Author – Grant
Based In – Tucsan, Arizona
Today’s Photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157616016082001/
If you don’t like cacti, stop reading immediately because today was a seriously cactus heavy day. We saw thousands of them, learnt lots about them, photographed hundreds of t
hem and even prodded a few of them. Whilst I admit it’s not like us to actually learn about the thing we’re seeing, we were kind of hoodwinked into joining in on a guided walk in Saguaro (pronounced sawaro) National Park with the uber-nice Volunteer Ranger Nick and two elderly couples; one of which you will see soon on Mastermind as their specialist subject will be saguaros. I am amazed that I managed to survive 32 years without knowing such facts about cacti as…it’s a prisonable offence to lop down a cactus; they live for about 200 years; after 70 years they start to grow arms; there are over 600 varieties of cactus; the cowboy scene where they open a cactus and drink from it is a myth – they do hold water but it’s heavily alkaline and will make you puke like a stag. Consider yourself cactus-savvy. You’re welcome. It wasn’t, however, all a stroll in the park (or the desert in this case) and sometimes being armed with knowledge isn’t necessarily a good thing. Take, for example, when something the size of a small bi-plane hovered over us for a few seconds before retreating into the bushes. “What was that?” we innocently asked Ranger Nick. “Looks like a Tarantula Hawk Wasp to me” 
he replied. Given that I don’t like any of individual components of this freakishly named beastie, the amalgamation of the three is naturally something that leaves me clammy with fear. In summary, nature is fascinating but my chosen method of information delivery is via the Discovery Channel as the 3D version is often terrifying.
After waddling round the one mile guided walk not much faster than the average cactus grows (about 5 inches a year, by the way), it was time to get our sweat on and bash out a self-guided 3.5 mile walk armed with our increased fear of nature. Unfortunately we couldn’t tell you much about the scenery as I focussed on nothing but the ground 5 feet ahead of me for snakes, scorpions and hairy spiders whilst Kate’s radar scanned for anything with wings that would consider any of the scary things I was looking for as a tasty, between meal snack. Net result, 3.5 miles in 7 minutes – nature can be quite the fitness incentive.
The afternoon’s activity should redefine the phrase “under pr
omise, over deliver” as I’ll admit that The Desert Museum doesn’t sound like the most intriguing of venues but in actuality it was fab. I’ll admit that my almost Spok-like logical/literal mind has very little imagination and hence I envisaged that the Desert Museum would be nothing more than a large hall containing sand samples from various deserts across the world. Luckily, however, the curator of the real Desert Museum has significantly more imagination than me and hence the 21 acre plot is more of an interactive zoo / natural history museum / botanical garden. However, in-keeping with everything else in this particular neck of the woods, most if it seems to be designed to scare the pants off you. The reptile house and arachnid displays are a real who’s who of the nastiest, deadliest creatures that Mother Nature put on this planet to smite Liverpool fans and even the hummingbird display involves walking through a contained unit with the threat of them plucking your eyes out at any minute. On the plus side, the ice creams were nice.
So many close brushes with death clearly deserve some hearty sustenance and there was a Greek place down the road that seemed to be perpetually filled with punters. Now I’m particularly partial to all things Greek (except the occasional hirsute lady) but we should have know what we were getting ourselves into long before any food arrived. The first sign that it wasn’t going to be anything above average was that it was called “My Big Fat Greek Restaurant” and, a little research uncovered, was part of a chain of 8 restaurants throughout the South East that were opened in conjunction with the movie (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but you already knew that). Still, don’t judge a book by its cover or a restaurant by its nam
e. Indication two happened whilst we were waiting for our table - service stopped whilst the entire wait staff linked arms and danced round the restaurant to Zorba The Greek before the plate smashing finale. Actually, I have no idea why this is in my negatives list as it was awesome. Cheesy but awesome. Unfortunately the food was a real let down which is surprising because Greek isn’t really that tough to do well. It’s your standard Mediterranean fare which means that the combination of incredibly fresh ingredients prepared incredibly simpley results in something incredibly good. Our Keftedes (meatballs) starter was luke warm indicating their lack of freshness and our main courses (braised lamb shank for me and shrimp souvlaki for Kate) were both pretty greasy and not particularly tasty. But my biggest gripe is that the mains hit the table about 60 seconds after the starter was delivered meaning that 10 minutes after arriving we had a mountain of food on the table. It’s not tough to work out the economics of delivering our food as quick as possible and hence increasing the table turnover but I want to spend more than 30 minutes over my meal – hell I’ll even drink more and make it well worth their time. Between you and me, however, the main reason I wanted to stay more than 30 minutes was the possibility that the Zorba The Greek show would be an hourly event but, alas, we didn’t stay long enough to find out.
