Surrounded by Action

On St. Patrick's day we got going early, to get downtown and find parking close to the St. Patrick's day parade. It was an interesting parade, and everybody was dressed up for the day in green. One strange thing was seeing all the local visible minorities dressed up in their finest Irish duds!

Marlene and I were accosted by a slightly drunk participant in the parade. You can see her in the picture above (in pink) just before she rushed up and hugged us.

On one of the passing floats they were handing out beads, but they were all drinking beer. A guy threw me some beads, and I yelled out that I'd prefer a beer. Before you know it a young lady has jumped from the float and ran back to me with a nice cold beer! Only in Tucson.

Enjoyed the Shriners in their little cars and trucks, and all the restored old service vehicles (police and fire vehicles). Check out all the pics above. You'll even find one of me in my St. Patties gear. I really like the old Metro milk truck.

Weather turned bad, and we had rain for 2 days, then cold. People were freaking out because the temp was dropping to near freezing. In some parts of the Tucson area there was snow, which many people told the various TV news shows they had never seen before. We had hail here on the East side of Tucson, and frost in the morning.

Thanks to the very heavy rain we found several leaks around the windshield, that's the one we replaced last summer! I'll be talking to the installers when I get back to Alberta.

We continue our shopping, stocking up on deals. This weekend there has been lots of activity around here. There's been a rabbit show, and a Dirty Kiss run, where girls and women race through a muddy obstacle course, to raise money for some charities. There's some pics above.

And last night Nitro Jam started over on the dragstrip. We couldn't see anything from here, but we could sure hear the racing. Unfortunately they were plagued with cars breaking on the track and leaving oil on the surface, requiring 45 minutes of track cleaning every hour. We could hear the pauses in action. The main event of all the nitro cars as well as the jets and wheelstanders began very late, and then they too had problems on the track and caused huge delays in the action. They finally finished racing just before 2 a.m.

Tomorrow we must leave here, because they are setting up for next month's huge fair. We'll stop in Phoenix for a day or two, and then on to Laughlin, NV. We'll really miss Tucson, it feels like home to us.

We do some needed maintenance

Over the past week or so we've performed some maintenance on our rig. First, I had to change a tire on the trailer. The right side tires are wearing on the outside, one of them too far to use anymore. I found the wheel bearings were all improperly adjusted, and I hope that solves the wear problem, because the only other reason would be out of line frame or bent axle. With only 6000 miles on the trailer the tires should not be worn out.

For the last 100 miles or so on the motor home we had smelled the sweet smell of antifreeze, and found the coolant reservoir was fractured and leaking under pressure. $160 for a new reservoir at the Ford dealer, and the parts man was surprised to find they had the right one in stock. An awful price to pay for a plastic jug! Replacing it should have been an easy job, but it was installed with three tiny headed bolts that over the years had rusted solid. Despite heavy application of WD40, the bolts broke, and I had to drill them out and replace them. I used full sized bolts.

Our generator had developed a leak in the muffler, and I attempted to weld it but found the whole muffler was rotten with rust. I had to cut the old stuff off, and used the rest of my WD40 on the manifold bolts to get it apart. The local generator shop where I'd bought parts before had everything needed in stock for another $125, then we went to an auto repair shop and got a length of 1 1/2" pipe for the tailpipe for $12. After a lot of dirt in my eyes, and cursing and grumbling, I got the new exhaust system installed.

Today I had to remove the motor home dog house engine cover (between the seats) and re-attach the sound insulation which had fallen off. Always something.

In the pics above you can see me with the just-removed reservoir and the newly installed one too, as well as me with the old generator exhaust.

We went to the drag races next door here last weekend, but we were disappointed to see few fans there to watch the sportsman racing. On March 23 and 24 the IHRA Nitro Jam show comes to Tucson, and Marlene offered to stay on here for the extra day or two so I could go and enjoy the craziest vehicles to run on the dragstrip, but the idea of watching the jet cars run just made me sad.

We`ve been doing some shopping, stocking up on things that are cheaper here, like shoes, lingerie, etc. We ordered a new electric wok from Amazon to replace our defunct 25 year old one, as well as some filters for our vacuum cleaner that we could not find locally.

