Traffic Accidents and Walking Places

Last Tuesday we were on the way to Jim's doctor when we were rear ended.  We were on AZ86, which is a high speed road that frequently slows drastically for no apparent reason.  The guy behind us was not paying attention and hit us when traffic tightened up.  He got us in the hitch receiver which is welded to the frame of the truck.  His car, an Audi, was leaking fluids and could not be driven after the accident.  He does have insurance, so that was good.  It has made me reconsider the idea of a second car, a small car so it will fit in the garage.  People in Tucson drive like maniacs.  They run lights, tail gate, change lanes frequently and often without looking.  Things would have been worse if we we in a uni-body vehicle.  We don't know what level of damage the receiver, bumper and frame have sustained and won't until it's put on a rack and measured by a collision center.  So that was Tuesday.

Tuesday and Wednesday it was really cold at night so we covered all of the plants.  None of them look any worse than they did, so I'm declaring success in this endeavor.  We now have a giant box of sheets that are just for the plants.

Wednesday we took one of Jim's bikes in for maintenance.  It was in storage for ten years and it's having some issues shifting.  So, it was off to the bike doctor.  On the way there, we saw this.  It's pretty close to where we were hit, but in the opposite direction.

Since it was cold (a relative term) we decided to walk through the UofA campus for something to do.  It's a beautiful campus.  This is a cactus garden in front of the Arizona Museum.  I really like the ones that look like artichokes.

Palm trees along the main entrance road.

This is a crested cactus in front of Old Main.  It has gotten really wavy as well as cresty.

Today we walked from the Sarasota Trailhead.  We were going to do one end of the John Krein trail, but got distracted by wondering where another trail went.  So we went that way, and discovered that it also will take a person near the intersection of Sarasota and David Yetman, which is close to the turn for John Krein.  There are a lot of unmarked, unnamed trails out there.  A person has to start at one end and see where it comes out to know anything about it.  Part of the difficulty of navigating is that so much of it looks like this.

Since we had ridden the mountain bikes up to this point previously, we knew that this wide part of the trail ran down to Tucson Estates Parkway, where it is marked with this.

None of the neighborhood hikers know anything about this headstone, or why it's there.  It was a nice day and it was a good walk in the hills.

Well, it was just announced that the president is willing to open the government for three weeks.  After that, who knows what he'll do.  One wonders if perhaps this is due to the flack he's receiving from things his administration is on record as saying this past week.  Kevin Hassett, a White House economic advisor, felt that furloughed employees were "better off" because they were getting time off without having to use vacation days.  Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, wondered why federal employees just didn't take out loans to carry them through the shutdown.  Then there was my personal favorite, when the president went off on an interesting line of thought of how federal workers are "known by the people in the stores" and that the people in the stores would "work along" with the federal employees.   Was he trying to say that the grocery stores would let them run a tab?  Was he thinking about the corner bodega or what?  Imagine, if you will, an air traffic controller living in the DC Metro area approaching the manager of a Safeway and asking for credit.  The president is clearly not totally in touch with how things are in the real world.  This shut down has been so bad for so many people.  The contractors, who don't receive back pay, will never be made whole.

Here is an uplifting photo of my favorite church in Tucson.  It reminds me of Greece with the white against the blue sky.