Arizona off-topic

[loftguy]

Here are a few pics of Chase Field from Row 1, seat 1 and 2. (Batter's box)

(Brewers game Friday night where D-Backs won with a walk off homer in the bottom of the 9th.)

My girlfriend and I somehow lucked in to getting invited to the game and given these seats... Free drinks and food. I think that night rivals the most I ever ate!

[MJLO]

OK guys i'm kinda back, thanks for sticking it out while I was gone, did anyone miss me?

What'd I miss!

[MJLO]

man this place sure has gotten quiet! I'm going to have to get a crackin where did you all go?

[loftguy]

I've just been busy watching our local Real Estate market go to complete crap...

-I'm actually more of a reply guy-

I clean em up or answer/ comment when I can...

Don't make me become a new idea guy!

[convulso]

don't forget the whoop-de-do that is arcosanti...wait, do forget it.

[convulso]

Any other suggestions? I've heard that Gary, IN is nice.

LOL

[colin]

I had to look up Arcosanti (yes, a place Colin doesn't know! although I saw something on it on the AZ Highways TV show a while ago).

It looks pretty interesting, although I'm not really into the whole concept, especially since these people probably still have to drive 20 miles to work and shop. It kinda contradicts itself.

[MJLO]

it's good to see you guys coming back from everything that we've had going on. Ben where the heck have you been.

[convulso]

sorry i've been awol, guys - i've not gotten my own internet connection yet, and the weak wireless signal i had been furtively 'borrowing' from my neighbor died when she moved out two weeks ago. my online life is pretty unreliable until i break down and get my own connection. thanks for the welcome(s) back!

you hit it about arcosanti being a self-contradicting concept, colin...design-school types get an earful of utopian community prototypes (and there's lots of hero-worship of celebrity architects like paolo soleri.) my exposure is mostly because of my interest in design. there's always somebody in design school who worships soleri or some other one-idea architect (kinda like there's always some english grad student who loves kurt vonnegut or j.d. salinger...wait, how do i get so off-topic?)

arcosanti seems about as capable of living up to its originally-stated mission as EPCOT does of fulfilling disney's early idea of an actual functioning community. it's become a tourist attraction and a one-idea curiosity, IMO. it promotes the notion of being self-sustaining but relies heavily on outside resources (not the least of which is toursim and art sales) and the ideological commitment of those who live on site.

[colin]

Sorry to hear about the loss of your Internet connection. I used to have a neighbor with unsecured wi-fi, but they've either moved out or got rid of their router. UA students' parking fees go to pay my Cox internet connection though, so I have no reason to complain.

Maybe even closer to home, Biosphere 2. That dream of a self-sustaining community was ruined pretty quickly when their crops failed and they didn't have enough food to survive. I'd strongly encourage a trip out there if none of you have been, but it's now $25/person for admission. When I first moved here and Columbia still ran it, it was $7.

Different subject in same post: a storm knocked out power on Mount Bigelow yesterday. This is important because KVOA (NBC), KUAT (PBS) and a couple of radio stations, including KXCI (91.3), the ultra-cool independent station in town, all have transmitters on the mountain. KXCI responded by continuing their web broadcast and putting amateur DJ's who graduated from their recent DJ class on the air. And they're playing some pretty good stuff.

KXCI's web site

The rain here has been pretty nuts, but I'm certainly enjoying it, save for the 60% humidity that makes 75 in my apartment feel freakin' hot.

