We arrived in Phoenix (as you may have noticed from my previous entry, “Phoenix Transit Exploration #fail and #success”.  Our first few days we stayed out close to our friends Jason & Cube so we could help out with and attend their awesome geek wedding (<3 u 2).

The ceremony was an outside ceremony, on a beautiful day with the setting sun off to our backs.  As the sun slowly set, and eventually disappeared we all sat and mingled, enjoying great food at the festivities after the vows were spoken.

Afterwards we all drove off in our paths for the night.  The newly married couple heading off to California in the morning in their Hybrid Honda, Jo and I off to our last night in the suburban hotel, and others in various directions.

Jo and I rose early morning today, Sunday ~ day 9 of our adventure, and went about some after wedding errands and wandering about southeastern suburban Gilbert, Mesa, and Phoenix.  After running those errands we headed with our rental POS Chevrolet Cobalt to the urban core of Phoenix to check in at the San Carlos Hotel.

Out Of The Burbs’

Once we checked into the San Carlos Hotel we headed back for our last suburban excursion in the ole’ rent a car.  Off to 16 miles south of downtown to check out a Brazilian Grill.  There we met Aendenne and her son, Cyrus for a bit o’ meat, tasty bits, and dessert!  Some of the meat was spot on, some of it was off a bit.  The desserts pleased all at the table.  :) 

Aendenne brought up some of the positive Phoenix points (as Jo and I are both having a time of this perpetual sun thing bearing down, and the suburbia – well, we’ll just get over that later).  One of the positives is the eternally consistent weather.  The other is when it does storm, it is awesome and epic, something that is often missed in Portland – being there are no actual storms of any sort.  Even the things Portland calls storms are merely a bit heavier rain or heaven forbid, one of the rare snow flurries (that happen maybe every 2-4 years).

Afterwards we parted ways with our farewells for the day.  I hope to make a trip out this way again soon and hang out with all.  It is really good to see friends like this.  Aendenne then headed off to do what I’m usually doing, more coding & more work!  For once I was actually heading off to just chill.

No Jo and I are downtown, and we’ve taken a bit of a zonk, and now are ready for our Sunday afternoon adventure to find something to swim in since we have a rooftop pool (oh yeah, rockerz!)   All that, with light rail at our very doorstep to lead us off to Lux, Breakfast, and the other adventures we’ll have in Phoenix.  So with that I’m off, and more to come later.

A little interlude from my vacationing posts, this is random and out of the blue, but figured what the heck.

There will be a pending move in the near future, before the end of 09.  Here are the zones I’ve outlined by preference.  Green areas are priority locations, red are secondary locations, and everywhere in Portland is AWESOME.  :)  So it is a really hard decision, but we’ll definitely be bouncing about to a new location.  I’d really like to stay on the east side, as would Jo, but the Goose Hollow area is in such a perfectly strategic location for business, logistics, and Portland life in general.  Then of course I really like the idea of being along the new light rail alignment somewhere.  We’re not sure yet, but will be figuring it out soon.

Any Portlander’s have any suggestions, thoughts, ideas, etc?  More areas that we might want to check out?  I’d love to be along the light rail or streetcar, but it is a higher priority to be near certain other items – as listed below.

The following are priorities that are met by any location in the outlined areas:  Extremely close, multiple routes, frequent transit.  Grocery story, restaurants, bars, and more within 5 blocks of residence.  So now on to the optional priorities:

In order of priority  🙂

1. Proximity & number of transit options.
2. Proximity of wi-fi enabled establishments that are cool to hang out at; i.e. Backspace, Stumptown, etc.
3. Maximum uniqueness.  i.e. I want authenticity in the people, shops, restaurants, and such in the immediate surrounding area.
4. Proximity of light rail.
5. Proximity of streetcar.
6. Minimal “cookie cutter” or “ticky tacky” type construction.  There is of course minimal in the entire area this map shows, but I don’t want a view of a single McDs, Taco Bell, or some other generic dump like that.
7. Ease of engaging in business meetings, meeting others for entertainment, and location of entertainment sources – i.e. movie theaters, etc.

The location of residence absolutely must have multiple transit options nearby.  We’re going car free for sure now, and I don’t want to even contemplate needing one for anything.  Thus the west side of the river is looking optimal in that sense.  However, the east side has never required more than one trip a month – at most – in a car.

