My Last day in El Mirage (aka More Stuff I Typed on the Plane

On my last day, we all went on the most amazing drive: It’s called the Apache Trail. It’s way on the other side of the city, but if you go to Phoenix do it (although I would recommend a 4 wheel drive vehicle not a Jetta). We got ice cream, and we stopped at a little museum thing to buy a postcard for Grandma (I forgot to in SF arg). Then the real trail started.

And I mean trail: as in non-paved roads, one way bridges, and winding up mountainsides and partially flooded areas.

We went by Superstition Mountain…

AND I REALIZED MY MEMORY CARD WAS NOT IN MY CAMERA IT WAS STILL IN MY COMPUTER.

So for the most beautiful sights I saw in Arizona, I will have to rely on other people’s pictures. Sorry ‘bout that. It was so interesting though: TONS of Cacti, red rocks, mountainous areas, canyons, desert plants everywhere. Just gorgeous! It really made my last day awesome!





We kind of took the wrong way back thanks to TomTom, but we still got there… just later. We had a nice Valentine’s dinner at the house, and I got a hold of my first Couchsurfing host! Yay! Excitement!

Annie and I went on a last minute trip to the store to get flip flops and extra large cheap black nylons to hold my hula hoop pieces together while on the side of my backpack. The flip flops were not something I was planning on buying so soon (ie before Montreal) until she made a very good point. I probably don’t want to be in bare feet while using shared/public showers at lots of potentially dirty hostels. I would not have thought of this!

So now I am packed and actually on plane #2! For some reason this cheap flight had a layover in Salt Lake City, so I had dinner there.

SLC Airport is the first one I have been in with a natural fibers/fair trade/organic store plus giant recycling bins next to the garbage bins. I was impressed. Go airport go.

Things I Typed on the Plane

Post-hoop sesh:

We came home in the evening, and stopped by Boston Market for my first time. I am surprised that I liked it despite being slightly fast food. It’s like a fast food and home cooking hybrid of sorts.

Somehow we ended up watching Rambo one and two, then Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze (wtf).

I ended up staying up late enough (past 4:30am) reading my book that Josh woke up to go to a class before I had gone to bed. Whoops. I am full on addicted to this book by Neil Gaiman!

Thursday was relatively uneventful… I hooped in the yard a little bit teaching Annie. We went to the grocery store again. We were going to go out for the night, but she kept changing her mind six times over. Finally several hours after we had planned on leaving, Annie and I ended up going back to Tempe. I wasn’t drinking since I was driving, and Annie for some reason told Josh that she wasn’t going to drink either (which I didn’t know until after I left), so when we got there we ended up walking around for a while getting chilly… at least it was a nice drive. Once again I ended up awake till 4:30am, but this time it was my little computer!

Friday I woke up late and was determined to catch up on writing this blog! It had been almost a week, and it was VERY difficult to remember what happened which day. I tried to write stuff that I’d remembered down in Notepad (which I still used up till now) and that helped.

That evening we were all supposed to go out together because it was Josh’s last day of class. We found a Japanese place where they chop and cook your food in front of you while you all sit around the table. They threw their utensils around, and I caught a shrimp in my mouth! I had a really good time :)

Next up was a quick stop at home before heading to a rock/metal/biker type place close by (we had looked it up online). At least that was the plan. The next thing I knew they were fighting about something, so it ended up being just Josh and I going to the bar.

The place itself was very clean surprisingly, and there was a live band and balloons (someone’s birthday?) virtual bowling, and pool tables. We played virtual bowling once and then started on pool. I am an extreme novice, but I can usually convince people to show me where to hit the ball :) and I still have tons of fun! We played until Annie was calm enough to come out, so we went to get her. We got one more round of pool in I believe, but then they started arguing again. There was some miscommunication, and at one point I thought they had left me behind! I was drunk so I got super mad for the five minutes they were not around for (they came back fast when they realized neither of them was with me). After that we went home and I tried to write a note in Teriyaki Sauce and climbed their tree in the backyard lol. I also bought my ticket to New Orleans.

Comparing train to flight again, turns out the flight was cheaper AND it was 6 hours instead of 39. As much as I loved the train down (minus my stomach being nervous) I was starting to get really excited about NOLA, and wanted the two days spent there not on a train going through Texas.

I can see Texas anytime, but Mardi Gras is once a year!

Booze Slushee Machines and Mountain Hoop Sessions

Yes, slushee machines with alcohol. Annie discovered this online on Tuesday. We decided we should check this out despite it being in Tempe, which is a 40 minute drive across town, in the University district.

Everything is very spread out here. It's annoying.

I hooped in the back yard for a while, read in the sun, and ate dinner while watching UFC. We got ready and Josh drove us out to the slushee place, named Fat Tuesday.

