Lights, Camera, Alcatraz!

I. Alcatraz Eve

I'd experienced occasional jitters during the previous week, but the nerves kicked in big-time on the afternoon before the Alcatraz swim. I can actually see Alcatraz Island from Lafayette Park where I was walking my dog the afternoon before the swim. The wind had picked up quickly putting some serious chop on the bay. I hadn't really considered that I might have to swim in white caps. I tugged on Layla's leash and hustled her toward the leeward side of the park...

I began to think about all the things that could go wrong. Although sharks are the first thing I'm usually asked about when I tell someone I swim in the bay, they are really at the bottom of my list of imaginary catastrophes, probably because I've yet to hear a reliable story about a shark attacking a swimmer inside the bay. Hypothermia ranks higher, but dehydration is a precipitating factor and I'd been hydrating well since Wednesday, so I figured I'd be fine on that front. I'd trained for this, so I was only mildly concerned about running out of steam.

Sadly, my highest ranking fear was that I'd be the slowest swimmer in the group and that I'd be forced back onto the boat where I'd have to ride to the beach in shame. I pictured the crestfallen faces of my friends while they waited on shore for me and watched the successful swimmers high-fiving each other; I could actually feel my face getting flushed. The insanity of being more concerned about a boat carrying me to safety than being eaten by a shark was not lost on me, but still..

I tried to stay in the moment and focus on the things I could control. I figured out a timeline for the morning, got all my gear together, ate lots of carbs, and by the time the Giants game started, I was pretty relaxed. My fear was just a blip on the screen and absent additional ammunition, it died its usual death. When the whitecaps crossed my radar again, I reminded myself that afternoon winds would be unlikely at 7:30 a.m.

II. Showtime

Afternoon winds unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No, as it turned out. We immediately noticed the trees blowing on our fairly sheltered block as we left the house at 6:30 a.m. When we arrived at Fisherman's Wharf where Chucky's Pride was docked, it was clear that the wind was blowing hard to the east. Damn, we would be swimming against a strong wind, something I hadn't yet experienced.

The wind was all everyone was talking about. One of the coaches remembered how something called "wind waves" threw her backwards even though she was swimming with a strong current. One woman quietly chanted "no wind, no wind, no wind." I tried to get someone to tell me that it wouldn't be any worse than the choppy conditions the week before, but there were no takers. Ann, the coach I would be swimming with finally gave it to me straight: "The swells today are going to be bigger than anything you've experienced."

Believe it or not, I didn't panic. Ann told me that the most important adjustment would be turning farther on my side with each breath and I had practiced that. We got our instructions: we would swim 300 yards toward the Fontana Towers, then head toward Fort Mason, then the Palace of Fine Arts, and then our destination - St. Francis Yacht Club Beach - about a 2 mile swim. We boarded the boat and in the safety of the harbor it actually seemed like the wind had died down.

But it hadn't, and by the time we were approaching Alcatraz, I could see that the white caps we saw from the shore were actually big waves. The boat began to have some trouble positioning itself and every time the Captain killed the motor it seemed like the boat might tip over. I started to get antsy; I wanted to either jump in or just go back to shore. The previous buzz of 40 people chatting died down. And we waited.

A few minutes later, the Captain announced that the conditions were going to make it too dangerous to jump as close to Alcatraz as planned and that a "modified course" would be attempted. That sounded fine but I did flinch a little when Coach Pedro announced that in light of the conditions, we shouldn't swim if we didn't feel comfortable and that our our money would be refunded or put toward a future swim. There were a couple of similar announcements and additional modifications before the Captain decided it was safe to jump. There were still waves, but they no longer looked like something you could surf and I stopped feeling like I might be thrown overboard.

I'm still amazed I didn't panic. I think there must have just been too much going on to panic; there was neither time nor space for panic. Once the theme song from 'Rocky' began to blast over the loudspeakers, it was time to jump. I stepped to the rail, held on to my goggles, and let her rip.

It immediately felt so right, like there was nowhere else in the world that I was supposed to be. I hardly felt any movement during the first 100 yards and the 60 degree water actually felt warm. When Ann stopped to ask me how it felt, I remember saying "this is totally doable!!!" And it was.

