Arizona

desert

Grand Canyon

panoramae

Phoenix

arrival

hotel

the Rez

dust storm

Tempe

Tucson

This is the story of a long weekend in the Phoenix, Arizona area that happened during the last week in August and the first week of September, 1997.

As I've done early each Monday morning for the last several months, I leave home for San Francisco International Airport. This time, unlike the innumerable previous treks, I've taken my wife Rose with me on this trip. (Instead of paying for my round trip from Phoenix to San Francisco and back on the following Monday, my employers have agreed to foot the bill for my wife to come with me. In exchange for all the inconveniences of being on the road they've also agreed to take care of the other incidentals.

The cab drops us off at the departure gates. We head to our gate, getting one of the early boarding tickets (so that we can sit in one of the three sets of 6-seat face to face areas that are a unique benefit of Southwest Airlines). People don't like to sit facing a stranger, so I can usually put my feet up and have a laptop balanced on, well, my lap. Everything goes as planned, and we're safely ensconced in the comfortable leather seats. If you look carefully you can see that we're eating sushi from styrofoam containers. They're from We Be Sushi; we had the cab stop by on the way to the airport. (See, Andy-san, your sushi at 60,000 feet.)

Looking out of the airplane window during this trip never ceases to amaze me. I love the change of colors and textures and shapes. We go from the Bay Area's evergreens to the California desert (Death Valley) and into the Arizona desert (seen here).

Landing at Phoenix is always fun, what with the invariably hot breezes and cactii. Walking over to the car rental agency, where I meet the same folks I've seen each week for the last quarter or two, I haggle to get a nicer set of wheels than my usual minimalist set. I'm rewarded for being a steady, personable customer: for not a penny more I get a convertable gold Sebring Chevrolet. Rose and I aren't car people, as you can probably tell from the number of photos we took of us next to our chariot.