I was a little disoriented when I woke up and saw a pickup truck parked outside my window this morning. I distinctly remembered lugging my bags up the Super 8's stairs last night, because my first keycard was a lemon and I had to climb them twice. I was certain I was on the second floor. Yet, I was looking straight at this truck from the other side of the room.
It's funny what perspective can do it a pre-caffeinated brain.
But that was nothing compared to the shower puzzle. I could turn the water on just fine, but how one redirected flow to the showerhead was a mystery. The only other control to speak of operated the bung for the drain.
I've stayed in quite a few motels, so I've seen just about every mechanism there is. But here, there was no knob, no lever, no handle and no pull. Neither was there a chain, a switch, a slide, a jimmy, a button or a rod. No doodads or frohickeys, either. Don't even ask about a whatsit. I would've killed for a whatsit. For the second time in 2 days, I just stared and said, "hrm." Turns out it was this thing, a secret trigger underneath the faucet. I was staying in a freaking funhouse.
Sadly, that was the most exciting part of my day. I pushed myself too hard last night, so I overslept, then had an incredibly hard time getting hold of anyone on the phone all day. After some difficulty, I did reach Dr. Kravetz, creator and curator of a kind of bizarre Phoenix medical museum, but he was in Prescott and was unable to meet till later in the week.
So I drove around the Tucson area doing the best I could to check something off my list. I circled Davis-Monthan Air Force Base looking for a safe spot where I could shoot the airplane boneyard outside the fence, but after having the El Paso Police Department called on me for such innocuous behavior as photographing a tourist attraction, I was loath to whip out a telephoto lens along the perimeter of a military post. I ended the day grabbing some shots of the World's Largest Steer Skull instead.
I'll simply have to look at it this way: Every trip has at least one nonproductive day. This time, it just came a little earlier.
I'm staying in Tucson tonight, but I'm forging north in the morning. Something about this area sucks me in and devours my time, so I've got to disentangle myself and push ahead.
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