Life, or Something Like It

I got caught in the rain on my ride home from work. Onto the Vespa, around the gate and out into the dry street. Within a mile, BOOM - it starts pouring. It looked like a fucking movie.

It was a long day.

And with scooters on my mind: The last day before my break, two weeks ago, I had errands to run. I went straight from school, wearing scrubs - the last day for that also - and riding the Vespa.

I had all this shit with me by the time I got home.

The Spindle is slated for demolition. It's being torn down to make way for a Walgreen's. Critical Mass went out there on the July ride.

Oh, yeah. There's already a Walgreen's in that strip mall.

This is the piece of shit "compact" car I rented in AZ.

The third thing Renee said to me, after "Dat's Daddy-O!" (pointing at my friend Joe) and "Dat's Mommy!" (pointing at my friend Miki), was "Dat's Artoo-Detoo!"

Cute kid, ain't she? Not even two yet.

She called the mouse "computer knob." By the way, her shirt reads "Everyone loves a blue-eyed girl," and she can tell you that's exactly what it says if you ask her.

After visiting Joe and Miki for a few days, I drove from Phoenix up to Sedona to meet Dani for some camping and hiking.

See that little turnabout at the far left of the picture? That's where we parked for our hike. We didn't make it to the top; we started back down when it started raining and lighting on the slick rock, and went for some fresh microbrew, instead.

She's doing something related to dinner, either prep or clean-up. I lit the fire and cooked the food, like a real cave-man.

Since the rain had passed and it was rather nice out, we sat looking up at the stars that night. The Milky Way from the desert is pretty sweet. We were going to sleep out, but the damn skunks kept looking around our campsite. Pepe LePew motherfuckers. So we set up the tent and slept in to avoid skunkdom.

It ended up raining four times that night, Dani told me. I only woke up once.

We went hiking up another trail outside Sedona the next day, before heading back to the Hopi Res.

We made it to the top of this one, although we took a bad switchback and ended up forging our own trail for a little while.

Dani had to work the next day, but I hung out, laid back, relaxed, and went for a walk.

Look up!

Look down!

My friend Jenny is also working out there for IHS, so the three of us had dinner, and their friend Ericka also stopped by and we all hung out for a while.

This is the view starting out the four-hour drive back to PHX and my flight to Chicago.

My emotional state at that point surprised me. I realized I was sad for the simple prospect of missing Dani, and Jenny too, as I left. I hadn't felt that strongly about leaving anyone in a long time.

It was a fitting visual. I turned up the music, pushed the pedal down, and continued on my journey, too far gone to see anything if I looked back.