The Adventures of Fric and Frac: Adventure 212: Covered Wagon RV Park/Phoenix, AZ/Post P

Work hard, if you must.

Too busy living the Life of Riley to post yesterday. We lounged the morning away with our normal routine, except that now that I'm doing Master Stewart's form, Master Kai Ying Tong's form, the Tiger Mountain exercise, and my usual breathing exercises, my Tai chi practice takes nearly two hours. This is good (It is the reason we came to Phoenix, after all), but it cuts into the adventure time. Speaking of adventures in politics, I've neglected to update the cribbage wars (Just playful games, really). The Wily Cager ran into a little bad luck and lost five consecutive games including a smelly skunk, which put her behind by six. Her little doe face, as mournful as a Mexican Madonna, almost made my hard heart break (I thought about throwing a couple of games, but never really seriously). I did offer her a deal: double or nothing on the next game. She lost: down a dozen; she redoubled. She lost: Down Two dozen. At that point, she, being one of those interests that is too big to fail, you know like Smith and Barney or Fred and Barney or Enron or Enrigue or Massey Ferguson or massively meaningful or whatever. In any case, she rejected the buy out of pride or good conscious, and she redoubled the bet. She won, so we're tied going into the last two weeks. Trust me, it's better this way (That's what the Smith Barney guys said, too). Yesterday, we met Russ (Judy's cousin) at Grand Canyon University to watch the Division I High School Girls State Basketball playoffs, which if you know me, is pure joy. We'll catch some more this weekend, since GCU is about two minutes away. This morning we left the trailer about 5:45 A.M in order to drive to the summit of South Mountain to watch the sun come up. We started out on I-17, but it was tail light bumper to bumper in the dark, so we took the side roads instead. I'm pretty sure most of them were going to work, but not all. As we drove up the summit road, we passed three cars and eight cyclists. The view from Dobbins Point, painted a pastel purple and orange yellow made the idea worth it. As dusk lifted, the city lights twinkled away into the morning haze. Even though we dressed for it, the cold morning wind had us huddling like hamsters, but what can be better than that for a couple of young lovers like us. For breakfast, we tried the Market Cafe (Sister restaurant to the St. Francis). It was a fairly good walk up deli style order place. It's a mixed bag, however. The food is well prepared with locally grown foodstuffs, but the seating is mostly large picnic tables, it's noisy, and the prices are high end. The efficient staff is young and the music, catered to them, blared loudly, playing mostly New Age/Jazz. I left feeling the place didn't really have its identity nailed, but probably it just isn't marketed toward retired tourist rubes from No Place, Washington. Whatever. I would have most likely been happier eating a three dollar breakfast burrito at the Atoyac. Not to worry because as Joe Bonino used to say, "These are not really my concerns." Thoughts of the day for those of you still working: First, retire if you can. Second, if you must work, don't get a headache or call in sick because in this environment you could very well end up like Wally Pipp who is regarded as the best power hitter in the dead ball era. He played for the Yankees, led the league in home runs two years running, and was a crowd favorite. The story goes he asked to be benched because he had a headache (Hangover?). He was replaced by a guy named Lou Gehrig. The rest is history. The moral is: If you must work, work hard and when you play, play hard because as we all know by now, it's best to remember that life is good, especially today.