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We walked a bit later than planned and paid for it by feeling the
heat. In order to divert my attention I
called the Charlevoix WonderKids and by the time I talked to each of them about
45 minutes had passed and we were back at camp. I was still hot and sweaty but at least I
wasn’t complaining about it.
When I talked to 4 year old Shelby, she excitedly told me that she loved the video of me wanting to sit on a cactus but Grampa doesn’t want me to and proceeded to recite it verbatim. Maybe she’s watched it a few times.
Then she reported that she really likes all the pictures I send them and offered her opinion as to why I do that. “When you see cool stuff, Gramma, you take pictures so we can see the cool stuff too… ‘cause we’re not out there to see it ourselves.” Bingo!!!
Charlie was excited to tell me that she found her Anna shoe in the yard
(a shoe that belong to her Anna doll), that they were at our house, and that
the snow was melting. Then she
absolutely squealed in delight when I showed her that Grampa was with me. Charlie is a Grampa’s girl for sure.
Clayton, who has lost a lot of teeth, showed me his stash of coins from
the Tooth Fairy and because he can’t help himself he kept pushing buttons that
messed with the video call.
Dylan was telling me all about this new game he came up with where he’s
the tiger and Clayton is the owner who teaches him all sorts of useful
things. Then we did some knock, knock
jokes…him reading them from a book and me just making ‘em up on the fly.
It was a good diversion while walking.
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Every
year we come out here it’s a given that there will be a trip over to Oracle where DeMarco’s Pizza, home of the #1
BLT on my list, is located. Kim is a fan of their Philly Cheese Steak also…I
personally think it’s the homemade bread they use. Anyway, yesterday we checked to see if they
were even still open…the pandemic was tough on some of these little
eateries. “Yay! They’re still open and it
reads like the dining room is open, too. Good deal! However…they’re closed on Tuesday so it looks
like no DeMarco’s today.” We decided to catch a movie instead and made a
plan to head over there today. We’d get
our walk in early and head to Oracle for lunch.
The cost of fuel wasn’t going to stand in our way…I was so looking
forward to this.
This morning Kim checked his email, looked over at me and simply said,
“Today’s challenge is to fast from meat.”
Immediately I asked or maybe whined, “Is bacon considered meat?” Then inwardly I yelled, “Nooo, Chris…not
today!!” or maybe I said that out loud, I don’t remember.
We talked about what food options there were in the camper and the
result was pretty bleak. And full
disclosure here: I called Chris to tell him that I was seriously considering
conceding this one…and even though I wasn’t serious I mentioned the possibility
of swapping with tomorrow’s challenge so I could have my cake and eat it
too. Chris, being the good guy that he
is, told me what tomorrow’s challenge was going to be and gave me permission to
swap out if I needed to.
Bottom line: I could have quietly not done this one and life would have
continued on as usual. I’m not accountable to anyone but myself in these
challenges. But I signed up for the 40 Days of Lent with the intention of doing
my best to complete each challenge and quitting or swapping, especially because
of selfishness, was not doing my best. Before
I called Chris I knew the right thing to do was to skip that BLT…my
conversation with him just confirmed it.
Lent
is about sacrifice and self-discipline and let’s face it, Jesus gave up so much
more than a BLT for me. We made plans to
go to DeMarco’s tomorrow.
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There was a breeze and due to the fact that the cell cam has been
sending a lot of notifications I’d say camera or cactus jiggle is responsible
for the majority of them. I turned the
sensitivity down to 1 and notifications have slowed down considerably. Going to be a lot of videos to go through
when we switch out the cards. Ugh!
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Most of the bait at the culvert trail cam was gone but there was nothing
on the card. Ding Dang!! We’ll have to
check the settings tomorrow…it should at least be recording video when a person
is approaching to check the card.
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So…today’s plans were thrown off course by the meatless challenge. Once we decided to go to De Marco’s tomorrow
there was a big hole in our day. The
drive there and back plus eating would’ve take 2 to 3 hours. Now what?
Hey! How about we go out to the Trading Post
and get nachos? Going out to Gu-atchi
Trading Post for nachos is another Arizona ritual except we’ve always gone there
on the bikes. I haven’t been out there
on Zeus yet and I don’t intend to either; it doesn’t seem right because it’s a
Kim n Karen thing, not a Karen by herself thing. So today we went there in the truck.
We’ve gone to the Trading Post multiple times over the past 6 years and
while there are different varieties of cacti out there, the majority are
saguaros. Today I realized that the big
multi-armed cactus out by the driveway to parking lot is an organ pipe cactus,
not a saguaro like I always assumed. I
saw a growth on top of one of the arms today that intrigued me and when I
walked over for a closer look I took me a minute to realize it wasn’t a
saguaro. I guess I never had reason to really look at the cacti over that way
before.
So
we had a late lunch, we filled a hole in our day and there was no meat
involved. Win-win-win!
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Rode the bike to Coolidge late this afternoon. Had to pick up more pictures to send out to
the grandkiddos. Took a detour to Eloy
on the return trip…wanted to see if the weekly ration of piggy cookies was
in. Score!! Got two bags. Now to have
the will power to ration them. 😋
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Bike miles today: 47
Total miles: 728
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