Today we awoke at 6:30am, a veritable sleep in, and made it to the hiking meeting point at exactly 7am. This morning the hardest hike offered was a Level 3 and as we sussed out our fellow hikers, it was clear that these were no experts. There were two pudgy 60-something women wearing their new Ranch t-shirts, such an amateur move, as well as a mother daughter duo who were, I surmised, at long last attempting to make good on a new year’s resolution to get into shape, and one 75-year old gentleman with his own hiking stick, water bottle belt and some wicked varicose veins. Once aboard the van, the elder man who was sitting next to David, introduced himself and began to tell us his life story without any prompting or for that matter show of interest on our part.
Danny is from Brooklyn originally, and 47 years in LA have done precious little to modify his prodigious Brooklyn accent. “I’m Da-ehn-ny from LA bud I grew ub in Brooklyn, you evah hoid of the late comedian Jack Benny, funny guy very funny in a Jewish kinda way ah-end if you grew ub in Brooklyn when Jackie, that’s my wife, and I did then you eeder are Jewish oh-wer you should be, ha, ha, ha. Anyway, like Jack use to say, Benny I’m tawkin aboud, “You can take da boy oudda Brooklyn but ya cain’t take the Brooklyn oudda da boy.” Ya know whad I mean?” Needless to say with Danny present, one needed to do little other than nod, smile, laugh intermittently and answer the odd question no matter how personal.
Our guides on this hike were Warren, a 50-something year old smiling man with a grey mullet worn in a ponytail that accentuated his fluffy sideburns, and Donna, a no-nonsense woman in her late 50’s with the kind of leathery skin only acquired by years of hiking in the hot desert sun. Two hiking poles in hand, we set out into Sabino National Park for our 1,100 foot ascent.
Out on the trail, Danny immediately motioned toward the mother daughter duo behind us and told me just how often newbies overestimate their fitness level on hikes and slow the entire group down. “Whadda shame. Jackie, she nevah comes hiking wid me cause she knows I like to hike fa-est and she, god bless hah is like a tortess wid no race.” Over the course of the next few hours I learned plenty about Jackie, Danny’s two sons and daughters-in-law “da best, knock wood, bedda than any real daugh-ders could be, serious I tell you like angels.”
After our hike, I enjoyed a facial with my fav facialist here Yvgenia, who remains determined to one day sell me her luxurious potions which I consistently refuse. As a former physician in her native Russia, Yvgenia employs very convincing terminology to try and tempt me into buying her spa goodies but I am not easily persuaded, no matter how authoritative the accent. I was starving by 1pm when I sat down to a fiber filled lunch with David in the dining room. Having partially digested my lettuce, I decided to try DJ Dance Mix class, which is an aerobics class with a live DJ spinning the music. The woman with the slightly-too-tight facelift to my left looked positively euphoric as she kick, ball, changed her scrawny heart out. Then it was off to my 100-minute Ashiatsu treatment, a deep tissue massage performed by a therapist who essentially steps on you while holding onto ceiling bars for support. Another romantic dinner for two replete with psylium husk sprinkles and the keen sense that my colon has never been so happy. After dinner we decided upon a DVD in our room; not surprisingly after last night’s embarrassing defeat David was not quite in the mood for Scrabble before bed.
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