Family in Arizona

David and Nina arrive just as I finish showering. I saw them last for my brother's wedding the previous summer, and they just moved into a nice new house and I have the pleasure of being their first guest there. I guessed as much when I noticed the dust in the guest shower and the tag still on the bath mat. We go out for a late dinner at a Mexican place, and I get something that I didn't order, but it was close enough so I ate it anyway. We rent Dr. Strangelove which I have not seen in it's entirety and when it ends I am very impressed with how funny it is. At this point it is bedtime, and I am ready for it after the full day I have just had.
It is Sunday morning and David and I go for a drive up Mt. Lemmon, just outside of Tucson. The vertical is about from 4000 to 10000 feet which is quite a rise, but what is more impressive than the numbers alone is that I can see the change in elevation in the plant life as we drive higher and higher. At the lower levels, there are saguaros and ocotillos and agave like I have been used to for the last couple days, but as we ascend, they give way to lots of grasses and rocky outcroppings, which in turn give way to alpine forests. We stop at a trailhead and go on a hike on what we think is the trail. It's hard to tell at first because of erosion maybe, but we find it and follow it for a ways, past charred trees from a past firestorm, lightning probably, and around a few bends until we get to a nice viewpoint that lets us see the distant hills and valleys and river through some haze, and also some ominously dark clouds above us that convince us to cut our hike short. Back at the car, we drive up to the small ski resort at the peak of the mountain, and get hit by a little bit of rain. On the hike, David tells me that he will soon be a father, and that I have the honor of being the first non-parental member to know the good news. Very cool. I wonder if I will then become a great cousin, or what, to the kid.
Back in town, we pick up some Sonoran hotdogs, a local delicacy which is essentially a hotdog smothered in every sort of topping imaginable. It's delicious. This evening, I speak to my uncle whom I plan on driving out to visit in the desert tomorrow, but I mixed up the dates he will be available, and I will have to wait until Tuesday morning to head out.
It's Monday morning and the first day of classes at the University of Arizona, and David and Nina both have their first classes to teach, so I entertain myself by visiting the Center for Creative Photography on campus. The current exhibition is Ralph Gibson and the Lustrum Press. I spend almost two hours looking at mostly black and white photos by Gibson and the various photographers he published. I then drive a little south of Tucson and check out an old Spanish mission. "The White Dove of the Desert" according to it's website, the San Xavier del Back mission is a large white church that must have been in the middle of nowhere when it was first built and now in the middle of nowhere special, a very marginal increase in status. It's not very big, so I spend about 20 minutes in the nave, or whatever it's called, looking at the paintings and ridiculously ornate decorations that you can always count on in old Catholic churches. There is a rocky hill outside of the church with a cross on top of it. I climb up to the top, but there is still only a cross up there, so I snap a couple photos and curse my dying battery and climb down and head back into town and spend another couple hours in the climbing gym I went to when I first got into Tucson.
I meet David at his house and he asks if I have ever had a passenger on my bike before. We are going to meet Nina for dinner near the campus and she has the car they share. I have indeed has passengers, I assure him, and no, it won't be too gay, I assure him. The only tricky part about riding with someone on the backseat is stopping and starting, and very slow turns, as the balance of the bike is what is affected by adding anyone, regardless of what sort of frame they have, onto a motorcycle. We make it to Pei Wei in a pretty safe manner and enjoy dinner.
It's Tuesday morning, and I head out to Pearce, Arizona, after saying goodbye to Nina and David who are on their way to their respective offices. I get on the highway south of town so I don't have to deal with all the closed exits, and it's a quick hour and a half or two hours. On the way though, I see smoke spilling across I-10 from the other lane, and traffic backed up behind what I assume is smoke from asphalting. As I drive by I see it is not any sort of road construction, but a semi trailer that is spitting out the smoke, since whatever it was carrying is now slowly burning itself out from both ends, which are also warped and crumpled. I don't have enough time to really figure out what's going on as I am seeing all of this at 65 miles per hour, but it's interesting nonetheless.
