setting out

by the time i arrived in denver i had a voicemail to give them a call at the desk at great lakes airlines.  my flight was, in fact, uncancelled and all would go as planned.  when i finally arrived at their desk in phoenix i was told the truth: someone had actually played a prank and sent out an email saying that the plane would be out of order all day.  not so funny.  for the airline or the passengers.  fortunately nothing could have put off my good mood at that point, so we all had a good laugh about it.

after a bumpy star-studded ride on the beech 1900D turboprop with only one other passenger and a clear aisle straight out to the windsheild on the front of the plane, i stepped out of the page airport to find two vagabonds playing soccer in the vacant parking lot.  smiles and hugs and cheerful words.  we walked towards patrick’s truck.

“i set a hippie trap for you”

i looked down at donnie’s words to find a Naked Green Juice and a banana.  donnie can always make me smile. but even more than my gratitude for the ‘hippie trap’ was my awe at the new moon’s arizona sky.  jewels.  i haven’t seen skies like this in months.  we rode the 40 miles to the put-in with the moon roof open and the windows down.

some of the group were already sound asleep in their bags, but i made headlamped introductions to the few straglers before tucking into our sacks ourselves.  it was tough getting my body to sleep – possibly due to excitement, possibly due to the rocks under my micro thermarest, possibly due to the billion-bulbed lightlight hung in the sky.  i had no idea how much i missed being uncomfortable.

three weeks

Our group of 11 put in at Lees Ferry just south of the Glen Canyon Damn on October 18th.  We ran five rafts through almost 300 miles of the most incredible landscape I’ve had the privilege of bearing witness to.  Three weeks later by calendar standards (but lifetimes later by human standards) we rowed into Lake Mead and disassembled our boats before saying tearful smiling goodbyes.

Maybe some of the stories or evolutions will find their way to this space – it can be good to put experience into words – but for now they need a little more time seasoning and unfurling inside my head.

cancelled

yesterday the postman came and went…and though he delivered one interesting small box, he did not bring the box shipped from my dad.  the one with my sleeping bag, waterproof stuff-sacks, motorcycle helmet, armored jacket*, bivy sack, etc.

i made an emergency trip to REI – my third trip yesterday – and bought dad a new sleeping bag that i will now borrow for my trip to the canyon.  (let’s not get that confused; parents have a way of using words to make sure what they’re doing isn’t spoiling their children, and for that i’m very grateful.)  thank you, dad.

once i felt confident that i had all the things i need I finished painting the dining room – our last planned painting project.  it feels good to have all the paints put away before i leave.  after such a roller coaster of a day, i felt pretty good going to sleep – knowing that all i have left in the morning is a quick packing job (everything’s laid out right now) and and drive to the airport.

of course it can’t happen that way, though.  where would the fun be in that?  this morning at 6am my phone woke me up.  my dad.  he must have just forgotten the time difference.  i let it ring.  a few minutes later an unrecognized number called.  i let it ring.  a few minutes later, dad again.  clearly something was up.  i’m not sure where they got my dad’s number, but somehow they’d called him to tell him my flight was cancelled.  not delayed.  cancelled.

with my 6am brain it took us a good 15 minutes to figure out that i could actually just take my original first two flights (yes, it seems to require 3 flights to get to the grand canyon from la) and they’d put me up in pheonix while the mechanics fix the plane (which makes me nervous) and then i’ll instead fly in tomorrow morning.  whew.  that works.  pray that all goes as planned B.

i just keep saying: i’m going to the grand canyon.  i’m going to the grand canyon.  it seems to help…

* the lucky part of that is that less than 48 hours ago a friend called and very adamantly insisted that i not ride my motorcycle out to the canyon, as i had been planning.  instead she proposed that she and her boyfriend (who would then borrow my motorcycle and my already-borrowed car) buy me a flight to the canyon in exchange for use of the vehicles for three weeks plus.  after a lot of insistence, i finally agreed and we purchased a flight.  well, turns out that’s quite perfect considering that i would only ride my bike out there if i have the proper protection gear.  the protection gear that did not arrive yesterday by the time i needed it.

gyroscope

these last couple weeks I’ve felt like i’ve been strapped to one of those space-camp gyroscopes: three rings each spinning on a different axis within one another…and me strapped into the middle just trying to catch glimpses of whatever i happen to see in that moment: with two jobs, moving, painting and packing for a three-week trip where i’ll be unable to make contact with anyone should i forget any of these things i should have done…well…there’s a lot i’m trying to catch these looks at. but with so much going on and so little free time i feel like i’ve only been able to plan as i swing by for the moment. when i happen to spin on this axis i get to think about and plan for moving…oh! time’s up! you can think about your trip now – wait – you took too long! paint! no work! no! and on and on i spin. the result? i leave tomorrow morning and only have about 15% of the very specialized gear i’ll need for this trip.

wow. i kid you not….i just looked up and the UPS truck pulled up. ha! incredible…i’m going to stop complaining, let go, and trust that everything’s going to be just fine. i just need a sleeping bag…come on, box-from-dad!

