RAH RAH RAH !

It's been over week now since I returned from my one week trip out to Arizona. Recalling the mood that I was in a couple of weeks ago regarding the sudden crack down in security at airports across the western world, it was a welcome surprise that security was really a non-issue soon into my travel.

Wifey and The Savages had been out in Tucson for close to two weeks and the plan was for them to fly back here to New Jersey and reunite with me and for me to take another week off and head out to Portland, Maine to gorge on lobster among other things. We were to keep the summer vacation season going in-stride.

It didn't work out that way. Wifey's folks have been victims of the foibles of being retired, having many of their friends end up passing away, and not having a constant presence of family around. One of the byproducts of mixing such ingredients with people who are solidly in their late seventies is alcoholism. Wifey's father, in the last four or five years had become a terrible drinker. Get up in the morning and hit the vodka kind of drinking. Stay up late at night rambling around the house loudly and noisily kind of drinking. Go out to dinner four times a week and start the meal with a double type of drinker. Ask him about it at all and have him anger heatedly kind of drinker.

Wifey and The Savages were out last October for a week and Wifey concluded that her mother unconsciously is his main enabler. When Wifey left that time, and unbeknownst to The Savages, the departure was acrimonious. Wifey could not envision returning if the situation could not be fixed.

Then something happened that was very fortuitous. Wifey's dad fell and broke his leg after loading up for dinner at a Chili's restaurant. It was a good thing. Why? Because he was forced to be hospitalized and undergo physical therapy and in-effect was forced to detoxify during that entire period. The detoxification process was not pretty. When alcoholics undergo this, sometimes, as was the case with my father-in-law, people suffer dementia. In his case, it lasted about 10 days. It was the best thing that could have happened.

Her father has been sober since that fall and injury last November, and that is the reason that Wifey and the Savages did head out there to spend some time this summer. The visit was so good that Wifey called me to persuade me to forgo the Portland trip and to get on a plane and head out there. She wanted to stay another week and did not want me to spend a week away from work by myself. She was very emotional about it. She was having a great visit and couldn't bear to leave just yet. She called, she cried and I flew with the condition that we all get in a car and head out to see my uncles in Mexicali. The Savages have not see their cousins in close to two years and a 300 mile drive was a reasonable request.

So, two weeks ago I got onto a plane to Tucson with short notice. I was sooooo early at the US Airways terminal that Saturday morning. I struck an intriguing conversation with a delightful older empty-nested couple from Edison, New Jersey who bought me very needed coffee and who happened to return to New Jersey on the same flight the very next week. Our interaction allowed for the time to pass delightfully.

On the second day of this excursion, I was in the middle of a very beautiful Sonoran Desert on the way out to Baja California. I got to see my uncles and cousins. Wifey and The Savages did also.

Later in the week, I got to see both my good friend and colleague CL. I also saw my good friends FA and AA. Strangely, I managed to get together with some interactive internet acquaintances (spooks/inmates) who after seven years of interaction could not believe that I live in New Jersey and not Nogales.

I ate Mexican food until I couldn't. Wifey and I left The Savages with their grandparents and we went out and about every night. We'd go to dinner and then go to a bar that we used to go to. We would also just drive those big wide main thoroughfares around Tucson for hours at night with the windows down just to cruise and get reacquainted with the city with 96 KLPX off the speakers. I bought three varieties of chilies that are difficult to find: Pasilla, Cascabel and Chiltepin. The Chiltepin which I purchased at an astounding price of $50 dollars per kilogram. I bought 20 dozen flour tortillas to store in the freezer to use piecemeal. And last, but not least, a few new UofA t-shirts, license plate frames and decals to mark the start of the football and soon to be here basketball seasons.

My wants are simple.

Although I did not get to sit on a beach, in a chaise lounge, with a cooler of stout and with little or no distractions, I did get to incorporate the missing ingredient quite a few times with a little help from my friends. And it was great to commiserate among friends.

It was all well and it was all good.

The picture above was taken for our local township newspaper who publish pictures of our town residents on vacation if they take a picture with the front page of the newspaper. The newspaper wants poses with the newspaper just like hostages would. The picture above are The Savages flanking their cousin Rogelio III in front of what was Mexicali's municipal administrative offices. "El Palacio de Gobierno" is now "El Palacio de Administración" of the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC). Also in the background is a statue of General Alvaro Obregon. The general lost his arm fighting Pancho Villa's rebels back in 1915. It's 11 a.m. and the temperature is 106!

One week from tomorrow it's New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana where Ambassador Julio and I will be reveling with drink and song leading into the UofA vs. LSU football game.

I've got the throw-beads already.

*!*

posted by JerryNJ @ 4:44 PM