I get lost a little bit trying to meet up with my Uncle Jack. Take the first right after the school, he told me, and when I see a school bus parked outside of a building along a curve in 181, I begin looking for my first right which should be Fort Bowie. Eventually, I see the first right, which is not Fort Bowie. Maybe I was supposed to turn off at the smaller road the school was on and then look for the first right. I try that, but still no Fort Bowie to be found. When turning around, I see that the school was not actually a school, but a church with a schoolbus parked outside. I head back the way I was initially heading and see my Uncle Jack had come out to find me since I should have been there 15 minutes ago. Then I see the school that actually is a school and I feel like a slight retard. I ride slowly on the two or three miles of dirt road that leads to his ranch house, and I manage to avoid all the large rocks and ditches that litter the way there. We we arrive, I meet his dog Hoppy who is new since my last visit here four years ago. Hoppy is aptly named since he has so much energy that he cannot stay still for more than thirty seconds it seems.
I spend the next three days at Uncle Jack's taking it easy mostly. He is an excellent cook so I eat very well. I harass Hoppy with a remote control truck that drives him nuts, and we visit with his neighbors across the way and oversee the installation of a new refrigerator and stove, a momentous event way out here. We drink Miller High Life and some Black Butte Porter, and one day I help him move the larger rocks in his firepit closer to his house. I listen to his stories of Vietnam and his time as a police officer in Ohio, about the glory days of the local wolf pack that is now down to its last two members, two sad wolves that just don't have the energy to run around like they used to since Roscoe, Jack's old pet, and Sam died. I study the road atlas and Uncle Jack helps me plan out my next leg to Austin. At his advice I plan on avoiding a small road along the Mexican border of New Mexico. Not if I were armed with two other guys, he said, and considering that he almost always is armed anyway, with smugglers and illegal immigrants often crossing his property, I take his advice and map out a more northern route. What is nice about this part of Arizona is similar to what is nice about western Arizona. That is, the stars come out in the millions, and you can see the sunsets silhouetting the distant mountains, and for some reason the air in front of the setting sun is extra clear and crisp compared to any other sunsets I have seen anywhere, and they really look like the image on the Arizona licence plates, except better. I don't know how to describe any better than very crisp, like a slice of life in HD. It's hard to keep track of days and dates when both he and I are on our own schedules, but one day we go for a quick motorcycle ride into "town" 20 miles away to mail some letters. Uncle Jack recently bought a gorgeous Harley-Davidson Road King that is still in the process of being broken in, so when we ride, he accelerates quickly and then will fall back, and accelerate quickly, and fall back. I don't know why this is needed for a new engine, and neither does he, but that is just what you do with a new bike. Another day, we go over my bike pretty well to make sure it's in prime riding condition. We put two coats of Gunk on the chain to clean it off. We tighten some screws here and bolts there, and check the oil, brake fluid, which probably needs to be bled and replaced, check the tires, tighten the chain, and lubricate the chain. We both feel like it's in pretty good shape at this point.
It's my last night, and before the pork roast, sort of as an appetizer, Uncle Jack grills up some rattlesnake he personally killed. I've been wanting to eat rattlesnake since I heard how good it was awhile back. I eat it with my fingers, and it tastes like chicken, but a little juicier and chewier. It is cooked in short sections, maybe three inches long, and to eat it I have to gnaw the meat from either side of the spine, making sure not to get the needle-like rib bones in my mouth. Pretty tasty stuff. When Friday morning comes around, I pack up my saddlebags, and strap everything else onto the back seat. Uncle Jack is coming for a ride with me into Wilcox, where I will hop on I-10 and head east, and where he will turn around. It's a nice drive, mostly a straight shot. The only unpleasant stretch is past a dairy farm and there there is a nasty stink for a mile or so, and a blizzard of bugs that sprays my helmet with guts, but both are soon past. We stop at the post office so I can send a few small things home to New Hampshire, and we part ways at the Chevron near the freeway. It has been a nice few days; it's very easy to relax in the middle of the desert, and I thank Uncle Jack for all the great food and help with the bike, and hop on the interstate towards New Mexico.