Desert Snow Birds

 It was an unusual flight to be on - Orlando to Phoenix considering neither place is our home, but it was a bit of a last minute decision to help Nicole with a bit of research for a script she is working on. On this flight, Olympian Michael Phelps was riding in first class. Nicole and I were in the last row, so we never saw him again as it took about 30 minutes to deplane. Our time in Phoenix was brief as we immediately rented a car and began driving south toward Tucson.

Nicole is working on a script regarding missileers, the crews who are in charge of America's nuclear weapons, and Tucson is the only remaining Titan II missile site in existence (albeit deactivated per nuclear treaties from the 80s). As we drove around the Tucson area and checked into our hotel, got dinner etc, we discovered that we were about 30-50 years younger than everyone we encountered. Traffic moved . . . slowly down the roads. Most of the luggage on the airport conveyor belt consisted of golf clubs. The Q-tips were in down, and in large numbers.

This age gap did not change when we got to the missile site itself. There were 25 people on the tour, and all but 3 (including us) were over the age of 65. Nevertheless, they were active enough to be capable of walking down the many steps to reach the base of the missile and the missile control room. It was good to get some insight into the inner workings of a missile site that contained the most powerful warhead in U.S. history. Apparently the explosive power would have been 650x that of the atomic bombs dropped over Japan. So that's some food for thought considering the U.S. still has 450 land-based missiles alone. It is a bit overkill, but what do I know. Anyway, on our way back to the city from the missile site, we stopped at the San Xavier del Bac Mission.

There we encountered more Q-tips, but enjoyed the sunshine and deep blue skies that flanked the mission. After that we spent a brief amount of time in downtown Tucson for some tacos and tortas and headed back to the Snowbird Inn to relax for the rest of the evening.

All in all, it was a relaxing time in Tucson despite the old folks oggling us and making us feel a bit out of place. Come March, I presume things will normalize.

Hot in the City

With Nicole in tow, we left Los Angeles last night for Tucson. It was a cool 97 when we touched down. Since I had a long overnight in Tucson, Nicole decided to rent a car. The following morning we drove east of the city to the Tanque Verde Ranch, the shooting location of Nickelodeon's Hey Dude. Nicole was a big fan. She showed me a few episodes prior to going to Tucson. It was your standard Nickelodeon fare complete with jokes that landed flat delivered by kids who couldn't act, but I suppose as a kid, it would have been enjoyable.

Nowadays, the set is basically collapsing on itself and has been abandoned since shooting ended in the early 90s. We could feel the temperature rising as we walked around the ranch. It was only about 10am, but 100 degrees. Since we were already in the area, we continued to Saguaro National Park. We only had flip flops and it was quite hot and dry, so we weren't really fixing to go for any hikes. We just did a loop drive through the park that had a few pulloffs to look at the cacti. We saw some javelinas, or pig-like mammals, asleep in the shade of the visitor's center. I get it. It's hard to do anything on a day like today. It was now 110 degrees.




After the short loop through the park, we continued on toward Pima Air & Space Museum.

The desert surrounding the air force base is known as "the boneyard" and contains the remnants of older military aircraft that have been retired from service or are no longer needed to meet the country's needs. We visited the museum after chugging some Gatorade. There were various exhibits inside, within range of overworked air conditioning systems, but the most interesting sites were outside. There were examples of military aircraft, civilian airliners of past and present, and even some old MiGs.

Naturally all of this was probably a lot more interesting to me than Nicole. I was frolicking amongst the petting zoo of aircraft and Nicole was dragging behind me, her body slowly succumbing to the heat. If I spent to much time with the B-52s and KC-135s, I'd be peeling Nicole off the ground like a fried egg.


After getting some Mexican food for lunch, we went back to the hotel to relax before getting ready for our flights. It was now 116 degrees. Supposedly Phoenix SkyHarbor airport closed down a few years back because the temps got so hot that takeoff performance could not be calculated since it was off the scales. Anyway, that's my next stop and it's supposed to be 120 tomorrow. At least I'm not flying the 200 anymore.