There would definitely be moments when the swells surprised me. They were bigger than those I'd experienced. And there were times when I couldn't sight because of an oncoming wave. But then on the next breath, I would be able to. Somewhere around the 1/2 way point, Ann and I just stopped for a moment to take it all in. There was the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Palace of Fine Arts, and although I never saw them, she told me that two sea lions had been swimming with us for most of the route. It was perfect.

During the second half of the swim, the currents were super strong and we really picked up speed. The modifications had probably taken 10-15 minutes off our originally planned swim and in 33 minutes we were stepping onto the sands of St. Francis Yacht Club Beach. And there was my son and his wife who showed up to surprise me. And my Masters Girls who had been with me on that first swim in Aquatic Park. And Mike and Joanne and Laura... I got them all soaking wet with big sloppy hugs and then we heard the call over the loudspeaker that it was time to swim back to the boat. And just like that, one of the biggest adventures in my life was coming to an end.

But not before the party on the way back to the Wharf. It turns out we had a lot to celebrate. According to the Captain, the day's conditions were the worst he had ever seen. Coach Pedro and the other experienced swimmers confirmed this. The wind was 25 knots and the swells were 6-8 feet!! I was told things like "if you can swim in this stuff, you can swim anything" and "this swim gives you serious bragging rights." I felt a little more swagger in my step as I took a victory lap around the boat, taking photos and soaking it all in.

I know the excitement I still feel right now will pass. But I think the boost to my confidence as an open-water swimmer will linger. And I hope the lesson I learned about acceptance and adaptability will linger as well. The conditions were not the ones I wanted but they were the ones I got and I didn't fight them or panic over them or complain about them. I did the best I could with what I had, and it was enough.

So I guess that's enough about this Alcatraz swim but I have a feeling there will be more because ***WARNING*** THIS SPORT IS SERIOUSLY ADDICTIVE!!

Sunrise over the San Francisco Bay

Getting instructions on the course

Going down Ms. Marks?

Chucky's Pride 

 Alcatraz Island 

 Ann breaks the news that it will be a tough swim 

But like Van Halen says - Might as Well Jump 

You Go Girl 

Hilary could spot the orange stripes on my Helix 

We had support in boats, kayaks and  paddleboards 

And just like that it was over 

My baby boy was waiting on the beach 

The Coaches told me I had serious bragging rights 

Coach Ann is my new BFF  

Until next time...





Swimming From Alcatraz? You've Got To Be Kidding...

I. Getting Wet 

I never thought I’d want to get into water that wasn’t 82 degrees much less swim in the San Francisco Bay. So my swim to Alcatraz in a couple of weeks is as much a surprise to me as a challenge – I can’t believe I actually want to do it. But I do, with a vengeance laced with obsession. How did this happen?

My husband is the swimmer in the family and he’s been on me to get in the pool with him for 20 years. My excuses usually centered around the time involved, not wanting to get my hair wet and several varieties of “it’s just not my bag, baby.”

When I was recovering from a surgery in 2006 and unable to engage in my passions at the time, Brazilian dancing and Astanga yoga, I started taking the water-aerobics class at my local YMCA. Being the only person under 65 made me very popular and I loved the spirit of the “90 is the new 60” crowd. But as I jogged in place in the shallow end of the pool, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the “real swimmers” effortlessly gliding back and forth in the lap lanes. One thing led to another and before I knew it I was clocking a mile 3-5 days a week. It turns out it was my bag after all.

I swam in the lane next to the Masters group for years, wondering why anyone would want to be on this glorified swim team for grown-ups. My swimming had become a slow, relaxing meditation, and Masters appeared to be the opposite of that – there were drills, timed sets, lots of different strokes - they did the butterfly for God’s sake!!!

But my usual lane was crowded one morning and there was open space in a Masters lane. When the coach told me to jump in, I thought he meant I could split the lane and do my own thing. Before I knew it, I had a pair of fins and a kickboard and was being introduced as a new Masters swimmer. That was two years ago and save vacations and natural disasters, I haven’t missed a Mon, Wed or Fri workout since. You just never know...

