Day 14 Recap

We thought about going back to the Grand Canyon for awhile today but in the end decided the previous night was good enough (Aaron did; I had already seen the canyon so I didn’t really care). We went to Flagstaff and went up the ski lift that I hadn’t been able to the last time I was in Flagstaff because of this:

Fortunately this is what it looked like this time:

There is not a cloud in that sky. In fact, other than a few wispy clouds at the Grand Canyon, we did not see any clouds from Saturday evening until Wednesday afternoon.

The ski lift wasn’t nearly as interesting as it could have been. This is probably mostly because instead of the tallest mountain I’d ever been on, it was now maybe not even in the top five. I suppose it still was, but it just didn’t seem like it.  It was a pretty long view, but there just didn’t seem to be as much to see as there was in other places.  Here is some of what we could see:

We drove from there to Tucson.  We wanted to stop somewhere in Phoenix to buy some Phoenix Suns stuff.  We were originally going to stop at their arena’s gift shop but couldn’t find a place to park and figured we could get stuff cheaper at a mall anyway.  Well, we then wandered around looking for a mall; the GPS was somewhat less than useful again.  We eventually gave up and just went to a mall in Tucson.  I actually never got anything, but Aaron got a couple Suns jerseys.

The drive to Tucson was uneventful except that I hit the maximum speed on the trip outside of Phoenix (keeping up with traffic, downhill, in a 75 MPH zone; I’ll let you use your imagination).  We didn’t have hotel reservations, so I ended up paying too much for a hotel just because we saw it had a computer in the lobby, which ended up not working or something.

In Tucson I had my cell phone stolen. Mom, if you’re wondering why I didn’t tell you this entire story at the time, it’s because you would have needlessly worried the rest of the trip.

I was out getting some fresh air around the hotel parking lot about 2:00. I heard some voices, so I kind of stayed away because I’m not big on meeting people I don’t know at 2:00 AM, you know? Eventually a guy comes around the corner, followed by another guy. He asked me what I was doing, and I said, “just walking around.” “Do you want to walk over here?” I stopped and asked what he wanted; he came right up, punched me on the left side of my face, and demanded his money which he apparently thought I had stolen from him. I just got hit by this guy, and there was another guy with him (who in hindsight probably thought his friend was an idiot), so I had no idea what was about to happen. The last thing I wanted to do was lead them to our room where Aaron was out cold, so I ran to the lobby, which was of course locked. He was still threatening me and it was too dark to see if either he or his friend had a weapon, so I backed up to the road. All I had in my hand was my hotel key and cell phone. He thought I was holding his money, so I tossed them toward him. He kept coming toward me, so I just ran until he was out of sight. (In the morning the key was there, but the phone was gone.) I was just looking for an office or something that was open so I could call the police and get a safe trip back to my room. Fifteen-twenty minutes later, I saw flashing lights and went to get the cop myself. I gave him all the details about the guy, and it somehow became a robbery investigation even though that was far less important to me than getting suckerpunched and needing to get back to my room (especially given that he wasn’t trying to rob me). I’m completely fine now though; the whole thing never was that big a deal. For those of you that have heard Aaron’s version of the story, keep in mind that he left out and embelleshed on details in order to make the story funny and about him. The real story isn’t either of those.

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