day 13 -- tucson to flagstaff

rolled out of tucson at 9.30am energized from the run and itchy's scrambled eggs and then immediately needed to take a nap. found a roadside picnic table, took the obligatory pic of a saguaro (promised myself that this was the only one I'd take, but soon broke that one) and dozed off until a friendly cop pulled in and checked on my health when he saw the mostly healed but still pink scars on my arm (I think it kinda looks like little more than eczema). so off again through desert scrub that looked like new mexico except now with saguaro patrolmen. climbed again this time into mining country and the bluejay copper mine in miami, AZ. the didn't-leave-enough-time-to-reach destination for this evening was the barringer meteor crater. from time to time I remembered that this is something I've always wanted to see, or that 12-year-old aaron-with-a-moonscape-mural-on-his-wall wanted to see, but I didn't really have a good idea where it was / hadn't bothered to check. was relieved to find that it was still ahead to the northeast, so instead of a planned loop past phoenix and up to flagstaff through prescott, I veered off the scenic route and toward winslow, AZ, hoping to make it to the crater before sunset. of course, though I'd promised myself that I'd avoid falling into the collecting archaeological sites trap, when I happened by cliff dwellings above lake roosevelt, I couldn't resist. that the misnamed anasazi decided to start living on dramatic cliff faces in the 11th century made them much more archaeologically visible and inevitably romantic as well. pueblos and hohokam great houses and the like are just as socially interesting, but people climbing 35-foot ladders to live in cramped dark caves is naturally alluring. so I stripped off the leather and exhanged it for shorts and running shoes and climbed a short paved trail to these ruins, supposedly now guarded by africanized honeybees. initially that sounded like a dubious way to keep tourists off the ruins, but since other ruins have more permanent barriers than the hastily thrown-up cones and sign here, I believed it. (not that climbing around on ruins is all that more instructive than appreciating from a few yards away.) a couple of college-aged wisconsiners tried to get me to convince them that it was okay to disregard the ranger's warning, but I demurred...and they came tittering back when one heard a buzz.

this put me a bit off schedule for the crater, but uninformed optimism is the best kind, so with only a vague idea of mileage I pressed on. and there was a desert road toward winslow that was wide open and smooth, so I opened it up and made great time into another scrap-of-rt 66 community before a stretch of the dreaded I-10. I got over a fear of truck traffic on interstates when I was forced onto I-75 in toledo on the ontario trip, but that doesn't make them more appealing. it's invariably windier on the broad open road and less scenic...and in this case straight into the setting sun. but there's no other way to the crater. billboards emphasized that this is the best preserved meteor crater on the planet, and there were other such encouraging signs on the entrance road. weirdly the signs continued to extol the virtues of the crater even after I'd traveled 6 miles off the interstate, as if I was likely to turn around if I didn't know about the 10 minute movie and guided walking tour. I arrived with time to spare, paid the entry fee and headed past apollo astronaut barracks to the crater. pics galore. best part of the museum, which continued to sell the site even after you'd paid to get in, in a very 19th century museum/circus kind of way that you find at this sort of anti-national park holdout site. I was reminded serveral times that this was the best preserved meteor crater on the planet, and that scientists found indisputable confirmation of meteor strikes on earth here first. there was constant reference to dr. eugene shoemaker's contributions in this regard, as if his phD was a magic badge. beyond the braggadocio the museum was packed with interactive exhibits like one that allowed you to model a meteor impact (size, speed, angle of impact) so as to see what it would take to destroy the planet. overwhelming and breathless in route 66 carnival way that a more restrained NPS museum couldn't capture.

