Author: Rudy

Sunday: We got up at around 7am. Alex got up soon after we had the coffee going. Tim got up a bit later. Tim had not really slept well, although he said it was NOT because it was too hot. Windows open, ceiling fans going, trying to keep it cool in here without the air conditioner.

After breakfast Sue and Alex went for a walk to the pool. Then at around 10:30 we went for a drive around Gold Canyon and then on down to the Mesa Swap Market. We walked around it once. Tim and Alex bought a wall hanging for their dining room which we’ll take home for them in the van.

We went home and had lunch at around 12:30. Then the boys sat down in front of the TV and watched golf (and Rudy had a nap). The girls sat outside and read. I woke up just in time to watch Tiger Woods win his first tournament in almost 3 years. I called the golf course and got a 4:15 tee time. Alex decided to go for a nap and not join us on the golf course. Sue opted out too. So Tim and I went by ourselves. We hit a bucket of balls on the range first. Tim was hitting the ball a mile.

At 4:15 we teed off on hole 1. It was slow going — the foursome ahead of us was very slow. But the temperature was not so hot, the wind was not at all, and the sun was behind the clouds — a perfect day for golf. And although we started off a bit rough, we made great progress and improved hole by hole. And we had a good time.

We got home at 7pm. Late. The girls were hungry. We had happy hour. Then I went out to light the barbecue. Out of propane! So we went to refill the tank. Salmon for supper. Very good. We sat in the living room and listened to iTunes and waited for dessert. At 10:30 Sue served us angel food cake with whipped cream and strawberries. Tim and I had G&Ts for a nightcap. We visited until nearly 11:30 before we all went to bed. I left the windows open so we’ll get a cooling breeze in the house tonight.

Saturday: Bacon and eggs. Cycled to Walgreen’s to return the DVD. Vacuumed the house and cleaned up. Watched some golf on TV. Called the golf course and got a 3:45 tee time. We went golfing. We both played poorly (but still had fun). No one to pressure us. In fact, as we finished the ninth hole we watched as a wedding party was taking pictures on the driving range. Came home, showered, had leftover pizza for supper.

Went to Santan Village to stock up on wine and beer. Got a birthday card at Walmart. Went to Barnes & Noble to buy a book and some chocolates for Robert Dyck’s 60th birthday (Monday). Then we hurried to the airport to pick up our kids. They were just coming off the plane as Sue went in to meet them. We also met Larry and Lynn Petkau at the airport (going to Sedona for a week). We took the kids home and had a sandwich. Very excited. Them and us. Great to see them. Got some nice gifts from them, including golf shirts, golf balls, and a very interesting (Dr Seuss) card from them. All is right in the world! They were tired although they stayed up till 11 our time before we all went to bed.

Friday: Another hot day in Arizona. We got up early, had a couple of great cups of coffee. Then we added toast (breakfast). Read a bit. Did some computer work for Smitty’s. Went for a hike up Silly Mountain. Got back at 11. A bit more computing, lunch, more reading. Alex skyped — she’s home from school, ready to fly here tomorrow from Grand Forks. Spring Break. Tim is home too. Excited.

We went golfing at 4:10. Great afternoon. No one behind us. Slow pokes ahead of us. I bogied hole #1 and birdied (with a long chip shot) hole #2. And continued with mostly bogies for a few more holes. All good things come to an end. A couple of 8’s. Final score 49 on nine holes, Sue a 47. Fun times. Warm. Gorgeous sunset. Great course.

Stopped at Basha’s on the way home and picked up a large pizza and some additives. Sue add italian sausage and a bit of mozza cheese and we called it a pretty good pizza. After supper we watched ‘Chef Ramsay’ solve another ‘Kitchen Nightmare’.  The we watched our Redbox DVD, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”.

Thursday: We read a bit and I computed. Had a call from Dave Driedger (John Prine tickets?) and Chris Koop (part-time work?). Just after 10 we headed to the Mesa Fruit Market. Sue bought $46 worth of fruit and vegetables — a record! Then we headed to the dentist’s office for our 11:00 appointments.

As usual, Sue’s teeth were great — the $29 special for x-rays, exam, and cleaning were just right for her. My mouth required a ‘level 2’ cleaning — $120 extra! And it took a whole hour. In fact, we got home at 2:00pm. A late lunch.