Based In – Tucsan, Arizona
Today’s Photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157616016082001/
If you don’t like cacti, stop reading immediately because today was a seriously cactus heavy day. We saw thousands of them, learnt lots about them, photographed hundreds of t
hem and even prodded a few of them. Whilst I admit it’s not like us to actually learn about the thing we’re seeing, we were kind of hoodwinked into joining in on a guided walk in Saguaro (pronounced sawaro) National Park with the uber-nice Volunteer Ranger Nick and two elderly couples; one of which you will see soon on Mastermind as their specialist subject will be saguaros. I am amazed that I managed to survive 32 years without knowing such facts about cacti as…it’s a prisonable offence to lop down a cactus; they live for about 200 years; after 70 years they start to grow arms; there are over 600 varieties of cactus; the cowboy scene where they open a cactus and drink from it is a myth – they do hold water but it’s heavily alkaline and will make you puke like a stag. Consider yourself cactus-savvy. You’re welcome. It wasn’t, however, all a stroll in the park (or the desert in this case) and sometimes being armed with knowledge isn’t necessarily a good thing. Take, for example, when something the size of a small bi-plane hovered over us for a few seconds before retreating into the bushes. “What was that?” we innocently asked Ranger Nick. “Looks like a Tarantula Hawk Wasp to me” 
he replied. Given that I don’t like any of individual components of this freakishly named beastie, the amalgamation of the three is naturally something that leaves me clammy with fear. In summary, nature is fascinating but my chosen method of information delivery is via the Discovery Channel as the 3D version is often terrifying.After waddling round the one mile guided walk not much faster than the average cactus grows (about 5 inches a year, by the way), it was time to get our sweat on and bash out a self-guided 3.5 mile walk armed with our increased fear of nature. Unfortunately we couldn’t tell you much about the scenery as I focussed on nothing but the ground 5 feet ahead of me for snakes, scorpions and hairy spiders whilst Kate’s radar scanned for anything with wings that would consider any of the scary things I was looking for as a tasty, between meal snack. Net result, 3.5 miles in 7 minutes – nature can be quite the fitness incentive.
The afternoon’s activity should redefine the phrase “under pr
omise, over deliver” as I’ll admit that The Desert Museum doesn’t sound like the most intriguing of venues but in actuality it was fab. I’ll admit that my almost Spok-like logical/literal mind has very little imagination and hence I envisaged that the Desert Museum would be nothing more than a large hall containing sand samples from various deserts across the world. Luckily, however, the curator of the real Desert Museum has significantly more imagination than me and hence the 21 acre plot is more of an interactive zoo / natural history museum / botanical garden. However, in-keeping with everything else in this particular neck of the woods, most if it seems to be designed to scare the pants off you. The reptile house and arachnid displays are a real who’s who of the nastiest, deadliest creatures that Mother Nature put on this planet to smite Liverpool fans and even the hummingbird display involves walking through a contained unit with the threat of them plucking your eyes out at any minute. On the plus side, the ice creams were nice.So many close brushes with death clearly deserve some hearty sustenance and there was a Greek place down the road that seemed to be perpetually filled with punters. Now I’m particularly partial to all things Greek (except the occasional hirsute lady) but we should have know what we were getting ourselves into long before any food arrived. The first sign that it wasn’t going to be anything above average was that it was called “My Big Fat Greek Restaurant” and, a little research uncovered, was part of a chain of 8 restaurants throughout the South East that were opened in conjunction with the movie (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but you already knew that). Still, don’t judge a book by its cover or a restaurant by its nam
e. Indication two happened whilst we were waiting for our table - service stopped whilst the entire wait staff linked arms and danced round the restaurant to Zorba The Greek before the plate smashing finale. Actually, I have no idea why this is in my negatives list as it was awesome. Cheesy but awesome. Unfortunately the food was a real let down which is surprising because Greek isn’t really that tough to do well. It’s your standard Mediterranean fare which means that the combination of incredibly fresh ingredients prepared incredibly simpley results in something incredibly good. Our Keftedes (meatballs) starter was luke warm indicating their lack of freshness and our main courses (braised lamb shank for me and shrimp souvlaki for Kate) were both pretty greasy and not particularly tasty. But my biggest gripe is that the mains hit the table about 60 seconds after the starter was delivered meaning that 10 minutes after arriving we had a mountain of food on the table. It’s not tough to work out the economics of delivering our food as quick as possible and hence increasing the table turnover but I want to spend more than 30 minutes over my meal – hell I’ll even drink more and make it well worth their time. Between you and me, however, the main reason I wanted to stay more than 30 minutes was the possibility that the Zorba The Greek show would be an hourly event but, alas, we didn’t stay long enough to find out.Spring Training tomorrow. For both us and the professional athletes of the MLB.
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