Phoenix: Back Again

Back in Scottsdale for client meetings. Three nights at the Hilton Garden Inn Scottsdale North, which is a Hilton Garden Inn near the Perimeter Center and does Hilton Garden Inn things. Clean room, decent breakfast, a pool I didn't use because January in Scottsdale is mid-60s during the day and drops into the 40s at night. The desert in winter is not the desert people picture. It's cool, dry, and the light is lower and softer than the summer version.

The meetings went well. Same team, building on what we'd started in September. The coworking space in North Scottsdale still had that terrace with the McDowell Mountain views, and we took a coffee break out there on the second morning. The mountains looked different in January: less harsh, the light more forgiving, a dusting of snow on the highest peaks that disappears by mid-morning.

I had dinner one night at a place in Old Town that the bartender from September had recommended. Italian, small menu, handmade pasta. The cacio e pepe was excellent and I ate it thinking about the version G and I had in Trastevere and the version at Bestia in LA with Lola years ago. Some dishes become a measuring stick. You order them everywhere and rank them without meaning to.

The other nights I worked. Room service, laptop, the familiar rhythm of a work trip in a city I've now been to five or six times. Scottsdale is becoming one of those cities where I know the routes, the restaurants, the good coffee spots, but where I'm never there long enough to feel like I belong. It's a layover city for me. Always on the way to somewhere else.

This time, the somewhere else was San Luis Obispo. And a ring in my carry-on that G didn't know about.