Phoenix Fly-By

I blew past downtown Tucson toward Phoenix. In their wisdom, the Tucson city fathers have closed several exits, unfortunately for me, they are the exits to downtown. I understand road maintenance and improvements, but must they close all downtown exits at the same time? Ah, well, I'm sure there's a good reason. The downtown skyline looked attractive. I understand that although they are only little more than 100 miles apart, Tucson is often as much as 20 degrees cooler. And, believe me, that wasn't the only difference that I would notice. Mind you, it was Saturday morning. There were THREE separate accidents on the south side of the city. The traffic was a nightmare, the terrain is flat and scrubby, the mountains are not close, as they were in Tucson. And did I mention the traffic? It was just as bad inner city AND on the north side, exiting the city! What must it be like to navigate that during the work week? There are cities in Arizona I could live in and like. Phoenix isn't one of them. Just getting through it as quickly as I could, cost me an additional 45 minutes. At this point of my adventure, I have covered 3,500+ miles. In this last leg, I have two categories: "It would be nice to see" and "Nothing will deprive me of seeing this!". In the first, I have included Albuquerque, Sante Fe, Taos, the Grand Canyon and San Diego. In the second, Alamogordo, Tombstone, Sedona, Ventura (again), Solvang and (possibly) Carmel. And then there's Malakai. When I called this morning, Lucia put me on speaker phone and when I said "Hi!", I heard an excited little "Hi!" from Mali. Tomorrow I will have been on the road two weeks. I expect to be in Nevada City, in California's Gold Country, by Tuesday or Wednesday. This day has to be divided into 2 more postings... a very full, satisfying day... I thought of Shaq today. The Heat traded him to the Phoenix Sun and he led the charge to beat the Celtics. I wish him well. When he came to Miami, he promised us a Championship and he delivered.