The joys of living in Arizona?

[Dave Bagwill]

My sister in law lives in southern Tucson - way southern - with her husband RF. They are renting a place and....well, as she puts it:

"Landlady wants RF to pull out all the cholla (jumping cactus) from the property. He called a friend who is a horticulterist and asked his advice. We have to rent a Bobcat or RF has to beat the cacti with a stick till all the arms fall off. Then he has to stab the stump with a pitchfork, apply rotational force till the trunk snaps and then burn the roots with a blow torch. Wish you were here to witness this. "

I know all of Arizona is not like that, ok? Though those of you that read my post on 'jeeping' a couple of years ago know that I am not real partial. :-)

[Dave Bagwill]

From 2/10/12 - just for old times' sake:

My wife and I just returned from a one week trip to visit her sister and her sister's brood in Tucson.
They have been after us for a few years now to visit and go 'jeeping' with them - they have an older wrangler that converts to a no-door, no-top, wide open road machine. I thought: huh, sounds like fun, I used to have a jeep and liked tooling around in the wide open manner as well.

'Jeeping' is a different thing to them. What it is, is: drive South from Tucson - south from Tucson - south - until you find an off-road spot that has a county number on the little jeep trails - a two digit number means a fairly level, occasionally graveled trail, where the only discomfort was the steady, non-ending cloud of dust that enveloped us and it was a penetrating dust - any available orifice and yes, some filters down the back of your shirt and finds its way to a spot between your 'cheeks'. Gritty. And sweaty.

Those trails would often reveal THREE digit number trails - all of the above plus severe and concealed bumps and rises and dips. I'm in the back seat and don't see any of it coming, and am reduced to gritting my teeth, and gritting the grit IN my teeth, hanging on, and just waiting to be jarred halfway senseless while I am trying to blow the dust out of my nose and lungs. I don't have to wait long - say, 1/3 of a second between jars. This went on for many miles, at a couple of miles per hour. I was not my cheerful self, and, while her sister (the driver) swears she was having fun, she is a lying sl*t and I told her so. In a loving brother-in-law way.

Those three digit trails, of course, lead to the FOUR digit number trails - all of the above plus boulders and other sh*t, trails steep enough that you could only see the sky when you looking forward. We're beyond jarring at this point - we are levitating over our seats, there is no respite between teeth-rattling, violent side-to-side motion chaos and more and more dust and a special treat - dust-covered SIGNS saying things to the effect that the area is overrun with drug mules and hopped-up cartel thugs with big rifles and lots of bullets. Those signs would, if my testicles had not already been left behind in the dirt, have caused them to shrink visibly.

To mollify me, my brother-in-law Rick offered to buy me a beer at the Frog and Firkin, an outdoor eatery close to the university. I don't drink, but heck, I had an Arrogant Bastard ( a great beer) and watched the college girls stroll by for an hour or so and I quite forgave him, but not his sl*t of a wife.

That's the short version.

[Tim Benware]

So Dave, that sounds like fun, when you going back?

[Dave Bagwill]

Maybe next month. We can combine jeeping with killing cholla cacti somehow.

[John Link]

I like your writing Dave. You need to start a travel blog, one that deals in reality, not commercial hype. It would be widely read.

[Dave Bagwill]

Writing is an awful lot like work. :-)

[Tim Benware]

You know, I think there might be a country song in there somewhere.