[alli, kirk, james: you're amazing. the egg carton was the perfect last touch. i love you!]

scary side

this week we painted 5 of our 8 rooms and i tell you what…there’s a battle of efficiency in my brain! I have to fight off the thought, “ugh…this would be more efficient and better quality if i just did it all myself! Poor Julie caught the brunt of a couple freak-out moments when I would see paint about to drip or a smudge on the white trim. yikes…there’s a control freak beast that lies dormant inside of me…just waiting for the right project to wake him.

ps it’s looking great – i’ll post pictures sooner than later

raining snoring

it’s been raining here for a few days – something that pretty much only happens for a few days each fall and spring. now seems to be the time.

all the friends at school have been singing parts of the ‘old man is snoring’ song, but apparently it doesn’t rain enough for them to actually remember all of the words. yesterday at lunch faber stopped mid stanza and asked, “calais? how does that song go again? that raining snoring song?”

without missing a beat i sang the song for him and with him right up to the end:

it’s raining, it’s pouring
the old man is snoring

he went to bed and bumped his head
…(erm…) and didn’t wake up in the morning…?!?

the final words were out before i realized how horrid childrens’ songs can really be. somehow we don’t realize it when we’re that young. welp, the damage was done. they remembered the words and every time i just think about that poor old man and how i reminded them of the weapon with which they continued to kill him over and over for the rest of the day. sigh… some battles you just can’t win.

bazooka-zooka

we primed my room and the kitchen.  for someone who likes to wake up slowly it’s a bit much in the morning, but having a couple bazooka bubblegum-colored rooms is pretty amusing for a time.

not my mattress, but my pink room...

lake balboa

i’ve officially spent the night in our new home. our neighbors are already wonderful: leo lives across the street, speaks no english, but saw me unloading a mattress by myself and crossed to help me out. victoria lives next door, is probably from germany, and has a terrifyingly large rotweiler named barbie. ernesto is our gardener and simply a kind man who worked a miracle on our yard this week – relandscaping, planting, and killing the many black widows we found. part of me feels terrible about that…but the other part of me just feels safe.

i’m not sure when having different nationalities in your neighborhood began to mean that the area was low income or at least low safety, but i’m proud that our area proves the opposite. i get to shop in a grocery where everything is labeled, spoken, and served in spanish. i love grocery shopping for this reason.  i also love that there’s a japanese garden, a nature reserve, and a large lake all within walking distance.

and then there’s our home itself: old and obviously full of  billions of stories. julie insists that we have ghosts…and being that it’s still has the original hardwood floors, well…i laid awake for a good 3 hours last night before falling asleep in a fort i built for myself. sleeping in a fort was fantastic. not sleeping because i was scared from ever creak and pop? ridiculous.

hopefully i can load some pictures soon, but given that my camera was broken awhile back i’ll have to wait until i can get them from julie. our home has already overgone a transformation. our yard has already gone from a desolate wasteland to well…a smelly brown velvety mess that at least now has the promise of someday soon becoming something a little closer to normal. i’d rather have a garden than grass…but i’m going to hold out on that one until our landlord is a little more used to us. we do have an orange, lemon, fig, and avacado tree in the back yard, so that will do for now.

currently (when i’m not working or moving or painting or getting ready for a wonderfully massive and unfamiliar trip) i’m working on bed designs and i know at least one person whose insight would be particularly helpful. such projects are meant to be done with more than one set of hands and definitely more than one imagination. right now i’m leaning towards something that’s a mix between a hammock and native indian fur pileup, but who knew fur was so expensive? let me know if you know anyone who could help me out with that.

a few more rooms to paint and a lot to organize and build, but it’s already feeling great.

ardi

has anyone else seen this drawing of ardi yet?  and has anyone else wondered about all the artistic liberties they took in recreating him?  i mean seriously, guys…yes, the pieces of ardi are very well preserved, and yes they’re monumental, but even if you had a full skeleton and knew for certain that it was structured as shown, who’s the wise guy who decided we must have been covered in hair?  probably the same wise guy who realized that if we keep finding older and older skeletons that look more like humans than like apes, we’d better at least cover them in hair in the drawings so that people will remember our theory has-to-has-to-has-to be true.  they always make me laugh when i see them.

i think it’s fascinating how even science is a large percent self-fulfilled.  the discovery – or rather the study of – ardi has uprooted everything they’ve been teaching in biology for the last 20 years.  based largely upon the scant remains of one skeleton (lucy) they pieced together the history of the human race – speculating that lucy was very closely related to the original common ancestor between men and apes.  well…ardi has blown that out of the water by showing that even a million and a half years before lucy supposed human ancestors looked and behaved like…well…humans!  the most interesting part of it all is that rather than questioning everything they believed, they simply back the timeline up.  now, instead they’re saying that the common ancestor must have simply lived a few million years earlier than they’d previously thought.  granted, they’ve never found this ancestor, but they’ll damn well keep searching. at least now they’re admitting that they have absolutely no reason to believe that we evolved from chimpanzees:

Myth Busted: Humans Never Evolved From Chimpanzees

Although chimpanzees remain our closest living primate relatives, there is now no evidence that Homo sapiens somehow evolved from chimpanzee-like individuals, losing chimp characteristics over time. Instead, after the chimp/hominid split, the two groups appear to have gone their separate evolutionary ways, developing the unique traits seen in each today.

Alan Walker, a professor of biological anthropology at Pennsylvania State University who did not work on the project, said that the Ardipithecus fossils “tell us that the anatomy of closely related living species cannot predict the anatomy of their ancestors very accurately.”

Walker said, “It now seems, from the analyses carried out by the discoverers and their colleagues, that the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was much less chimpanzee-like than previously thought.”

He concluded that the unveiling of the new hominid “is certain to cause considerable rethinking of not only our evolutionary past, but also that of our living relatives the great apes.”

footnote:  now, in no way am i saying that god must have created the earth in 7 literal days and therefore evolution is a complete crock.  there’s absolutely overwhelming heaps of evidence proving that species are constantly evolving within themselves.  what i am saying is that i’d prefer they have the skeleton of a common ancestor before they teach that there is one.  that seems like a rather large assumption.  after all, people believe science because it’s “proven”, right?  it’s humorous how little actually is…

pain in my posterious

this made my night.  while i think elvis was a little off on his judgement call, the video’s downright hilarious.  there are such gems out there….sigh….:)