Finally managed to visit my Dad again in Sun City. Christina wanted to visit her childhood friend Lizzy and her new baby, so we took a plane to Vegas first. On the plane, I had a philosophical discussion with poker professional Phil Ivey’s uncle Xeno, and Christina lost a notebook of writing, sadly.
Daughter’s adventures while I slept aside, I got some reading and contemplation in, including hammock-time by the large pool with it’s own Mayan temple (ironically reading Toltec wisdom) — we used a few days of a timeshare my folks hadn’t taken advantage of for a while. We stayed an extra day when we caught up with my step-brother Bill and his family, including an evening of jousting and walking the strip.
To my surprise, the “compact car” I rented turned out to be a Volkswagen Beetle, and after solving the mysteries of moving the seats and opening the trunk (in the back, like all modern ones), it really was comfortable and moved when I needed it to. It also enabled the use of a tight space in the almost-full parking ramp for Hoover Dam.
The trip through the desert wasn’t as desolate or uninteresting as everyone said it would be, not the speed limit as high as I was told. Nevertheless, I tested the boundaries of the needle briefly a few times. Sunset here and in Sun City was as colorful as home, but with more clear blue in between shades of orange that simply don’t show up on camera images.
The weather was a bit cool the whole time, and not cloudless like last time. We spent less time outside, and much time hearing and rehearing my father’s life tales. It was wonderfully slow-paced, and I enjoyed doing a few ladder-required handy-man chores as well as removing dead rose bushes, but it was actually less monastically pleasant as the last time, as WiFi was constant. Maybe we shouldn’t have wished for it after all.
We dreaded coming home to single and barely-double digit temperatures (my car was encased in a glaze of ice), but it was also just good to be home. Even though I handled a lot on the road with my tablet, the first week afterward was spent catching up.
It was perhaps all a bit much after my 3-day journey with the Deputy Grand Master’s team to eastern upstate New York the weekend before. I have other travelling coming up, but am appreciating being home for the moment, including prepping the attic for an office for Christina.