My company sent me to Scottsdale for a work event in November 2025.
My dad can’t fly anymore, but he does fine in a car. We have family in Arizona he hadn’t seen in a while. And I had a 911 that was still a few thousand miles shy of 200,000 and very much in need of a reason.
So the math was easy. I’d work the event, he’d hang out with family, and once the work stuff wrapped I’d get some family time in too.
Honestly, I was stoked to drive.
6:27 AM, leaving the Bay Area. The 911 had no idea what it signed up for. Neither did I.
The easy half
The drive out was smooth. 700-something miles, a long day in the seat, and a sky that kept trying to outdo itself the further east we went. I dropped my dad off with family and got to my place late that night.
Somewhere past the Arizona line. The clock in the middle of the dash says it’s been a while.
Then I spent almost an hour trying to get into that place.
A Booking.com mixup. I’ll spare you the details because they’re boring and I was mad about it at the time. The short version, and some of the only travel advice you’ll ever get from me: book direct. Always. Skip Booking.com, skip Expedia. You’ll almost always get a better rate, and when something goes sideways there’s an actual human on the other end who can fix it.
The car got in fine. It was the guy driving it who had a problem.
Once I finally got in, I slept like I’d driven 700 miles.
The work part (briefly, I promise)
The next day I got going on the work stuff. And then we cancelled the event. Not enough people signed up.
Woof.
I’ll keep this part short because this isn’t a story about a job. But the irony isn’t lost on me that about 6 months later, a bunch of us got laid off from that company. Sitting in a coworking space that week, I kind of already knew. Nobody wanted what we were selling, and it showed.
So I did what you do when the reason you came disappears. I found better ones.
Making the most of it
Work was a little stingy on the lodging, so I got to stay with family for a couple of nights. That was a gift, and so were the evenings.
Arizona sunsets are unfair. The sky out there does things the Bay Area simply refuses to do, and it takes its time doing them, starting somewhere around gold and working its way through orange and pink until the mountains go flat and black against whatever color is left. I spent a few nights cruising around the desert after dark, chasing the last of the light and pulling over whenever a spot looked good enough to stare at for a while.
No destination and no plan. That’s my favorite kind of driving, the kind where the point isn’t really getting anywhere. After a work trip that had gone up in flames, it was what I needed.
Chasing the last of the light somewhere outside Scottsdale.
I also made the pilgrimage to Fourtillfour in Old Town Scottsdale. Great coffee! Cool vintage cars, and a built in Porsche crowd even during the week. I parked out front next to another 911, which is the car enthusiast version of matching outfits with a stranger.
On the way out of town, I stopped to see a childhood friend who lives just outside Phoenix. We grew up on the same street. Our parents knew each other well too, which meant we spent a lot of time together, which also meant a lot of BMX and fun times on our old neighborhood street.
We caught up. We revisited old memories, and made new ones.
It’s something special to visit with people who knew you before you even really knew who you were. They remember the kid on the BMX bike, long before the job titles, the moves, and the version of yourself you’ve gotten pretty good at presenting to the world. With them there’s nothing to explain and nothing to keep up. You pick up right where you left off, even when where you left off was a long time ago, and for a couple of hours you get to be that kid again. Just older, and with a louder car.
Wholesome is the only word for it.
I left AZ with time with family, an old friend, and a few desert sunsets. That’s a good trade.
Then we had to get home.
The hard half
Leaving Arizona on the 10 was great. The landscape out there is barren in a way that somehow still looks cool. It’s wide open, and everybody goes fast. So, in the spirit of fitting in, I unofficially saw triple digits in the 911 for the first time. Allegedly.
Making great time. Note the clouds. They’re about to become the main character.
We were making great time. Then I saw the clouds.
I don’t know how many miles ahead they were. But they were dark in a way that felt personal. It was around 10 or 11 in the morning, when the day should be getting brighter and warmer, and instead it got dark. Fast. Thunder. Lightning. A touch of anxiety.
