Lettuce to a Turtle

So when Aaron and I were golfing at Vista Del Camino, an old man drove up on an electric scooter. And he said, "Hey, do you know what turtles eat?" This sounded for all the world like a joke. Aaron responded in kind, "No, what do turtles eat?" And the old man said, "I don't know. There's a turtle down there by the sidewalk, and I was thinking about getting him some lettuce." He then zoomed up the sidewalk to the restaurant next to the park, presumably checking to see if they had any left-over turtle lettuce.

Flash-forward to our hike on Saturday, when Aaron asked Beck what turtles eat - do they eat lettuce?

B: "To a turtle, lettuce is but water."

A, predictably: "Butt water? Ewwwwwwww..."

One example among many of beck's being in the zone of unintentional comedy on Saturday. She led the hike for most of the way, and as mentioned before, Beck flies on hikes at estimated speeds of 23 mph. Real fast. During one hilarious moment (re-enacted by Aaron later), Beck grabbed a flowering branch from a Bush and sniffed it, not breaking stride to do so. Of course I chimed in with all kinds of sentiments to the effect of "Carpe diem - it's important to slightly slow down and smell the roses." Beck replied that they weren't roses, that she didn't want to stop to "smell the mountain bush." Groans ensued.

But that wasn't the best - the best was when we were riding out to Sedona in the morning and beck was sharing tales of seeing people ride mules down into th Grand Canyon last weekend. She in fact specifically said,

"Riding a mule for four miles is really hard on your ass."

At which Aaron and I groaned appropriately, having completed Dr. J.'s pun-training at early ages. Awesome. Of course, this opened up a sort of pun vortex from Aaron. Many an ass-joke was told that day, my friends.

Getting back to the narrative - we woke up early early on Saturday to await the arrival of D&C and their Rav4. They ran a little late and got to ur house at 7:30, which was okay because it wasn't supposed to be too hot in Sedona anyways. We piled into the car and drove northward, entertaining ourselves with Beck's punny comments and by watching Christina get her archi-nerd on in the car:

So Xtina's bosses take note: she does spend her hiking trips working on buildings. We rocked out to a solid selection of Dan's impeccable indie rock collection and made it up to the red rocks of Sedona in about and hour and a half. After a quick pit stop at one of what I'm sure are several reputable non-tourist trap tourist info sites, we headed to the trail. And a bumpin' we did go. mad props to Dan who navigated the choppy waters with ease and/or four wheel drive and high ground clearance. Pretty crazy, and the backseat three got pretty bruised up, but we eventually made it to the trailhead.

The hike was nice - a long flat stroll through a forest, some sandy paths, and then some rock-hopping along a river bed at the bottom of a canyon. Sweet. And outside of Beck's comedic stylings, there was some great scenery and plenty of photo-ops. Here's the usual post-hike gallery:

A little bit of commentary, (row, column) style: (1,4) is a tugboat. (2,1) is Xtina striking a superhero pose. (2,2) I believe the comment was "We have soooo much potential energy right now." (2,3) and (2,5) are pictures of Willy Wonka's chocolate-coated trees. (2,6) Aaron said, "Did it make a sound?" (3,3) Fat lizard photoed by Beck. (4,4) is where Beck talked about "but water." (4,5) is Xtina doing her best Lisa Loeb impersonation. (4,6) is not Aaron peeing, I promise. (5,1) is a leaping frog we saw. (5,6) is "beautiful," according to C.

And here we have two fantastic pics from the trip, big style:

First one is that same frog - they jumped like crazy and were camouflaged against the mossy rocks; very cool. Second is from the insert from Danimal and the Pleasure Pumas new album, Triple Entendre. What a great shot; look out we hang out by the river all cool like, and Dan stares off contemplatively. Most excellent.

After trekking back along the bumpity bumpity, we stopped at a pizza place (Picazza's or something like that) and enjoyed strawberry lemonades and ridiculously good pies. Yummm. We all feel asleep on the ride home except for Dan, who blasted The Cure and Ugly Cassanova to make it through. We parted briefly for showers, but reunited and felt so good later for a movie down by D&C's place. We had originally intended to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but couldn't get seats together. So we opted for a later showing of Baby Momma, which was medium good but had its share of laughs (none quite as great as the lady who chewed out some drunken teenagers in the front row for making too much noise. Hells yeah!). Of course, the hours inbetween provided opportunity to chill at an uncrowded bar downstairs. Good times, good convo, bad modern jazz. Awjyeah.

Great way to spend a Saturday says I. Got to bed around midnight and got ready to wake up early for the next day's disc golf...