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.