DAY FIVE - May 26, 2004

Day Five began with me finding it very difficult to wake up and get going in time to catch our tour bus to the Grand Canyon. We procured a muffin on the way out of the hotel and ate it on the ride to the train station where we were to be picked up. The drive over was rife with discussion of tourists and politics and we discovered that we had found one of the few people who truly did not like our president.

Once at the train station I stayed outside and smoked a cigarette while Martin went in and confirmed our plans with the ticket agent. He or the agent took his time and everyone had loaded the bus by the time I went in after him to let him know we were leaving. While waiting for the bus a train went by and I got very close to it, looking up and down that front and the back of it until it started squealing and I had to back away as far as I could from it.

On the bus we ended up napping a little more until Williams, Arizona where we saw the train station to the Grand Canyon and even dropped off one person. Our driver pointed out that this was the beginning of the Route 66 and Martin started singing the Manhattan Transfer version of the song. We saw some beautiful scenery between Williams and the Grand Canyon area including Humphrey's Peak, which we found out later is the highest point in Arizona at 12,633 feet. We learned another interesting fact about it as well which you can read about on the Factoids page.

The tour bus dropped us off at an airport terminal that had a shop full of Hopi Native American items. I saw they had a bowl of different polished rocks that were very beautiful and I was immediately hypnotized. I searched through it to find a Tiger's Eye specifically and did find one, so I picked that and a sea-green translucent quartz as well. When I went to the cashier, an aging Native American lady, she was arranging incense and when she noticed me she told me to go ahead and look around. I told her I already had and showed her that I wanted to buy the two rocks. As she was ringing me up I voiced my appreciation at finding a Tiger's Eye.

As I was doing this, Martin searched for more information regarding the tour and found out that we were unfortunately at the wrong airport terminal. We inquired where the main one was and the cashier told us it was a short walk further down the road. Martin and I saddled up after I took a picture of the store and we watched planes and helicopters take off as we walked to the terminal.

Once inside, I smoked and then looked for a soft drink in the gift shop while Martin was dealing with the front counter. My plans were thwarted when Martin mentioned I had to go to the counter and drop off my bag. I left my soft drink at the counter and took the bag off my back but my first indication that something was up was when she asked me to step on a piece of the floor to get my weight checked. I did it with no argument and then asked if I was still at 135 lbs and she mentioned that was a very good guess. I went back to my soda purchase and upon returning from the gift shop swigging, I was told I had to watch a movie. I asked if it was required and both Martin and the ticket agent said it was. This, of course, was indication number two that things were not what they seemed.

I asked Martin why we had to watch a movie since I'd rather see the experience for myself untarnished from the bus and he said nothing. An attendant came in and turned on the DVD and I became further confused when the television played footage of instructions of how to ride in a helicopter. I figured it out pretty quickly after asking Martin why we were watching this and he only smiled. "We're not going in a helicopter, are we?" I asked and he answered "Happy Birthday" (which at that point was over a month away. I couldn't say anything for a second because I had never been on a helicopter before and it wouldn't have been high on my list of things I would want to try out. I told him it was a good thing he hadn't told me beforehand since I probably would have tried to talk him out of it. He said it was his first time on a helicopter as well and after that statement did not help I went outside of the waiting area to smoke a couple cigarettes to hopefully stop my legs from shaking uncontrollably.

After I calmed down a bit I went back inside and an attendant handed Martin and I a purple card, his reading "3" and mine reading "1". I was amused by this placement until Martin enlightened me to the fact that this meant I would be sitting up front with the pilot. Truly nervous now and not knowing what to expect, they loaded us into the helicopter after taking our pictures singly or with our friends.

The pilot very our helicopter was a very smiley Asian guy whose first language was definitely not English. I found him hard to understand, on top of the helicopter noise, but he was very friendly and humorous and I began to feel better about flying when he asked everyone in the helicopter if this was our first time flying a helicopter and when we all answered to the affirmative, he said it was his first time too. I loaded my camera and made sure it had a tape and turned the switch to camera to begin recording. Unfortunately the camera did not respond and after many mad rush attempts to clean the battery, take it off and put it back on again, and switching the power button on and off, I deemed the camera unusable and kicked myself mentally for not bringing another camera since the one I currently carried had only 9 pictures left. This turned out to be okay, however, since after I finished them off I was quite content to see the whole thing with my own eyes.

