Belated posting

Here's the stuff I typed for the Arizona trip, written Friday night and Sunday morning. Due to life and, more specifically, a presentation (the last one of this kind I'll have to do in grad school!) due this morning (adviser dropped by afterwards and told me "kudos for doing well under pressure" and I have yet to figure out if that means that I actually did well or if he thought I looked nervous presenting and wanted to cheer me up afterwards), I haven't gotten around to posting it (Ivy was lying abandoned on my bookshelf, with the posts, until just now). But now, without further ado:



Dear all,

Even though this will be uploaded at a later day, I would like to report that I am currently sitting in a motel room just east of Phoenix proper, Arizona, enjoying a very nice chicken & povolone hoagie (note to self: look up provolone hoagie) while dripping cold tea all over my keyboard. (Really must do something about that leaky thermos, perhaps acquire a non-leaky thermos? But I digress....)

The itinerary so far involved driving up to LA yesterday morning (no traffic at all, or even slow spots, it was like...magic) where I promptly re-ensnared Lucy in her game of Medieval Sims through the cunning use of character commitment (there will be never ending jokes involving bear soap now, I expect). I managed this so successfully that we ending up spending pretty much the entire day in front of the computer (oi) pausing for food, which was also, I think, my first time to ever partake the home-made turkey meal (it was delicious, presumably much better than bear soup).

I think I have reached the point where I found long distance driving soothing. This is no doubt a combination of empty roads and the level of stress I routinely live under while in lab. The weather, I should point out, helped too. It was a beautiful day.

The trip to Goodyear, Arizona, began at eight this morning and was also surprisingly painless (again, empty road does wonders). I had no difficulties locating anything and meeting up with friends is always fun. Arrival was at around quarter to one and I stayed until just after the sunset. There was a lot of reminiscing and trying to figure out what happened to whom and baby! And tea. With snacks. And an impromptu lecture on maternal effect and mitochondrial DNA, by request, which caught me completely off my guard but hey, it's not like I need a lot of encouragement to ramble on about genetics, given that I'm currently doing for a living. (I was also informed that Russians are in the habit of keeping exotic animals as pets, such as tigers. T/F, my dear Russian friends? I wasn't sure how much of that sentence was a joke.)

At some point I passed by a road sign which said, “State Prison, do not pick up hitchhikers” and I thought, “Okay, that makes sense”. What made less sense was the fact that there was a rest-area about a mile after that sign... .

There was also a road sign that read something along the lines of:

State prison
Surprise
Wildlife zoo

While I drove by, which amused me quite a bit because, as I visualized the words over and over in my head, I realized that if you read those words together you're going to get a weird result no matter where you stick the comma(s). (I believe in commas, I do, I do. Labmate's had to help an undergrad with her lack of faith in commas this past week and I was there to share the vicarious pains of teaching.)

No, the real adventure happened after that. You see, I was booked to stay just east of Phoenix, but the motel was situated in a way (tucked away behind and sharing parking lot with a large store) that
google maps apparently cannot cope with. According to the nice receptionist this happens often, but what it meant for me was driving up and down the right road in a strange city after dark looking for something that 2/3 people I've asked for directions weren't even sure exists (those were fun conversations). Though as a result of that I did locate both a gas station and a grocery store to get food, so it wasn't a total loss. Nevertheless, the experience of repeatedly pulling into parking lots to try to figure out where I am and whether the place that I placed a reservation for is something concocted from a combination of my fevered-mind and questionable google-map algoriths...it's not an experience that I care to repeat. And then my keycard refused to open my door (turns out it's broken), so for those of you that I checked in with who were wondering when I was going to get to where I was going to go, this was the delay.

Figures that the most nondescript part of my trip ended up the part causing the most stress. Heh.

Anyway, I have obtained directions to both Camelback Mountain and Desert Botanical Garden (in Papago Park), so tomorrow should be fun!

In conclusion: despite of unexpected detour, trip so far is awesome.

...

Right, so on to day 2 (it is now the day after and I am sitting in lab, waiting for media to reach the right temperature):

I left the motel fairly early to go hiking at Camelback Mountain, specifically the Cholla trail. There were a lot of people there but despite of the fact that it was supposed to be a fairly famous trail there was no parking lot, which resulted in a lot of stalking, by drivers, of any one walking down the car-lined road in an hopeful bid for a closer parking spot. (I just parked further out, but was stalked for five minutes despite of my attempts to explain that really, my car was parked quite a bit further out.) The weather continued to be awesome and the hike was fun. The trail was pretty steep and while knee-high steps were doable on the way up, coming down proved to be tricky, what with the loose gravel. The view was nice though, and the locals started telling me about the importance of having a walking stick for the way down when I was about ten miles up, which amused me. (Not to mention I'm pretty sure a stick was not going to help, in my case.) I stopped about 15 miles up because I need to save some time and energy for the descend and the six hour drive that still awaits, and that there was still some place else I wanted to go before I left Arizona.

You see, the night before, when I was locating Camelback, I saw, on the map / brochure, an ad for a desert plant garden.

Long story short: it was amazing.

The scale was not astounding. It had nothing on the UC Davis arboretum or the UC Berkeley conservatory (though it was a lot bigger than the SF and SD conservatory). What prompted me to use the word “amazing” was how well planned and aesthetically pleasing the place it. It was one thing to know, intellectually, of the diversity of  plants specifically adapted to the desert habitat. It was another thing entirely to see all of that on display, as it were, with the hills / mountains of Papago Park in the background, cunningly winding trails separating the areas according to plant types, and strategic placement of statues. I want to know who planned the garden. I mean I've only ever attended one class and two lectures on gardening, since it was more of a horticulture field of study than strictly plant biology, but even with that I was able to tell that the place was staggeringly well designed, between the layering and grouping of plants and the arrangement of shading and water supply. (Though perhaps specialization in desert plants made that last item slightly easier – only slightly, because it is, after all, a plant sanctuary for tourists.)

There was even a Chihuly at the entrance. (His work really does get around, doesn't it?)

I would've happily spent twice as much there as I did but, again, time constraints. I ate a quick lunch there and started my drive back at that point, which went smoothly save for the two areas where I had to deal with border patrol (I was on I-8), which meant cars in a line, waiting to be waved through.

I arrived home around 6pm.

And now I need to get on with my experiment and my day.