Beat by the heat

31 May 2018

A week of dry desert heat. The steering wheel in the Nissan Rogue was so hot Tuesday afternoon that I could barely touch it.

This was after two-plus hours in the sun while we toured and lunched at the Wrigley Mansion with Brother Tom and his wife Karen. Best views in town, overlooking Camelback Mountain, downtown Phoenix and, just down the hill, the Arizona Biltmore, which dates from the same era, the late 1920s. Naturally, the man who built the Biltmore – Frank Lloyd Wright – thought chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr.’s Italianate winter vacation home was an abomination.

Just for balance, we followed up the brightness of Wrigley with a walk through the dark interior of the Biltmore, still sleek and enduringly modern after all these years. Here, thankfully, there was a parking garage.

On Wednesday, we find shelter from the heat in the Phoenix Art Museum, where Monica had the closest encounter she’ll ever have with a Big Mac.

Meanwhile, we’ve had only two glimpses so far with the object of our travels, our honors high school graduate – grand-niece Edda Anderson, my nephew David’s oldest daughter.

First was her graduation party Sunday night at the home of her maternal grandparents, who have a big kitchen and a bigger back yard.

Second was Wednesday night at Chandler High School, during the pre-graduation picture-taking with the family out in front of the building.

Commencement was in the football stadium, which had baked all day in 104-degree sunshine. No seats left on the shady side of the bleachers by the time we walked in an hour before it started. A few empty seats remained on top at the other side of the field, the sunny side. Already beat by the heat, we didn’t bother to check them out.

Instead, we retreated to our airbnb, where we followed along on a live streaming broadcast and polished off most of the low-cal ice cream in the fridge.

It was a good choice. Individual presentation of the diplomas to more than 1,000 graduates, accompanied by endless cheering, lasted for an eternity. We never would have endured. Our girl apparently survived with flying colors. Here’s a shot from after the ceremony, courtesy of sister-in-law Karen.

Now that school’s out, we’re off to hang with that branch of the family tree this afternoon. Friday morning we catch the once-a-day direct flight to Buffalo on Southwest. That cool air is going to feel sooooo good.

Phoenix descending

Sunday 27 May 2018

     Sights and insights en route to Saturday night.

     1. Hoover Dam has been Hoovered away. The highway engineers did it. No longer does the main route from Vegas to Phoenix run us over the lip of this heroic marvel. To go visit, you need an exit.

     2. Saguaros! You know you’re in Arizona when the landscape softens and these giants bid you hello with upraised arms. Every arm has a little fluffy crest on top, like a high fade haircut. They’re in flower.

     3. Rough riders. The Nissan Rogue doesn’t like the road surface on the higher elevations of US 93 up around Kingman. Feels like mini-cobblestones. Brother Tom in Phoenix says the sun degrades the stuff between the gravelly bits in the blacktop.

     4. Home sweet airbnb. Arrive at our domicile for the next week – a two-bedroom, bath-and-a-half condo in a complex behind a wall on Baseline Road near Dobson Road in Mesa, five minutes from Brother Tom’s house. Dog poo on the sidewalk and a locked key box on the screen door handle that won’t respond to the four-digit combination. Text the owner. He texts back. Cleaner was supposed to change the code. The old one gets us in.

     5. Fat of the land. Our sometime host in Phoenix, Nyle Jenkins (longtime WBFO listeners will remember him as overnight jazz host Orlando Norman in late ‘80s, early ‘90s) steers us to the Cornish Pasty Company branch nearby. Tasty pasty (Pesto Chicken) washed down with a couple craft porters.

     6. Fat of the land II. Niece Traci, looking fabulous as usual, steers our party of 5 to the Parlor Pizzeria on Camelback Road, an artisan pizza place voted #1 in Arizona by the Food Network. Plus it’s 10 minutes from the theater downtown in the Phoenix Art Museum complex that’s our ultimate destination. Monica and I share a yellow beet salad and Puttanesca pizza with shrimp, calamari and capers, accompanied by a brown ale (me) and an especially luscious Riesling (her).
     7. Everybody knows Traci. An empty parking lot greets us as we eventually leave “Gunmetal Blues,” a musical by a Phoenix songwriter that’s played around the world since he wrote it 15 years ago. Traci not only knows the guy (we’re introduced on the way in), but the director and most of the backstage crew, all of whom get greeted and chatted after it’s over. She did “Rocky Horror Show” here a while back. The play? A whimsical take-off on film noir which left us confused about the plot. Best feature – Buddy Toupee, the cocktail lounge piano player.

     8. Gas pain. The Nissan Rogue tells us it’s finally getting thirsty en route to the theater, so parched that it won’t get us back to Mesa. After 300-plus miles, first fill-up takes 14 gallons. $2.99 at a Circle K downtown – 20 cents cheaper than Las Vegas.

