On our mostly-annual visit to Arizona, the usual plan is to spend three or four days in the Phoenix area (Tempe/Mesa) and then drive to Tucson for the remainder of the trip.
As I said in the previous post, it’s all pretty basic. The pieces are mostly the same every year, and everything for this year was booked quite a while ago.
Except that normally we make this trip in early November. Late last summer, I had to move everything to right now due to several non Covid-related issues. Not a big deal. Rebooking the flight is easy and reservations for the rental car and hotel carry no penalties for canceling.
The wrinkle, however, is that I had no idea the Super Bowl was also booked in Phoenix for this weekend. And that the PGA was also running a major tournament in the area this week.
Who knew? Since I pay almost no attention to American football, I had only the slightest knowledge of when the Super Bowl might be played (always the weekend after EduCon) and no idea what poor community was being forced to suffer through hosting it.1 I know even less about golf.
But no worries. The hotel wasn’t my first choice and was a little more expensive than normal. And we had always planned to get out of town on Friday, so that got us out of the way of most of the weekend madness.
While it was amusing to sample some of the craziness that goes with major sporting events, next year I need to pay closer attention to little matters like over-hyped, inconsequential crap like this. The NFL doesn’t send the game back to the same place twice in a row, do they?
The photo at the top shows downtown Phoenix as seen from South Mountain Park. The stadium to the right of the tall buildings belongs to the Diamondback baseball team. The football stadium where the Super Bowl is being played tonight is somewhere off to the left, probably outside the frame.
1. Football is great for local politicians, corporate sponsors, the media, and a few businesses. It’s a pain for the people who actually live and work in the area around the stadium.
It’s in a different city every year, so you’re good. Though they might re-visit certain cities. We’ve had it here in Atlanta a couple of times. I visited a friend in Chicago and had no idea the bulls had just made some kind of history. There was a huge parade for them. It was hilarious how clueless I was.