Under the Tucson Sun

Had a busy last few days. Monday morning, I found someone had listed a bike for $35 in the student classifieds. I can afford to have that stolen once a semester. I called the guy up and walked over to take a look. It's a women's Fuji mountan bike, with grip shifters. The back tire was shot, but it was in working condition and the guy threw in a shackle U lock, aparently the only things which foil theives. I biked to a local bike shop and pickd up a stock tire. I've got the whole rear wheel disassembled, and I still need to pick up an inner tube for it, after I accidently punctured the existing one trying to get the tire on.

Anyway, I found out that school starts for the Tucson people at Uof Arizona this wednesday, so I left Tempe around 2 PM. It's a pretty quick drive, and I drove straight through to the San Xavier mission as Cassie works until 10 PM at night. San Xavier is the best maintained Franciscan mission in the Southwest. I got there around four, just as the light was begining to get really nice with the sun going down, and I hung around there for awhile, sketching, taking pictures, reading, and grabbing some indian fry bread from a sole vendor under a cactus spine veranda. The smoke you can see in the one picture comes from the woman extinguishing the cooking fire.

After sunset, I drove back into town and spent a few hours at Bookmans before finding some dinner and driving out to Cassie's apartment. We spent a few hours talking and hanging out with Kevin, Cassie's boyfriend and a friend of mine from school.

This morning, we went to IHOP for a late breakfast. After I left Cassie's I went to the Pima Air and Space Museum. This is a really cool air and space museum, the biggest I've ever seen, and reportedly the biggest privately funded collection in the world. Walking around amid all the planes out there in the dirt is very surreal, almost out of a movie. Most of the tourists there chose to pay five and take the tram which drives you around the place. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of these tourists looked like they flew these planes at one time, or were married to someone who had.

A few highlights: an SR-71 blackbird WITH an accomapning drone, which looks like one blackbird engine with its own swept wings, the "Superguppy" transport used by NASA to carry rocket componants, a few Air Force One planes including one used by Kennedy and the one the Tehran captives were returned in, an Iraqi fighter jet, and the ceremonial swords the Japanese handed over during the signing of the surrender on the USS Missouri. I ended my visit with a ride on the motion simulator which simulated flying a bunch of old planes. Major cheese-fest, but still kind of corny fun. Drove back and stopped off at Dairy Queen halfway between Tucson and Phoenix. School starts in a week.