Today a big RV show started here on the grounds, and we went for a first look around. We were not really impressed by the new coaches or trailers. It seems that construction materials and methods have not improved in the past ten years. The best rigs (over $200,000) seem to have better materials and finishing, but still are poorly designed and executed. The build quality of the coach bodies is poor even when compared to the cheapest of new cars. Lucky the chassis builders take their work more seriously.

After being accosted by several hungry salesmen looking to find the best trade-up for us, we still did not see anything that caught our fancy, but we did enjoy the free hot dogs! We might go look again tomorrow... I hear they`re making burgers!

We see the strangest things sometimes in RV parks, but the guy living in his boat while towing it around on the trailer was pretty strange. See pic above.

Marlene had an eye exam at the optometrist ($39), after which we went to the Sher-e Punjab restaurant where we enjoyed a nice lunch buffet of curried beef, curried chicken, tandoori chicken, curried eggplant and potato, naan bread, salads, samosas,basmati rice, and several vegetable dishes, as well as rice pudding, fruits, and little deep fried dough balls in a sweet sauce. Very tasty at $9 a person.

Back in Tucson - Feels Like Home

We left Fort Stockton after a good night, and started the climb into the hills. Suddenly we were caught by a severe crosswind (later reported to have been 55-60 mph). We fought that wind all the way to Las Cruces, New Mexico. I had to keep a quarter turn of left steering just to stay on the road. The gusts were enormous, tossing us about like a ship at sea. We made it to the Walmart in Las Cruces, and snagged a good spot, put out our hydraulic levelers, and sat amazed as the wind continued to rock us, even here sitting still!

The wind died down overnight, and we set out on the final leg to Tucson. We arrived here with no incidents, thankfully the winds were more manageable, and set up camp at the Desert Diamond Casino, a nice place we've visited before. On Thursday we went to check out a few RV parks, and were not impressed. They seem to make the spaces as small as possible, to jam you in like sardines in a can, then charge you $600+ electrical for the privilege. We finally settled on a place we sleuthed out online, the RV park at the Pima County Fairground property. This is a no-frills place that offers the same size sites as all the others, but charges only $100 a week including everything. After deciding to move to the park we'd chosen, we celebrated by enjoying a nice Italian buffet lunch in the casino, for just $7.49 each.

Friday morning we moved to our site at the fairgrounds, and found that this weekend there would be a gun show here, as well as ongoing horse shows. By staying here we save on parking charges if we want to go to an event. It was very peaceful here Friday night, but next weekend there is drag racing at the track on the property so it might be noisy then.

Saturday morning we visited the swap meet, and bought some very reasonably priced veggies and a new bed cover set (an anniversary gift to ourselves). Check out the picture above to see what $9 buys you in vegetables here. From the swap meet we went to Safeway and picked out two nice rib-eye steaks and some asparagus to go with the multi-colored baby potatoes and the portabella mushrooms we got at the dollar store. Topped that off with some mussels in garlic butter sauce, and we had the makings of a nice anniversary dinner.

After our shopping expedition, I went to the gun show, while Marlene stayed home with Ben. I'd never seen anything like it... a big flea market full of every kind of gun, and every kind of gun accessory. In addition to guns, there were purveyors of knives, ammo, leather goods (holsters), militaria, antique arms, books, pepper sprays, knuckle dusters, combat batons, stun guns, etc.

There was a mix of dealers (who fill in paperwork for each sale) and private sellers, where no paperwork is required. One enterprising fellow was selling a LAWS rocket and launcher, just in case a tank gets loose in the neighbourhood and needs to be destroyed. There were quite a few fathers shopping for a first gun for their kids, and one old lady in her eighties trying to decide between several revolvers, each of which had to be test fitted in her purse. I bought a neat switchblade knife for $5. The scene was amazing to me, a citizen of gun-hating Canada. Sorry, the pictures above don't do it justice.

Saturday night we feasted on our steak dinner, and it was fabulous. Never had those purple potatoes before, and we were surprised how different they are. Well sated, we retired to bed and had a peaceful evening. Stay tuned...