[MJLO]

we only had one day of rain here, but DAMN did it rain

[convulso]

lol...i wondered what happened to CBS for the last couple of days. now i know.

i almost mentioned biosphere in my previous post as an example of communal idealism, but i don't know quite enough about it in its present incarnation to hold forth on it. thanks for that info. $25 per person is krazy; other attractions here are very reasonable by comparison (the desert museum's rates are very reasonable, especially in summer for example.) we drove out to the tucson mountain park / desert museum / old tucson area for the first time today, and damn - what a beautiful area. the views of all the familiar sights (the catalinas & rincons, especially) on the trip back into town were mind-blowingly different from the view of the same ranges that i've gotten used to seeing out my window every day.

and on the subject of rain - DAMN. it's not the rain, but the lightning. i'm one of those flirt-with-fate douchebags who always ran out and stood in the cornfield behind my house every time it rained, when i was a kid, hoping to catch good views of lightning. i've always respected it but always sought it out and felt comfortable outdoors during storms. well, we drove to globe via phoenix wednesday night, and were about to take 77 south back to tucson when it began to rain hard...so we turned around and went back west, taking 60 back to I-10... no luck - the rain and lightning on the whole freeway portion of the trip home were NUTS. it was the first time i've ever been in fear because of lightning. literally three or four major bolts of lightning every second, if not more. most of the lightning was very close to freeway traffic, and most of it was cloud-to-ground. we saw a direct hit less than a mile away (using the thunderclap lag as a guide) that blew fireworks out of a transformer or some other electrical device around eloy. it took three hours to get from phoenix back to tucson. it was about 3:30 a.m. when we got back.

i've noticed that the whole area between phoenix and eloy seems to get slammed with weather - just about every trip we've made to or from phoenix since the monsoon started has been fraught with dust storms, rain / lightning or fierce straight-line winds. lots of flat, open ground through there.

i've always thought the yankee transplants who tell tales of electrical storms in southern arizona simply had no reference point for gauging truly impressive severe weather, unlike that with which southerners are so familiar. after wednesday, i eat it...AZ's storms put the fear of god into me. i should have listened.

picacho peak looks pretty bad-ass backlit by lightning at night, though. unforgettable.

Edited July 31, 2006 by convulso

[colin]

Yeah, in Arizona, especially in rural areas, when it starts lightning, you need to find your way back to your car quickly. After that, I don't know whether it's worse to be on the low ground to avoid lightning but then risk flash flooding, or to be on the high ground and then risk the lightning.

The Eloy area also has the occassional flood, and let's not leave out all of the farming-related disasters that could, and probably have happened at some point (locusts, toxic dust clouds, etc). I've never seen the attraction in that area.

Last night's was a memorable one. 2am, I got woken up by very loud lightning strikes, which only got much louder as the storm came closer. There were at least ten very close strikes to me, and I'm surprised that there weren't any fires.

This morning, the Rillito went over its banks and partially flooded the bike trail, the Santa Cruz was from wall to wall and Sabino Canyon was completely closed (they had limited the tram service last week due to flooding). The news had people saying that they hadn't seen it like this since '83 (there was a massive flood on the Santa Cruz in 1983), but it seems as though they always say that.

There was also a helicopter rescue in Tanque Verde Wash this morning of two men described only as "shirtless".

[convulso]

i took a zillion pics of the rillito surge this morning at the river park on campbell avenue. the police eventually shut the bike lanes down (but left the parking area open). the water travels fast - my guess is around 30 mph, judging from the speed of debris floating on top. it was so high that you couldn't see the columns that supported the bridge...the water was only about 4 feet from the road surface. people here freak when it rains heavily the way southerners freak when it snows. everyone brought their kids & cameras out and just hung around, until the cops showed up. the trader joe's parking lot across the street from the park was completely filled.

i'll post some pics this afternoon or tomorrow; i'll probably do it in the monsoon photos thread or just start a new topic if i have a lot of pics.

[MJLO]

this is a very weak monsoon right guys? I've been very dissapointed. I was told to expect all kinds of carnage, and so far July 25th has been the only True day I've seen rain. I know it's been raining in the mountain everyday. But Central Mesa and Sky harbor have been avoided by rain like the Plague! Colin I'm moving to Tucson you guys get more storms than we do.

