On this beautiful Saturday, we were tricked into bringing this Scotsman to Flagstaff, Arizona, after he flew in via Canada from his farm in Scotland. We don’t normally offer Uber services, but this guy convinced us via email that he was a descendent of William Wallace and had recently come into his inheritance. He was inviting us to raft the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon at his expense if we’d take him up north. We took the scenic road from Phoenix via Payson which I originally thought was so we could dip into one of his bottles of whiskey while underway, but apparently, he was nervous about an encounter with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement which makes sense now that I think about it, as Europeans are not allowed in America yet due to the pandemic. When I asked about that, he said that Post Brexit he was no longer part of that filthy horde of barbarians and so was allowed to be on our shores. By that time I was just drunk enough to believe him. Pulling into Flagstaff, we stopped at a local Haggis Shop where he was going to grab a couple of haggises and a pack of oatcakes, one haggis for this evening and one while we are out rafting the Colorado. Well, this was the last we saw of this crafty Scots outlaw as he must have left through a back door. Without hotel reservations and proof that we were booked for a Grand Canyon adventure, all we could do was head back to Phoenix looking like the rubes we are.

The truth is far more mundane as Flagstaff doesn’t even have a Haggis Shop nor did we drink a bottle of whiskey while on the road. This is our friend Willy whom we met years ago on a different rafting trip and we were simply bringing him to Flagstaff for his own adventure rafting through the canyon, without haggis and without us. We did enjoy our scenic drive through the largest stand of Ponderosa pines in the world and all the conversations that entailed.