The Previous Week in Tucson

The past week has been delightful climatologically speaking.  A big fat high pressure system established itself over the area and it was truly wonderful.  There has been much biking and hiking.  The jet boats are back at Christopher Columbus park.  It's amazing how fast they are.  Originally they were constructed with weed eater engines.

Jamie and I rode the trail up to the Rillito and then back Mountain today.  When we got to the Speedway underpass, it was roped off with crime scene tape.  There was a large police presence.

They were walking back and forth and looking into the wash.  We have no data on what happened.

Later we stopped at Starbucks for a nosh.  It was just so pleasant to be here in February.

Unfortunately,  the high will be moving off late tomorrow, followed by a "wind event" on Thursday.  After that, there will be another cut off low meandering over the south west, bringing rain. However, we're not in Boston, so it's all good.

In other news, the bicycle thefts in the park continue.  To date 40 bikes have been taken.  Our friend George lost the bike his kids gave him for Christmas, they cut two Kryptonite cables to do it.  We bought a motion detector bike alarm that is very loud.  Unfortunately, it occasionally fires off at random.  Friday we're going to reset the sensitivity level.  One of our friends has one, and has given all of the neighbors the code to turn it off if it becomes too annoying.  We've added a heavy duty hexagonal chain to our current security mash up.  We're up to 5 keys to free the bikes.  Fortunately there is not that much mountain biking around here, so we're just staying on the road bikes.

Remember Bertha?  She's the world's largest tunneling machine, who is currently broken and stuck in the dirt in Seattle.  A rescue pit has been dug to get to her, but the de-watering necessary to keep the pit from filling up is causing Seattle to sink a little.  Here is today's project update.

The Seattle Times reports that if the world's largest tunnel boring machine can't chew its way into a repair pit from where it’s stuck, workers could end up cutting a hole from within the pit to clear the machine's path.  Bertha has to drill about 20 feet through a concrete wall to reach open air and be pulled up by a crane.  The massive machine overheated and stopped in December 2013 (after traveling through 1,000 feet of dirt).

Meanwhile, utility crews in Seattle might have to tear up a street in Pioneer Square because of settling from the tunnel project.  If settling continues, the city said it might need to replace up to three blocks of a water main. That project could take at least a year and water would be turned off from time to time.

Poor Seattle, lost the Superbowl, can't dig a tunnel.

Other than this, maties, I have nothing else of interest to offer.