Travel Review: The Arizona Challenge

Contents

• Travel Location; Country, etc.
• Photos;
• Overall Review of the Trip and Travel Agency;
• Overall Review of Attractions, Accommodations, and, Restaurants;
• Most Enjoyable and/or Memorable Moments;
• If Trip were Taken Again, What Would I Do Differently;

The migratory ibis finds their next meal in marshed-out farmland in Buckeye, Arizona.

Alright, so it isn’t a real challenge. Yet. But in a nutshell:

In a dozen or so, short days, June will begin to bake Arizona in a daily maximum temperature between 102 and 106 degrees Fahrenheit (about 40 centigrade), according to Current Results. The hottest it has ever gotten in the Phoenix area was June 26, 1990, when it reached a fever-pitch of 122 degrees Fahrenheit. As June turns to July, who knows how hot it will get.

Now here’s the challenge: I’m going to attempt to survive these high temperatures after lived in two, relatively cool, places: New York and Colorado. According to Google, the July average max and the record highest temperatures in these locations are respectively 85/106 and 92/100. As I begin to write this first installment in this first series, I’ve never had to experience such temperature as those Arizona threatens, and I’m already wiping sweat from my face and neck.

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Buckeye, Arizona, United States of America

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Photo Gallery and More coming in Late August, Early September following this particular Trip. Until then, here are some Quick Facts About Buckeye:

Quick Facts

From Wikipedia:

Buckeye is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona and is the westernmost suburb in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The population was estimated at 68,453 in 2017.^[5] It is one of the fastest-growing cities in the US; in 2016, it placed seventh.

The canal for which the city, then town, became legally named in 1910.

Early settler Malie M. Jackson developed 10 miles (16 km) of the Buckeye Canal from 1884 to 1886, which he named after his home state of Ohio’s moniker, “The Buckeye State”. The town was founded in 1888 and originally named “Sidney,” after Jackson’s home town in Ohio. However, because of the significance of the canal, the town became known as Buckeye. The name was legally changed to Buckeye in 1910.

In 2008, Buckeye was featured on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer as part of a week-long series entitled “Blueprint America.”

A vote to change the town into the City of Buckeye became effective in 2014.

In November 2017, media outlets reported that a company associated with billionaire Bill Gates purchased 24,800 acres (100 km²) between Buckeye and Tonopah for $80 million. Gates’s company plans to create a “smart city” called Belmont on the site.

Geography

Buckeye is located approximately 30 miles (48 km) west of downtown Phoenix.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 145.8 square miles (377.6 km²), all of it land.

Climate

Buckeye has a hot desert climate, with abundant sunshine due to the stable descending air of the eastern side of the subtropical anticyclone aloft and at sea level over the southwestern United States. Summers, as with most of the Sonoran Desert, are extremely hot, with 121.0 afternoons reaching 100 °F or 37.8 °C and 181.6 afternoons getting to 90 °F or 32.2 °C. The record high temperature of 125 °F (51.7 °C) occurred on July 28, 1995, and temperatures above 86 °F or 30 °C may occur in any month.

Notable people

• Upton Sinclair (1878–1968), author of The Jungle (1906), The Fasting Cure (1911), and others – Late in life Sinclair, with his third wife Mary Willis, moved to Buckeye, Arizona.

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Food Reviews: Panera (#1) & the Ten Vegetable Soup

As soon as my feet touched the property I saw tables remaining with dishes and staff almost at a standstill. I had similar experiences at Panera, a chain that seemed to pull in employees with little zeal. Brushing it aside, I looked forward to a different experience on the West Coast than I had had back East.

Vegan, I ordered the Ten Vegetable Soup, and I took a leap of faith: in a bread bowl. My favorite way to eat at Panera. The hostess helped me place my order, and I even re-signed-up for MyPanera, the membership program — hoping still that I could get that free pastry, whichever one smelled so amazing.

In a few minutes the waiter brought me my soup and kettle-cooked chips. One thing remained off however. I was looking at a white dish with the soup inside, not a bread bowl.

Heart broken, I put on a smile and approached the waiter. I hated to be that person, but I went for it anyway. “Excuse me, Trevor, but…”

I passed him my white bowl and asked him to just return the soup in a bread bowl. It was a charge for the bread bowl, of course, and I wasn’t going to be victim to grifters. Besides, it was an accidental right?

