Sunset from Gates Pass. "Bloom."

Tonight, before dinner, we drove across to the western edge of the city to watch the sunset:

Wherever you live, find what's good about it and enjoy it.

"Bloom where you're planted." Those words--corny enough, I agree--ring through our ears now and again as we come to terms with Tucson-as-our-'home.' I had never seen that expression until our first trip to Central America--we came across those words, (cross-stitched, no less), in a missionary home--must have been a well-intentioned gift from someone 'back home' to encourage voluntary souls in their tropical assignment...

As corny as my first impression was of those words, over the past few years, we've come grudgingly to accept it as good advice.

Last night, as we made dinner, we had the television on, and two travel-shows featured, back to back, Seattle and Guatemala...We grew wistful for the Pacific Northwest and Central America as we waited for our food to cook...

But there is no utopia.

So--resolved: enjoy the good things where we are.

Tucson: pedestrian urbanity? Nope. Progressive local politics? Nope. Thriving high-wage economy? So no, at least not right now. (And don't get me started on the now-nationally-ridiculed lack of syntax during a recent state gubernatorial debate!) But clean air and wide open outdoor vistas? Yep. Technicolor sunsets? Oh yeah.

So. Blooming.

(Incidentally, last night's dinner--my local attempt at re-creating the Kogi-truck fare described in the last posting: we did a vegetarian version this time--a pepper-jack/kimchee/pineapple/sesame quesadilla with black beans on the side--made with local Tucson tortillas and kimchee from the Korean grocer down the street from where I work: Viva la comida del Seoul!)

this past weekend: across the desert to KOGI!

...just got back from another weekend jaunt to the L.A. area; due to funny timing this year,
we had two conferences to attend, just a few weeks apart...So, last Friday afternoon we took an after-work flight to LAX, got in a rental car, and on the way to our destination, we made a culinary pit-stop:

Yes--FINALLY: KOGI! The now-legendary Korean-Mexican taco-truck! (Actually, there are now four of the trucks; check out their website, and you'll see that the trucks move all over the L.A. location throughout the week for lunch, dinner, and late-night locations: http://kogibbq.com)

It has started a nationwide trend; check out this New York Times article from a couple of months ago:

"The Tortilla Takes a Road-trip to Korea"... Atlanta. Chicago, Brooklyn. Portland...Viva cultural fusion-food!

So, we looked up the location and dutifully followed the GPS directions through Los Angeles...and ended up in a light industrial office park in suburbia. At first I thought--huh? Are we lost? Was there a misprint on the website? Nope. The Friday-night location was in this warehouse area because of the plentiful parking--and we turned a corner and there was a long eclectic line of people...We waited forty minutes, chatting with a family behind us, who'd just come from soccer practice with the kids...And S. and I. had spicy pork tacos, kalbi (Korean-marinated beef short-rib) tacos, AND a glorious kimchee-pineapple-pork quesadilla topped with sesame seeds, a ponzu glaze and even toasted seaweed flakes! Wow, eh?

The pseudo-pilgrimmage for this food was not the main point for our weekend trip...but definitely a fun extra.

A few out-the-window views from the Friday-afternoon flight--yes, gratuitous shots from my iPhone:

looking NE over Tucson and the Santa Catalina Mountains,

with some of the irrigated fields of the San Xavier del Bac Indian Reservation in the foreground:

closer in--you can just make out the tiny cluster of 'high'-rises of downtown Tucson

in the left middle-ground...where we live is just off to the right of this photo:

the ribbon of blue is the Colorado River, just south of Lake Havasu on the AZ-CA border;

whenever I've flown over the SW, I'm always struck by the suddenness of irrigated farms in the middle of barren sands...

Back to Tucson.
Back to work.

post-race

I did it! I finished the annual Saguaro National Park Labor Day 8-miler! And the adrenalin-rush provided by the thousand fellow runners helped fuel things--I finished five minutes faster than I've ever run it before...

So--a new 'personal best' for me...Just a few years ago, I'd never have imagined that I would willingly wake up at 4:30 a.m. on a day-off from work to go run up and down hills in the desert--for FUN!? ('Personal best' and 'race-day' just weren't in my vocabulary.) Such is life in Tucson...A friend of mine, who carpooled with us (yes, my wife even got up that early to be our 'cheering fan section' at the finish line), did VERY well--placed 11th overall and 2nd in his age division...Hats off to him! There were people in their 70's and 80's, even, on the loop! Inspiring! (...and, no, they did not pass me...)