Google & Valley Metro

While rambling through yesterday’s blog entry I wrote about a desire to be able to click transit and see how to get somewhere in Phoenix.  The lack of this feature to the city’s transit system was part of the underlying cause that led me to rent a car (at $60 wasteful dollars per day) just to get anywhere in town.  30 Minute frequencies on a bus aren’t so bad when you have an idea of where the bus actually is, without a mechanism to track, or plot logistically the bus is almost entirely useless except for the most desperate of users.  Well, to my surprise, there are talks between Valley Metro & Google as I discovered.  I just have one last comment on that, “HURRY UP VALLEY METRO!”  It is services feeds, this isn’t a hard process, I could integrate and make the service feeds needed for Google available in under a month – ALONE, pending I had access to Valley Metro’s Servers.  So hire some software developers, I can provide references for a couple in the area that are awesome, and GET IT DONE!  :)  K, Thx.

Density & City Facts, Portland, LA, and Phoenix

I was curious about densities, size, sprawl, and other tidbits between the three main cities of the trip I’m currently on.  We started in Portland, so I’m including it in the stats, and then headed down to LA and then Phoenix.  Here’s how each ranks.

Stat	Portland	Los Angeles	Phoenix
Population:
Metro	2,159,720	12,872,808	4,281,899
City	557,706	3,833,995	1,567,924
Size:
City	145.4 sq mi	498.3 sq mi	517.17 sq mi
Density:	4,288.38/sq mi	8,205/sq mi	2,937.8/sq mi

Phoenix is a lot larger than the last time I checked.  But this is the beginning of my analysis of densities and such between the cities.  Los Angeles has really kicked off further interest to understand that city.  Simply, I knew the reputation LA has wasn’t accurate, but how did the city get to be known as a sprawling catastrophe of a city?  Was it because of movies like “Escape from Los Angeles”?  I am still not sure, but am going to start digging up more information.

That’s it for now.  More analysis of Phoenix to come later.

I wanted to take the #136 north on Gilbert, transfer to the #40, and then transfer to the light rail.  I studied the schedule for the #136 and could not determine when it would arrive near where I was staying.  I would have been happy to just go and wait for it if the bus arrival times where every 15 minutes, but the frequency was 30 minutes.  Strangely I almost went to wait for 30 minutes considering the temperature at 10:30am was an awesome 72 or so degrees.  That temperature however wouldn’t last long, and since I’m rather sun intolerant, I decided a car was unfortunately in order.

I got a ride from Jo’s soon to be married friend Cubers (pronounced “CUBE-ERZ”) to Enterprise Rent-a-Car and picked up a POS automobile.  I then drove directly to the nearest light rail transit park & ride and ditched the POS Chevrolet Cobalt.  That was the end of that turmoil, I could now focus on life, people, architecture, and my surroundings instead of driving.  With the car ditched I walked myself through the expanse of parking spots, filled with automobiles.  Through the parked buses, one a BRT oriented ride, one a normal hybrid bus, and then onto the platform where an LRV set awaited my embarking.

The Phoenix Bus System Fails but the Light Rail Rules

I’m going to clause this next section with my assumptions, thoughts, and ideas about Phoenix.  I figured it was a right leaning, socialistically auto transport oriented catastrophe of pavement ala Los Angeles.  I assumed that there would be no real density, and the downtown would be a corpse with partially sullen people.  I thought the light rail would be at 20-30% occupancy even though I had read the ridership statistics.  I thought all these things, how could this famously inefficient city harbor an intelligent process of zoning and growth.  How could mile long blocks, as inhumane as that is, allow for dense development, beautiful architecture, and above all – intelligently operated and built transit?

Please excuse my excursion in vulgarity, but holy shit did I just get sideswiped into a new consciousness.  Thank you Phoenix.

Mesa, Gilbert, and Bulldozing

I boarded in Mesa.  In my previously stated stereotype of Phoenix.  Mesa, is simply …  well, most of it should just be bulldozed.  Same with Gilbert.  Probably a lot of the outlying suburbs.  These areas are expanses of non-communication, human un-involvement, a faceless expanse of human development without any humans.  Sure, there were plenty of people around, but they were hiding in their cars, in their homes, and away from any actual community.  The sprawl was beyond destructive to the surroundings, but to any human being with a soul that desired community, life, culture, ideas, thoughts, or other elements it was not the place to be.  I’m sure there are some in the burbs’ that would argue this, but sit me down with them and they’d walk away either realizing this and a high likelihood of planning to move inwards toward the city.  Simply put, the surrounding suburbs are a dirge.  Pure death of the soul, no authenticity, no art, no originality.  The suburbs here are the archetype of American mindlessness, allowing corporatism to feed us the majority of our thought, the grand slice of our ideas, from our religion to our diets.