II. From Hot to Cold

 I first started hearing about open water swims in the hot-tub after our Masters workouts. Athletes training for triathlons often swim with the Masters when they are preparing for an event. A few swimmers would talk about competing in various open water swims. And I began to hear about some who regularly swam in Aquatic Park and Crissy Field. I could see the draw of swimming in crystal clear 82 degree Napili Bay, but in dirty 50 degree San Francisco Bay? As my son would say “Oh Hellllll No”.

I was fascinated as I listened to the stories though – crazy currants, encounters with sea lions, the thrills of swimming in open water. And I was scared too – there was vomiting in rough waters, losing site of landmarks in the fog, something called “Channel Claw” that made your hands freeze into the shape of a claw. Yikes!!!!

There was a shift occurring though and “hell no” was becoming “well maybe under the right conditions…”

Last October, during our San Francisco Indian Summer, word was going around the locker room that the waters in Aquatic Park were up to 65 degrees. A couple of girls decided to meet on a Tuesday morning. Our coach decided he was coming too. Then someone offered to lend me a wetsuit. June promised to bring food and it was on!!!!

I was so nervous that I could hardly sleep the night before the swim. June picked me up at 6:30am and we met our group on the steps of Aquatic Park and stepped into the water at 7:00am. Even in a wetsuit, 65 degrees is COLD!!!!!! So cold that it literally takes your breath away and makes your face feel like it might fall off. A few people swam the 1 mile perimeter of Aquatic Park. But I needed to know I was closer to shore so I opted for “swimming the buoys” which are about 1/3 mile from shore. Swimming back and forth between the buoys is about a ½ mile swim. I can’t say that swimming out to the buoys was pleasant but something started to happen as we settled into swimming the buoy line. I began to notice the movement and the expansiveness of the open water. I liked the connection to the pelicans and the grebes that were flying overhead and swimming next to us in the water. As I turned to breath I could see the San Francisco skyline to the right and the Golden Gate Bridge to the left. And just a glimpse of Alcatraz….

Well, that was it. I was hooked. Again. I managed to get a group to join me for the next couple of weeks, but then the temperatures began to drop precipitously. Suddenly it was 58 degrees, and then 56 degrees and my group’s enthusiasm began to wane. By mid-November they were done for the year. I knew that swimming alone was a really bad idea and I desperately began to put out calls and emails to people I hardly knew. Will you swim with me at Aquatic Park? I just wasn’t willing to let this bad-boy die. I got my husband to “babysit” from shore a couple of times, but that wasn’t a long term solution. When I found out that a group called Water World met every Sunday, year-round, I was ecstatic. And that’s when Alcatraz began to call my name…

III. Water World

Water World is a group of swimmers of all levels that meets year-round, once a week during the winter and twice a week once the time changes. Led by Coach Pedro Ordenas, who recently swam the Magellan Strait (again), Water World always has coaches in the water and in kayaks and on paddleboards to guide the group swims and support the swimmers in the event of problems. There are usually two groups, one swimming inside of Aquatic Park and the other going out into the bay, aka “The Wild West.”

Before every swim, we are coached on the currents and whether we will be swimming with an ebb or a flood. We are warned about the places where the currents are the strongest. Pedro will give us gems like “make sure you make a strong turn at the end of the wall or you’ll be shopping at Pier 39.” Or “make sure you stay to the left of Anita Rock, because the support staff won’t be able to get you under the Bridge and you’ll be on your own until the Coast Guard picks you up.” By the time I get in the water, I’m a nervous wreck, but it’s never been as disastrous as he predicts it might be.

Every week I learned something that made the swim a little more comfortable. I started using earplugs to prevent motion sickness. I bought a neoprene cap (even though I hated the straps under the chin.) I learned about Glide to prevent chafing around the neck. And then came the big investment – a thing of beauty called the Blue-Seventy Helix Wetsuit. Ahhhhh… I learned to bring hot tea to warm up after the swim and to get out of my suit before my fingers got too cold to take it off by myself. And when the temps hit the low 50s, I bought neoprene gloves that allowed me to stay in the water an extra 15-20 minutes.