Afterwards--met up with some friends for lunch at an Italian restaurant. Once a year--no more, no less--I permit myself to indulge in the miraculous alchemy of fat and carbs known as Spaghetti alla Carbonara. Afterwards, a nice long nap.

That's how to spend Labor Day...

...above photo from this morning's Tucson paper

why the difference in worldview?

from a column in this morning's New York Times,
(Religious Outlier, by Charles M. Blow),
this insightful graph:

(difficult to see here--click on the link to the article above for the larger version)

 

Religious view might not be everything, but it certainly can't be ignored when trying ot understand societies and individuals--and this graph makes it easy to see why the U.S. and other Western nations differ so often in their worldview...


It would be interesting to do such a graph for areas within the U.S.
Having spent my high-school and undergrad years in 'The Bible Belt' of the U.S. Southeast,
and then having lived for years in decidedly secular Seattle--with a year in non-religious France and also a year in super-religious Central America thrown in--this subject intrigues me.


And now here in Tucson--hmm--a graph of the city itself would be fascinating...
Catholic vs. Evangelical vs. Jewish vs. Protestant vs. Darwin-fish-sticker-displayers vs. Foothills vs. University area vs. Southside vs. near the Air Force Base vs. Anglophones vs. Hispanophones...

Friday afternoon chubasco: forty degree drop in four miles

First of all, a definition of chubasco:
Chubasco in standard Spanish means any rain shower associated with heavy wind or, in nautical usage, a dark cloud which suddenly appears in the horizon, potentially foretelling rough sailing conditions (Diccionario de la Lengua Española, Real Academia Española).

More commonly here in southern AZ, the expression 'monsoon storm' is used...
This afternoon, as I drove home from work, I drove into one.

When I got into my car, the thermometer read 108 degrees--hot on the asphalt in the parking lot...
A mere four miles to the east, a few minutes later, while my windshield wipers were frantically at work, the temperature had dropped to 67 degrees! Amazing.

Just a couple of miles more, and then I drove out of the squall and rolled my windows down--wow, COOL air on a Friday afternoon in Tucson...

I was on my way to Saguaro National Park East--time to renew my annual pass--and just in time before next Monday's Saguaro National Park Labor Day 8-miler.
I drove the loop before heading home and took a few photos with my phone-camera:

--javelinas at the visitor's center:

...a few late summer wildflowers among the saguaros...

--looking west from the the higher hills on the loop road, across the Tucson basin under a rainy sky:

(click for a larger view)

...barrel cactus in bloom:

...back at the visitor's center--gives you an idea of the terrain of the Park and the Rincon Mountains,

with the arrow pointing out the 8-mile loop...

...looking forward to Monday's run--supposed to be the largest number of registered runners ever for this event...

'Ireland' in southern Arizona...back from L.A.

A friend of ours recently went on a drive south of the city, and he called me, saying, "you have to get down to Sonoita--it's like going to Ireland."

So, yesterday morning, we went for the scenic drive--just 45 minutes to the SE of Tucson, and the monsoon rains have indeed turned the normally dun-to-golden grasslands into rolling green hills...there are even some pronghorn antelope in the area, although we didn't see any yesterday...it was disorienting--felt like we were in Montana, maybe--very dépaysant...

A nice way to get out of the desert even if just for a couple of hours. Some friends of ours from Phoenix were with us--they too were amazed by the un-desert-feel, less than an hour from Tucson...


The grasslands have also, for a few decades now, become home to some vineyards and wineries. The wines are not 'amazing,' but the high elevation and soil conditions are ideal for growing grapes...and it's interesting that viticulture in Arizona dates back to the 1600's when the first Spanish priests brought vines to plant in their mission gardens, huddled behind walls not always adequate against Apache attacks...

...yeah, so maybe the yucca plant is not exactly Irish, but to our now-desert-accustomed-eyes, this is a super-verdant scene...

...looking west toward the peaks of the Santa Rita mountains,

from Empire Ranch in Las Cienegas National Conservation Area...

 ...and there are late summer wildflowers in abundance...and this cool-looking bug, eh?

I found out what it is: a veined ctenucha moth.

(Ctenucha--pronounced: teh-noo-chah.)

=============================================

Last weekend, right after the first week of the new school-year, we went to Los Angeles for a conference...

