Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Another day at the box factory, as they say in one episode of the Simpsons. Breakfast today is vaguely better, the eggs are formed into a folded entity and contain cheese which offsets the awful a little bit. Today I eat alone, reading my book while I power-up. Tommy meets me at 7:30 and we drive to the office and grab a coffee at Village Coffee Roastery which is the same place we went the day before. The espresso is better than the previous day which is a nice surprise.
On the walk to the office Tommy suggests we bag this day at lunch, which isn’t hard to convince me to do. Yesterday wasn’t painful, per se. But it wasn’t especially useful for either of us to be there. I work on some docs and decide that I certainly won’t be coming back for the 3rd day, so I duck out of the room mid-morning and reserve another bike for tomorrow. Foreshadowing!
Apparently someone complained that Tommy & I weren’t dressed up enough today. Then someone else complained that the guy running the workshop was too preachy. I can tell you, I can’t get away from this place fast enough. I will not be sad to have nothing to do with this implementation.
We leave at the lunch break, and tell our coworkers we’re out for the week. We get back to the hotel by 12:15. D and I do some work here while Tommy & family head to ASU where Serena went to university. I get some more documents done, which is turning this trip into an incredibly productive endeavor. Usually I get 1-2 of these done per week but here I am cranking out 4-5 a day. I know, this is an amazing travel entry.
Plus I put this blog together, which is bit of a new start on travel writing for 2019. Eventually we leave the room and head to Old Town.
We end up at Cartel Coffee Lab again, where I get an espresso and a pourover, while D gets a tea. Again everything is decent, nothing is amazing. The coffee may be the best thing I’ve had so far but this town severely lacks in good coffee. We both noticed the water is hard as hell everywhere, and it tastes awful. This may be a citywide problem preventing anyone from being able to make a good cup of coffee.
As I sit and drink my coffee, I can’t help but wish I wasn’t going to be alone tomorrow. I know I travel all the time by myself and I’m ok with that. But I won’t be going to the workshop which means I have a free day. I am sure I’ll enjoy it but it’s just not the same doing it alone. Just as we ask if a solitary falling tree in the woods makes no sound, I also ask if a bike ride done by one’s self generates the same camaraderie of enjoyment?
After our tea & coffee we decide to walk around and enjoy the late afternoon. It’s absolutely gorgeous out, and the weather won’t be like this when we get back to New Jersey. So we aimlessly walk around Old Town enjoying the day, talking. It’s a nice day to do nothing and enjoy everything.
As we’re strolling around we run into Tommy & family, who we’re meeting for dinner on our last night here together. Serena grabs a quick coffee and we walk around some more before heading to Citizen Public House which is really fantastic. The kids are super well-behaved while we take our time, talking and eating. If you ever go to Phoenix, I recommend this place. Really this is all Scottsdale but the whole area is a glom of shared space.
After dinner we finally let the kids have their dessert, which is Alien Donuts. I’m not going to link that because I can’t imagine any donut shop anywhere is really worth flying across the country for. The dinner? Maybe. Donuts, never. We hung out for a few more minutes before heading back to the hotel room to allow D to try to nap before I drop her off at the airport at 9:45. It’s going to be a long overnight for her so any rest she can get will help.
While D naps I read some of my book, both paper and Kindle, and intermittently text Jason about Sedona, as well as the area around here and our place in it. I’m coming to the realization that there’s some long, dull desperation about the dessert, and this city within it. It’s kind of hard to put into words. But I think there’s an inherent desolate sadness to the geography, perhaps due to the difficulty of living here at all. In one sense it’s awesome, yet I feel some sense of despair underneath it all. I also feel like the Native Americans spent 1000s of years coming to some sort of peace with the dessert, only to be driven out by the white man. At that point the peace was lost, and it became this sort of mismatch of purpose.
That’s not exactly right. But it starts to scratch the surface at some level.
At 9:30 I drive D to the airport and 20 minutes later she’s on her way through TSA. She gets past the gate while I’m still driving circles in the damn Terminal Maze that is PHX. I head home with little fanfare and hit the sack once I know she was on the plane in her seat.
Traveling Normandy 
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