Rice Works: Arizona 4.1

The home remedy of using uncooked rice to save your water soaked electronics really works. I am here to testify that if you should lose your balance in a creek in Arizona with your camera in your pocket, there is hope for your camera. There is always a happy ending; you just have to look for it. I am telling this story out of sequence. Let me start from the beginning.

It was Monday afternoon when Snapper and I arrived at Huntsville International Airport and from the corner of my eye who did I see, Antoine Dodson! If you haven’t been on YouTube in the last few months he is big brother who spoke out about his sister’s attempted rapist on WAFF. YouTube and the rap “Bed Intruder” has made him famous. People where walking by Mr. Dodson snapping his photo with their smart phones.

We didn’t speak to him in Huntsville. His flight left from a different gate than ours. We were off to Atlanta after a thirty minute wait in the ramp area before heading to the runway. Needless to say after a run from terminal to terminal we missed our flight to Phoenix. We had a flight on a 9:30pm flight and standby on a 7:30pm flight. It was going to be an extremely long wait in Atlanta if we didn’t make the standby flight. So Snapper and I did what any good traveler would do, we went to the closest sports bar to pass the time.

Right after sitting down, I looked up from my menu and who did I see? That’s right, Antoine Dodson! He was like a travel elf, bringing entertainment and fun travel. This time, I didn’t pass up the opportunity to speak. I chatted with him for a few minutes as he waited to board a flight to New York City. He seems to be a really nice guy! I wanted to ask him to do a recruitment commercial for us. Many people on my Facebook gave mottos and pitches for him to use in our recruitment efforts. Here are two of my favorites:

“You dont have to come to us… we gonna find you, we gonna find you!”

“Hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband too, because they are recruiting everybody up in here!”

After hanging with Antoine and some refreshments, Snapper and I, like little kids, celebrated making our 7:30pm flight to Arizona. If you can’t have fun traveling stay out of Atlanta, that airport might suck the soul out of you. We celebrated again when we saw our bags being loaded onto our aircraft. This was turning out to be a great day!

We made it to Phoenix and picked up our rental car, a red Mustang convertible. I saw the writing on the wall after pulling out of the parking garage, “Ruth gets second speeding ticket in Arizona.” All was well as we headed to Flagstaff to visit Northern Arizona University. I must say, NAU is one of the nicest campuses I ever visited. And no tickets, yet!

On our drive to Prescott we took the scenic route though Sedona. WOW is pretty much all I can say about that drive. Snapper spotted a park to venture through. Little did I know that flip flops should have been worn. It was an area called Slide Rock on Oak Creek just north of Sedona. Here is where the rice comes into play. Snapper and I waded through the water and saw a few lizards but no other critters. We were almost out of the water, so close to where we dropped off our sneakers, when I fell in. It was epic. Snapper had made it across and I did what I always do, I got cocky. Oh yeah, this is easy… I can make it across the water and rocks.

My camera was soaked and unusable for the remainder of the trip. However in my soaked state Snapper gave me some uplifting words of wisdom, “At least it wasn’t your iPhone!” There was a silver lining in this watery adventure! Well, it wasn’t a bad diversion from the road trip; it was really fun and a very peaceful spot on the side of the road. Snapper made sure I had a souvenir from Slide Rock. We made it to the hotel room in time to watch Glee. After Glee, I walked to Albertson’s to purchase a bag of rice. This trick really works. I am glad I didn’t have to try it on my iPhone.

It wasn’t a flawless trip and you will have to read more later to see if I got a ticket or not. However, everything about this day and our trip was good. The bumps along the way made for a more epic adventure. My first recruiting trip to Arizona wouldn’t have been memorable without a Diet Mountain Dew exploding all over me. My slip into the water during the fourth was just another memorable moment in Arizona!