Day 2: Indio, CA/Phoenix, AZ

Woo-hoo! 92 degrees at 8:30 am! Five quick hours into Phoenix on highway 10. Straight shot with only a rest stop or two.

Driving into Phoenix was so surreal for me. Ten years ago I know the city like the back of my hand. Now, all day long each street sign and freeway interchange started clicking memories into place, like a jigsaw puzzle of familiarity. I know I'm a very map-oriented person -- having a complete mental map of an area us a huge part of what makes a place start to feel like home for me. So today it was is if that map was starting to be re-crafted in small bits and pieces as we drove through Phoenix. And with every piece, there came all these associations and memories. No real surprise there. But what did startle me was how good it made me feel -- almost elated, high. Not necessarily due to the specific things I was remembering, it was more about the recognition itself. I told Paul it felt like going back to Disneyland after 15 years and walking down Main Street. Every next few steps brings a "remember this?" and "oh man, I'd completely forgotten about that!", and then by the time you get to Cinderella's castle, even more is coming back and you know just where to turn to get to Pirates of the Caribbean.

We're staying with Ryan and Dean at their place in Phoenix, and Drake has come to stay for the weekend. Simon spent all day playing with Willie their wire-hair terrier, who pretty much lives for playing in the swimming pool, while Simon (who won't enter the pool of his own free will) would only circle the pool and bark, telling Willie to come on out of there and play fair, dammit.

Had dinner at Barrio Cafe, a tiny central-Mexican restaurant that has actually been called the best Mexican in the state. It was a terrific meal! Achiote-rubbed Pork slow-roasted for over 14 hours... A chile relleno stuffed with chicken, pecans, apricots and pomegranate seeds... And of course, Oaxacan mole. Wow. The bathroom was decorated with posters and figurines of hooded mexican wrestlers.

After dinner, Drake, Paul and I stopped at Charlie's, a favorite country-western watering hole of mine, but alas it was particularly short of two-stepping cowboys in tight Wranglers. What good is a gay country dance bar if you stop in at 9:00 on a Sunday night to find them playing electronic dance music? So we headed to the New Towne instead, where I actually found my old roommate lurking in a dark corner.

E.S. and I -- wait, I should change his name to protect his anonymity.

F.T. and I shared a couple of apartments for two and a half years before I moved to California. I knew him as an extremely quiet, charming, eccentric who drove a Nash Metropolitan, waxed his moustache, and routinely left the house sporting spats and pince nez. He had a great love and appreciation for finials of all kinds and eschewed modern technology in favor of an 80-year-old typewriter and a phone that weighed more than a small toddler. An artist who worked in stained glass, he had a workshop in his bedroom, complete with a custom-designed hood that vented the fumes from his soldering iron out into the Scottsdale air.

Or so we thought. Talking with him last night, I learned that much of what I knew as his quirky personality could in fact be attributed to the effects of long-term lead poisoning. Those times when I'd find him sitting all alone at the kitchen table and ask "whatcha doin'?", and he'd say "oh, just chatting with the toaster"... Yep. He wasn't just being funny. He'd been chatting with the toaster.

He doesn't work in stained glass any more.