“There is no, Arizona! No painted deserts, no Sedona. If there was, a Grand Canyon, she could fill it up with the lies he told her.” -Jamie O’Neil

Windows down as I barrel into the desert heat singing yet another pointedly cheesy shout out song about my next destination. I cut the actual Grand Canyon out of my travel plans, but Scottsdale, A.Z will be close enough.

Out of California, across the border and yet another drastic landscape change into Arizona. I see my honest to goodness first live cactus through my dusty windshield. There I go being melodramatic about a cactus, but I’ve never been in this part of the country before. The borders between our states could divide fifty individual planets for how drastically the vegetation and the creatures and the skies change with every one traversed.

Burn through the last couple of hours to Derek’s place. I’m twenty minutes away, checking my GPS for the exit aaaaaand, KABOOM!!!

You’ve got to be kidding me. This is a joke. Except for the real life part where I just blew another tire in the desert. Freaking Fabulous. Nevada all over again, oi with the poodles already.

At least this time I know for sure it’s completely blown as it shreds up under itself, shot like a deflated rubber duck, while the raw metal of the wheels grates against the concrete as I scrape down an exit and into a strip mall parking lot.

Guy pulls up behind me, rolls down his window.

“Hey, you know you’ve got a blown tire?” He asks.

I curb my initial response, suppress a sigh and mentally roll my eyes.

“Yes sir, thank you, I had noticed.” I quipped.

“There’s a discount tire store right behind you.” He replied and drove off.

Well I’ll be damned; I really must have a guardian angel, in spite of my smart mouth.

An hour and a half and 450 dollars later and I am back on the road. My grandmother forgot to mention when she gifted me the van that the tires were ten years old… Ancient rubber + hot desert highways = Ani going boom in the desert twice. Four shiny new discount treads for Delilah. No more roadside disasters. Knock on wood.

Finally pull up to Derek’s little suburb and am greeted with hugs, a cold beer then steak and Alfredo dinner, in that order. Now that’s a homecoming. His girlfriend Lydia is totally rad. We’re outside on Derek’s back patio, lounging by the pool. Laughter, drinks, and catching up on a lifetimes worth of stories as the sun sinks behind us and carry on well after it has set in full and gone to play on the other side of the world.

Lydia checks out first for the night, Derek and I are incorrigible, but man this is great. Finally wear ourselves out and call her a night. There’s a Pittsburgh Steeler game tomorrow and that’s a big deal in this household.

Neither Arizona zip codes nor Wisconsin fire numbers will ever sway the two of us from our boys in black and gold.

Not only do I get my own queen size bed with the softest comforter in the entire universe and a cave-like encroachment of giant plush pillows, but I get my own room. Not a tin box parked against the curb, not a dark blue curtain dividing the bunk beds and sleeping girls in the hostel or a solid tent and earthen floor, an honest to goodness bedroom.

It’s too unfamiliar for me just yet, as I fall asleep on the couch under a soft knit blanket, watching T.V, another novel contraption. I’m as a time traveler from before the lines and wires and waves that connect our world. Flung into the future and awestruck by the foreign land. Okay Ani McFly it’s a television not a hover board.

Wake to kitchen noises and wondrous smells assailing my nostrils.

“Good morning kid!” Derek says over the sizzling coming from the kitchen. Him and Lydia whip up an omelet concoction worthy of kings and feast like kings we do. After weeks of sandwiches and bar food it’s all almost too much. Says the girl wolfing down seconds.

The game is on early and off to a good start. Day beers and cheers and sideline replays and then we’ve won! Cause for celebration and sushi it is. You may have noticed a predominant theme running here. Munch munch munch.

If I haven’t made my affinity for raw fish apparent yet I love the stuff, but Derek and Lydia show me how it’s done. We take on about half the menu, variety bento box, specialty fire rolls, seared ahi tuna, whitefish hand rolls and things I will neither try to pronounce here nor try ever again. Something about the little fish eggs that burst with gel like goo against your tongue, and whole baby octopi, it’s just where I draw the line.

Stuff ourselves silly and back to the homestead. Dance and jam party in the living room. I play my strings and belt em’ out and everyone joins in. This is family. I needed this, after so many weeks on my own with only the interesting yet sometimes solemn company of strangers.

Settle down and throw on a movie. Derek and I are snoring within half an hour and it’s eight o’clock. We’ve really outdone ourselves today. Lydia turns out the lights and tucks me in on the couch once more. See you in the morning friends.

