Thursday, June 28, 2012

back in flagstaff

his and her's breakfast drinks of choice:
coffee and orange juice, never fails.
we woke up yesterday with our plan of driving to california, mapping out our route home from california all during breakfast at du-pat's (a diner in a hotel in vegas where we accidentally valet parked ourselves...), but once we got on the road knowing our drive home from santa rosa would be 30 hours, we turned our car around and headed back to flagstaff to stay in one place for a few days.


from vegas to flagstaff we drove about five hours back through the mountains. tyler had a bright idea to watch "21" on his laptop and to play it through the stereo of my car which made the time fly by. since we never stopped for lunch on our trip back to arizona, we were pretty hungry when we arrived at around 4:30. our dinner of choice was at beaver street brewery, a gastropub downtown where the hosts, the waiters, and essentially every male-gendered individual looked exactly the same. while eating, we noticed this indian couple sitting across the way from us. i even made the note of "those are the sort of people i would picture living in the mountains of arizona," like legitimate navajo indians, not these granola twin boys who seemingly run this town.

after dinner on our walk to our car, we happened to walk out to the parking lot with this couple. they stopped us at our car that still had the "just married" writing all over it, and the indian man wanted to shake our hands and congratulate us with a big smile on his face. we stood there and talked to this couple for a while about where we were from, what sort of people go to OSU, and about when we got married. he told us that he and his wife got married on june 19th, 47 years ago. after congratulating them, they blessed us with 47 years "and many more" on our marriage. he said we were a wonderful looking couple, and said we looked like we could make our marriage last. tyler and i hopped in our car, me practically shouting how kind they were, both of us so amazed that we had just been blessed by these navajo indians, feeling so thankful for something like that.

having already scouted out what we wanted to do for the night, we parked our car at the top of this large hill, and walked to all of the shops downtown. the whole street, this whole part of town, smelled of pachouli, and every store was either bohemian-esque or camping/hiking/biking related. needless to say, tyler and i were loving every moment of it. i got to go into all of the native american trade stores and drool over their turquoise rings, then flit over to their art with kachina dolls or kokopelli on every piece, reminding me of when we lived in westville when things like this covered our house.

it was either my own good will that made myself leave or tyler encouraging me not to spend all our money on sand-textured artwork that helped us out the door, but right from there, i found a sign that said "crystal shop". i nearly ran into it, and found row, upon row, upon row of crystals. any crystal you could imagine were on these shelves. there were little pieces, big cactus pieces, huge stones, really any size you could imagine. tyler and i even joked about buying this huge piece of amethyst that sat on the ground, and when you looked at the bottom of it read, "504.67". all of these crystals had my head spinning, examining each one repeatedly- trying to find ones perfect for my bests. while i'm still doing circles around the store, tyler hands me the most beautiful piece of moonstone. it fits perfectly under my thumb in between my index and middle finger.

 the weather was perfect last night. there was a perfect mountain breeze, it had previously rained, and it was just comfortable enough to be able to longboard. we walk back to the car at the top of the town, grabbing our boards, both of us anxiously jumping on and quickly realizing that riding in arizona is completely different than riding in oklahoma. obviously the hills are different, but in the particular neighborhood we were in, the stop signs were unpredictable. when you would finally get going, you'd have to stop for traffic, and you would have to be careful about the one way streets that would catch you off guard.

we finally decided that it was almost too dangerous for us to board in this location, and started walking back to our car. it was a relatively long hike back up these roads, so occasionally we would hop on our longboards and kick ourselves up the hill (which is much more tiring than actually walking). however at one point, tyler starts to longboard down this hill in a different direction. not wanting to let him get away without a phone or knowing where he ended up, i follow him. you'd be surprised at how much momentum you can gather after longboarding half a block. alright- so on this hill that tyler has committed us to, there are stop signs, stop lights, and it eventually merges into a street that connects to route 66. i make it about two blocks before i notice him wobble right before a light, not knowing that he had gone over a dip in the road, i bail off my board, trying to stop myself by dragging my foot on the ground, but realizing that my momentum is far too great for that, i have to just jump off. my board is flying down this street with cars passing, because of all the speed i had on my board, my legs have to catch up with me by running, and i'm shouting "my board!", and at this point, i accept that my longboard is going to get run over. within moments of this thought, it bounces over the curb and hits a tree, stopping in the rocks (which replaces the grass that is in yards here...). whenever i finally come to a stop, tyler is out of sight, and around a corner. this is a good sign because it means that he didn't bite it like i assumed he was going to, but now i have to wait in this spot for his return.

the beginning of our longboarding adventure,
not the hill he was so proud of.

after only a few minutes of walking in his general direction, i see him. he's holding his board behind his head with the biggest grin on his face. i wish i could've gotten a picture of the sheer excitement he had from this. we finally meet and he's asking me if i watched him the whole way down, how far i got, speed-talking about how fast he was going. we make it back to the car, and he shows me how far he got, and he probably went five or six blocks thru this neighborhood we had deemed too dangerous for us to board. the whole drive back to our hotel he was looking at the streets in a whole new light. the town was suddenly bigger, and every street was a new longboarding opportunity.

i'm unsure of what we have planned today, but i imagine that we will be going to the grand canyon with our longboards. if you have any free time, or really any short, brief moment that you have time to say a prayer, be mindful of us haha.




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