Sweet/Sour

Howdy partners. I'm retired now, living it up in Phoenix. I had to move down here because that's what old retired people do, right? No, I'm actually visiting my sister for a week. I've never been down here to her new house and she's lived here for three/four years already.

Sweet: Ice cream. I've had far too much already on this trip. I'm a fan of almost anything by Ben & Jerry's and down here I found a new variety, Creme Brulee (minus the accent marks). I don't especially like Creme Brulee or custard, but this ice cream was incredible. Custard flavored ice cream with a crusted sugar/caramel ribbon. Incredible. By the way, if you are also an ice cream lover, try the Cinna-buns Ben & Jerry's flavor. I used to think it couldn't get better than Phish Food, but those two varieties may win out. After the Creme Brulee, I also bought a half-gallon of Waffle Cone generic ice cream that is about half gone now. Then today, out in Tonto National Forest, we stopped at an ice cream shop that served prickly pear cactus ice cream, made from the berries that grow atop the prickly pear cactus. It was great.

Sour: Garbage. We hiked into the South Mountains of Phoenix, which by the way, are protected as the largest city park in the entire world, and encountered a few rest areas on the trail just covered in garbage. Then today out in Tonto National Forest, at a lot of scenic viewpoints, there would be garbage thrown over the ledge. Can I please assume that this garbage represents a large number of accidents over a long period of time? No, I can't believe that. Why do people throw their garbage over the edge, or anywhere for that matter, besides a garbage can? I picked up some garbage along the trail, but there was some I couldn't get to/didn't want to try to get to.

Sweet: Sweet Tea. I've had sweet tea about five times before in my life and have been very unimpressed, but I've always wanted to give it a try because southern people always go on and on and on about it. Well, I had some today at a soulfood restaraunt in Phoenix called Lolo's Chicken and Waffles, an out-of-the-way brick building right next to a car junkyard. If I could only drink sweet tea the rest of my life, I'd be a happy man. Maybe a fat man, but a happy man. I believe I now understand why people go on and on and on about sweet tea. My meal at the restaraunt was 3-piece southern fried chicken, cornbread, red beans and rice, and mixed greens. Mmm.

Sour: I'm not sure how to label this one. I was at a gas station and Lana went inside while I stayed in the car, we were parked on the side of the building, not the front. There was a teenage-ish girl trying to use the payphones. This guy pulls up in his car and looks around for a long time before getting out. I didn't think anything of it at the time. He gets out of his car, looks around, and then walks around to the front of the building, where he looks around, doesn't go into the stor and then goes back to his car. He starts it up, starts to drive away, then stops, rolls down his window, and motions for the girl to come to his car. She does. He talks to her while she's at the passenger window and convinces her to use his cell phone. Lana comes back and we leave before I know how the rest of the situation pans out. I have to say there was something about the situation that did not feel right. Something about the way that the guy was talking to her looked ungenuine, like he was talking nice, smiling, offering his phone, only to maybe build up trust and then "offer her a ride home." I wish our society was one where this situation wouldn't arouse suspicion. I hope it was just a person helping out another person, but what if his intentions were evil? What if something bad happened and I didn't stay to prevent an undesirable outcome? I can't believe how nervous I might be to bring a child into this world someday. How do you tell who is genuine and who isn't? Do you distrust everybody until they prove trustworthy, or do you trust everybody until proven untrustworthy? How do you decipher such a situation as the one above? In social psychology, they taught that most people don't help in trouble situations largely because they don't know what the situation is. Say a man grabs a child in a mall and the kid starts screaming. Is the man the child's parent? Is he throwing a tantrum or is the father hurting him? Is the man a stranger and the child is in danger? Have you noticed when things like this happen that people in the area either try to ignore the situation, or just stand there and stare, not really knowing what is going on? What do you do?

Sweet: National Parks. I can add some more to the list of parks I've been to. Lana and I visited Painted Forest National Park. Tomorrow we will see Saguaro National Park near Tucson, and Thursday we are toying around with the idea of seeing the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, but we will be going to the North Rim during our honeymoon, so we might not go to the South Rim. We will be disc golfing at Snowbowl in Flagstaff, though. An alpine disc golf course built around ski lifts in the mountains near Flagstaff. I'm very excited.