The Great Southwest

Cristy and I woke up Thursday morning in El Paso, and after packing up, made a run for the border. El Paso is really a suburb of Ciudad Juarez -- El Paso has 400,000 people with 700,000 in the county while Juarez has 1.7 million. Yowza.

We drove into downtown El Paso to park and then walked across the Santa Fe Street Bridge over the Rio Grande and into Mexico. It cost 35 cents (or 3 pesos) to cross the bridge -- you just drop your 35 cents and walk into Mexico. While crossing the bridge we spotted four young men wading the Rio Grande in the direction of the United States side. There was a big fence with razor wire beyond the river -- Cristy and I didn't stick around to see how they got around that one.

Juarez was incredible. Incredible! Just a five minute walk and you are in true Mexico. Every sign in Spanish, discount pharmacies (no prescriptions needed!), and tons of stalls and taquiera's to trap turistas. Turistas like us. The whole place was vibrant too -- hustle, bustle, color, music blaring. Really neat.

We walked down to the Juarez mission which was built in the 1640's, and then strolled around the mercado just soaking in the scene. We had lunch at a taquiera that had salsa hot enough to rot your stomach -- one bite and it was no mas. But lunch was great, we collected some souvenirs (the best of which was my picture of Emiliano Zapata; the quote says, "It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees") and headed back to the USA. It was a short trip, but one that really made us appreciate the radical cultural difference between Mexico and the US.

After clearing US customs -- which involved showing your drivers license and answering the question, "Where do you have citizenship?" -- we got in the car and headed to Phoenix. New Mexico now rivals Louisiana for least interesting state to drive through. There is dead nothing on I-10 for the whole length of New Mexico. Three things of note: (1) we had a Border Patrol check about 20 miles into New Mexico that involved forced exit from the freeway only to be waved through with no inspection, (2) these 'safety corridors' where they arbitrarily say traffic fines are doubled despite there being nothing unique about the stretch of road, (3) an awkwardly worded sign about dust storms.

Later on, Cristy and I were able to confirm that, yes, dust storms do exist.

We reached Arizona and made a stop in Tuscon at Tuscon Electric Park. The stadium is home to the Tuscon Sidewinders of the Pacific Coast League but more significantly hosts Spring Training for the White Sox and Diamondbacks. My family has been to Spring Training the past seven or eight years in Phoenix -- it was interesting to see one of the two Tuscon stadiums we've never been to. Truthfully though, Tuscon Electric was no more interesting than any of the stadiums in Phoenix. Not worth the trip next March.

As the sun set over the Sonoran desert, we reached the oasis that is Phoenix. Phoenix just starts -- it's desert nothingness, and then ten lane freeways and strip malls. We spent Thursday night in the Hyatt Place in Scottsdale and come away thoroughly impressed. The room is very posh, has good view, and a 42 inch, plasma, HD television. It's so cool. I'm worried that I've been bitten by the HD bug -- it might be hard to go back to the mediocre definition I'm so familiar with.

We slept in on Friday, recovering from the long haul we've done the past two days. This morning we strolled around Old Town Scottsdale, went to the Scottsdale History Museum (not too interesting), saw Scottsdale Stadium, Fashion Square Mall, and the Fiesta Bowl Museum (cool, but not that big). Tonight we'll be heading to Oregano's for dinner (Cristy's down in the fitness room right now in anticipation) and then will be heading to the Scottsdale Drive-In to watch Pirates of the Caribbean at 8:30. I'm not sure whether we should watch the movie from the cab or under the stars in the truck bed -- might be a game time decision.

Then tomorrow we head to the coast, La La Land, to meet up with my family flying down from San Francisco and have dinner with my Grandpa in Burbank. 'Til then!