Back From Phoenix – BionicOldGuy

I’m just back from visiting my Brother Bill and Nephew Tommie in Phoenix for five days. The weather was delightful this time of the year, which is why snowbirds like to visit. I don’t usually qualify as a snowbird, more of a cold-and-rainy-bird, but this year I actually did leave when there was snow on the mountains as I showed in my last post. We had a great time. It was delightful for me just going on walks with the desert scenery, and one day we went on a desert hike in South Mountain Park and saw wildflowers. Not too spectacular yet, they are not at their peak, but still pretty. We also enjoyed 3 separate museums.

The first was Butterfly Wonderland in Scottsdale, part of the Arizona Boardwalk. Tommie volunteers there but this was his day off so we had him as a great tour guide. It was wonderful (but not surprising) to see how well-like Tommie is by his co-workers. He is one of the most positive and outgoing people I know. They have the largest butterfly conservatory in North America. You’re not supposed to touch the free-roaming butterflies but they do land on you. I also enjoyed their movie on the eastern branch of the Monarch migration. Living on the West coast I knew all about the Western branch, but the Eastern is even more spectacular, with them traveling up to 3000 miles.

On another day we went to the Western Spirit museum in Scottsdale which tells the history of the West through art, with wonderful docent-led tours.

Finally we went to the Musical Instrument Museum, also in Scottsdale, which has displays of musical instruments around the world. It has a cool setup where they give you headphones, and as you come up to each video display it auto-tunes into it. Some were samples of music, including really cool old black and white videos, like Buddy Holly and Ray Orbison, while others were explanations by craftsman and artists about the instruments.

I final highlight of the trip was all the Waymo self-driving cars I saw. I was curious so asked Gemini about their safety record in this chat (I think you need a Google account to open this). Their record is superb, just under 10 million trips in Phoenix so far, accident/injury rate about 6 times less than human drivers, and the vast majority of incidents were not the Waymo’s fault. I then disappeared down a rabbit-hole with Gemini trying to understand the tech which is mind-boggling but very impressive.