I worked hard on a logo job for Tim — only finished it at 4:30. Sue was busy cooking for tonight’s guests. At 4:30 I went to the driving range and continued making progress on my drives. Good times.

Our guests, Ed and Val and Bev and Lyle, arrived at our house for a BBQ at around 6:50. Sue made rice, roasted vegetables, and angel food cake for dessert (with whipped cream and strawberries). Val is brought a salad. I barbecued the chicken. We had a nice evening, eating and visiting. Ed and Lyle and Bev had golfed at Mountain Brook today after taking lessons from the old pro, Jack Kramer. Our guests were tired and left at 10:30. We watched a bit of TV and then went to bed too.

Wednesday: Read all morning. I washed Sue’s golf balls after lunch. Then I discovered I had a flat rear tire on my bike. Sue was already all dressed and ready to go — but now I needed to patch the tire first. So Sue went grocery shopping while I cycled to Walgreen’s and back to rent a DVD for tonight.

At four o’clock we went golfing again. We both shot a lot of bad shots, but the day was great as usual. We let others play through so that we could be the last ones on the course. By holes 8 and 9 we had corrected many of our issues and were playing better again.

We barbecued cheeseburgers for supper. Yummy. Then we watched a bit of TV (Kitchen Nightmare shows) before our movie. The movie was quite funny — a bit like a Woody Allen story. “Carnage” was directed by Roman Polanski and starred Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet. We were zonked and went to bed early.

Tuesday: After a quick breakfast we hit the road to Tucson. The day was a bit nicer than the weekend weather had been, but it was still quite cool.

Our first stop was at the Pima Air & Space Museum. We thought we were too late for the 10:30 tour, but we quickly bought tickets to 2 tours that fit our schedule. In fact, one tour was going to run right up to the next, so we decided we better get something to eat before our first tour left. We ordered a hot dog and fries and coffee from the museum restaurant. While we waited for our food the tram outside the restaurant window was filling up quickly. Then it left! We were still waiting for our food. Quick check with the ticket taker and we were reassured that another tram was coming. We actually gobbled up the hot dog and took the fries and coffee with us on the tram.

It was an open tram, and we were a little under-dressed for the cold wind. Our tour guide was a retired pilot, 15 years in the air force followed by a career as a commercial pilot. He was extremely knowledgeable about all the different aircraft we looked at as we circled the big outdoor yard at the museum. I think he knew everything about every type of aircraft on display — and he clearly loved to drive around and tell us about them. He was an excellent guide. He was also a war movie buff and identified many of the planes as the one that Jimmy Stewart flew in such-and-such movie. In fact, at one aircraft he stopped and told us that he himself had been a pilot of a plane like that in Vietnam and had been part of the rescue mission for a downed American pilot caught in the cross-fire in a river. The story was made into a movie, “Bat 21”, starring Gene Hackman. When we got home I looked up the movie and actually downloaded it so we can watch it sometime.

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After our tour we were invited to visit the various hangars and buildings in which many more aircraft were on display. We were cold. We opted to sit in the warm restaurant and have another coffee before going on our next tour.

Our second tour was the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARG), also known as the “Boneyard.” The facility is located adjacent to the Museum at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The bus drove us around the 26 acres of neatly parked planes. Our tour guide was once again a retired pilot — this one had served in the Air Force for 30 years. Like the first guide, he was knowledgeable and seemed to genuinely enjoy what he was doing. It seemed that all the docents at the museum put in lots of volunteer time, many coming from other parts of the US to Arizona for the winter in order to spend time at the museum. The guide’s talk was accompanied by a soundtrack of clicking cameras. All around us were people with big cameras and huge lenses, and they were snapping hundreds of photos at each pause along the route. I’m not sure how they will cull and catalog their photos! We actually never got off the bus, so all of the photos here were through the windows of the bus. But we were happy to be sitting in the warm bus, sheltered from the cold wind.

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After the AMARG tour we got back into our van and headed to the Saguaro National Park. The park actually has two parks, one on either side of the city of Tucson. We went to the East park because it wasn’t far from the museum and we were told it had a loop drive that we could do. It was already 3 or 4 in the afternoon and we were running out of time.