When the water dropped from 56 to 53, I didn’t notice much of a difference. But when it hit 52, it was noticeably colder. And at 49, it was even colder. I had been swimming for close to 45 minutes, and I was pretty uncomfortable after only 25 minutes in 49 degree water. And the first 5 minutes became tortuous; I just didn’t think I could bear it. But I did. And even during the coldest stretch, there was something that kept pulling me back like the tides - week after week. To be sure, the high that lasted until Tuesday was definitely a big part of it. But it was more than the way I felt afterwards. Not many things in my life have put me more radically into the present moment. Maybe it’s the sound of my breath in the water and the return to the breath, again and again and again. Or maybe it’s the deep connection to something that feels infinite. It could be the connection I feel to the other creatures in that world - the pelicans that circle over us and nod at us from the piers. Its just an experience that stays with me and returns to me throughout the week. It’s hard to describe in the way that most really profound things are hard to describe. Words just aren’t enough…

IV. The Inevitable

Water World is famous for their “Monthly Crossings”. Someone in our group is always planning for an Alcatraz Crossing or an Escape from Alcatraz or an Alcatraz Classic. It’s what people talk about before and after our Sunday swims. One guy who joined Water World about the same time as me signed up for the January Alcatraz Crossing, the baddest of the bad boys, and I knew I wasn’t quite ready for that. But as soon as I started swimming outside of Aquatic Park, Alcatraz became something of an intoxicating draw. As we swam along the outside of the break wall, with every breath to the left, there it was – The Island. And even though it’s over 1 ¼ miles away, it looks so close; it’s sort of impossible not to want to swim it.

With each week, my confidence began to grow. I became familiar with the ebbs and the floods. We practiced swimming against the currents and I started to think about them as “different” instead of “scarier and harder.” The same thing happened with choppy waters; I started to think of bigger movements as something akin to a roller coaster ride. Instead of “Oh F---” it became “Oh Wow”. We swam in strong floods and strong ebbs, we swam out side of AP and at Crissy Field. And I just started to feel ready. So I signed up for the April 19 Alcatraz Crossing.

I feel lucky that my last two swims have been challenging – a 2 mile Crissy Field swim against heavy currents and “Washing-Machine” conditions last Sunday. I think I’m ready. But you never know exactly what conditions will be like in the open water – some floods and ebbs are stronger than others and weather is always variable. There’s always a bit of a risk and that’s part of the thrill I suppose. Whatever the conditions, I’m looking forward to enjoying the ride.

                                           My husband babysat from the shore for this swim

                                         Nick swam the January Crossing in his skins (no wetsuit)

                                                    Last swim before the Alcatraz Crossing

                                                              Oh yeah - I'm ready!!!!

Rock On

Why aren’t we all living in Sedona? Seriously, I think it might be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I know I’ve said this about other places, but we left Sedona a week ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe all those crazy vortexes put some kind of a spell on me; more likely it’s those haunting red rocks.

Massive sandstone monoliths bearing the descriptive names of Snoopy, Coffeepot Rock, the Nuns, and Bell Rock surround the town and create an unforgettable landscape. Iron oxide gives the rocks vibrant red and orange colors that become even more intense as the sun rises and sets.

We pulled into Sedona after dark and didn’t see the red rocks until the next morning. I looked out the window and couldn’t believe it when I saw Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte right next to our motel. What amazing luck, I thought, until I realized that amazing rock formations were everywhere in Sedona. Even the dog park is in the shadow of Coffeepot, Steamboat, and a dozen other famous landmarks. I hadn’t told my husband yet, but I had already decided we were moving to Sedona.

We struck up a conversation with the computer geek who worked at the Subway across the street. Along with helping me with a computer glitch, Sean provided an excellent introductory tutorial on Sedona. He told us to avoid the vortex tours. Like many who’d spent years in Sedona, he’d never felt anything at the vortex sites. He told us how to get to the most popular ones on our own. “But be careful,” he advised. “Some people think being naked enhances the vortex experience and you never who you’re going to see running around without clothes on.” Aha, I thought, they’re probably mistaking the breeze on their naked butts for the vortexes.

