This week I spent an hour driving eleven miles across town to a shoe store to pick up a pair of walking shoes I ordered online. That's not news, everyone is doing it. Look at me go, contributing to the economy. I'm a dynamo.
Should I get a t-shirt that says something like immuno-compromised or preexisting conditions on board, as an excuse, basically, a reason why I'm not buckling to peer pressure? I'd like a t-shirt that says what are you staring at? or mind your own effing business. But that is my fleeting need for self-righteous vindication talking. I try not to let that part of me out of the cage if I can help it. It only gets me into trouble.
About the reluctance to mask up, I don't get it. Isn't there another variant making the rounds? Maybe everyone in Tucson has had COVID-19 already, except for that cashier and me. It's like an invasion of body snatchers. Except I can't win. If I take my mask off, I might be able to hide my bleeding-heart liberal presence among the herd, but taking my mask off puts me at risk of breathing in COVID. I might think I'm laying low but end up coughing my brains out with long COVID.
I didn't plan to write about that.
Metro Tucson has just over a million inhabitants, and I think I met all of them on my drive across town. I'm guessing citizens have more than one vehicle and they drive them both at the same time whenever possible, as if we get points for how many square feet we occupy at any moment. And how fast we are going. I fail on both counts. The speed limit on most east-to-west city streets is 45 mph, which means many drivers go much faster. The beast can manage a trot if I apply the spurs, but we are really most content clopping along at a mild 35 mph. Drivers wave and toot their horns as they speed around me. So nice.
Tucson is a large basin surrounded by mountain ranges on all four sides. The mountains have turned into a bit of a constraint. The city has sprawled up into the foothills of its mountainous boundaries. That's where the rich people live.
You need a helicopter to get around this place. There's only one freeway, the I-10 going west to Phoenix or east to Albuquerque. The entire city of Tucson is a crowded grid of surface streets coopted by trucks and SUVs, which seem hellbent on mowing down all pedestrians and bicyclists with the audacity to try to share the roadway.
I lived in Los Angeles for twenty years so I know how cities can sprawl. Tucson reminds me of L.A. Los Angeles had the ocean, though. Tucson's ocean equivalent is the desert beyond the mountain cage that traps the city. In L.A., I could take a bus and eventually put my toes in the Pacific Ocean. In Tucson, putting your toes in desert sand will give you third-degree burns.
It's been almost one year since I made the drive from Portland to Tucson. Now I've experienced all five seasons. I understand the weather cycle now. Right now, it's spring. The doves are cooing in the trees, on the days when the wind isn't howling. The tiny lizards are sunning themselves on the concrete steps. The neighbors are enjoying their rap music outdoors with the bass cranked to brain death levels. Winter is over. The thermometer will be in the low 90s all week.
Spring is short here. We'll have a few nice weeks, followed by months of mind-boggling heat and drenching monsoons. I'm going to enjoy my new walking shoes before summer peels the skin from my bones.