But this ended within just a few stops on the light rail system.  By the third stop the train was full of human beings.  Smiling, some talking to each other, checking their phones for the latest text or E-mail.  The train was primarily college students, young and beautiful.  There were a few people heading to work or other errands, but mostly college students at this time.

By the fifth and sixth stops the train was even more packed.  Even once we reached ASU and unloaded a ton of people, a ton more got on.  We kept rolling at a good speed down the center street alignment.  In about 10 minutes we where downtown, rolling through the streets with cars and people everywhere.  Strangely though, and this is where my idea of Phoenix rapidly started to change.  I thought to myself, wow, “this is enlightening”.

There were people wandering around outside heading for lunch, EVERYWHERE.  This of course is just one test of a city, a good lunch crowd.  I also realized that citizens, regular ordinary citizens, were walking around with their second amendment rights squarely planted in armaments upon holsters on their hips.  Unfortunately for the staunchly anti-gun blue crowd nobody was gunning down each other – hmmm, the twisted irony of that.  On the note of the staunchly anti-transit red crowd, which I thought polluted Phoenix too, the transit was indeed full of riders and even the bus stops garnered decent numbers of people waiting for a ride.  I was, being the Libertarian middle of the road advocate that I am, euphoric to see high transit ridership and armed, proud, happy citizens all over the place.

American Citizens in Phoenix

Speaking of Phoenix citizens, I honestly thought there would be much more grumbling and aggression.  In the suburbs it seemed that this might just be the case.  I saw 3 arguments taking place, heard about a botched robbery and the robber being shot, and other various forms of aggressive crimes.  But here I was downtown being greeted by complete strangers as I walked the sidewalks.  At first I figured it was the camera, so to see I took it off and stowed it in the backpack – but it ALL continued.  People, in full honesty, were greeting me with hellos.  Of course not every single person, but a solid 2 dozen people greeted me with hellos and smiles.  I was, shall I say shocked.  I had not seen this in any city except Portland.  But really, most American cities do seem to be picking up this spirit of camaraderie among each other.  I have to admit, that it has improved even more amid Obama being elected.  His victory truly has made an impact in city life, just by the air of change.  Regardless of what is functionally occurring with the administration, his presence versus Bushy Boys presence has changed the attitudes of millions of Americans.  Phoenix seems to be no exception, except that it has bucked my idea by exponential degrees.

Sandwich Factory

I jumped into the sandwich factory and got an excellent New Yorker Sandwich.  The shop had a great attitude (and armed employees also), and just gave me even more of an exuberant boost.  I gave Tony (of Lightrailblogger Fame) a call, got popped into voice mail.  I then tried to give my coworker from a job in another land, Aendenne a call, but my phone ceased to cooperate for a moment.  After about 15 minutes though Tony txted me back and we had a short txting exchange, which ended with me asking where a good wifi establishm
ent, preferably with coffee, would be.  He pointed me to Lux.

Lux – Community – Coffee – Art

I mapped Lux on my iPhone and found it without much effort.  I fortunately knew where the light rail went, because I looked at the map and hit the “transit button” which failed to work.  I checked and came to the unfortunate conclusion that Valley Metro has not provided their transit information to Google.  I had a message for Valley Metro, GET YOUR INFORMATION TO GOOGLE!  Even without the transit directions I knew where it was, walked over to the light rail and checked the station stops.  A few stops north would land me almost at the front door of Lux.  An LRV arrived and off I went for a coffee surge and some electricity for my montage of devices.

I arrived, and was puzzled at first where Lux was, but then in short order with a tip from Tony, realized the located and stepped inside.  At first, walking into Lux was disorienting because of the darker lighting compared to the excessive sun outside.  My eyes adjusted and I moved forward in better clarity.  Stepping up to the bar I realized there was a roasting machine in the back.  Absolutely a good sign for coffee of credibility.  I got a smile on my face while I set my pack down beside the bar.  I ordered an ice mocha, figuring it would be a good default to jump into after the heat.

The girl at the counter asked, “want whip cream” to which I replied, “no thanks.”  She then got a sad puppy look like I’d hurt her feeling, which she then told me kindly, “we make the whip cream home made…”, to which I quickly changed my tune.  I received my mocha and must say, very tasty whip cream.  The mocha was good too, with a solid rich chocolate flavor and a slight bit of espresso bite.  I’d suggest one.

