Lots of books, a great MSU victory and a memorial service for a friend

Festival of Books

During our stay here last year we missed attending the Tucson Festival of Books at the University of Arizona campus. The event is a major weekend of hundreds of authors and book peddlers and other vendors.

 I can’t remember why we didn’t attend last year, but we were determined to make the festival at least for one day.

As it turned out Saturday was the day. It is a daunting thing to do as it turns out. With literally hundreds of authors on hand, some well known – former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Scott Turow – and many lesser known authors.

Lily Koppel - Author of "The Astronaut Wives Club"

Finding a parking place was the first order of business and it wasn’t too easy either. All of the major parking garages at the University were already full when we arrived at 11 a.m. We found a satellite lot about three city blocks from the event with a few empty spots and we walked.

We later learned that the festival draws about 60,000 visitors each of its two days. The key speakers – like O-Connor and Turow – are scheduled for the ballroom and you have to stand in long lines just to get a chance at getting in to hear them.

Joan with the Arizona "Wildcat"

About 11:30 a.m. we stumbled on a large tent, which belonged to the Arizona Daily Star newspaper, and they were advertising author Lily Koppel (pronounced Cop – pell) who has written a non-fiction book on the astronaut’s wives – titled appropriately enough “The Astronaut Wives Club.”

We were fascinated with her speech and purchased a book for the coming Family Literacy Center auction and then waited in a line to have the author autograph it. She has also written another non-fiction work – “The Red Leather Diary” – which we also purchased and had autographed for the auction.

We spent another couple hours roaming the grounds and visiting vendors, including the local charity – “Literacy Connects” – which is a much larger, but similar organization to The Family Literacy Center of Lapeer, an organization near and dear to my heart.

Literacy Connects booth

Next year, we will plan out our visiting strategy even more carefully to make sure we see a couple of the main stage acts but this is clearly Nirvana for folks who love to read books. We also picked up a couple children’s books for our younger grandchildren.

Saturday night we attended yet another dance in the ballroom at the resort and had a fun time with new friends Jerry and Marcia who are also Michigan residents. There are plans for us to get together for an evening of fun outside one of our RVs.

The books we purchased

Sunday was church and then we spent the afternoon watching Michigan State dismantle the Michigan Wolverines in basketball. Now I have to admit basketball is probably fourth out of four of my favorite sports, but I do pay attention when State plays Michigan or during the tournament. I don’t watch all the games, but I do pay attention.

It probably should be noted that this is the third time we have met Michigan this year and only the first time we have beaten them. I suppose there is a chance we will run into them again along the way in the tournament.

The game did provided an interesting and funny moment between Joan and I. With just a couple minutes left in the game and Michigan State up by more than a dozen points Joan mentioned that “it looks like the fat lady may not be singing, but she is picking her nose.”

The Julian Wash hike/bike path

Joan insisted that she said “but she is picking her notes.” Could be even with my new hearing aids that I am not hearing as well as I used to. We had a good laugh anyway.

After the game we picked up Walt, a man I know from my Bible Study, who lost his wife last June. We had been praying for Walt and Norma last year after it was discovered she had cancer. Walt is a former chemist with 3M and is just a very humble and nice man.

Earlier this year he loaned me the ladder that I used to get on top of my trailer to clean and maintain it.

He and Norma were married 51 years and her death has been hard on him. We decided a couple weeks ago to take him to dinner and tonight was that night. We went to the local Texas Roadhouse and had a wonderful time.

Wildflowers in bloom

Now I need to clear up something from my last post. A couple of folks have pointed out that I teased a story about my flat tires and then went on to not write about the problem in the post. I suppose I could say that I did that on purpose to see if your were paying attention, but that’s just not the case.

A couple weeks ago, I think it was on the Empire Ranch hike, we took an unimproved road back to the trailhead. The road was paved with rocks and some of them had sharp edges and I believe I put a small slice in my driver’s side rear tire during that drive.

