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Cute Little Emails
5 december 2004

Auntie Lucylle Light
3 december 2004

Thanksgiving memories
25 november 2004

Hairy arms of death
20 november 2004

Having My Cake
6 november 2004

Nitwit Nation
3 november 2004

Morning After
1 november 2004

Nightmare on Liberty ST
31 october 2004

Tricks & Treats
24 october 2004

Saguaro Saga
16 october 2004

Saguaro Saga

Like I said before I'm not real conscientious about taking pictures. I swore this trip, I would get a picture of Tony and me next to a saguaro cactus, an amazing plant that can weigh six tons, live for up to 200 years and serve effectively as a clothesline or industrial grade cheese grater.

Well, that didn't quite pan out. Not for lack of opportunity. There were saguaros everywhere down there in Tucson, which is smack in the center of their remarkably limited natural habitat. (They only grow in the middle part of the Sonoran desert, mostly southern Arizona and the northeastern corner of Mexico.) But it just never occurred to me to take a picture of one until we were taking our rent-a-car back to Phoenix. I pulled over in a rest stop off Highway 10, but the nearest saguaros were off in the distance behind a menacing barbed wire fence.

So, I did the best I could. Tony took a picture of me where I'm kind of pointing to them. I would have jumped the fence and gotten closer, but there were all kinds of signs warning about scorpions and poisonous snakes.

And then this morning, I drew a picture of a saguaro, which includes a cow and a muffler from a '47 DeSoto, you know, just to give perspective.

And speaking of things automotive, I meant to take a picture of our rent-a-car that we got from the Phoenix airport. We were supposed to get Ford Taurus, but Hertz ran out of mid-sized cars, so the lady at the counter told us we could have a convertible at no extra charge. The convertible turned out to be a fire engine red 2004 Mustang, which is a lot of fun to drive, but I could barely fit Tony's wheelchair and voluminous luggage into it. And it did feel kind of funny driving around with the top down and listening to our Beach Boys CD as we passed towering saguaros, parched arroyos and signs warning of potentially deadly fauna.

So like I said, I forgot to take a picture of the car, but then I remembered that the Barbie car that we put under the Christmas tree every year is a red Ford Mustang, so with the help of Barbie, Ken and Steve I kind of recreated the moment.

I think it gets the spirit of the trip across pretty well, but I doubt even Barbie packs as much luggage for a four-day trip as Tony.

If you want to know more about saguaros (and I realize the information I'm presenting here might seem a little sketchy), here's a saguaro FAQ from the National Park Service.

Kurt "big daddy" True
16 october 2004