Since this is the shakedown cruise of the blog at Lone Locust, I make no apologies for the disorganized approach I’m using at the moment.

It’s our first morning in Flagstaff and I’m the only one awake, I’m cathcing up on yesterday’s entry because I just didn’t get around to it last night. Without further ado, here’s yesterday:

After the power failure that had kept me up well past 3:00 and hampered my sleep even longer (no A/C can bring the temp down from 97 to something sleepable without some delay) I had to get up at about 7:30 in preparation for the trip. I had to get over to the cell phone store to swap out my dead new phone with a replacement. So far, I like the phone, but am not crazy about the quality-control.

The shop opened at 10:00 so I took the opportunity to stop for breakfast at Lee’s Sandwich Show an interesting Asian-themed from California located, regrettably, on the wrong side of the Phoenix-urban sprawl.

Once the phone was in my possession (the owner had thoghtfully pre-charged it overnight for me) it was back home for final preparations and off for Flagstaff.

There’s not much to say for the drive. I would have thought Michelle would sleep, but instead she stayed stubbornly awake and, as she often does when overly-tired, chatted incessantly.

I was the only one who had breakfast, so we stopped around 1:00 PM in Verde Valley and ate at Wendy’s. I wasn’t too hungry yet, but everyone else needed the break.

Just as we reached pine trees, about 40 miles outside of Flagstaff, Michelle fell asleep. The highway travels at 75 mph (with cars still passing) and we travelled into a cloud burst. Visibility dropped rapidly and we began to decelerate, but it was the noisiest rain I’d ever heard. That’s when I realized it was hale, battering the windshield in excess of 60 mph. At first they we pea-sized, but suddenly they became marble-sized. Fortunately, they must have been fairly soft, and they impacted the windshield and compressed into discs about 1 to 2 inches across.

I got the car off the highway at the first exit and headed for parking under the trees, but by the time I was off the highway, the storm passed. Despite the fact that it had sounded like someone beating the car with hammers, Michelle managed to sleep through it all. The rest of us were shook up. Ice and water from the sky just isn’t natural.

Later inspection of the car revealed a few paint chips and a half dozen or so pits in the windshield.

By the time we got into Flagstaff, drove to the resort, so that they could send us to the Holiday Inn, I was hungry, but no one else was. Irene made reservations for 8 at Black Bart’s, a steakhouse she loves and always visits when in Flagstaff. As it was only 5:00, I grabbed a bite at Taco Bell and tried to see if any wireless internet was available nearby. I had no hope for the hotel because it had one of those web-tv like keyboards on the TV and, a quick check showed it cost $10 a day to use. As we’re right next to several other hotels, I had hope my wireless might pick up a stray open-access signal. It turns out, though, that the Holiday Inn had free wireless access and I was soon online.

My first experiment was trying to make some posts to this blog and it was fighting me every step of the way – I couldn’t get to the management software of my website to make necessary changes. After doing and undoing every possible thing I could that I felt might reverse the changes I made putting this blog into place, I finally stumbled upon the fact that the wireless hosting here at the hotel was what was preventing me from using my management software. The unique, session-specific URLs were being interpreted as hacking attempts and blocked. So much for “intelligent” software. The net result was that I didn’t take a nap before it was time to go to Black Bart’s.

Black Bart’s, for those not in-the-know (which I assume is statistically almost everyone on the planet) is an RV park with a steak house and music hall review. All the waiters and waitresses are presumably all starving students from NAU who get up and perform songs and musical numbers. Not my cup of tea, but Irene loves it. We also suspected that Michelle would really like it. My hope was that James would just ignore it.

Food was good, Michelle really enjoyed the singing – too much, in fact, as she paid more attention to the signing and not enough to herself, consequently, she peed all over the chair.

After we got back ot the hotel, exhaustion finally sat in and I needed to sleep – no one else was ready, though, and, being in a small confined space they kept me awake another couple hours.

During the night, James would kick the crib, which sounds just like a prisoner rattling his cup against the jail cell bars.

It was not a good night, at least there is only one more to go…

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