Sean suggested that we ignore the signs instructing us to buy Red Rock parking passes and to park illegally like all of the locals. He directed us to Tara Thai, where we had the best green curry since leaving San Francisco. And he gave us sage advice about the Sedona “entrepaneurs.” “Watch out for anyone offering you a ride on a spaceship,” he said, sounding very serious. Apparently, someone recently made off with 200K after promising hundreds of prospective, and ultimately disappointed, passengers a ride on the mother ship.  

I didn’t want to go on a vortex tour, mainly because they were run by organizations like “Spirit Quest” and people with names like “Kristelle Love.” But I was curious about these strange forces that elude scientific explanation. They have been described as “whirling masses of energy that affect anyone who comes within a quarter mile of them.” Terms like “magnetic,” “electrical,” and “electromagnetic” were used a lot. So were terms like “psychic” and “spiritual. All of this sounded very cool to me. “I guess science just hasn’t figured out a way to graph the mystical,” I mused aloud. “Or maybe they defy explanation because they are imaginary,” said my killjoy husband.

In any event, I hiked to several of the vortex epi-centers really wanting to feel something mystical. And I think I felt something. At one of the vortex sites I felt really energized and my thoughts were very clear. And I thought I felt some sort of vague connection to something. Was it the mystical vortex or was it breathing clean air and looking at beautiful red rocks? In the realm of the “woo-woo,” who can say for sure…

One morning, as we parked our car in the shadow of Cathedral Rock, a Native American man with a chiseled brown face and a long gray pony-tail approached us with a big smile on his face. He looked sort of familiar and I thought maybe he was an actor who’d played a stereotypical “Indian Elder” in some movie I’d seen. “Hey, hello, hello there,” he said, as if he knew me. Was this going to be some sort of a mystical connection? I looked over my shoulder to make sure he was talking to me and he started to laugh. “I saw you at dinner last night, at the Thai restaurant.” Damn.

He was sort of mystical though. His name was Eagle Spirit, but we could call him “Gil”, and he was an Apache “Guia” or guide. He asked me what I thought of Sedona and I told him about the connection and the lightness and the clarity. “Oh, Sedona has that effect on everyone” he nodded knowingly. “It is a powerful and sacred place and it was that way long before the New Agers got here. But even they can’t do anything to spoil it.” Eagle Spirit had a sense of humor. We swapped cards and he promised to look me up when he came to San Francisco. I made a mystical connection after all.

As you might expect, a lot of people end up in Sedona because they really buy into the whole “New Age” scene. Even before the "Harmonic Convergence" in 1987 - a gathering of spiritualists intended to ring in an era of universal peace - Sedona had been the destination, and increasingly the home, of all kinds of metaphysical believers. On the day we left, Hilary made friends with one of the hundreds of massage therapists who try to make a living in Sedona while I chatted up a guy who worked at one of the numerous crystal shops. His eyes glazed over when he talked about the healing properties of rocks and I found it really hard to keep a straight face. I began to wonder if I was just a little too cynical for Sedona

The rocks in Sedona were spectacular alright. But sometimes bigger is better, so we headed for the Grand Canyon. We stayed in Flagstaff, a college town on historic Route 66. It has a ski resort in mountains called the San Francisco Peaks, a cool Old Downtown area centered around a train station, and a young and hip vibe to it. But we were there because it was the gateway to one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

I found it difficult to speak when I first saw the Grand Canyon. I just sort of mumbled for the first 10 or 15 minutes. I didn’t burst into tears or anything, but I felt ill equipped to process what I was seeing. I thought about God and how I can’t process that one either. Like the Grand Canyon, God is also too big for me to wrap my head around. Wow, I thought, going into LSD flash-back mode, I think maybe God is the Grand Canyon. 

Unlike God, however, the Grand Canyon was explained concisely on the little wooden placards we read as we walked along the South Rim Trail. We learned that it is 227 miles long, 18 miles across and has a depth of 5700 ft. Marine sediment is deposited in the canyon walls from a time when the ocean covered the canyon. Over millions of years, it has been carved and shaped by the movement of the Colorado River. The various hues, like in Sedona, are from the deposits of iron and other mineral in the rocks. I found it all fascinating. I realized that I had never taken a geology class and I added that to my already jam packed “to-do” list.