There is nothing I can say about the Grand Canyon that can top either what has already been said or what any picture could convey better than I could. This being said, I will let the pictures do the talking for scenery references.

We took off from the launchpad very smoothly and flew over forest with dirt roads and invisible elk, It was at this point the pilot said that since I was sitting up front I was now the navigator and asked me if we should go toward the Canyon or toward Humphrey's Peak. I opted for the canyon since that's what everyone had paid for and he "complied". When the helicopter approached the south rim of the canyon this was announced by the theme from "2001" playing into the headphones we were wearing and, well, the pilot mentioning it also. We flew in a slight zig-zag pattern over mesas and buttes in the canyon and got an excellent view of the Colorado River through the glass floor at my feet. The north rim was a little higher than the south rim and the pilot took the helicopter into a 180 degree turn around a rock island topped with trees that was the same height as the north rim. The helicopter tipped, making my jaw drop with a great view of the bottom of the canyon through the pilot's window on the right side (I was on the left!). After that he noticed I had stopped taking pictures and looked at my camera to find it was full. I shrugged with a smile and he did also, indicating he understood. We flew back over the canyon in the opposite direction and he gave us a little information about rafting on the Colorado River (which was 300 feet wide but did not look it from the helicopter) and 3 hour hikes into the canyon as well with or without mules. After flying back over the south rim he asked me which direction to go and I answered to the left and he praised my attention to detail. The wind kicked the copter around a little on the way back and we had a very smooth landing on the pad we started from soon after. I shook the pilot's hand before leaving the copter and an attendant took mine and Martin's picture with our own camera. Martin mentioned the view had almost made him cry and that he had taken nearly three rolls of film. I mentioned that I only took nine pictures and that I was bummed my video camera didn't work since that would have been perfect for it. I also mentioned I was still so in shock that I could not describe the experience, and that the ride in the helicopter had been easier than I had anticipated, of course. Four days after we still couldn't think of anything to say to describe it.

Another bus driver who had just dropped off another tour was nice enough to take us to the nearby Imax theater where we were supposed to meet the tour bus coming back at noon. Martin found another collection of rocks in the gift shop located in the building and I rushed in to see what they had. This time they had the rocks displayed in glass around the bowl and I mistakenly tried to slide it to get one. I found out I had to search instead and added a light blue amethyst and a glossy hematite to my new collection.

The bus picked us up once again behind the Imax and the driver asked if we watched what they had to offer. Martin and I both concurred that we were sure it would have nothing to compare to the actual experience. We napped on the way back after asking the bus driver if he could drop us off at the Holiday Inn upon return and getting a negative. However, once we got back to Flagstaff and everyone else was gone he agreed to take us back to the hotel. On the ride back he talked to us about out trip and we of course were still speechless about it. He mentioned he would like to take the helicopter trip but his wife didn't, but his wife wanted to do white water rafting in the Colorado River and he wasn't up for that. I suggested that he go in the helicopter while his wife rafts and maybe you'll even see her on the river, and he found that very funny.

Back at the hotel, we immediately had to get packed up and get moving since we arrived at 2pm and our ride over to the bus station was at 2:45. We got the same driver who was noticeably more tired and he revealed that he was the only one working that day. He asked us how it went and we had the same reaction as when the driver asked us. The driver recommended that next time we visit the red rocks of Sedona and we mentioned that it was a common recommendation from the locals.

At the bus station, we put our stuff down and Martin went across the street to get lunch from the Jack in the Box, which I never had. We ate heartily and got in line for the bus back to Phoenix. It was at that point that during our casual discussions of the trip so far, it had revealed a few patterns across America that I could gather enough for an addendum to this posted page. I borrowed Martin's pen and wrote six of them down immediately. While this was going on we found there was another parallel route to ours that had a family filled with people who were obviously not concerned about other people at all. One little girl in their troop asked one of the baggage handlers if she could get her shoes off the bus, which had been closed while they were waiting to reboard, and when she received a negative, she pushed one of the buttons on the doors and messed up the opening hydraulics. Upon reboarding our bus, two more from their party budged in front of Martin and I and it wasn't even their route.

