It's (Wart) Hog Heaven here in Tucson

It’s been a quiet couple days here in the park. On Sunday, we started the day with church, which is always a good thing and then we decided to head to a movie because the temperature was cool and the winds were howling.

Our big adventure today - Staples

Since last Wednesday there has been a major golf tournament going on here, but the weather has been less than friendly to the golfers. As it is turning out this week would have been much better for a golf tournament.

Anyway, we headed to a nearby movie theater with winds blowing at nearly 50 mph at times on Sunday afternoon. With temperatures in the 40s it seemed much, much colder.

A lot of other people had a similar idea but we were able to get tickets for the 2:45 p.m. showing of “Zero Dark Thirty” which was a really, really good movie. As Joan pointed out to me later this is the first year that we have seen almost all of the Academy Award nominated movies. (Les Miserables, Argo, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty).  By the way, I accurately predicted that Argo would win. OK, that’s not such a big deal since a lot of experts predicted precisely the same thing.

Once back home we had “tube steaks” (hot dogs) for dinner and we settled in for a quiet evening at home. We watched several episodes of our new favorite show – “Duck Dynasty” – but tuned in for the last half hour of the Academy Awards to see who won the big awards.

On Monday I was up early and did 50 minutes on the treadmill and 20 minutes on the elliptical at the fitness center. I worked out with weights and then headed back to the trailer to clean up.

Joan spent her early morning at her Aquasize class and then we watched a little of the ongoing Jodi Arias’ trial that is going on in Phoenix.


The Met Life blimp

In the afternoon we headed to a nearby Staples where we did some copying for our income tax and bought a couple mailing envelopes.

I was thinking of my Dad this afternoon as A-10 after A-10 (affectionately known to pilots as a Wart Hog) was taking off from the nearby Air Force base. I mentioned something to Joan about it being a great day to be flying a jet around southern Arizona.

“Like Hog Heaven,” she said. It was a great pun.

Currently at the Tucson International Airport a World War II B-29 – FiFi – is on display. I was going to try and make a visit today, but ran out of time. Maybe Wednesday.

On the way back from Staples we say the Met Life blimp flying around the air force base. The blimp was in town for the golf tournament but I believed it was grounded due to yesterday’s high winds. Not sure what it was doing flying in A-10 Wart Hog air space, but it wasn’t shot down so I guess it was OK.

In addition to the constant flights of the A-10s (there is one operation squadron and two training squadrons of A-10s here) there are frequent flights of C-130s in and out of the air base.

Tomorrow, I head up to really high ground (5,000-feet plus) for my next 6-mile hike.