2026 TRIP

For those of you who don’t know Surprise is the city in Arizona where my son Andy and his wife Sherry and their family live.  Actually, my grandsons Brandon and Jeremy live on the east side of Phoenix and Surprise is on the west side. I agree it is an odd name for a city so I’ll share the history of how it was named.  Back in the mid-1800’s it was a mining town.  There was only one large employer and that was the owner of the largest gold mine there.  When prospectors came there hoping to strike it rich but had no money they sought employment at the big mine.

On one occasion a recent immigrant from China came seeking employment.  He was very slight of stature so the foreman didn’t think he’d do well working in the depths of the mine so he told the Chinese man he’d be put in charge of supplies and that he would start the next day.

The next day came but the Chinese man was nowhere to be seen… he never reported for work.  The foreman and his assistant went looking all over for him but were unsuccessful.  They gave up and returned to their office.  As they opened the door and walked in the Chinese man jumped out and yelled, “SUPPLIZE!!!”  And that’s how Surprise got its name.  Sorry I had to cheer myself up after the Knicks loss tonight.

This morning I brought the car in for a lube, oil & filter.  Then I just lounged around until I picked up Sherry (Andy wasn’t feeling well) and we went to meet Brandon and his girlfriend Hannah at a sports bar in Mesa to watch the Knicks game.  I had what they called shrimp cargo. I would guess they named it that as a play on escargot because they were moderately small shrimp (bigger than popcorn shrimp but still tiny) served in a dish with depressions similar to how escargot are served.  The garlic butter sauce they were in was perfect. The evening would have been better if the the Knicks had won.

Nothing else really happened today.