Back from Phoenix

I just returned from visiting my brother Bill and cousin Tommie for five days in Phoenix. The weather was lovely this time of year, which is why snowbirds love to visit. I don’t normally qualify as a snowbird, more of a cold-and-rainy-bird, but this year I actually left when there was snow on the mountains, as I showed in my last post. We had a great time. It was wonderful for me to just walk through the desert landscape, and one day we took a desert walk in South Mountain Park and saw wildflowers. Not too spectacular yet, they are not yet at their peak, but still beautiful. We also enjoyed 3 separate museums.

The first was Butterfly Wonderland in Scottsdale, part of the Arizona Boardwalk. Tommie is a volunteer there, but this was his day off, so we had him as a great guide. It was great (but not surprising) to see how popular Tommie is among his peers. He is one of the most positive and outgoing people I know. They have the largest butterfly garden in North America. You are not supposed to touch the free-roaming butterflies, but they do land on you. I also enjoyed their film about the eastern branch of the Monarch migration. Living on the west coast, I knew all about the western branch, but the eastern one is even more spectacular, traveling up to 3,000 miles.

Another day we went to the Western Spirit museum in Scottsdale, which tells the history of the West through art, with wonderful docent-led tours.

Finally, we went to the Musical Instrument Museum, also in Scottsdale, which exhibits musical instruments from all over the world. It has a cool setup where they give you headphones, and when you get to each video screen it automatically tunes in. Some were music clips, including really cool old black and white videos, like Buddy Holly and Ray Orbison, while others were explanations from craftsmen and artists about the instruments.

The final highlight of the trip was all the self-driving Waymo cars I saw. I was curious and asked Gemini about their safety record this talk (I think you need a Google account to open this). Their track record is fantastic: to date, they have completed just under 10 million rides in Phoenix, their accident/injury rate is about six times lower than that of human drivers, and the vast majority of incidents were not the Waymo’s fault. I then disappeared down a rabbit hole with Gemini trying to understand the technology which is baffling but very impressive.