Sleepless in Scottsdale

This always happens when I travel West. It takes me at least 5 or 6 days to adjust to the time zone. And speaking of time zone, I haven’t quite figured out why AZ is in the Mountain Zone, but yet we are on Pacific time. So this means that I will be wide awake before 3 PM for most of this week. Sigh.

Yesterday was a pretty easy travel day. Once we got over the shock of awaking at 3:30 am to get to the incredibly crowded airport by 5:00 the rest of the day was smooth sailing. It was nice to sit on the plane and do nothing for several hours. Lord knows I needed that decompression time before the start of vacation. Karlo and I are both having trouble erasing work from our minds, but hopefully that will get fixed soon.

We had all afternoon to just chill (if that is possible in the desert at the end of May) at the hotel yesterday. We hung by the pool, in the sun, and tried to catch up on some rest. Poor Karlo came down with a cold. What amazingly bad timing! So he was happy to just lay there and snooze. I, on the other hand, read every brochure and magazine I could get my hands on, and then I studied all the maps. When I ran out of reading material I found it to be torture to just lay there. I can’t believe how impossible that was for me. The afternoon seemed endless.

Finally it was time to pick up our bike and that was a fun adventure. We left the motorcycle place around 6 PM and took a short cruise around Old Town Scottsdale. All I can say is, “It was HOT!” The bike throws off more heat than we are used to because of the silly BMW boxer engine design. I never liked the look of it, and now knowing the heat displacement, makes it even worst. Of course, with that said, it would be handy in the winter. Luckily we didn’t ride in the city traffic too long. We stopped and had dinner at an outdoor Mexican cantina. The exhaustion was starting to catch up to me by that point. Between the fact that I’ve been up for 20 hours, the incredible heat on the bike, and the heavy helmet I’m not sure how I stayed on the back.

Sadly, I didn’t take one single picture yet. So far my theory about having a DSLR on a vacation is turning into a reality. It will be very interesting to see how many times I have it in my hand this trip. Hopefully I’ll do better today. We are preparing to check out of the hotel and head up to Sedona on the bike. The sun is already up and it looks to be another perfect day in the desert. Stay tuned.