Day 193, Tuesday, December 13

Last night was a really tough night for a couple of reasons.
First, the threat of rain last night turned out to be more than a threat. I set the tent up in a drizzle and it rained hard through most of the night. This morning I found out that in my haste to get the tent set up, I managed to leave a corner of the ground cloth sticking out. NOT good. The rain collected on that corner and ran underneath the tent. When I woke up this morning, I found that the foot of the tent and my air mattress were soaked. Luckily my sleeping bag escaped unmoistened. What a nuisance.
The second reason last night was a rough night is because of a phone call I received. As I was sitting in the laundry room, working on my computer, my cell phone rang and I saw it was my best friend from Chicago, Tania White (She’s the one who joined me for the week in Yellowstone Park.) I answered cheerfully saying “Hey Tania! Great to hear from you. How’s Chicago?” Her response stopped me cold. “I’m not in Chicago, I’m in Florida.” I could hear that she’d been crying and I know, from having spent Christmas with her last year in Florida, that her parents live in West Palm Beach, FL. I knew right away that something was dreadfully wrong. It turns out Tania was there because her father had died in an unexpected event and she was absolutely devastated. Tania adored her father, Ronnie, and he likewise returned the affection. I was at a complete loss for how to comfort her. Having a parent die unexpectedly isn’t even something I can imagine. It tore me up inside to hear her hurting so much and know that I was completely powerless to do anything to relieve her pain. Tania means the world to me as a friend and there’s pretty much nothing I wouldn’t to for her. I hope she and her mom pull through this. They had plans to go as a family over to Germany in mid December to enjoy a vacation. Instead, Tania had to go down to FL and organize the funeral, organize her father’s cremation, organize making the house presentable, comfort her father’s family who’re all from the area, and more. It meant she’d not really had time to mourn on her own. She told me she and her mom are going to go on to Germany where her mom’s family is. There they can allow themselves a chance to mourn where they’ll have family to comfort them and where they’ll be able to draw back from making any plans or having to face responsibilities. When they return from Germany, Tania will go down to live with her mother for a couple of months, at least, and then will try to convince her mother to move up to Chicago instead of staying on in their family home. I hurt for both of them and wish them the best.
From Benton, AZ, I rode over to Chiricahua National Monument to see the fantastic rock formations there. Words are going to completely fail me in trying to describe that landscape. Layer upon layer of rocks sticking up in spires with boulders balanced precariously on top. Unfortunately it was extremely windy, cold, drizzly and grey which made photography difficult. None the less I enjoyed a 6 mile hike and got some really good pictures. Leaving Chiricahua I headed over to the KOA at Las Cruces, NM.