The bucket list - a long list of things I need to do/see before I die - is officially one notch shorter. I have seen the Grand Canyon. And it's exactly as Chevy Chase describes it in the movie "Vacation." It's "the biggest goddam hole in the world!" And that's really about all it is. It's kinda funny how you put so much hype into seeing something and after five minutes of seeing it you're like, "alright, where's the wine?" I suppose that's the nature of being a tourist. You see it just to say that you've seen it and then you get drunk. I mused that the people who first discovered it were in awe over how beautiful it is for like 30 seconds and then were like, "Fuck...how we gonna get across it?" What was really thrilling about the Grand Canyon, though, was the trip there.
I went with Anthony, his parents, Deb and Steve (aunt and uncle). We drove from Phoenix up to cold, snowy Flagstaff (I'll be the first to say that I was unprepared for snow in Arizona - mentally, physically... and emotionally - I cried a little). However, I was the proud winner of the Arizona car game "Spot the last saguaro." The saguaro is a cactus, and if you spot the last one before the elevation doesn't allow them to grow anymore, you get a prize. Beginner's luck, I suppose, but I won! I spotted the last saguaro on the slope of a hill and my prize was a train trip to the Grand Canyon (I suspect that was going to happen either way - whatevs). But before we boarded the Grand Canyon Railway we got to enjoy a Wild West show!
I was brimming with excitement. "Here it is!" I thought to myself, "A chance to finally see a real wild west show. None of that pseudo-Southwest, theme park bullshit." Much to my disappointment, though, the show was comprised of four old, bearded, washed-up community theatre actors/park rangers who had no sense of comic timing and a severe lack of energy. They trudged their way through the poorly written script ("I'm hungry, let's go to McDonald's" long, dramatic pause "But I got no money!" longer dramatic pause "Any women out there know how to cook?" blah blah blah), they made an unfortunate volunteer play poker with them (the winning hand was five aces - "But I only put six in the deck.") The gun fight at the end paralleled the excitement of NPR's "All Things Considered." This was all just a warm-up, though, for the train ride.
On the train, the entertainment got much better. Allow me to introduce you to Katie - plain, but pretty, dry-humored, and extremely sarcastic - the woman in charge of our train car. She had witty remarks at the tips of her fingers. She could whip out a joke faster than Hermione could reparo Harry's glasses. Someone asked her where the snow was. She replied, "What are you talking about? That right there is Indian snow. There's an Apache here, an Apache there..." And on the ride back there was a "train robbery." The same washed up actors from the show "jumped" the train and robbed people. Before this happened Katie goes to the microphone and says in her driest voice, "Oh nooooo. Why is the training slowing down? This has never happened before. Oh, that's right, we couldn't find anyone to jump onto a moving train for minimum wage so we're stopping the train and picking up the robbers. Here are the 'Rules of the robbery.' This has never happened before so I'm making these rules up on the spot. Do not poke them" etc etc. But the best joke of all was later when she interrupted one of the robbers' awful jokes to ask him "Hey, do you know what they call the very front of the train?" We all braced ourselves for what was definitely gonna be one of Katie's amazingly dead pan, perfect punch lines, "The head." That was it. She had been telling us jokes and feeding us sassy lines the whole trip only to end with a cold fact that she had learned that day. But she made up for it with a whole series of cow jokes later (What do you call a cow with no legs? Ground Beef.)
The final part of the trip that made it so memorable was a man I like to call "JC." No, not Jesus Christ (although he was definitely makin' things pretty awesome, as always) but this guy named Jim. He's a "western" singer. NOT a "country" singer. He's the one pictured below. You can see how he sings out of the side of his mouth. His complete lack of pitch (notes optional), and his horrible, repetitive strumming patterns were only topped by his over the top vibrato which I think he produced with his bowels. He was a special, special man and played right in my ear the whole time. Lucky me! Fortunately for all of us, he ended his show with his "swan song" which was the classic "Happy Trails." It was a particular treat when, on the last note, he managed to sing every vowel known to man. Way to go JC!
And that was the "hole" experience if you will - washed up actors, funny Katie, lots of old rock, a big ass hole, and JC. I couldn't have asked for more.
Happy trails ya'll!
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