The tire developed a slow leak and when I took it to the local Goodyear dealer they showed me that the horizontal nature of the puncture defied repair. With 76,000 miles on the tire it was time to replace it. About $180 later (these are very large SUV tires) I was back on the road.

University of Arizona solar array

Less than a week later, while Joan was enjoying a day at the casino I went off to buy some new cargo shorts and use the Internet at Starbucks.  One the way back to pick up Joan I heard a clicking sound from the right rear driver’s side tire.

Of course, I stopped and found that I had picked up a small steel rod that was firmly embedded in my brand new tire between the treads. So I quickly called Joan to see if she was OK staying at the casino longer (stupid question, I know) while I drove across town to the Goodyear dealer for repairs. The tire was holding air and I knew better than to pull out the steel rod.

The Goodyear dealer was able to repair the tire quickly and because I purchased the Road Hazard protection the repair was free. I was just annoyed that the puncture had to happen to my brand new tire.

That’s the story of the two flats that I forgot to spell out in my last post.

Some of the hike scenery

I should also mention that the music at the Voyager Chapel was excellent on Sunday. We had a wonderful string quartet – The Palladio String Quartet – and they really provided some inspiring music.

Monday brought another hike, which was a flat and easy section of the Julian Wash that I had not done previously. This section is actually much better than the previous section of the JW hike that I did earlier.

Only the hike leader – Brad – and I showed up for the hike so it went quickly and the weather was beautiful. Part of the hike passes an array of large solar panels owned and operated by the University of Arizona as part of a solar power test project.

Addisen's Flat Stanley buckled up

The power from the panels take care of the power needs of the nearby UA Technical Park. The desert wildflowers were in extreme bloom.

After cleaning up from the hike I decided to throw a Hail Mary on the Internet Hot Spot device that we purchased for the trailer back in January. My efforts to get this resolved through the company via telephone having failed I took the device back to the Walmart where we originally purchased it Monday afternoon.

Not expecting much, we were nearly three weeks late on the promised 15-day return period, the manager was very responsive and made the exchange for a new hot spot with no quarrel or hesitation.

After arriving home I set it up again and we are back online in the trailer with many thanks to Walmart for making an exception for us on the return period. I showed them my documentation with the company and they promised to send that back with the device for me.

A better photo of Grandma's outfit for Flat Stanley

In the mail Monday was our first “visitor” of the year. Our granddaughter Addisen sent us a little person – Flat Stanley – who came to us in the form of a thin white cardboard cutout of a young boy. He will be coming with us for a week and then we will send him home with photos of all his adventures here in Arizona.

This apparently is part of a school project for students in Addisen’s class to learn about other places.

We took Flat Stanley for a little ride and of course for his safety he was buckled into the Tahoe.

Usually on Tuesday I go on a more challenging hike, but a friend from Bible Study – Neil – died in the park on March 3 and his memorial service was scheduled for 11 a.m. that made the hike impossible.

Someone told us Hispanic was a slur - someone needs to tell them

Neil, who was born in 1931, lost his right arm after a compound fracture and infection set in during 1942. The Brooklyn, NY native credited his mother with giving him a strong will to overcome what some would see as a handicap.

There were many (and I do mean many) times that his arm came up during discussions at Bible Study. He always said his mother told him that he could not use the loss of his arm as an excuse and he accomplished a great deal in his life. He was a college economics professor and at age 67 learned to fly.

Every year he flew his airplane back and forth to Tucson from Brooklyn, NY and he made many friends in the park. He did have a bad heart and apparently had a problem during a February cruise through the Panama Canal. When he arrived back at the resort he struggled, but died shortly after returning.

We met Mr. Schoonover at the resort

The service was very nice and we got to know many of his friends.

Joan and I went shopping on Tuesday afternoon and then went to Tuesday potluck in the ballroom. Joan made a delicious strawberry, cool whip and angel food cake dessert. It was very popular.