Sunday afternoon, we're driving home through the desert, heading back to the middle of Arizona where I live at a point along the base of a geological freak of nature: the southwestern end of the Colorado Plateau lift known as the Mogollon Rim.
Driving back home on Interstate 8. The cool breezes of San Diego shorelines replaced by humid monsoon season heat-waves. A few clusters of dark clouds dump dense sheets of rain on Mexico and the rest of the sky fills with clouds, high, non-threatening...
Downtown San Diego on a Saturday night, Gaslamp district hopping, clean streets, several large condos within sight of the harbor, sports, old town nearby, the walk along the harbor itself. Nice.
My partner, my dog and I walk up to Balboa Park crossing over I 5. It's dizzying. All of that aggressive power and energy roaring beneath us. Such a contrast to the downtown foot traffic vibe, to the beach vibe... Well, I suppose one has to get to and from the beaches with our auto-sleds; then there's Tijuana and LA (and all points inbetween) traffic to boot.
Sunday morning, we're off to Dog Beach. Tasha, my 11 year old dog has cancer. She had her spleen removed just a little over a week ago, but is feeling much better as the cancerous tumor around her spleen had ruptured and caused a pronounced stomach bloat and anemia. I'd always promised her a trip to the ocean and the vet had told me that she may have only a few weeks of decent health remaining, so the road trip was on.
Dog Beach was even better than I imagined for Tasha. She had puppy-like energy and much to my surprise seemed to really like the ocean. We meet a local gal with a dog that looks much like Tasha, a Shar-pei / Ridgeback / Boxer mix. Nice to meet a cousin! We comment on how cool it is to have a rather large section of a beach allocated for off-leash dog use and the lady agrees noting that her North Carolina relatives laughed it off as something only in California.
All of the dogs, the sights and sounds seemed to overwhelm Tasha a bit and she once ran away down the beach and went swimming off into the ocean by herself -- she had spotted a man in the distance on a retaining wall in a white tee-shirt and decided that he was me. A poignant sight, my red-brown companion paddling determinedly to a distant shore; I called her back.
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Driving home through the desert, it's getting late in the afternoon and a hole opens up in the clouds behind us; a large ray of sun illuminates a light rain in the distance reflecting back to us a comet shaped rainbow -- and the sun ray looks to disappear into an odd swirl and opening in the clouds beyond... Tasha sleeps peacefully in the back with new dreams.
Originally, this diary was to be a rant on urban sprawl (Phoenix, San Diego, et.al.) and how we can't seem to get any real traction on getting off of the oil standard until we're in crisis mode (which I would semi-snarkily propose to accelerate by driving as much as we can until there is no oil left), but it kept drifting into the more personal, I blame the little fluffy clouds. peace.