Bread bowls are popular. Which also means that the kitchen should be turning them out. Yet, as I sit inside the restaurant and enjoy my meal, I saw only sandwiches around me.

Perhaps I was just that weirdo ordering a soup made with “tomato, red and yellow peppers, onions, corn, carrots, Swiss chard, poblano peppers and garlic in seasoned vegetable stock with chickpeas, sprouted brown rice and red fife, black chia, spelt, wheatberries and dried Aleppo chili,” topped with a lemon wheel, in a bread bowl.

Regardless, yes. That’s what I ordered. That’s what I had paid for. That’s what I was expecting. Weird as it may be, I stood by my decision and was even rewarded for doing so. I had an additional load of bread beside my soupful bowl.

Good things come to those who stand up for themselves maybe? What other lessons could be gleaned? I mean, I even swiped an unfinished salad from one of those outdoor table rather than see it sit longer, wasting away. So karma? I don’t know.

The bread bowl was warm. The soup, hot. I was satisfied by the vegan, $6.99, purchase. Highlighting here, especially because terrorism and American responses in the Middle East: Aleppo chili.

As I began noting this, “You Belong Among the Wildflowers” by Tom Petty played. Here’s a link to the song. Wildflowers by Tom Petty.

The Aleppo chili pepper is well known in Arabic meals of the Middle East, as well as the Mediterranean. Named after the ancient city in Syria, which is unfortunately not in the state that it once was in the previous century, it appears as a red spice, also called Halaby pepper. If you’re trying it in a dish, be sure to add some apricot for a flavor piquant to most taste-buds.

The last time I had eaten at Panera, also vegan, I had ordered a Vegetarian Black Bean Soup, again, in a bread bowl. It was marvelous, and rivals the Ten Vegetable Soup easily. Other vegan options include: Vegetarian Garden Vegetable soup, Mediterranean veggie sandwich, the Fuji Apples Salad, and others.

Remember: if it isn’t made with dairy, meat, or other animal products, it isn’t impossible to go out with friends and eat with them. Just ask the chef or Google what’s in something if you’re not sure. Remove meat and cheese and replace it with something delicious, like Black Beans or Eggplant.

Bread Bowl Pro-Tip: All for a Fork, Tabasco sauce, and Balsamic.

Final update: I got that MyPanera, initiative, free pastry. Yes, I took another leap of faith. A pumpkin muffin. Goes great with coffee!

Why I left Yuma, AZ

When I was in high school, I wanted to volunteer and do some service for my community. I saw people struggling, including my own family, and a city in depression. A quote stuck with me from one such organization which helped me get started:

“Service Above Self”

While, according to the Education Commission of the States, service-learning, or community service, is not a state requirement for graduation in most states, it ought to be.

Still, some individual schools in Arizona, and other states, may require this altruistic education. There may always be selfishness, with altruism on life support globally, but schools could educate for altruism. Even in the spiritual sense, people need the right service education.

For myself, this education came piecemeal, both spiritually in Buddhist, Christian, Hebrew, Muslim, and Pantheistic senses, or in agnostic/atheist activism and volunteering. To me there’s a coon thread: love each other, be patient and kind, create balance, sometimes all of which means to seek justice. For Christians and others, this isn’t to subvert God’s ultimate judgement, but to intervene so that one may repent. We’re always seeking these balances, but without others it takes a lot more meditation to reflect upon it.

In all of these ways too, we may need more education, more guidance, and a more unified conversation about the world. At least, in the United States, it appears that conversation is in small and marginal amounts. We seem more interested in the self than the us.

Borders by M.I.A
“Freedom
I’d meet ‘em, once you read ‘em
This one needs a brand new rhythm
We done the key
We done them key to life
Let’s beat ‘em
We dem smartphones done beat ‘em….”

The benefits of doing something for others, before something for yourself, is myriad. For those in school, it offers a realistic lens of the world, beyond what the curriculum may say. Post-grads may be seeking work and there may be few opportunities, but those that hold the door for others find that new doors may open for them. Sometimes also, altruism is to atone for past wrongs.

Before I finish this article, I’ll start with this call-to-action for anyone who is in-between jobs, or still in high school, or in college and somehow manages to find free time in a fairly busy schedule:

Volunteering is for you first and foremost.

