\n<\/strong>I was staying in the Phoenix area (Mesa to be exact) with yet another friend I hadn’t seen in several years and had barely kept up with. In the\u00a0years since I saw her last, my friend’s\u00a0work had\u00a0moved her to Seattle, where she met a guy on eHarmony. They got married and moved to Mesa six years ago. There was so much to catch up on in both our lives that we talked late into the first night, and then for hours again the next day.<\/p>\n
Reason\u00a0#2: God & Cigars<\/strong> Reasons #3: Chris Pratt & Jennifer Lawrence<\/strong> Reason #4: You<\/strong> Reason #5:\u00a0The Chicago Cubs<\/strong> But\u00a0wait a minute.\u00a0Maybe I’m not a terrible friend and we both just got busy. And who can blame God or cigars? They are both awesome (but certainly not equivalent). Time spent watching fun movies with good friends is\u00a0never a bad thing, and what was\u00a0I thinking? Its not your guys’ fault- I love you guys, and I’m truly\u00a0humbled that people want\u00a0to read about my trip in a blog.<\/p>\n So that just leaves the Cubs. That’s right, Chicago, because of you and your obsessed fans, I\u00a0never got to see the city of Phoenix! I hope that silly little World Series trophy was worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What can I say about Phoenix, Arizona? Not a thing.\u00a0Because I didn’t actually\u00a0see\u00a0Phoenix. And the\u00a0reasons for that I\u00a0elaborate here: Reason #1:\u00a0I’m a Terrible Friend I was staying in the Phoenix area (Mesa to be exact) with yet another friend I hadn’t seen in several years and had barely kept up with. In the\u00a0years since I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-grand-canyon-state","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/storygirlontheroad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Old-Phoenix-postcard-e1492716728355.jpg?fit=498%2C309&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8xsVh-2Z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen I arrived Saturday night, my friend said we had\u00a0to hide out in the house because her husband (whom I still had yet to meet!) was out in the backyard with a bunch of dudes for “God & Cigars” time. For\u00a0what<\/em> time? She explained. Every Saturday night, her husband invites a bunch of guys over, guys from church or work or friends of friends, and they all sit around a fire in their backyard and talk about God\u00a0and the real issues facing men trying to live an authentic Christian life. So it turns out her husband loves to talk worldview and faith and politics as much as I do, so he and I ended up talking a lot, too!<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/storygirlontheroad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/FullSizeRender-19.jpg?resize=290%2C217\")
\nMy friend’s house has\u00a0a very cool arsty open plan living room AND they have an entire wall they use for watching\u00a0movies. I hadn’t seen a movie in ages, and despite what\u00a0Rotten Tomatoes said, \u00a0Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are just so watchable! So we rented\u00a0“Passengers”‘ on my last night there.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/storygirlontheroad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/FullSizeRender-20.jpg?resize=256%2C192\")
\nWhen I started telling people about my trip weeks ago, nearly everyone asked if I was going to write\/blog about it. Well, I was 8 days into my trip,\u00a0people kept emailing\/texting me asking when the blog was going up, and\u00a0I knew if I continued on my trip any longer without starting my blog,, I would abandon the whole thing. So I stayed up until 3 AM on my last night in Phoenix and spent most of my\u00a0last morning asking my friend’s husband – who was a former-IT-guy – a gazillion\u00a0questions and finally launching the blog.<\/p>\n
\nThe Cubs hold\u00a0spring training in the Phoenix area, and with that\u00a0comes thousands\u00a0of die-hard fans causing all kinds of traffic and jamming\u00a0up the roadways. This particular weekend the Cubs were playing in Mesa.<\/p>\n