I did take this past Monday off, so we could get back to Tucson without being totally exhausted...or so we thought: we'd planned on leaving Monday morning, but then the friends with whom we were staying wanted to show us around, so we ended up having a tourist-day...and didn't get back to Tucson until midnight--exhausting, but worth it.

The day began with pastries and lattes at Porto's Bakery in Burbank--think Paris-meets-Cuba--awesome!

Then we putzed around Hollywood and then up to Griffith Observatory above the city:

...the famous 'Chinese Theatre' on Hollywood Boulevard, on the 'Walk of Fame'...

Over the years I have been to Los Angeles, I had never actually stopped in this part of Hollywood to gawk at the cement-immortalized handprints, footprings, signatures, and stars...

S. and I don't really keep up with celebrity 'news,' but this was actually kind of fun...

...Neo-Babylonian à la Disney architecture (?) at the

Hollywood and Highland Center, where the Kodak

Theater is also located--the site of the Academy Awards...

ahh...the smog-enshrouded skyline of Los Angeles, looking SE from Griffith Observatory...
we could just barely make out the ocean to the SW...

I'd never really spent time in Burbank--just driven through--it always seemed like it would be an overly asphalted area, with all of the studios--ABC, Warner Brothers, Disney, Universal...but our friends live in a tree-lined neighborhood just around the corner from where Jay Leno is filmed every day--I went for a morning run among eucalyptus, palms, pines, magnolias, gardens full of callas, roses, bougainvillea-vines trained into giant trees...who knew that Burbank was so green?

So. Today. Time to breathe. Next weekend--three days off--Labor Day weekend...and Labor Day itself--the 8-mile run through Saguaro National Park.

late summer in Tucson--in and out of Outside: 

from trails for bikes to 'Tostitos preparados'...

...in and out of Outside magazine, that is--this month's issue names Tucson 'best town in America' for road-biking...Yes, this is indeed a desert metropololis full of velophiles and bike-lanes, surrounded by miles of Sonoran desert and mountain terrain, trails, etc. etc... (Runner-up town?--Boulder, Colorado.)  

This morning--my last 'Monday of Freedom,' since students return to classrooms a week from today--I went for a bike ride along the Rillito--the seasonal river that cuts across the Tucson basin from east to west. Most of the length of the river has been developed into parks and trails--part of what makes Tucson one of Outside magazine's 'best towns:'

(for more info on Rillito Park, click here)

================================================

So...so much for what's in this month's Outside magazine.

Now, for something decidedly out of that publication: tostitos preparados.

Yes, 'tostitos' as in the brand-name corn-tortilla-chip. It's a Mexican street-food classic, but you won't find it at any Taco Bell near you...

Yesterday, S. and I were introduced to this snack experience by a couple of amigas mexicanas...We'd heard about this concoction (definitely only a 'sometime-food,' since it's pretty far to the 'junk'-side on the junk-food-scale) but had never seen or tasted it.

In the photo below--look to the lower left of the chalk-board-menu:

See it?--'TOSTITOS' and then, in the diminutive 'preparaditos'...

(The hole-in-the-wall joint was a classic example of how you can be in one city/country, and then go through  some doors and be instantly transported to a different world...S. and I immediately felt like we were back in Central America...could've been a raspadería in Nicaragua--the concrete-walled establishment didn't have the a/c running, all of the conversations were in Spanish...)

So--'what is it?' you ask...

Behold--in all of its still-in-the-bag-glory:

Sí, sí, mis amigos--you just take a bag of the chips--cut the side off, then top and fill with a mixture of melted nacho-cheese-sauce, diced cucumber, diced carrot, diced tomato, sliced jalapeños...and if you want, you can add peanuts, or 'chamoy', even shredded cabbage (!)...and it's served and eaten messily right out of the bag, preferably with one's fingers...As there were four of us sharing, we asked for plates and forks:

Junk-food-WITH-VEGGIES!!

Wanna try?

Come on down...

===============================================

With the recent monsoon-rains, the mountains around the city are becoming carpeted in green--normally, the color reserved for the forested peaks, but now even the lower slopes are almost verdant...

(yesterday evening--looking up at Finger Rock in the Santa Catalinas, from La Encantada mall...love having a camera on the cell-phone...and below, a view of downtown Tucson--I was running errands, and noticed that the view from the parking garage was kind of nice--actually made Tucson's small cluster of 'high'-rises look 'urban'...and I do love the multicolor-tiled dome of the Pima County Courthouse, built in the 1920's...)