The Eastern Rincon Mountain District rises to over 8,000 feet and includes over 128 miles of trails. We followed the Cactus Forest Drive, a one-way 9-mile drive just south of the Santa Catalina Mountains. We parked our van and went for a 2-mile hike along some of the marked trails. We expected to see a forest of saguaros. While the desert vegetation was very beautiful, we both agreed that we see more saguaros along the Hieroglyphic trail in Gold Canyon!

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On our drive back home we stopped in Catalina to refuel the van — gas was $3.68/gallon as compared to $4.00 in Phoenix. We got home just as the sun was setting. Stopped for a couple of photos of our own Superstition Mountain with the sun setting behind us. Sue warmed up leftovers and we sat in the living room and watched various reruns on TV. All that adventure tuckered us out and we were off to bed before midnight.

Monday: The rain is done. Superstition has a layer of white at the top. It’s still pretty cool for Arizona. Too cold to drive to Tucson and tour fields of airplanes and cacti. So it will be an ‘at-home’ day. We read for most of the day. By late afternoon the sun was out and the snow was mostly melted off the top of the mountain. We put on long pants and sweaters and went for a walk around the neighbourhood. Sue made chicken enchiladas for supper. We watched a couple of my downloaded movies — “Summer of Love” and the documentary “The Thin Blue Line”, both good shows. Sue skyped with her Winnipeg book club girls for a bit. We watched the Lang and O’Leary Report on CBC and then Letterman — and then off (back?) to bed.

Sunday: The start of a cold and wet few days here in Gold Canyon. Woke up at 7 and watched our Sunday morning news shows. Sue made pancakes (with fruit) for breakfast. We read for a couple of hours and waited for lunch time to arrive. It was raining quite hard for quite a long time. I saw a couple of brightly colored cardinals in the tree outside the window. That was before the hard rain began. And then it hailed!

Thunder, lightning, pouring rain, snow, sleet, hail. YUCK! We watched golf in the afternoon. It continued to rain. We read.
We went for a little ride before heading to the Peters’ place for supper. The rain had stopped and the sun was peaking through the clouds, lighting up Superstition Mountain. It looked great!

Lyle was busy in the kitchen when we arrived at the Peters’. Indian food. Three delicious dishes. Lots of food. A very fine meal. After dinner we sat in the living room and visited until around 9:30. We got home and looked online to see if a visit to Tucson would work for tomorrow. Might be too cold and rainy. Watched a bit of TV and went to bed.

Saturday, St Patrick’s Day: Bacon and eggs for breakfast. Skyped with Alex. Read all morning. Watched some golf on TV in the afternoon. Ed Peters called to invite me to go golfing Sidewinder with him and Lyle — I declined. We’ll get together tomorrow.

It was windy and a bit cooler today. Forecast for the next few days is rain and cold. (At home in Steinbach it hit 19 degrees!) So at around 3:30 we called Mountain Brook Golf Course and got an immediate tee time. Sue and I walked the front nine, shooting pretty good. When we were done we re-did holes 1, 2 and 9. Still not dark at 6:30. We headed to the Firehouse Bar for a Guinness to celebrate St. Patty’s Day.

Had leftovers for supper. It was 8 o’clock by the time we sat down to watch one of my downloaded movies. We watched Ikiru, A 1952 Japanese film. Subtitles. Black and white. Not bad, not great. We were tired and went to bed soon after that.

Friday: Because it was supposed to be another hot day, we went for our morning hike early today. Actually, I got up early today — 6:00am. So I had time to finish reading my Louis Zamperini (Unbroken) book. Then we went for a hike up Silly Mountain. In the afternoon Sue read, I talked to Koop on the phone for a bit. At 4:30 we went to pick up our next DVD at Walgreens and then headed to the golf course. We golfed the back nine today — Sue thought it was great. I played poorly, lost too many balls, had way too many terrible shots. But the scenery was great. We were done at around 6:30. Stopped by at Bashas on the way home — Sue picked up a few groceries and some cheese for tonight’s ‘cheeseburger’ pizza; I picked up some Guinness. Sampled a few of the beers with my pizza. Then we watched two episodes of Kitchen Nightmares and one episode of 20/20. By the time that was done (10pm) I was nodding off in my chair. Went to bed. It’s supposed to be windy tomorrow, then cold and rainy on Sunday and Monday. Not quite the weather we’ve sort of come to expect here.