The drive back to Phoenix was the same awe-inspiring stretch of road we traveled north on (I-17) but this time we sat on the side we hadn't seen yet and I took some more excellent pictures while Martin napped. We had no reason to stop in Camp Verde so we skirted right past it. This exit was also the exit to where my brother lives, and I silently said so long one more time to him.

Upon returning to Phoenix, Arizona, we checked the bus schedule on the screen and found out our bus was going to be an hour late, which meant we would miss our Los Angeles connection to travel up the coast. I mentioned this to Martin and he went to the ticket counter to see what we could work out. He came back with two possibilities: One where we could still go up the coast but arrive much later than intended in Seattle and the other where we could travel up the middle of California, get a little extra time in San Francisco, and still arrive in Seattle when we planned. To make things easier on ourselves and because I was beginning to get tired of traveling, I chose the second option. We saw that the family of tactless people were in a different line and our new intention was to avoid the bus with them since they were being fed and sharing sugar products between themselves and other hyperactive children in line. The bus we were originally going to take arrived 45 minutes earlier than the screen had estimated but for some odd reason they shut down that line, leaving three buses worth of people to squish into two. Stress was starting to hurt my neck as we boarded the bus, finally at 9:30pm. We thought we were lucky to avoid the tactless family but found out within hours that we were very wrong.

With no layover until the beginning of California, I tried to settle in for a nap. Unfortunately there were two very irreverent guys in the seat directly behind us, an African-American with some sort of CD/DVD player and a stereotypically trashy Puerto Rican who couldn't stop talking about an involved girl he was banging. The other guy kept playing rap music on his little player, which at first I had thought it was from the back of the bus. I asked Martin for his earplugs and that's when he revealed that it was the guy right behind us. Because of the earplugs and the fact that I was trying to nap, I did not notice that Martin had asked the guy to turn the music down or use headphones and apparently got flack for it. Martin waited another hour and by the time I decided I was not going to get any sleep Martin asked again, which I noticed this time. Even through the earplugs I could tell the response was not one that was agreeable and I took out the plugs to listen in. The guy insulted and swore at him and Martin mentioned he was not trying to be mean, that he could have just as easily told the bus driver (who we found very cool and funny, by the way, even at that time). The guy goaded Martin more and when Martin got up and had gotten halfway down the aisle, the music suddenly went off. To Martin's credit, when he told the driver he was not overdramatic and stuck to the facts. The bus driver got on the mike and told the guy to turn down his music since he was bothering people. The guy said "Do you hear it? Okay then" and went to the bathroom. Martin sat back down and when the other guy came back from the bathroom the Puerto Rican trash guy started to jeer Martin, basically calling him a pussy in so many words and intonations, and then the two guys started whispering about the next stop, where I did hear the phrase "fucking him up". They started to fool around with some sort of spring-loaded item and I was suddenly very scared. I wrote on a piece of paper "We need to get off this bus" and showed it to Martin. He couldn't see what it said and I rewrote it to say "WE NEED TO GET OFF!" He agreed and inexplicably (at the time) told me to keep my head down and he sat with his chin on his hand.

Upon parking in Blythe, California, during the bus driver's announcement I whispered to Martin that he should bolt and not wait for me. He had an ever better plan and let them go ahead. The guy with the music looked back and leered at Martin and I just before getting off. We disembarked as well and asked the driver when the next bus out of Blythe was coming through and she mentioned it wasn't until 5am. Martin and I decided immediately to stay there till then and she asked why. I was too shaken to tell anything so Martin relayed what happened. She immediately said she would call the police, which made us bristle but it was either that or stay there 5 hours. The police arrived very shortly afterward and went in to look for the guys, and came back out saying they had locked themselves in the bathroom. Ten minutes later they came out with the DVD guy who was fighting them verbally and slightly physically. The cop asked Martin if that's who it was and Martin floundered, I confirmed it was definitely him. They didn't find the Puerto Rican, or wasn't interested in him, but they did lock the other guy in the police car. Upon returning to the bus, the Puerto Rican guy came back on holding something in his jacket pocket and Martin and I immediately moved to the front, taking different seats out of necessity. One of the cops flagged the bus down and asked for the guy's radio and I got it for him. I stayed awake for a while after leaving that stop and couldn't help a glance behind me every once in a while. The rest of the night went without incident and that ended an eventful Day Five.