an evening with itchy

itchy requires no introduction to many of you since his place in running spot lore is a favorite topic. suffice it to say that if you know itchy he's The Nicest Guy You've Ever Met by default, and beyond that remarkably open and generous and sincere. the easiest and least complicated person to know in the world. itchy moved back to tucson and broke away from cincinnati's clutches in january and has set up in another running store gig, great apartment nestled up against the northeastern hills, already months in to preparations for the stillers' 7/11 year. complete with hundreds of football cards (and one willie stargell card) pasted to the wall in a pattern that supposedly shows the outline of the lombardi trophy. (sorry, itchy, I still don't see it.) a bo jackson shrine, and a newly acquired lifesize jordan cutout by the microwave. anyway, he was generous enough to put me up for a night and drive me out to a fine burgers and beer joint (first decent beer in weeks -- an unexciting microbrew stout, but better than the usual choices in the uninspired plains). itchy and I were evenly matched as runners when I worked at the store. matched in terms of speed, that is. otherwise there's nothing in common. build, stride, form, training schedules...couldn't be more dissimilar. what we share, though, is unfounded optimism. this may sound unlikely given that itchy will never give up on running a 2.30 marathon and I've 'retired' five times in the last eight years, but the thing is that I always come out of retirement and itchy has a tendency to throw away running shoes and announce his disillusionment with running every time the next injury crops up. so I pretend not to harbor hopes of running fast again and itchy claims not to remember his myriad injuries, but in the end we arrive in the same place. and it shows in its purest form in the one running aspect where we converge -- race 'strategy.' that is, neither of us has a race strategy other than to go out hard and hang on. most decent runners who continue running into their late 30s figure this out, but I never have. perhaps itchy has, but I doubt it. for me this comes partly in a lack of confidence in my kick and wanting to establish a finishing position early on, but it's also that optimism. I may go into a race with modest (realistic) goals, but on the line they always evaporate.

anyway, this optimism infects more than just running for itchy. it's in his general outlook, it's in his unfailingly optimistic appraisal of people he knows, it's in his absolute conviction that the stillers will win every year. he's been commissioned to liven up the only steeler bar in tucson after his brief cameo at the tail end of last season. so it's not surprising that we were up at 5.30 for a 6am run up the sabino canyon trail not far from his apartment. itchy waited up for me as I lumbered up the trail...lumbered and tiptoed since I was wearing my vibram slippers. gorgeous run, great scenery, cool air before the blast of the morning sun. itchy inexplicably doesn't wear his glasses while he runs and kept jumping out of the way of 'snakes' that turned out to be cracks in the paved trail, and he sprinted ahead at one point where there's a sheer dropoff into the canyon (safely behind a guardrail), but it was great to run in the mountains. we talked about the usual topics -- but not just the same old boring running spot tales -- in the way that's so easy with someone like itchy. no agenda, no motives, no lame attempts to impress. if you're ever in tucson, look him up. just not on a sunday afternoon in the fall.

day 12 -- el paso to tucscon

didn't have much interest in exploring el paso, which I kept calling 'UTEP' in my head, and when I staggered out into the blinding sun I was on the clock. I had reserved space on (running spot vet now retired to the southland) itchy's couch in tucson. hadn't checked mileage, but I figured it was a pretty good run...straight through new mexico since I'd covered it previously but a few scenic detours planned for arizona. headed to the mighty I-10 to skirt downtown traffic and remembered why interstates are mostly off limits for this trip. manic rush hour, had to dodge a ladder that clattered off a truck, and negotiated lane changes over a gap broad enough that it had sprouted a sash of grass. el paso inevitably recalled a second world city to me in the way I drag irrelevant comparisons to greece into everything. part of this was surely the bright sun on a treeless city, and the city looked 'mexican' (scare quotes because I've never visited mexico) because of spanish street signs and because it blended seamlessly with the sprawling-to-the-horizon juarez on the other side of a boundary I couldn't see. but...I think there was also something about how the components of the city were arranged -- apparently haphazard zoning, retail oriented toward the outdoors, garish signs everywhere.