It was New Orleans themed (perfect) with beads on the walls, 2 dollar tasty slushees, and really bad karaoke (it really is everywhere haha). The bartender gave us jello shots for free, and Annie made me try a maraschino cherry soaked in 170 proof liquor. It was nasty!!

We ended up taking off (mostly due to people trying to karaoke rap songs) and walked by a "dueling pianos" bar! I remembered Rebbecca mentioning how much she loved these in Calgary, so I insisted on going in... it was indeed awesome :)

they played good songs, I sang and yelled along and Annie had fun warding guys off by claiming we were lesbians. It works.

After the piano place, we went to some other bar where a random guy's friends were playing. They were playing Sublime when we walked in, a good sign. I drunkenly took a book on Islam from the side of the road and alienated people inside with it. The bartender still gave us free drinks though, and we still pretended to be lesbians to ward off males :). I also found a stripper pole in this bar, near the back. Annie danced, I tried to lol.


Josh picked us up from here, and drove our drunk asses home. I ended up chatting on facebook till late drinking water and eating greasy leftover chinese food to ward off any chance of a hangover...

It worked! I don't know why I am so much better at this on the road, I haven't woken up sick once.

Wednesday I even woke up before noon, and went in the backyard. I really wanted to go see a park or the desert or something. The sun sets so fast right now though it makes it hard to get out on time.

Annie and I tried going to a park in the city named Papago Park. It was easy enough to find, but Arizona has an interesting definition of park.

Considering houses don't even have lawns most of the time (they're gravel - uglyyyyy) the park was... well... desert. So we sorta killed two birds with one stone lol. There was also a big rock with holes in it you can climb. Apparently Ancient Natives used to use this rock to mark solstices depending on where the light shone through one of the holes. Now I have hula hooped on it. Papago park itself also used to be a German POW camp during WWII.

I had brought my hoops because it's a park - perfect place for it - and it ended up turning into a really cool photo shoot. We took over 35 photos, so there are too many to show directly on here, but voila! A FEW photos from the park, but I would recommend just looking at them on Flickr, play around on there... here is the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leannefairweather/sets/72157613700284281/

You can click "all sizes" to see bigger versions, have fun!








I think this was one of my favourite things I've done so far. I felt bad because of Annie's ankle (she was doing really well though) but I am realizing how much I want to be exploring Arizona's nature not it's city.

Saturday Continued

Ok so it is Thursday, technically 4am Friday awake as usual, and I suppose I should tell you what happened the rest of that day.

After I had my little photoshoot of the shopping carts at their checkpoint, We went to the next one and couldn't find parking. We drove around "downtown" Phoenix, and accidentally drove by the Heard Museum. This is the one Museum I had heard good things about, PLUS there happened to be the World Hoop Dance Championships on for ten dollars that weekend. Now, I know what you're thinking... hoop dance... this is not HULA HOOP DANCE. I had looked it up online, and it was Native American Hoopdance (if you don't know what that looks like look it up on Youtube). Still extremely cool. So we sat on the grass (it was outdoor - its warm here) and watched performances. We walked around the museum, and watched some more performances. We were entranced. I tried to zoom the camera and took a crappy blurry photo of a dancer:





We found a Thai place after harassing a photographer who had taken a photo of us for a college newspaper. We ate Thai, went home, and then Annie and I went out to try and find somewhere fun to dance. I was Skyping back home, when Annie had come in acting drunkish... I started drinking and took a cab to this awful place that the cabbie had recommended. It was packed and clean, don't get me wrong, but it was NOT our crowd. We danced to one song and went to a mediocre Irish pub down the street, after Josh showed up. Unfortunately when leaving Annie fell down off a hidden five foot drop and sprained her ankle medially (very rare and hard to do!). She freaked because she doesn't have insurance down here, and was scared she had broken her ankle. This could be potentially VERY expensive. It wasn't broken (yay medical knowledge) so we carried her to the back seat and got her home.

Crazy night.

The next day Josh got her a bandage and I wrapped her up (again yay medical knowledge - so useful!). She had a small bruise where her deltoid ligament was injured, and a little smelling, but it was looking good! She wanted to hunt for Smooth Away, a hair removal thingy from TV. It was difficult to find. We didn't want to walk around too much, so we kept it pretty chill.

On Monday it rained (weird), so we took it easy again. We found the Smooth Away at Sally's for ten dollars. She also bought the same soft leopard print hair curlers as me :)

My arms are smooth now lol.

It sort of works. Annie's legs were smooth also, but there is a slight burning sensation afterward (more on her than me), and you can feel slight stubble the next day. Sooooo I am not overly amazed.

We ordered Chinese food and played scrabble.

yup! ok this one is long enough.

