Hi Gram!
Oh, what a whirlwind week we’ve had! Our plans have probably changed twenty or more times, and they’re still evolving. Every morning, we wake up confident in our direction and plans; then every evening we go to bed, having decided to change just about every aspect and we’re off in a new direction. We’ve bounced between deciding to stay in Tucson, moving to Phoenix for a while, heading up North, going out east, heading to Mexico or even just heading back to Illinois. I’m getting ahead of myself, though – let me start at the beginning.
When we got to Tucson at the end of December, we had moved into a short-term apartment for the first four weeks, knowing that that it was only available until the end of January. It was just our launching point while we explored the town and found something longer term. Real estate can be a little weird in the best of circumstances. If someone wants to rent a place for a week or two, there’s Airbnb at reasonable rates. If someone wants a place for six months or a year, there are a lot of management companies or “mom and pop” landlords out there who charge market rents. There’s a gap, however, if someone wants a place for a few months. Airbnb owners want to make their daily or weekly rate, which translates to thousands of dollars per month. Landlords and management companies don’t want a lot of turnover, so they add a premium, which also makes their apartment cost thousands of dollars per month. Sometimes, someone can find a landlord that takes a chance on you, or an Airbnb host agrees to a discount. Unfortunately for us, our timing couldn’t have been worse. We arrived in the winter, when all the snowbirds are down here for a few months, so some of the inventory was already taken. Additionally, Tucson has a gem and minerals show, the largest in the world, for the first couple weeks of February. The show drives up the prices on everything and eats up a lot of the inventory. Motels that were asking $40-50/night before the show were asking $100-120/night. The few short term rental apartments that we could find had availability starting around Feb 17. All of this is to say we had a challenge ahead of us when we arrived. After a few weeks, though, we found an apartment – a little smaller and grungier than we were hoping for, but still acceptable – and last Wednesday, we were planning to move there. When I first looked at the apartment, it was run down and dirty because someone had just moved out. As a landlord, I understand how previous tenants treat a place. We agreed to rent it since he would obviously clean it up and make it rent-ready, right? Wrong! When we arrived on Wednesday, the maintenance man was there painting the walls, doors were disassembled, the furnace didn’t work, half of the furniture that we were expecting wasn’t there, and nobody had been there to clean. It was a filthy mess that was going to take a couple days to get ready. We took one look, handed him back the keys, and headed to a friend’s house nearby to make a new plan.
Deb was more than gracious as she tried to help us figure out this pickle we’d gotten ourselves into. At one point, she offered to give us her bed while she slept on an air mattress in the spare room, but we weren’t about to put someone out of their own bed! She asked her landlord if he had anything available while I started searching online for other options. Her landlord got back to us with a partially furnished house, but the cost of getting a bed and kitchenware put it out of our budget. I found a few “casitas”, but they were all out of our reach. Casitas, if you aren’t familiar, are very popular in Arizona. A casita is a small house, often a converted garage or other outbuilding, behind the main house. It usually is a studio or one bedroom unit meant for one or two people. They’re very cute, but we couldn’t find any at a good price. There were a lot of scams where people would offer a very nice place for a lower price than market. They each had a well-crafted story about why they were renting it for that price, but they were out of the country and would have to mail the keys after they received payment. Of course, they expect people to send the money with hopes of getting a rental at a great value, but the keys are never sent – the person who placed the ad doesn’t own the house or apartment in their pictures.
After searching all day and weighing our options, we decided that finding a place in Tucson felt a lot like pushing a boulder uphill. Sure, we could do it, but there are other things we could do that would be a lot easier, so we decided to head for Utah to visit Timmy and do some snowboarding. We had breakfast with my friend Bill the next morning, then headed up to Phoenix to visit dad, re-pack the car (we had packed it Wednesday morning thinking we were just moving our stuff from one apartment to another), and form a plan. Dad and I spent a few hours fitting a cargo basket to the rear of my car while Zibby got some work done on her computer, then we called it a night. The two of us found a motel and grabbed some dinner, where we decided to stay in Arizona for another couple days so Zibby could skydive with some friends and I could go hang out with Bill. Friday morning, Dad and I loaded up some tools that he gave me, then we headed back south for a couple days of skydiving and hanging out. Sunday, I picked Zibby up and we decided to swing by Phoenix to see Dad one more time.