the only way to new mexico SR9 was an awkward loop on a square-shaped belt road named after esteemed legislator pete domenici. I was for some reason worried that I'd miss the turnoff and end up in the queue for a secondary border crossing at santa teresa. ended up in an el paso suburb at a gas station with an attached 'tortas' burrito joint, where I had a kickass chorizo/egg burrito. eventually crossed into new mexico proper for the quickest non-interstate traverse I could find. SR9 was another why-is-there-a-road-here strip of asphalt that passed nothing but ranches that probably reached all the way north to I-10, in sight most of the time. in any case, I soon realized that I was sharing this road with the border patrol (late-teenagers in ill-fitting uniforms). more than half the traffic was an endless stream of white broncos with dark-tinted windows, either on the road or creeping slowly along on a dirt track immediately to the south of the tarmac. I even spotted what I swear was a refueling truck. every few miles there was some sort of mobile lookout post that brought to mind an imperial AT-AT from Hoth. not that these looked like they could move, but the cockpit was raised and lowered on jointed legs...not sure why these weren't just fire tower-like constructions. too easy/inexpensive. so...your tax dollars hard at work -- I must have seen 80 vehicles (very low estimate) prowling along this unlikeliest of crossing points. I tried to figure out how the tea party/NRA/free enterprise crowd can reconcile all that goes into 'defending borders.' federal agents and federal regulation and restricting the free (labor) market and expensive federal programs -- surely doesn't add up, right? right.

most of the other vehicles were mysterious late model black sedans of uncertain make (no hood ornament). for about an hour they passed going east, one by one at regular 2 mile intervals. looked nefarious to me, but surely nothing was getting by the patrols. anyway, the first town on this road to nowhere in particular was columbus, new mexico. and amidst the sleepy/dusty border town vibe was something remarkable. a coffee shop...the first sign of coastal affect I'd seen since downtown cincinnati. outside of college towns (and not even all of them), the south I'd seen had resisted the cafe that has invaded so many formerly french-coffee-resistant places elsewhere. no starbucks even. so a mark of things to come, esp in arizona. because arizona is where the west coast starts in earnest -- tourists and jewelry stands and mochas and real estate brokers. sleepy towns are not so sleepy, and the resigned-to-oblivion attitude disappears. that this rather more refined west is also the home of a refusal to observe daylight savings time (because who doesn't want to get up at 5am?), a refusal to acknowledge MLK, and of course enthusiasm for a 'papers, please' police state could suggest contradictions. but I think not...the reactionary garbage from a state that's really not so backwards is a symptom of trying too hard. arizonans really want to be daring frontiersmen in texas-white pickups. but in reality they all live in phoenix and sell insurance...and moved there from somewhere else. and can live there because the corps of engineers has built dams for them. the cowboy hat doesn't quite fit when you're driving a lexus SUV. so they overcompensate by electing a 'maverick' and begging the rest of the country to outsource its inmates to florence. this isn't new...this is the state that brought us barry goldwater, after all.

the 'real' arizona is unabashedly contrived. real cowboy towns like lamesa have nothing on bisbee and tombstone anad sedona, which have managed to turn that one colorful event (the OK corral, for example), mountain scenery, and proximity to LA into tourist gold. towns as theme parks, and a long history of self-promotion that predates the new american tourist city by decades. the neon motels advertising 'refrigeration' (I think that's A/C), the whole route 66 phenomenon...the American roadtrip started in arizona. and the shift to this was immediate and remarkable...SR9 ended near the border, and as I looped south to douglas, AZ and then back north into the mountains the towns transformed. land for sale, horseriding/canoeing/ATVing outfitters, and those ubiquitous jewelry stores. and on cue the landscape changed as well from the undifferentiated scrubby desert of southern NM (not all of the state looks like this) into an almost lush grassy plain that recalls iceland or sound of music alpine. back to desert, then into cute mountain village territory and ponderosa pines.

and so I found myself in the late afternoon sitting on a wild west boardwalk in the utterly fake town of tombstone stealing wireless and making an appointment for a bike tuneup in las vegas. the flies were swarming me mercilessly...at first I figured it was the stench of me/my jacket. or was it the patina of smashed insects? or did they think that the leather was still attached to a cow / water buffalo? I would have camped in tombstone and taken in a show at a saloon, but I didn't want to keep the early-to-bed itchy waiting, so I set out for the final stretch to tucson. high desert now with saguaros starting to pop up on the outskirts of the city. finished with an edifying tour of the industrial wasteland of east tucson when I tried to outsmart the googlemap directions only to be blocked by the airport, but arrived before sundown this time nonetheless.