Lux was pretty packed when I got there, with only 3 seats empty in the whole place.  I was able to snag one after inquiring with one of the beautiful people seated aside me, “may I snag this seat?” to which I received a reply of “oh no, please do” from the young lady seated there.  I took my pack and set it aside, pulled forth my camera, laptop, iPhone, and all requisite cords to plug em’ all up and get juiced back to full batteries.  The pretty gal aside me plugged in my gadgetry for me, since I was across from the plug.  With the zappy electric flow going I commenced upon completion of this blog entry.

Needless to say, if you haven’t been to Lux and live in Phoenix, you should probably go.  You might kick yourself for not having been, especially if you actually like coffee of the higher quality (i.e. Not Starbucks burnt roasts & sugar induced comas).

The Ride to Lux, Light Rail Style

As I stood upon the LRV rolling north out of the heart of downtown Phoenix, I marveled at a number of things.  One of those things was the smoothness of the ride.  Because of the straightness of the alignment, the LRV could really scoot and still sustain a smooth ride unlike some of the twisting, turning, and raised embankments the LRVs in Portland and Seattle ride along.  I’ve come to find that the best riding light rail is planted firmly in cement along straight corridors.  The ride was absolutely chill, I dug it.

The second thing that outright shocked me was the level of development along the light rail.  Of course some was pre-existing and some is new.  But much of the pre-existing has now become transit oriented development (TOD), and garnered options to the lifestyle that being TOD provides.  There where shops, businesses, and massive apartment, condo, and other living complexes along this northern branch.  Every inch of what I had seen so far along the light rail line was in good maintenance, and the entire line tended to run through areas where the buildings where beautiful.  At least in the facade of beauty that many buildings exist hidden inside of.  This level of development continued extensively with only a couple blocks along that line being undeveloped or under-developed.

The other notable thing I noticed, was the continuation of people riding on the light rail.  Not just old, or poor, but everybody.  There was an older guy in a suit, a 30ish old suited man, some young kids in the tweens, some young ladies carrying on about some cute guy toward the middle of the car, probably in their early twenties, and a few single people interspersed in age range, lifestyles.  Also stood gazing into the distance a skate boarder, pondering what no one really knows, or possibly nothing at all.  One thing in common among all of us, was that everyone on the train was relaxed, chilled out, unlike the drivers I had seen earlier in the day in Mesa & Gilbert.

Packed to Crush Capacity

My last comment in this entry, is that while I sat in the wonderful air conditioned space of Lux.  I sat there watching each light rail vehicle make its way by.  When I got off and entered Lux around 1:30pm the trains going by were at about 95% seated occupancy.  By 2:15pm the trains coming by had 100% seated occupancy and had 10-20% standing occupancy.  By 3:15pm the trains coming by had reached 90% of crush capacity.  Each LRV set was going by with approximately 190-200 people each.

I’ll have a lot more to say regarding Phoenix, the architecture, design, zoning, layout of the city, and much more.  But for now, I bid the intertubez farewell for a bit and am off to wander the line a bit more.  This last photo I depart with is a shot of the city from the Lux Light Rail Station.

At the crack of way to early in the morning Jo, Mike, and I broke out of the Balboa Peninsula bound for Santa Ana Station again.  The plan itinerary at this point in the day goes like this.

• 8:17am Metrolink departing to Los Angeles Union Station.
• Red Line to Hollywood for break fast and photo mayhem.
• 2:30pm Board Sunset Limited to Maricopa, Arizona.

At this point anything could change, except that hard 2:30pm departure of the Sunset Limited.

At 8:17am, the arrival and departure of the Metrolink Train was quick.  Jo and I boarded and put our luggage near the lower seating deck of the car.  Again, very nice that trains have this type of capacity, and another reason we rode in a car to the train instead of taking the bus.  The train has plenty of space for luggage and the bus sorely misses any remotely viable place for cargo.  Urban buses do not a make a friendly travelers aid.

Union Station & Phillepe’s

(spelling? – please correct me on that)

Jo and I piddled around the station for a few minutes figuring out where to go grab some breakfast.  Simply, it seemed the only thing we might be able to find would be Mexican food.  That actually didn’t sound like a bad idea, as we love some Mexican Food, but really wanted some eggs, biscuits, or some such traditional style American Breakfast.  Jo and I poked away at the iPhone trying to figure out where to go.  We found this one place, that looked like it might fit the bill.  We headed off in that direction, down Main and then over to Spring.