Especially, if you’re fluent in both English and Spanish, it’s a critical necessity in the shelters housing migrant refugees from Central America.

Yuma has many good, hard-working people, all with families, and they surely know what an opportunity it is to have a positive and lasting optimistic memory in someone’s life after, and during, hardship.

However, the better you are with children, the better you are at psychosocial trauma care, the better you are at practicing what you may preach, the better.

People need your love more than your time.

I saw a quote on the wall in the shelter:

“Volunteers don’t have the time. Volunteers have the heart.”

That’s why I had to leave Yuma. While I had both the time and the heart, I knew that these were opportunities for people with less time and perhaps less heart, in order to find the time and grow their hearts.

Similarly, while low income, I was not going to ask for food from the food bank at all. That was there for someone else. In my heart, I know that I have more than enough of everything that some may believe that I don’t have at all.

I have in my heart, so I always have. Those who believe they don’t have, won’t have. Volunteering, especially with refugees can remind you how much you really do have, and how much more you really have to offer Some people need this epiphany. I did not.

Not only that, but I volunteered with young people who unfortunately needed the experience in customer service and problem-solving. I did not want to be in the way of their challenges.

The Salvation Army may say, “Do the Most Good,” but in the shelter that must mean more than three hots and a cot, and the occasional film.

Volunteers have to open their hearts to vulnerability, and let people know that they’re there not just to help them survive, but to thrive. That’s what I did, as well as ensuring that there was the laughter of children in the shelter, I helped guide older kids through self-education, planning for higher education, and other resources that I’ve found useful in my own life.

I ask anyone in the Yuma area, or anyone planning to make the trip to shelters in Tucson and El Paso, to do the same. Bring resources, share knowledge, and open your hearts to call people in. Besides the basics that we would give any stray, we need to go beyond and cultivate human-to-human caring, communication, and friendship.

During times like these, the most important thing to have is a friend.

I made a lot of friends at the shelter. However, in addition to seeing how much volunteers really needed the opportunity, my sign to leave was the departing of one such friend. She was finally going to see her family, and I had to finally step aside.

Furthermore, having stepped away from that work, I believe that organizations that are finding volunteers could be doing more in terms of caring for these people as humans. This is, as well as fighting back against the racism, xenophobia, and culturalism, is critical.

There has to be a tsunami of positive energy pushing back when the President says things like, “I am a nationalist,” they “hate our country,” they’re “animals,” and, they’re “drug-dealers, criminals, rapists.” Especially when he says things like, he isn’t going to “shoot immigrants but shooting immigrants would be very effective.”

These things don’t happen in a vacuum, but when organizations leave out acting against this rhetoric, and don’t actively discuss a better world separate from these beliefs, they become complicit in creating a vacuum. Within such a vacuum, emboldened by his words, the worst comes to rise. Look no further than mass shootings in America and the “persistent, pervasive threat” of white nationalist, separatist, and supremacist language and acts.

Nonprofits should background check their volunteers and employees. Protect refugees and nurture them, by going above and beyond to serve them. Regardless of how many donors may leave your fundraisers, you have a duty to serve the greater good.

The bare minimum is not the equivalent of “doing the most good.”

“Sobrellavad los unos las cargas de los otros, y cumplid así la ley de Cristo.”

Review: Surpassing Certainty

Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me by Janet Mock

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was an insightful look into the magazine writer’s world from the fresh young perspective of a black, Hawaiian, trans woman. The majority of the books includes her trials and tribulations as a twenty-something looking for love and romance, while navigating the pitfalls of racism, sexism, and when exactly to disclose your complete gender portrait.

In this memoir, there are several references to all the early-2000s hits in television, film, and music, from the perspective of a girl infatuated with celebrities and media. This piece takes a very different page from Janet’s book than her previous memoir, Redefining Realness, which was much more heavily focused on trans-ness, real-ness, and self-definition, preferring more to focus on her experience as a young adult to that latter degree: finding herself in her work, in her friendships, and in her love life.

It’s a pretty fun read, and if you have the time, you could probably easily go cover-to-cover in a single day. It’s a really riveting love story (kind of). As an aspiring magazine editor, it has a lot of good nuggets in there for the intellectual in me. Maybe there’s something in there for you too, only one way to find out!

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P.S.
I may do these reviews more often because it’s an easy way to add more content for myself in between creating content for other people and my other blogs. (Yes, there are more.)

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