Everyone told us we had to hike below the rim, that the view would be completely different from below the rim. I’m pretty sure none of them had visited the Grand Canyon during the winter when there is snow and ice on the trails below the rim. Nevertheless, we dutifully drove to the Bright Angel Trailhead in order to attempt our descent.

My stomach was already in knots from looking over the edges of South Rim Trail and worrying that the dog was going to fall off a cliff. That might have been because someone (who’s name I won’t mention except to say that it starts with the letter “H”) almost gave me a heart attack when he dropped Layla’s leash and she ran around in several mad circles, each precariously closer to the edge than the last. Frankly, I was relieved to see that Bright Angel was completely iced over and there was a sign advising the use of crampons. It wasn’t even a close call. We got back in the car and drove to Hopi Point where we watched an impressive sunset. Hiking below the rim didn’t even make the “to-do” list.

After more than four months on the road, we were ready to go home. Now that we had seen the Grand Canyon, it was like air traffic control had given us the okay to take off. There was no question about which route we would take. Chuck Berry had been reminding us how to get home since we arrived in Flagstaff three days earlier. It was time to get our kicks on Route 66.

Bell Rock from the parking lot of our motel

                                               

Cathedral Rock

Snoopy Rock

Sedona Dog Park

Layla took a break with me in the sun

Climbing Cathedral Rock

I think I felt something at the top

Coffeepot Rock at Sunset

Layla assessed the situation

And we walked along the South Rim Trail

She was on the leash at this point

Later, she wasn't and she got way too close to this

Bright Angel Trail - we will hike below the rim in some other lifetime

The Colorado River is at the bottom of the Grand Canyon

                                                                                 

Air traffic control gave the okay for take off

                                                                            

And there was no question about which way we'd go

Dodging Bullets in Arizona

 We arrived in Tucson the night before Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head. We actually drove by the Safeway where she would host “Congress on the Corner” the following morning. She regularly made herself available to her constituents and her willingness to set aside time on a Saturday morning to listen to people complain made the tragedy seem even more unfair. As you might expect, the people we spoke with were still reeling and in a state of collective shock.

Arizona is a very conservative state, but Tucson is a fairly liberal city. And the people we came in contact with really loved Giffords. She supported health care reform and gay marriage and adamantly opposed Arizona’s controversial immigration legislation. “It’s just so sad, and it’s always the right-wing nut cases who kill people, you know?” said a visibly upset nurse in the dog park. “Watch, they’ll blame it all on her immigration policies”, said a teacher who was eating lunch at Chaco’s. “No”, said another man, presciently, “it’ll be about the way we still get to carry guns; it’s always the guns that get blamed when something like this happens.” 

But as shops closed for the day and memorials were set up all over the city, the news turned to Sarah Palin and her Facebook page with the cross hairs of a rifle scope targeting Gifford’s district. All the news stations were running her incendiary “Don’t retreat – RELOAD!” clip. When the Sheriff in charge of the Tucson investigation publicly speculated that “vitriolic rhetoric” helped lead to the tragedy, the public debate was on. Of course, no one knows if the shooter paid attention to any of the vitriol on Facebook or Fox News. And both the right and the left are using this incident to advance their own arguments, as they always do. It would be nice if this tragedy led to a toning down of the rhetoric, but the more likely outcome will be some sort of reactionary “Gabby’s Law” that does nothing to prevent something similar from happening again.

In light of everything that had happened in Tucson, it was embarrassing to have been riding around in a stagecoach and watching a simulated gunfight in Tombstone the day before. But we had been promised a “walk back in time” and we took the hook. 

Tombstone is nothing more than a Hollywood stage set these days, but as I sat on the wooden boardwalk watching people dressed in period costumes and listening to the sounds of the stagecoaches moving up and down the main street, I did get a sense of what it must have been like in 1890. Tombstone was a booming mining town then with bustling saloons on every street and regular gunfights settled by the likes of Wyatt Earp. It was a little on the hokey side, but I had to admit that the “Town That Won’t Die” still had a bit of life to it.

