Tucson Vacation, Days 0 and 1: Wednesday, July 2 and Thursday, July 3
This year’s vacation with gomijacogeo was to visit jikme and tsennyipa in Tucson, where I had been in '05 and '06. We flew Southwest into Phoenix (paying extra for Group A seats is a good deal; we were nearly the first on the plane in both directions). Everything went extremely smoothly upon landing, and we were quickly on our way to Tucson. The evening sun was bright and the 100F+ heat oppressive, but the scenery was lovely as usual. The Border Patrol were out in full force--flashing lights by a pulled-over van with its row of handcuffed, dark-skinned people sitting on the ground.
We reached our hosts’ house in time to get to The B Line for dinner, which included an exceptional gazpacho and yummy desserts all round.
The next morning we got up to a breakfast of jikme’s scones, and I learned from her tsennyipa’s method of making French-press coffee palatable--replace the press step with filtering. jikme made her morning shake of ice, banana, spinach (except this morning it was chard), rice protein, and vanilla. gomijacogeo took a liking to them; I prefered the chard version of the shake because even though it was an unfortunate color, the chard was better than the spinach at masking the banana.
gomijacogeo’s first-choice Tucson destination was the Pima Air and Space Museum, which has many many planes, both inside and out in the hot sun. I learned a lot more from his explanations of how different planes worked than I would have had I read through the signage.
In theory, the outside planes are still usable, at least for parts, but nature is already inexorably reclaiming them.
On the way back, we drove through the hilly (more expensive) part of town. (Our hosts have a clever name for this area that I’ve quite forgotten.) We had dinner at Blue Willow, which I’ve enjoyed a couple of times in previous years; we were seated in the courtyard just as a thunderstorm hit. Water quickly collected in the canopy and dumped down the sides of the courtyard, but we were safely ensconced in the middle. I was the only one who had a dessert, which turned out to be truly wonderful chocolate crepes.
We rounded out the evening’s entertainment by going to a brand-new theatre complex to see “Wall-E.” We all had our issues with the lame science (plants surviving the vacuum of space??), but mostly found it a cute movie.
We reached our hosts’ house in time to get to The B Line for dinner, which included an exceptional gazpacho and yummy desserts all round.
The next morning we got up to a breakfast of jikme’s scones, and I learned from her tsennyipa’s method of making French-press coffee palatable--replace the press step with filtering. jikme made her morning shake of ice, banana, spinach (except this morning it was chard), rice protein, and vanilla. gomijacogeo took a liking to them; I prefered the chard version of the shake because even though it was an unfortunate color, the chard was better than the spinach at masking the banana.
gomijacogeo’s first-choice Tucson destination was the Pima Air and Space Museum, which has many many planes, both inside and out in the hot sun. I learned a lot more from his explanations of how different planes worked than I would have had I read through the signage.
In theory, the outside planes are still usable, at least for parts, but nature is already inexorably reclaiming them.
On the way back, we drove through the hilly (more expensive) part of town. (Our hosts have a clever name for this area that I’ve quite forgotten.) We had dinner at Blue Willow, which I’ve enjoyed a couple of times in previous years; we were seated in the courtyard just as a thunderstorm hit. Water quickly collected in the canopy and dumped down the sides of the courtyard, but we were safely ensconced in the middle. I was the only one who had a dessert, which turned out to be truly wonderful chocolate crepes.
We rounded out the evening’s entertainment by going to a brand-new theatre complex to see “Wall-E.” We all had our issues with the lame science (plants surviving the vacuum of space??), but mostly found it a cute movie.