Surrealistic pillows and towels

Saturday 26 May 2018

     Big billboards tout the cannabis dispensaries, but who needs more mental alteration? Las Vegas is a Louis Carroll wonderland already.

     1. A hotel without hot water. Note on the dresser when we arrive at our room on the 21st floor of this Mirage of a lodging. It says hot is taking the night off. Back in the morning. The bathroom faucet seals it with a hiss.

     2. Salvador Dali, meet Hieronymus Bosch. That must happen on a constant basis in the head of Vladimir Kush, a Russian painter, sculptor and Las Vegas resident who is so successful he has his own spot in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, next door to the Mirage. An hour amid his “metaphorical realism” and we take some with us. Everything is at least four figures. Fortunately, our objet d’art – a calendar – has a decimal point in the middle.

     3. Cirque du Beetles. Real cars from the mid 1960s, plus a minivan with a padded top. They’re prominent props in “Love,” the Cirque du Soleil Beatles extravaganza in permanent residence at the Mirage. The Fab Four at their most psychedelic, seeding your head with song fragments and fantasy. An enduring high.

     4. Strip stakes. The Mirage has an erupting volcano, but it pales opposite the Venetian, which sits right across Las Vegas Boulevard with canals and the Campanile di San Marco. The shops are glitzier, the crowd is more stylish and the lobbies are much more majestic.    

     5. Night crawlers. The beverages at the Walgreens next to the Venetian are 33% less pricey than the convenience shops inside the Mirage. At 3 p.m., five cashiers flash the numbers above their stations to call up customers waiting in line. At 11 p.m., twice as long a line, twice as many cashiers.

     6. Reality doesn’t suck any more. The pressure drop is palpable when we escape the Strip. We unroll northward on Las Vegas Boulevard, beyond downtown to the pawn shops, the cut-rate wedding chapels and sleazy low-rise lodgings. Then at Charleston Avenue, the Arts District. They say it’s gentrifying.

    Our destination– Dona Maria’s Tamales Mexican Restaurant – needs no improvement. For me, the specialty of the house with homemade hot sauce. Good as I’ve ever had. Monica, bent on breakfast, gets what the waitress calls “divorced eggs,” one of them with green sauce, one of them with red sauce, rice and beans in the middle.

    Now we’re road ready. Five hours to Phoenix. 

Viva!

Thursday 24 May 2018

     I hope that’s a mirage that greets my eyes when the curtain open this morning on the 21st floor of the Mirage, but I blink my eyes and he’s still there. He’s on KNPR, too. Sayonara, Singapore summit. Can’t get away from the guy, even in the desert.

     Reaching this illusory place is a test of endurance and patience, mostly patience:

     1. Getting out of Buffalo, which involves a last-minute mowing of the lawn.

     2. The bumpy, non-stop, four-hour, 15-minute flight to McCarran International Airport on Southwest. It introduces us to grandmotherly Janet Wilson, a Bishop McMahon High School graduate transplanted to suburban Henderson, Nev., who sits between Monica and me and talks a lot – mostly to Monica – as she downs a couple Dos Equis during the flight. Mona thought she’d had a little more liquid reinforcement before she got on the plane. BTW, Southwest has gotten annoyingly cute. For instance, their cookies are “Plane cookies – Just plain cookies.”

     3. The “just a few minutes” when the plane arrived a quarter hour early at McCarran turns into about 20 as it sits on the terminal threshold until another plane exited our gate.

     4. The 8 p.m. traffic gets thicker and thicker as the neon landmarks pass on the Strip (a shudder at the Mandalay Bay) in our rented Nissan Rogue. We’re at the Mirage, because that’s where the Cirque du Soleil Beatles show is playing and we’re seeing it Thursday night.

    I turn a block too early for the Mirage and wind up on the Interstate, exiting at downtown Vegas. Crawling back up the Strip to the Mirage, I put the flashers on and sit in the Shuttles Only parking space near the main entrance while Monica goes in to wrangle the room. She texts updates every five minutes or so on her progress toward the registration desk. (I see why this morning. It’s like the lineup for a ride at Disneyland.)

    The trek from the parking ramp through the lobby and casino to the guest elevators is even longer than the trek from the airport gate to the baggage claim and the rental-car shuttles. Elapsed time from pulling up in front until we finally reach our room – about an hour and a half.

     Though it’s only slightly after 10 p.m. Nevada time – prime time – it’s late for us. Three-hour time difference. Too late for a real meal. So we hit the convenience store downstairs instead and pay a restaurant price for a sandwich, a bottle of lime-flavored Perrier water and a bottle of mocha iced coffee. $20.75.