We both made it to the exact address of where this place was supposed to be, however it wasn’t there.  Nowhere to be found, except down the block we saw something that looked like it would be acceptable.  A place called Phillepe’s stood before us and we walked our hungry selves down the street and into the front door.  What we saw was the jackpot for breakfast.  With long tables and counter ordering, we stepped into the fray to order.  We weren’t exactly sure how or what way their ordering process was supposed to work.  Diving in head first we ended up with Jo getting French toast, sausage patty, scrambled eggs, and orange juice for $6.55.  I plunked down a solid $9.50 for a pair of pork chops, two scrambled eggs, biscuits, and some hash browns.  The hash browns were made of fresh potatoes, something I honestly don’t think I’ve ever had.  We gobbled all our food and were again ready to take on some exploration.

We walked back across the street to Union Station.  Jo went into the open courtyard area and took and break while I walked around the station taking photos.  I must say, the security & staff people didn’t raise a look of distrust.  I was impressed.  LA, scores VASTLY HIGHER on the – “leave me alone I’m just taking pictures” – scale of coolness.  SF was a tomb of harassment, and LA so far has given me no lip.  Rightfully so, I’m not going to blow anything up, especially with a camera!

Subway, The Metro Red Line

After the 10-15 minute session of station pictures and Jo taking a break, we decided it would be off to the Red Line to check out Hollywood.  We headed down to the subway and jumped on the next train after buying our two $5.00 all day fares.  Once aboard we got two seats side by side and enjoyed the ride.  It was a short 25 minute or so ride and we were up on Hollywood Boulevard walking upon the stars’ stars.  It was an interesting walk, even though I must say I’ve never been much to be start struck by stardom.  I’m the dork that find impressive things impressive, actors and actresses don’t usually measure on that list of impressive stuff.  So I stood by and enjoyed others enjoyment of being star struck, not by the people who are the stars, but merely being in the place that these stars once or sometimes are.  I was entertained by the entertained.

Jo and I plied our way around and eventually dove back into the underground to board the Red Line back to Union Station.  Upon arriving we headed back to the waiting area.  But before I could bring myself to end the wandering yet, I told Jo I was going to go see what the Gold Line looked like.  I knew it was light rail, but I wanted to see the light rail vehicles myself.  Jo headed back toward the grand waiting room and I cut off toward the Gold Line.

Gold Line to East LA

With the giant Canon EOS 40D slung around my neck like a giant “steal me” I decided I would do more than just glance upon the Gold Line LRVs.  I was going to use a bit of my last hour before boarding the Sunset Limited to ride the Gold Line.  At least I would go a little ways down the line.

On the thought of, a few stops, I boarded after snapping a few photos.  I barely made it to the first stop and saw an approaching light rail vehicle and couldn’t help but think, “rats, I’ll probably have to wait 15-20 minutes before I can get another one back to the station, I may just miss my train!”  So I stood firm on the LRV I had boarded with my slight worry of missing the Sunset Limited, and possibly worrying Jo, or worse, making her angry.  We snaked through the remainder of the downtown core and immediately paralleled a field of corn & other plants.  The LRV line then increased height and crossed over the huge LA River Canal.  There one could see the railroad tracks coursing both sides of the canal, we crossed over all of these and immediately rolled into east LA.

The first stop, even amid the slight ghetto look that was encroaching the area, was a spot on perfect example of transit oriented development (TOD).  I wasn’t sure which was there first, the transit or the development, but it was a good example regardless.  We rolled to the next station which was sort of in the middle of nothing, just some warehouse yards and parked cars in the station lot.  Here I got off the light rail to wait for, what I hoped, would be another Gold Line Train along soon.  Without more than 2 minutes, a train arrived, which I snapped a number of pictures of.  I boarded, grabbed a seat on a train set that had approximately 25% of seated occupancy.  Again, I couldn’t help but wonder what the ridership was like on this line.  I also neglected to notice if 3 car trains could run on this line, but I believe they could.  The train I boarded however only had two cars.

I arrived back at the station with about 30 minutes to spare.  My adventure had not been the risk I had thought it might be.  I suppose though, I could have rode further but chickened out.  The Sunset Limited only leaves every other day or so, once can’t exactly miss the train and reschedule for the next one!

Aboard the Sunset

After our short wait, Jo and I were more than ready to board the Sunset Limited.  This however was going to be a challenge of retarded proportions.  When I say retarded, I mean it.

