Bike, Hike, Road Work and the End of the Covid Emergency

We've been riding.  One day we rode up a bike way to the University of Arizona, which is a street cars can drive on, but it's understood they're not supposed to hit the bicyclists.  It's relatively safe.  I need to go back to the U and get some photos. 

We saw a couple of these rolling down the side walk.  They deliver food on campus.  They're just cuter than bugs.  Cartken makes them.  When people walk towards them, they pause to avoid collisions.

Almost every UofA student dreams of living here - someday.  I've never seen a for sale sign on this house, but one can always hope.  This is located in the historic Sam Hughes neighborhood.

One day we were tired (days are running together, can't remember when) so we went into Tucson to look at stuff.  The last time we were here there was a giant hole in the ground next to the neighborhood we like.  There's a building there now.  It looks pretty good.  It's retail down, residences up.

These are some of the houses from the beautiful neighborhood.  It still has the issue of being surrounded by old houses that have seen better days.

However, it still has the advantage of being within walking distance of Seis for most excellent Mexican food.

There was also a drive to see what's happening on 6th Street.  We were last there when Jim got his second Covid vaccine.  That post is here.  As it turns out, there is a massive construction project to widen I10 between 29th and St. Mary's which we were unaware of.  There is a good article on the project here.  There is a slide show at the bottom of the text that was interesting.  Anyway, it's still very much under construction, and all of my pictures are terrible because of the spots on the windshield and where the sun was.

From the article we learn, "The complete reconstruction of mainline I-10 for the segment between St. Mary’s Road and 29th Street included 6 new bridges, 17 retaining walls totaling nearly 14,000 linear feet of walls, drainage structures paralleling the corridor, and pavement design. The field investigation program conducted by NCSG included 122 borings for the various structures. A combination of drill rigs was required, including conventional truck mounted, track mounted for drilling on slopes, and difficult access rigs for the sides of steep embankment slopes."

New widened road.

A good mural we were afraid might be lost.

St. Mary's (also known as 6th Street) on the way to the freeway.  The road there is entirely gone, really gone.

Today we went up the Iris Dewhirst trail.  It was kind of a slog.  Apparently today was a fatigue day, but we went anyway.  It was a beautiful day.

I love this view into the canyon.

Once you get to these rocks, the hike is over and your feet are happy.

If you haven't seen this, here is news you can use.  As of May 11, the Covid state of emergency is over.  This will change what the government pays for.  It will no longer pay for monoclonal antibodies, which are moot anyway, since they don't work on the new variants.  The feds will no longer pay for home test kits.  This paragraph, "Paxlovid and other oral antiviral drugs made available under emergency use authorization will remain covered by Medicare even though it has yet to be fully approved by the FDA, thanks to a provision Congress put in place as part of the fiscal year 2023 government spending package that passed in December." leads me to believe that the elderly will not have to pay for paxlovid, which is good because it's about $500 retail.  I'm not clear on lab testing, who pays for that.  CNN put up an article on this which you can find here.  I think this was a premature decision, but nobody asked my opinion.

So that's what's shaking in Tucson.