Somehow it seems a waste to arrive someplace new and not start touring. I need to remember that this is living not “vacation” not a “tour.” Yesterday, after a lovely lunch at Chipotle in Sierra Vista with Mike and Cindy which extended into mid afternoon, we decided to take the long route back through Tombstone past the San Pedro Riparian Reserve. As we passed through town I saw a tire shop and stopped to rotate the tires on the Jeep as they are wearing sort of weird and then at a natural food market so Carol cold pick up some produce since we were having Ellie and Kelly from our Thailand/Vietnam trip at the coach for lunch. As we pulled into the parking lot I noticed a barbershop next to the store. I hadn’t had a haircut by a barber in some time. I usually just use an electric clipper I keep for the purpose and when Carol goes into a unisex hairdresser I often will have them cut my hair too, they are hairdressers not barbers! These guys were trained barbers. Not only did he reduce my hair length to almost nothing as requested, but he shaved the back of my neck with a straight razor, trimmed my eyebrows and made sure the hair on and in my ears was eliminated. I’ll never understand why as men lose the hair on top of their heads it seems to start growing from the ears. Is it gravity?
Goodness that paragraph seems to have wandered all over the place. I thought I would wax philosophical and then cover some locations and somehow I got into barbering and aging. The mind does wander and there is no one here to edit me, well Carol might try. Back to the initial thought, I know there was one there someplace. We are sitting in Benson with no motivation to move on to Phoenix just yet. Our mail will arrive at Benson General Delivery on Monday at some point. Then we be free to consider moving on. Since we know we have to be in Phoenix on March 6, we will most likely head on up there on Tuesday, that is February 24 if you are not reading as I post it. Actually we are hoping to get into the Tempe Elks Lodge if there is space available.
This year has been an interesting mix of the planned/scheduled and lots of time to stare at the mountains and read. We can even take the occasional hike or long walk just for the fun of it. The planned we have taken on intentionally and then sometimes find it to be a straight-jacket. We really want to go to Escapade, but it is a fixed time commitment. We do enjoy getting together with the people we know along the way, but most people plan more than a day ahead and that means we must also. This is not a complaint, just a comment on how our lifestyle has changed from one of daily/weekly/monthly commitments to a very loose schedule. Also since we are traveling through areas we have explored many times, the sense of urgency to get out and explore is much lower.
On the other hand, while sitting with Ellie and Kelly yesterday, Kelly asked whether we had been to the Amerind Foundation Campus and I replied yes, but many years ago. It is less than 20 miles from where we sit so we will head there after lunch. I looked at their website http://www.amerind.org/index.html and started drooling over some of their offerings. But that will require us to plan ahead.
People do ask when we will be where and this is as good a time to outline our thoughts for the balance of 2015 as any. Through March 22 we will be in the Phoenix area. April 1 through 13 (at least) we will be in Los Angeles visiting with Yechiel, Miriam and family and celebrating Pesach. We will then drive north to the Bay Area to meet our nephew Leo. We need to fly to Rochester for May 1 and 2 when a percussion piece we have commissioned in honor of John Beck will be premiered. We still need to figure out where we will fly from, Reno? Salt Lake City? I know those sound strange but we are determined to travel east far more northerly than we have in the past. I tripped over the Lincoln Highway in my browsing and we are thinking it would be interesting to follow the first named US Highway back east. Everyone follows “Route 66” we have too, but this is different and it passes through Reno, Salt lake City and Denver. The calendar includes our nephew Steven’s wedding in Vermont in early June, Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival -June 19 to 28, and travel to Greece and the Adriatic with OAT in August and the last stop we are sure of is C’vlle Virginia for Corey’s Bar Mitzvah on October 24. Hmm, just noticed my high school class will be gathering in Rochester October 9 -11 to celebrate our survival of 55 years since graduating. It actually sounds like a pretty full calendar for retired folk who don’t plan ahead.
As I say when I blog the jazz Festival, watch this space to see how it actually plays out.