History Adventuring

Although the Arizona Canal has flowed through Phoenix since 1885, most people who live there really have no idea where, exactly, it is and fewer still know where, exactly, it ends. I've been fascinated by the history of Phoenix for many years now and I really didn't know until this morning. Ride along with me to the end of the Arizona Canal, which is at 75th Avenue north of Greenway Road in Peoria, a suburb of Phoenix. The Arizona Canal looking west towards 75th Avenue, just north of Greenway Road Well, to be fair it doesn't just abruptly stop. It makes a turn and kinda trickles out into the ground just past the water treatment plant. And that's because the water gets mostly used up along the way from the Salt River, where the canal begins at Roosevelt Dam. Along the wash Looking back east on the wash But don't worry if you want to continue to ride along the wash, which is just north of the canal. Technically, it's a flood detention area, but mostly it's jus...

I was talking to a friend of mine at the Burger King on Thunderbird where I stop for coffee yesterday morning, and he reminded me to be careful out there because of the all of the people who are driving crazy nowadays. And he's right - from my point of view pedaling around Peoria it does seem as if getting behind the wheel makes ordinary people crazy. And then I thought that it's really always been true, since the invention of cars. No doubt they were described as "crazy contraptions" that spooked horses, went out of control and drove through flower beds, and of course, ran over pedestrians. And it seems like everything that happens "nowadays" has always happened, but we just forget and imagine that it's all new. But we can time-travel back further than the invention of cars. I'm sure that the first time someone saw someone riding a bicycle it seemed crazy, or even riding a horse. Heck, I've known people who somehow seem to manage to run into oth...