September 26, 2012

THE CAR MAN AND THE BUS GUIDE left us so exhausted that we slept late. When we eventually got up, we took a walk to the rim and again marveled over the size and ever changing light of the Canyon. Many prominent artists come to paint the canyon, and I snapped a photo of one of them.

The friend we had dinner with the other evening had hiked rim to rim hike last year; and looking through our binoculars, we began to appreciate what that meant:  a mile walk down into the Canyon, a ten mile walk across it, and then a hike up the North Rim. Because the route is not along straight lines, the total distance is around 26 miles.

Many people have an urge to get to the bottom of the canyon. For hikers, there are moderate, strenuous and extra-strenuous hikes. Occasionally, hikers will become too tired to make the climb back up. If they decide that they want a helicopter ride to the top, the price tag is $3,000. Some people like to hike to Phantom Ranch, the only lodging at the bottom of the Canyon. Other people take burro rides to the bottom. The burros are very well trained, but like to walk as close to the edge as they can. A few people, after seeing the movie Thelma and Louise have committed suicide by driving cars into the canyon.

After pondering a possible descent, we decided against it. It was around 100 degrees in the canyon, and we will blame the heat when we tell people why we decided not to hike down into the canyon. The truth is that there has never been a time in my life when I would have thought that hiking up and down the canyon would have been fun. Instead of risking a $3,000 helicopter extraction fee, we took a shuttle to a ranger show. On our way, we saw a massive elk with a rack which would have dissuaded even the stupidest tourist from approaching it. Directly across the road from the elk, a male mule deer was quietly eating.  In comparison to the elk, the mule looked like a small dog.The ranger program was a one hour walk and talk and killed the time before the train left to take us back to our car and luggage.

When we got on the train, we saw that we had the same car man who had entertained us the day before.  Either because he was 103 years old or because it was near the end of his work day, he was much quieter on the way home. Instead of telling jokes, he decided to favor the passengers with one on one conversations. He had a ten minute conversation with a girl who looked to be about 17 and who had completed a rim to rim hike. I guess I have been retired too long, for she was an attorney for an L.A. firm specializing in estate planning.

When he started moving our way, Carole thought she could prevent him from intruding on our privacy by leaning over and kissing me.  Nothing could stop him, however. I looked over my shoulder and saw his nose about six inches from me.  He blurted out, “Yuck, yuck, what’s going on here?”  I then reverted to one of several of my pseudo foreign languages.  Not yet deterred, he asked Carole what “land” I was from.  When she told him Green Bay, he said:  “Oh, a football player.”  After he left, Carole commented that I should have used my crazy-eyes ploy, a tactic I used to use to fend off drunks when I was taking the late train home from work.  

The banjo player didn’t make an appearance today, but a woman with an accordion came into our car and said: “I’m from Tennessee; where are you all from?” A guy behind us yipped that he was from Tennessee too. When she approached me, I drawled out: “I’m from the Valley of the Three Forks, right on the Kentucky border, the same town where Sergeant Alvin York was born.” Her eyes got big and she said: “Really.” Because she seemed like a nice lady, I couldn’t sustain the con and admitted that I was from Indiana. Demonstrating the quality of public education in Tennessee, she replied: “Well, Indiana is in the South.”  Next, she pointed to her accordion and said: “I’ll bet you know what this is.” When I told her that the people who played the accordion in my home town were Polish, she played a few bars of one of Frank Yankovic’s polkas. I showed my appreciation with a few hoya hoyas. Noting that the young female attorney was watching, I said: “My home town is so backward that the courts still follow the Rule Against Perpetuities. I knew that my reference to an arcane rule of property law would interest her, but I was surprised at her response. She laughed and said California also still followed the Rule Against Perpetuities. I admitted that, after generations of law students, lawyers and judges had struggled to understand this holdover from the common law, Illinois had abolished it years ago.

The picture lady, who had taken pictures of most of the passengers the day before, came into our car with a huge stack of photos which she offered to sell to people for $35 a photo. I looked at her expectantly as she looked in vain through her stack of photos for ours. Shortly after the picture lady left our car, we saw masked riders alongside of the train. They were getting ready for the pièce de résistance of the ride: a fake train robbery. To assist the banditos, the train stopped so that they could board without having to leap onto the train. As they strolled through the cars, some of the excited passengers stuffed money into their belts like they were the Chippendale Boys. They probably made out better than some of the real train robbers. In any event, they occupied the last fifteen minutes of our train ride. We found our luggage and drove back to the Grand Canyon, where we had booked a room in a lodge for a couple of nights.