Tucson, Witch Doctors, And What Some People Call Spring Break

Whew! What a week it's been! This is going to be one m***********g long post, 'cause, well, I've got nothing better to do. Turns out there actually is stuff to do in Tucson. It was actually pretty sweet. I drove down to Tucson, AZ for a week with my family and four other families for a week-long family fun spring break extravaganza! Mostly, that means sitting around the pool in the daytime and sitting in the hottub drinking virgin margaritas at night.

I celebrated my twentieth birthday while down there in the Grand Canyon state. I can't tell you how many times people asked me how old I was turning, only to show off their most disappointed face when I told them I was turning twenty. It went something like this: "Oh, it's your birthday? Cool! How old are you?" "Um, twenty." *downtrodden face* "Oh... OK. Uh... Sorry." Sorry? Sorry for what? Sorry that, no matter how hard I try, I can do very little about changing the order of the counting numbers? Twenty comes after nineteen, people. I'm not sorry about that. Why should you be? I'll turn twenty-one in the exact same amount of time it took everyone else on the planet to do so. Just about twenty-one years. Give or take.

One of the first things we did was head off to the Titan ICBM museum. It was awesome. I mean, the tour was OK, but the tour guide was hilarious... though not in any sort of "on purpose" way. His name was Dean, and according to his name tag, he'd logged over 7,000 hours as a tour guide at the museum. The amazing thing about that is the fact that everyone who works there does so on a VOLUNTEER basis. Even more amazing still was the obvious fact that Dean wasn't exactly a stickler for things like "common courtesy" or "working well with kids" or "remembering his lines" or "cutting his chesthair to a manageable length." All these pleasant characteristics were completely missing from the lab when God went to work on good ol' Dean. AWESOME. Not to be missed.

The manager of the hotel, who I came to affectionately know as the Bar Nazi for reasons that will be made apparent shortly, was a grade-A first class creep if ever there was one. Said my dad of the individual, "I bet he's one of those guys who hides those tiny cameras in the air conditioning vents in all of our rooms." The guy actually bore a striking resemblance to Henry Winkler, "The Fonz." Um, a little essential information for the following story: We stayed at an Embassy Suites in Tucson, and as some of you may know, Embassy Suites always provides a happy hour for their guests. Free Drinks! How cool is that? Anyway, the first night we were there, I schlepped up the bar and asked the booze jockey for a virgin rum and coke. This just happened to be Mr Winkler. He looked at me and said, "You know, this is a bar. If your parents aren't in the room, then you have to leave." I wanted to staple the guy's ass to his face. "Do you have any idea who you're talking to? I'll eat your babies, bitch!" If only I'd said that. Instead, I just said, "Yeah, they're around here somewhere. All I want is a coke." (Yeah, I know, that was decidedly unfunny. What can I say? I'm very non-confrontational.) From then on, he was forever more going to be known to me as the Bar Nazi. What a jerk-ass.

One thing I really miss about California is Wienerschnitzel. It's this awesome hot dog chain. They also have them in Arizona. One night, after we'd witnessed the Rockies get dumped on for three hours at a spring training game against the Mariners, we went to Wienerschnitzel for dinner. (The spring training game was so boring, we actually got more entertainment from the bats flying overhead. When one particularly tenacious bat finally caught a quite elusive moth, the entire section in which we were sitting erupted in applause. Yeah. I know.) Anyways, when we were in Wienerschnitzel, my whole family was greeted by a mute Native American man who was apparently homeless and most likely certifiably insane. The guy kept wanting to shake our hands, and he kept on showing us a bunch of weird stuff like the cover of a strange looking comic book, the cover of the Stephen King novel “Rose Madder,” his biceps, and a pair of black socks. I kid you not. He had a just about half his teeth missing, and his fingernails were longer than my fingers (OK, not really, but whatever.) The funniest part was the hand motions. I actually think I was able to translate some of what he said. So, what I’m going to do is attempt to give a rough outline of exactly what the guy was trying to communicate:

“Hey guys. Look at my wrist. I don’t have a watch, but it sure is a clean wrist, isn’t it? Hey, lady behind the counter. Look at this book. No. Look at it! The cow’s skull on the cover of this book obviously means I’m very strong, as indicated by my flexed biceps. Hey, I saw that you were doing some sort of martial arts a few seconds ago. That warrants a handshake.” (It was at this time that I said the line “Can you deal with that?!” from the end of Meet the Parents, while at the same time doing the goofy hand motions Ben Stiller does.) “No, really, I want to shake your hand. Look. The guy on the cover of this creepy comic book has knives. That means martial arts, too. Look! I can do it too! Yay! Oh, hey, look at these socks. I got these socks for just ninety-nine cents at the ninety-nine cent store. Isn’t that great? Look at this cover, because you obviously didn’t see me show it to the lady who works here. Look. It means I’m strong. Check out these guns!” And… scene. I wish I were making all this up, but I’m not. Seriously. My family came to call him “Cochise the Witch Doctor.” Why not? I really think he was a witch doctor! For reals, guys.

For my birthday, as well as the seventeenth birthday of one of my sister’s friends, we all went to a steak place called Pinnacle Peak (there were twenty-one people in total in our group for most of the week). Seriously… one of the best steaks I’ve ever had. It was unbelievable, and it was also HUGE! Best… birthday… dinner… EVER! I would honestly rank it as one of the top three greatest meals in my life. Highly recommended.

We all drove around Tucson in a giant convoy and kept in touch via walkie-talkie. When one family’s car was about to roll over to 100,000 miles, everybody in the group heard about it. The dad whose car it was is an engineer. So, what do engineers do on their spring break? They get video footage of their car rolling over to 100,000 miles! He’s got it on tape! It’ll probably be on the highlight video he makes of the trip! Man, I hope I never EVER do that on my family vacation when I get older.

All in all, we had a fun time. We laughed, we cried, we ate huge steaks. Not a bad trip. Not a bad trip at all. (And how did I remember some of those stupid little details about the trip? For my birthday, I got a digital handheld voice recorder. Now, I can “write down” my thoughts no matter where I am and save them for later! (I’m such a nerd.))