Rise and shine and Derek has an early half day at the office. No worries uncle, Lydia and I have plans. She has lived in Arizona all of her life and is the most excellent tour guide. And a hiking we will go!

We drive out into the desert and I feel like I’m in an old western.

“And somebody poisoned the water hole! There’s a snake in my boot.”

Okay maybe I just feel like I’m in Toy Story Two since I’ve never really watched a western.

Mostly because of the cactuses. Outside of the tiny planter pots in grade school teacher windowsills, I’d never seen one up close. Big, oblong, misshapen ones remind me of the waving wind men of primary colors that blow their arms round wildly in front of car dealerships and mattress warehouses. Okay I’ll shut up about the cacti.

Pull up to the trail-head parking lot, hills rising amongst us in reds and sandstone beiges. The dry heat and rocks yield only to prickly desert flowers and resilient, dark and ancient looking trees with twisted branches with not a whisper of flower or fruit.

I feel fantastic. Weeks of walking and hiking in the open air and my breath no longer hitches when I charge headlong up a mountain.

“This is Squaw Peak,” Lydia says between strides. The state renamed it Piestewa Peak, when the nation moved to stop offending the Native Americans, but Lydia has known it to be Squaw Peak all of her life so shall it be to me. I don’t think we’ve mortally offended anyone, but if so please feel free to call me out.

I feel that familiar twinge in my left knee, reminding me that I will regret my reckless gallivanting in the morning and Lydia’s breathing is becoming heavier as well. Turn round’ and back down the winding pass.

And then somehow we’re back at the sushi bar minus Derek and feasting again. We earned it on the mountainside. So we tell ourselves. Back home, Derek’s done, carry on in words, music, love and infinite smiles. I was going to leave tomorrow, but what’s one more day in paradise?

Last day and another morning hike with Lydia. Pinnacle Peak this time. Light Nike’s on hot dusty rocks crunching lightly beneath worn rubber, step light, step light. Then the sun and the air and the thrill of the moment take me under-wing and up and up as I take off at a run. A jog not sprint mind you, I’m no Steve Prefontaine.

I carry on this way for fifty yards or so, charged with electricity and raw energy. So this is what healthy people feel like. I’d forsaken my usual fried buffalo chicken bacon sandwich for much lighter fare since I’ve been on the road and the great outdoors and lack of Culver’s double bacon butter-burgers has done me good.

Slow down and catch my breath, take stock of the moment. Inhale, exhale, reap vitamins and warmth from the sun and probably skin cancer if I don’t start putting sun screen on. I love this tan though…

Back down and back home, snack a little and rest. Then off to the fair with Lydia’s grown kids, Zach and Brianna. Chocolate covered funnel cakes, pizza and three whiplash carnival rides later, always a winning combination, and I’ve grown tired in my bones. As tired as old man time, slumbering beneath the earth til’ this world’s end when he wakes to put us mortals to rest. And also mildly nauseous as any good fair experience will induce.

Ride home with my fuzzy blue seahorse carnie plunder and am sleeping soundly in the back of the car the instant the wheels begin to turn.

“He promised her a new and better life, out in Arizona. Underneath the blue never ending skies.”

This life is new and better and I’ll never stop chasing it. Across the desert, towards to the gentle Atlantic, hidden in the depths of the Wisconsin Northwoods and back again to the might of the Pacific crashing endlessly against the western coast.

I finally sleep in the bed, the softest bed in this world and say goodnight to the stars in another place that feels like home. Thank you guys so much, I will always remember this.

It is getting late in the year now, though I’ve been following the sun and am still fixated in the light, autumn is chasing summer off in the east and I too must soon yield to the seasons and return home. For whatever that means.

Texas is a big state though, lotsa driving, so I squash the somber thought, pack my bags, hugs and remove my neighborhood parking ordinance violation from under Delilah’s wiper blades and head into the sunrise again.

My friend Angela lives in Dallas now, so I’ll midway there and then finally to New Orleans. But aside from her I’m not itching to get to the outlaw frontier. Our childrens’ conservatively biased textbooks hail from there, along with the gun fanatics and border vigilantes. As Spongebob would say shortly before Sandy Cheeks karate-s his holey ass, “Stupid old Texas.” But I can’t live in my pineapple forever, let’s do this thing. Bye for now.