Phoenix Redeems Itself!!!!!!!!!! IDIOTAROD 2009

YAY! On Saturday Annie and I went to Arizona's Idiotarod 2009. If you don't know what it is, CLICK THE LINK! Their site is HILARIOUS! It was funny. Snazzed up shopping carts, Burners (of course), drinking on the streets and bars (I was driving so I could not partake in this)... Here are the photos... BUT there was a themed shopping cart with some graphic content so I have WARNED YOU. It's not a real vagina.




















Whew. I have more pictures from that same day but I will try to break it up a bit...

Karaoke and Shades

Arizona is a lot different than California.... I have no good reason for not trying to summarize what I have been up to here, and since it's been a while I might not be able to do a day by day like I did in SF... I will try to remember highlights though...

I arrived on Monday night, and Annastajia the master baker had made this chocolate/key lime/Oreo cheesecake that I immediately gorged on :) She is a fantastic cook! They had picked me up at the airport which was also extremely awesome.

Tuesday I accidentally slept in an obscene amount partially due to the time difference, and partially due to me being tired from traveling all day then staying up late... so most of the day was gone, but I still went outside briefly to see how hot it actually is here:

it's hot. Like 27 degrees in February hot. It goes up to 45-50 in the summer apparently, so I am glad I'm here with all the migrating old people in the winter lol.

My sunglasses got squished in my bag on the plane, so I went to the mall with them and bought a new cheap pair. I learned that A&W's in the states have a cheese fries option. It was... not cheese.

A large difference between the situation in Cali vs. Arizona is the lack of local knowledge. Annie and Josh moved here fairly recently, and work from home. A result of this is that they don't know anyone here, or where to go. We are also in a suburb of a suburb similar to being in Langley. Luckily Annie has a car! You need one here.

We have been trying to search the internet for things to do or places to go around here, with difficulty. It's really hard to realize what's interesting in a place with no human reference. Everything recommended on the internet has the potential to have been recommended simply because that place had paid for it. We looked at Yelp, and Tribe.net, couchsurfing, the city's website... and paid for it lol.

I found a "castle" that looked interesting. Wednesday we decided to try and check it out. Annie has a GPS thing called a Tom Tom to navigate the foreign city with, but even with that we managed to go to the wrong place. It sent us to an industrial gas/oil thing. We had put in the wrong street. We still found it after, but it WASN'T OPEN! The stupid thing was supposed to be done late 2008, the signs beside it AND internet said it was, but it was behind on restoration.

So the internet failed, but at least we had a nice long drive and saw some of the sights of phoenix.

We bought a movie that night, and had a little home theatre night. We watched "Swing Vote". The main character drove me nuts, but I liked the ending :)

Annie and I went to get pedicures on Thursday... this was the second one I've ever had, and I had "nail art" for the first time. She drew a little design on my big toes.

I didn't think I would like it this much! I have not been able to stop staring at my feet! I have been taking tons of pictures of my toes hahaha, but not many I am satisfied with... feet are not photogenic...

I also found an "art walk" in Scottsdale, which might have been interesting... but it was galleries being open (for old people lol) not art on the street. It was also very fancy looking, not somewhere for two young girls with an elf jacket and tattoos. Oh well. I drove the car out with Annie, which was interesting. I hadn't driven a car in almost a month, and it wasn't a car I was used to.


On the way back from the walk, we tried to find the city centre of Scottsdale, but once again the Tom Tom decided to take us into the middle of nowhere. FAIL.

We got home and managed to get out to a local bar for a couple drinks. Little did we know that it was Karaoke night!!! I was so happy!!!!

This karaoke was weird though, because there was no stage! People would just pass the mic around and often the person would just sit hiding at their table singing, so you really had to search where it was coming from every time. Nothing like the karaoke from last weekend!

We ate, had a few beers, threw some darts (fun!), and I took a couple pictures... funny how the camera comes out so much faster when there is alcohol involved! if you look closely you can see the karaoke words in the corner




Friday was slightly more chill. I can't really remember what we did for the day... I think we got the mail?! We worked out in the living room for 20 minutes... ummmmmmm well the night consisted of renting a game for the Wii about Rabbits. I was hooked so fast... They had a hula hoop function on the Wii fit too that I tried right after hula hooping in the backyard. Annie videotaped Josh trying it because it looked so ridiculous... oh yes and Annie showed me a new drink named Lynchberg Lemonade: very yummy :)

I have photos for Saturday, so I think I will make then on a separate post!

Love you all so much!

Leanne

Arizona's Winter is like Vancouver's Summer!!

oh yes it is. This desert is hot hot hot it is soooooo wonderful!

I have now seen a giant cactus right right where its supposed to be :)



Annastajia has a plot to increase my weight by at least ten pounds I am sure of it hee hee hee...

Things are excellent!!

xoxo Leanne