First off, when Amtrak does seating, they already have it all screwed up.  There is more touch points to seat a single person on a train than was necessary in 1920 let alone today.  Amtrak has seriously pushed the ticketing and seat assignment process back to the late 1890s as far as I’m concerned.  First off, they always get everyone to stand in a line to get a seat assignment after buying tickets.  Who in the world does that anymore?  FREAKING NOBODY!  The airlines don’t do it, and I can’t recall a single other entity besides Amtrak that makes their own cu
stomers wait in lines to manually receive seating assignments.  Just let the customers pick a seat assignment at time of purchase.  There is zero reason for this inefficient nonsense.

Then there is the next step.  The step of actually getting to the seat one has been assigned to.  Since the process is so manual, and often confusing for both the Amtrak Employees and the customers, people end up in each others seats all the time.  Rarely do airlines ever screw their part of this process, Amtrak however is a different story.

So with that in mind, Jo and I start walking toward the train through the underground concourse.  Mind you, the Amtrak seating assignment staff were telling everyone to go to track #11.  Here’s the problem though, there isn’t just a track #11, there is an 11A and an 11B.  The Sunset Limited is also not just the Sunset Limited, it is also the Texas Eagle.  Well all of these people go hurdling down the main concourse toward track #11, for their respective train.  These people don’t understand that the train splits, that it is currently connected as one train, and thus once the hurdling people get to track #11 and realize there is an A and B chaos ensues.  Jo and I realized this along the way and concluded through simple reason that coach cars where down #11B and the rest of the train was down #11A.

We bypass the herd of confused passengers and head down #11B.  However another complication awaited us.  Waddling up the concourse was an obscenely obese woman, pushing a cart.  There wasn’t anything exceptional about her at first glance except she was huge.  Jo walked by the woman with no issue and I began to pass her by too.  Now this lady, being huge, wasn’t moving very fast.  However as I was about to pass her by she swung her cart of luggage directly toward me, I leapt forward to avoid having my ankle smashed by the cart.  I looked back at her with a wicked glare and almost lapsed into obscenities.  I’m really truly not keen on getting my ankles busted, and don’t care what is wrong with someone when I am threatened by such risk. I decided nothing said was a better idea.

Jo and I made it almost to the top of the concourse and onto the platform, but even though the confused herd was in the main concourse hallway behind us, many had made it to the Amtrak Employee standing on the platform directing before us.  Now I’m not really sure what the plan was from Amtrak, but there was a guy at the end of the concourse walkway onto the platform attempting to direct the herd of passengers.  He was looking at tickets and pointing to which car to head to.  This seemed intelligent enough, yet another point of possible error.  Yes, another point of error.  In short order this staffer directing people had sent people going to the further cars directly behind us going to the nearest cars.  The problem with this was, that the concourse entrance left little space near the nearest cars to board, but had an area they could have walked to not have been impeded.

With this cluster of people gathered, there was little people could do but stand in line.  However there was a rude couple that just started babbling about getting by, so myself and a few others squeezed over since they couldn’t wait.  From their cries and whining to get past it appeared they thought the Sunset Limited was going to leave and their idea was we were in the way boarding the Texas Eagle.  The couple got by but a scourge of others poured through our line, now disabling me from being able to give the car attendant my seating assignment so he could direct us to the correct part of the car.  Then, of all twisted evils, the obscenely fat woman poured herself through the cavalcade of people and ran her cart directly into Jo & my things.  She blurted out in stupidity, “I’m sorry, I can’t drive real well.” to which I replied, “I know”.  After my curt response she stammered another statement of, “I’m big and have a hard time steering.”  To which Jo and I managed to tell her to hold on a second while we moved the things she had ran into out of the way.  We finally moved our stuff out of her way, with enough clearance for her to move forward.  She uses this opportunity to plunge into another person, yet this time she falls forward also.  All of her excess largess she pushes the cart into this person.  Fortunately the other person moved out of the way a bit and didn’t take the full force.  The large woman straightens herself out and manages to finally get by.

I finally am able to step forward and hand the seating assignments over to the car attendant.  He directs us up the steps and to the left for our seating assignment.  Finally, the process of seating assignment was complete.  AARRGHBRAAA JEEEEEEEEZZZUUUUM!!  Ok, now that I’ve finished that outburst…  I’ll continue.

Phoenix & Hotel #1, Hampton Inn

We arrived in Maricopa on time and Jo’s friends swooped in to rescue us from the train full of stupids.  My brain immediately shutdown as the only thing either of us could see from the car our friend where driving us in was empty black darkness.  The road went on into nothing, and one couldn’t even see the prospects of the city.

On that note, I’ll continue in the next entry.