After a brief visit, we decided to go see the Hoover Dam. As we left Phoenix, the map put us on a route that took us through beautiful landscape and quaint southwest towns. We stopped at a BBQ joint in Wickenburg, AZ for some delicious dinner, got to see some cowboys roping cattle on our way out of town, and made our way to Boulder City, NV for the night. We awoke to a brisk morning, cooler than we had experienced so far on this trip, and headed to the lobby for a nice little breakfast before heading over to the dam. Luckily, we got there early enough that the crowds hadn’t really started forming yet. Security is a lot stricter than it was last time I was there. As we approached in the car, we were waved over to an inspection lane where they could check inside the car for any contraband. Well, we had the car packed to the ceiling plus a cargo basket on the back and Thule box on the roof, so they had a lot of places that we had to unlock and let them inspect. They were quick but thorough, and I’m sure they were so quick because we approached with a smile, answered their questions, and opened every box and moved every bag that they asked without hesitation. When you don’t have anything to hide and treat them like people just doing their job, it doesn’t raise any flags. We found a parking spot near the stairs in the parking garage, headed down to the visitors center, and immediately regretted not emptying our pockets and planning better before leaving the car. We didn’t have anything that raised any flags, but my pockets were full of receipts, trinkets, and stuff that could have been left in the car instead of filling the bin at the metal detector line. Once we got through security and bought our tour tickets, we were treated to a movie detailing the history of the dam’s construction and maintenance while we waited for our scheduled tour time. After the movie, they let us know we had a few minutes before the tour would be starting, and suggested we use the restroom if we needed to, since there are no bathrooms along the tour, which would take about an hour. I could hear my mom’s voice in the back of my head, “I don’t care whether you think you have to go. Get in there and try!” As it turns out, Zibby’s mom gave her the same speech so we were both well prepared by the time the tour started.
I could write another couple thousand words about the engineering, history, and stories that we learned about the dam. The turbines that are seventy feet tall, the concrete that could pave a road from coast to coast, the over-engineering that helps the dam survive earthquakes and will let it survive for thousands of years, the problem solving ideas, such as running cooling lines through the concrete to help it cure in a few years instead of over a hundred, the fact that the power generation has paid back the cost of building the dam and left it as a self-funded entity that doesn’t require any tax money – these and many more facts and trivia had my mind reeling the whole time we were there. After our tour, we drove up the road a little bit, then parked and walked across the bridge finished in 2010 to route traffic around the bridge. That bridge was an engineering wonder all its own, and gave us a breathtaking view of the dam.
Looking up from outside Looking at us from outside
Once we were done with the dam and bridge, we took the short drive to Las Vegas, where we rented a condo for a few days. I’ve been to Las Vegas a few times, and Zibby has flown through their airport, but we both wanted to see some of their world class shows and I wanted to show Zibby the glitz and glamour of the strip. We stopped at a Ramen restaurant for lunch, dropped our luggage at the condo, then headed to the Luxor for dinner and a show. We picked a restaurant that offered generic food at gourmet prices, but we got the chance to talk about how excited we were to see some shows this week. After dinner, we had a little time to kill so we decided to check out the casino. Neither one of us are excited by gambling, but we stopped at a video poker machine and gave it a try. I put in twenty bucks, played for about ten minutes, and was up some hands and down on others. When we got back to twenty bucks, I cashed out. Like I told Zibby, when I’ve had a little fun and haven’t lost any money, it’s best to quit while I’m ahead. We headed to see “Fantasy”, an adult revue with singing, dancing, acrobatics, and a comedian. It was a great show, with all the glitz and over-the-top showmanship that you would expect from a Vegas performance. We were talking all the way back to the car about the acrobatics on silk ropes, the flips and dancing, and how they did a great job getting the audience pumped up and excited.
A beautiful smile with dinner
Tuesday, we slept in a little and I started writing this while Zibby got some work done. We headed out in the afternoon to walk the strip and take in “the Las Vegas experience” before heading to the theater. In addition to wandering through some casinos, we followed a suggestion from Zibby’s mom and walked along the canals, where we watched gondoliers row past the shoppes at the Venetian, watched the fountain show at the Bellagio, and looked at the artwork and displays setup in the lobbies of these over-the-top resorts. We stopped at M&M World, where they offer candy in all colors of the rainbow and every trinket you can imagine with the M&M name on it. They eventually wore us down and we ended up buying some M&M’s with our picture printed on them. For the evening’s entertainment, we decided on Cirque du Soleil – we’ve always wanted to see a Cirque du Soleil show, and last night didn’t disappoint! The dancers were perfectly synchronized and choreographed and the trapeze artists were stunning as they swung overhead. A contortionist would bend his body in directions that didn’t look humanly possibly while performers in lavish costumes walked the aisles and interacted with the guests. It was a couple hours of jaw-dropping, head-spinning action coming at us from every direction. The attention to detail was steps ahead of where you would expect from a standard show – while a performer was swinging and hanging from a rope up above the center stage, other gymnasts were interacting and tumbling out of the lights toward the back of the stage. The experience surrounded us from every direction, and we left there amazed. After the show, we wandered through New York New York, where they have shops and cobblestone walkways set up to feel like you’re walking the streets of old time New York, then headed back down the strip toward our car. The family-friendly daytime displays that we saw on our way to the theater were transformed into bright, glitzy exhibits tuned to the adult crowd that walked the streets after sunset. After a brief stop for some gelato and watching some street performers, we found our way back to the car and headed back to collapse into bed once more.