it has begun!

Man oh man. It's a little after midnight, now, I'm in my room at the Clarendon Hotel in Phoenix, AZ. This hotel is like... have you ever seen Melrose Place? It totally looks like it was once that, it's got the pool in the middle and everything, and then someone came along and decided, "This place is a dump. We gotta do something." And threw a bunch of flashy paint and art and funky things everywhere and re-introduced it to the world as a cool place. And it is pretty cool, minus the 80's music that plays nonstop in the lobby. But hey, free phone calls! To anywhere! In the whole world! That's the kick-assinest thing I've ever seen at a hotel.


There's a lot to tell... three days of shooting have gone by; I'm a little sunburned, now. We'll start at Day 1.


Day 1: we were at the Grand Canyon for 8:30, to do this mule ride thing down the side of the canyon. I stood in on an orientation given by a dude named Casey, who waxes up the ends of his mustache (a sign of authority, he says). It was at this point that my toes started to get very cold. After the orientation, we got paired up with our mules. Mine was named Zanzibar. One of the dudes, Pancho (also with waxed mustache) tells me Zanzibar hasn't been ridden before. I tell him that he is joking. Since I'm not following the whole group all the way down, I ride in between two guides, Pancho and Buff. Buff also says something about me being one of the first to ride Zanzibar. I reconsider Pancho's earlier words. But you never know with those dudes; half their fun is making fun of the tourists, I guess. After that, we took a helicopter ride over the Canyon. Holy balls, that was gorgeous! We had a lady pilot, too, which was pretty rad. Her name was Ann. We had these headphones on, right, so she could talk to us through them and provide commentary without having to scream her face off, but when she wasn't talking, there was this ridiculous playlist going on, like with that song from 2001: A Space Odyssey and other assorted tunes. As we were landing, that Green Day song starts playing, you know, I hope you had the time of your life yadda yadda, and then right after, "Give a little bit..." Directing us to the gift shop, much? The ride itself was spectacular, though.


We break for lunch, then head back to the canyon. I met up with a couple of Rangers, Diana and Andy. At this point I become an official Grand Canyon National Park Junior Ranger, along with millions of children ages 4 and up. It was fun. I have a little plastic badge and a cool patch with a scorpion on it. We were there for the rest of the afternoon, and then drove to Sedona, this small city nestled in among gorgeous red rock mountains. I fell in love as soon as we drove in. The inn we stayed at had the most amazing view; we checked in just as the sun was setting behind the mountains. As night set in and the stars made themselves known, we could stand on the little terrace and look up at the sky, straight ahead at the silhouette of the mountains, and down at the trees, houses, and soft lights of the locals. Really a beautiful place. Woke up early the next morning and was lucky enough to catch a bit of the magnificent sunrise. And then we continued on for Day 2 of shooting.