit of the Jeep's hood in the frame. It's still fuzzy and duller than the real thing, but it's the best I could do, parked on the side of the interstate.



Then, while I was still parked on the roadside "OMG, I gotta put the phone down for a minute. Got two Apaches here!" The camera couldn't focus fast enough in the low light and high zoom, but trust me when I tell that they were close enough to tell that the second Apache had Longbow installed. Taking a picture of Apaches in the sunset, in the Arizona desert, while giving an AJAX lecture to a guy in Israel at his 2am. My kind of evening.

See, Ron? An Apache.


Nighttime. In a camping site. With a broken flashlight (Damn you, airport throwers! ) and no gas for my lantern or for the stove (Damn you, Phoenix traffic and hidden wireless-internet cafes! How am I supposed to find a Target?). There are no lights in this park, to help you better see the stars. Or maybe because the state's cheap. And they are spectacular (the stars). Every time I look up, I stay glued to the view for a few minutes and I think of Dave Bowman (yes, he of "Hey, Dave, what are you doing?" fame) saying "My god, it's full of stars!". Anyway, it's dark, and cold, and I'm bored, so I'm going to upload this (GPRS is da BOMB! IrDA, not quite as explosive, though) and go to sleep.

Good night, honey. I'll see you tomorrow. Taken from instide my tent.


Update: Yeah, I'm home now. I managed to upload this text from the park, but not the pictures. So I switched to saving the text on disk and publishing this from home when I'm back, which is now. I'm still splitting it into separate posts with fake dates, for that authentic feel.