"The Way West"...Day 59...Friday, August 10, 2012

OK...when I get up this morning at 8:00AM, the temperature is already 90 degrees. By the time that I make coffee, pour a cup, light a cigar and check my emails, it's 95 degrees. It's supposed to hit 110 degrees today, so I'm thinking that I'll stay close to air conditioning.
Around 11:00, I head back to El Charro for one last meal...tacos, a chile relleno, a prickly pear margarita and a couple of beers.
Then back to the hotel...clean and ice the coolers, reorganize the Explorer, mess around on the Internet...anything but go outside in the heat. From 4:00PM to 6:00, I take a very restful nap.
At 7:00PM, I'm off by cab for 4th Avenue...I figure that I'll do some bar-hopping, then dinner at Mi Nidito. They are rebuilding the road surface of 4th Avenue, and they have installed a baffling system of chain link fencing for security. To get to a place immediately across the street, you might have to go up four blocks, cross, then come back four blocks. Sometimes you walk into a dead-end...I feel like a mouse in a maze.
I am also guilty of very poor planning because,

while Mi Nidito is on 4th Avenue,it's on north 4th Avenue, and I'm on south 4th Avenue. After wandering around for an hour or so, I finally hail a cab for the five-mile drive to Mi Nidito.
It's packed...there's a one and a half hour wait for a table...I take this as a good sign. So...I get a Margarita and head outside to sit on a large stone in the parking lot.
After forty-five minutes or so, an extremely rude security guard comes running at me, arms waving, to tell me that I can't have my margarita in the parking lot. So...I head back inside to the sweltering waiting area...packed with people...and, maybe, 100 degrees. Soon, I head back outside...sans margarita. Across the street, there's another restaurant...with a bar! So, I sneak over there for a quick margarita...inside...in the comfort of air-conditioning...then back to Mi Nidito's parking lot.

I wait the full ninety minutes before being seated. I order a margarita...pound that...a Dos Equis draft...pound that. I order the Chiles Rellenos for which Mi Nidito received the 2010 "Best of Tucson" Award. Much to my disappointment, they are mediocre at best...soggy coating, underdone pepper, cold cheese filling.
Cab back to the Days Inn...a few beers...bed.