We toured the Tombstone Heritage Museum and viewed a massive collection of antique weapons, some apparently used in the various gun battles that shaped Arizona’s history. Afterwards, I started to notice that it wasn’t just the actors dressed up as Wyatt and Doc who were walking around with guns on their belts. Ordinary people were carrying guns too. And apparently, it’s okay to have concealed weapons as well. Arizona’s gun laws are among the most lenient in the country, it’s one of only three states to allow concealed weapons to be carried without a permit and there is very little obstacle to purchasing a weapon. The guy in Chaco’s was right; in light of the incident in Tucson, gun control activists are having a field day with these laws.

It was pretty depressing time to be in Tucson. But it seemed sort of disrespectful to just leave. Like anyone in Tucson would have noticed, right? In any event, we stayed long enough to learn everything there is to know about Saguaro Cactus (pronounced sah-war-o), the iconic symbol of the desert itself. These cacti were so familiar that I was surprised to learn how limited their range is. They grow only in the Sonoran Desert; if transplanted, they will die within five years. But they were everywhere in and around Tucson - in front of houses and restaurants and all over the hills and mountains that surrounded the city. Some were close to 60 feet tall and 175 years old. But contrary to popular belief, it would be a bad idea to try to drink from them like John Wayne used to do in the movies; they are full of acids and other chemicals that would make you very sick. According to the docent who showed us around the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, if you are stuck it the desert without water, you are pretty much fucked: “This desert will take you out quickly; if I were out there without water, I’d use my remaining energy to look for help instead of whacking a cactus.” Good to know.

The museum was about 15 miles outside of the city and it bordered Saguaro National Park. As we drove into the parking lot we saw the sign informing us that any pet left unattended would be confiscated by the Pima County authorities. We considered, and quickly rejected, turning back. We were told by several different people that the “Raptors in Flight” show was a “must-see” for anyone visiting the Tucson area. Besides, it was cold the morning we were there. And after the mass murder, we figured the police might have better things to do than confiscate Layla. We put towels over the windows to shade the interior (and hide the evidence), left a bowl of water in the back seat, and took our chances. She was still alive and in the car when we returned. And we were able to learn all about the Sonoran Desert and watch a family of Harris Hawks hunt as a pack. Wow!

We also stopped at the Mission San Xavier del Bac while in Tucson. It was recently restored and its interior reminded me of a tribal gingerbread house. This mission is clearly influenced by the Tohone O’odham Indians, whose reservation houses the mission. The O’odham manage to practice their tribal customs along with Catholicism and their cultural festivals and art shows draw people from all over the country. This was definitely the grooviest mission I’ve ever seen and it would have fit in just as well on Fourth Avenue, Tucson’s equivalent of San Francisco’s Haight Street.

“I’m starting to think you guys are Forest Gump” said my friend Loren when she heard we were in Tucson. We have ended up in the center of a lot of action on this journey. Hopefully, the only remaining drama in Arizona will be provided by the landscapes of Sedona and the Grand Canyon.

 

Tombstone, Arizona

And the town characters

I think that might be Doc Holliday

And some of the ladies

Who teaches them to stand like this?

They must learn it in Cowboy 101A

Gunfight around the corner from the OK Corral

Embarrassingly, this is us

On the boardwalk

Giffords and 19 others were shot the morning after we arrived in Tucson

The whole city was in mourning

A Saguaro standing at attention

The Sonoran Desert is full of Saguaros

H demonstrates how big they are (and how cold it was)

Thalidomide Saguaro

Regular sized arms

The Sonoran is pretty lush for a desert

Prairie Dogs live there

We saw this Harris Hawk at the "Raptors in Flight" show at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

They hunted in a pack, which is very unusual for hawks

This is a Great Horned Owl

He was really something in flight

This is a Ferruginous Hawk

Mission San Xavier del Bac

The interior was very cool

And would have fit in on 4th Avenue

Hippie Gypsy on 4th Avenue, Tucson

A Tohone O’odham Indian

And some of the kids on the Reservation

We are on our way home

Layla is getting tired of checking into motels