For a while, it was actually pretty cool. Writing this now, I can still see and smell the landscape.
Then it set in how hairy things were about to get.
One wiper down
Not long after we drove into the storm, my driver’s side wiper folded back over the side of the windshield. The spline had stripped, and the arm was just flopping around out there, waving at me and completely useless.
The driver’s side, of course. Never the passenger’s.
We pulled off at a gas station. I needed a 13mm socket to get the arm off. I did not have a 13mm socket.
(I now carry the Harbor Freight tool kit that used to live in my E36 M3. It should have been in the 911 for this trip, and it wasn’t. Learn from me.)
The nearest auto parts store was a long way off. Then a guy rolls up with a tool kit.
I asked if I could borrow a 13mm socket. He said, well, if we bill it through AAA, he gets paid, and blah blah blah. I was already suspicious. I was also stuck in the desert in a thunderstorm with one wiper. So I rolled with it.
He wasn’t able to fix anything. He did get the arm off, which was more than I could do. I paid him, and he handed me a slip and said AAA would reimburse me.
Spoiler: they didn’t.
You live, you learn, and sometimes you pay a guy in a parking lot for the lesson.
Somewhere in the California desert. Wet, gray, and fresh out of 13mm sockets.
Code brown
We drove the next few hours on the passenger wiper alone. I spent most of it leaning toward the middle of the car to see through the one clean patch of glass. My eyes have never worked that hard. My Lasik was paying for itself, and my watch was firing off stress alerts like it wanted me to pull over and talk about my feelings.
Somewhere past the California line, heading toward Palm Springs, the freeway bends and drops down toward the valley. Coming around that bend, there was flooding across the road we couldn’t see until we were in it.
In about 1 second, the entire car was covered in sheets of water. We were doing maybe 40 mph, and for a few moments I had no control and no idea where we were going.
I just held on and hoped.
Code brown moment, for sure.
We came out the other side, and I’m still not totally sure how. I seriously thought about calling it right there, finding a hotel, and waiting out the storm. But we kept going, very carefully, straight to a McDonald’s, and then to the nearest O’Reilly.
The mono wiper
At O’Reilly I bought a small socket set. And in the pouring rain, my dad and I invented the mono wiper.
The idea was simple. Pull the passenger wiper off its spline, rotate it over, and seat it back on so its sweep covered just enough of the driver’s side of the windshield. Not all of it. Just enough.
Soaked, slightly unhinged, and very proud of one wiper.
It worked well enough. That one little maneuver bought us enough clarity for the last 6 or so hours home.
I wish I had thought of it sooner. Honestly, it was my dad who kept asking what else we could try the whole way. While I was white-knuckling the steering wheel, he was problem-solving. That’s been the story for most of my life, now that I think about it.
And the 911? It was a champ. Hydroplaning, hours of rain, one wiper, and a driver running on pure adrenaline. It never missed a beat.
Fuel, a stretch, and back out there. Still a long way to go.
We got home late. I don’t think I have ever been that tired after a drive. And I barely needed caffeine. One Red Bull around hour 9, and the adrenaline did the rest.
What the storm taught me
A couple of days later, I wrote some notes on my phone. I’ll leave them mostly as I wrote them:
The trials of the storm. The limited visibility.
The people who offer to “help.”
The ingenuity of a solution.
The white-knuckling, and no need for caffeine because of the adrenaline.
The moment of 0% visibility, simply hoping we came through ok.
The perseverance to push through so you can get home.
The companionship and the shared experience.
The views. The micro moments of reprieve.
And the last one, which I think about the most: almost every road trip after this one is going to feel like a breeze.
I went to Arizona for an event that got cancelled. I came home with a story my dad and I will be telling for the rest of our lives. Some of the best drives you’ll ever have are the ones you’d never sign up for twice.
Also, carry a 13mm socket.