[colin]

Well, yeah, Phoenix has been pretty much screwed over by the monsoons. I can't say that I've spent enough time there to really judge this season versus others, but it would seem weaker than normal. Tucson's has certainly been wetter than average. In fact, we're actually about 0.5" ahead in annual rain right now, this even with our crazy drought earlier in the year.

[colin]

I went up to Springerville (specifically Sipe Mountain Wildlife Refuge) this weekend for a workshop on the Mexican Gray Wolf. It was put on by Game & Fish, mainly for teachers, but I just wanted to go to learn more about the wolf and camp in the mountains for a couple of days.

They've gotten hammered by rain this year. It only rained once for about 2 hours while we were there, but it was very muddy and most of the streams were up pretty high.

Two interesting things on the way back:

- On AZ 78 east of Safford, the soil was so saturated that little waterfalls were streaming off of the rock embankments cut for the road. I've never seen that before.

- The Mexican poppies are blooming right now. From what I've always understood, they're supposed to bloom in the Spring, but didn't this year because of the extremely dry winter. I guess they finally saw their chance and took it.

It doesn't really relate to urban living, but I learned quite a bit about the wolf and how the locals are reacting to their re-introduction. We didn't get to see any, of course, but got fairly close to a den.

[convulso]

cool - where do you hear about this stuff? that's the kind of thing i'd be interested in doing, but i haven't figured out where to look. maybe it's in the fine print of tucson weekly...that's the only place i ever see workshops and small events listed.

[colin]

Well, sorry if it sounds elitist, but this was invitation-only because of all of the controversy surrounding the program. Plus, like I said, it was actually supposed to be for teachers, but I have a good friend that works at a museum here in town that registered me as a museum volunteer. It was minimum 20, max 40. 30 registered, 24 showed. The relatively small group size actually made the experience a lot better because you could really talk to and ask questions of the people involved in the program.

They do it every year. Last year was elk. I didn't go because I don't particularly like elk or have a whole lot of interest in them. Plus it was in October, which meant lows in the 30's, whereas the temp this weekend was extremely comfortable.

[MJLO]

Colin you make my life seem boring!

This weekend I spent running back and forth between a couple of my restaurant concepts putting out fires. There was no nature involved. I'm a nature fan but I can't seem to make it past, the 202!

[MJLO]

You guys, I am making Arizonas 1000th post! I hope you all realized what that means. In April when I really first started posting here there were only 65 posts. We've really started to grow a community in the past few months, and I know that momentum will only continue. So let's all pitch in over the next few weeks join in the conversations, and lets see if we can next take over the spot as the most posted in subforum in the west. From there lets see how quickly we can get to 10,000 posts in AZ!

Thanks guys for coming here and blowing steam with me.

It's one of my favorite things to do.

Matt

[colin]

The Scottsdale speed cameras had been mentioned, but this is actually much more than that, an actual Big Brother system like they have in places in England.

Cameras might get try on 'A' Mountain

"A" Mountain is a problem area. There's lots of teenage bs going on in the parking lot at the base at night, after the mountain is closed off. TPD said that they would increase patrols a long time ago, but I guess it hasn't worked.

It'll be interesting to see what happens.

[colin]

I thought this was interesting (Scottsdale news):

Woman speeder is record holder

[Mith242]

You guys, I am making Arizonas 1000th post! I hope you all realized what that means. In April when I really first started posting here there were only 65 posts. We've really started to grow a community in the past few months, and I know that momentum will only continue. So let's all pitch in over the next few weeks join in the conversations, and lets see if we can next take over the spot as the most posted in subforum in the west. From there lets see how quickly we can get to 10,000 posts in AZ!

Thanks guys for coming here and blowing steam with me.

It's one of my favorite things to do.

Matt

Congrats

[MJLO]

Anyone have any predictions on if the cardinals new stadium is going to help them have a winning season? You have no idea how depressing it is for me to go from having the Lions as my hometeam, to having the Cards. I just can't win.