"I Suppose I Can't Blame It Entirely On the Lizard"

Short Version:
Guns in the sun, angry plants, a hard day's ride with real lizards, fried-egg sandwiches

Long Version:
Unfortunately for us, the same semi-official long weekend which had cluttered Sedona's inner trails with day-hikers and -bikers meant that the desert around the Black Canyon Trail's southern trailhead at Table Mesa was far from deserted. In fact, we managed to stumble into the midst not only of an ATV convention, with all the attendant glories of fat sweaty people who talk loud and laugh obnoxious laughter too often and too forcefully; but also a competitive target-shooting weekend outing. Knowing, as we do, that Arizona is gun central, we probably shouldn't have been surprised that an area of desert within an hour's drive of a major city in this firearms-mad state would be populated with shooters of all shapes and sizes, discharging weapons of all shapes and sizes, on a sunny Saturday afternoon on a long(ish) weekend... but we were.

Not as surprised as I was, though, not long after we found a spot not in anyone's firing line and not next to the fattest or greasiest-looking ATV crowds, when a cactus I walked past leaped out and attacked me. I was shocked, and mildly horrified, and in pain, and a wee bit scared, because I absolutely had not touched the vicious plant-like evildoer, and yet there was a big chunk of it attached to my leg with enormous, barbed spikes. It was the exact same type of cactus that had attacked me in the exact same manner down in the Baja, near the disembowelled dog on the outskirts of the horrible shitty city, only this bespiked menace seemed healthier. Maybe fat Amerikans are more nutritious than skinny Mexicanos. It took a while to get the thing off me, and the horror stayed with me afterwards, banished only when Nene managed to turn her butt into a pincushion for a prickly pear, which meant that I got so busy using tweezers and the last of the sunlight that I forgot to keep freaking out about the jumping nasties.

The assortment of weaponry which was being employed in our vicinity was staggering. Not only were we hearing the flat crack of rifles and the deep booming of shotguns, but also semi- and fully-automatic weapons, and an occasional huge bass thud that had us thinking of dynamite and mortars (and not the kind that have pestles as partners). The artillery cacophony carried on well after darkness fell but we figure that people must have gotten too drunk to reload because eventually the echoes of the last percussive reports faded, and we ended up getting one of the best nights' sleeps of the trip so far - maybe subconsciously figuring that no-one was going to be stupid enough to be messing with anyone else in a place where absolutely everybody was armed to the teeth and had spent most of the weekend brushing up on their targetting skills.

They started again early the next morning, but we were already up and about, and were riding not long afterwards; past the fat, greasy ATV crowd (who were just beginning to rouse after what had no doubt been a hard night of carousing with quality beverages and snack foods) and onto the trail. It turned out to be crowded on both sides by plants with spikes: the jumping ones, prickly pears, even cartoon-stereotype giant saguaros. Nene got scratched-up during an encounter with one of the evil kowhai relations, but had a scapelizard handy. Between the undulating terrain, the dry heat, and the mixed-bag of trail surfaces that included sketchy loose-over-hardpack and soft, wheel-eating fine sand, it was a hell of a hard work ride.

We'd both been fantasizing about the fried-egg sandwiches we were going to have when we made it back to the Reaper for a while by the time we saw the lizard. I thought I was hallucinating at first; it was too big, and far too pink-and-brown for unreserved believability. But Nene saw it too, and so did the camera, and then it hid in the bushes so we carried on, back to the trailhead, where we saw a man so fat that I almost rode into a cactus while staring at him, and then we cooked and ate fried-egg sandwiches, and they were really, really good.