I drove to Phoenix, Arizona, where my good old friend Sarah lives with her husband Lee. I took a bus from there for freakin' 31 hours or so. That was a long ride.

I count Sarah and Lee as my first couchsurfing hosts. Couchsurfing.com is a place where you can seek out people to host you for free, stay on their couch, and see a place from an insider's perspective, which I think is wonderful. And it is very safe, for all you old-world skeptics out there who don't even make deposits from an ATM machine but wait 30 minutes in line at the bank. Seriously, now.

With Sarah and Lee I played Scrabble (and won tremendously), went swimming, ate BBQ chicken and fruit salad, played Beyond Balderdash (and lost terribly), saw a mall, witnessed heat, and met some cool friends, Matt and Chris, who drunk dialed me once at 1:40 in the morning trying to impersonate Arnold Swarchenegger.