Weekend Art Show 2012

Sad to say, I haven't gotten much riding in lately.  The weather has been nice, but between being on-call, at work, and running errands, there hasn't been a lot of time for riding.  I'm hoping to change that this weekend.  But until then, I thought I'd post some pictures from my last trip, a little over a week ago.  Kiri and I attended a small art showing, at a private residence, on the east side of Tucson.  We knew about the show because her father is a pretty accomplished artist and had a few of his works displayed.  So Kiri headed over a little early while my dad and I rode over on our bikes a bit later.  I parked out on the street.  The driveway had a lot of gravel, and Bonnie doesn't like gravel.

I decided to get a close up of the Cholla cactus off to the right.  Some people call this a jumping cactus because if you slightly brush against it the various segments will break off and appear to "jump" onto you. Side story - I'd go bird hunting with my dad, as a kid, and you'd always have to find some way to take these things off either yourself or the hunting dog.  Not an easy task since you can't grab it or shake them off, they like to stick into the skin and stay there.  The best solution is to carry around a small comb.  You can slide the comb between the cactus and your skin and then flick the cactus away.  Just be careful not to flick them onto a friend, not that I've ever done that or would admit to it.

Walking up to the house.  My dad is off to the right.  He rode his Honda dual sport so the gravel didn't concern him.

Various displays listing some of the artwork that could be found inside.

I headed in and started searching for Kiri.  This was our second time coming to this event.  I was pleasantly surprised by it last year and wanted to see if we could find any Christmas gifts for this year.

Ahh there's Kiri, not posing for the camera at all.  For some reason she stands like that when making small conversation.

Kiri's dad on the right, talking shop with another artist.

Appears my mom is picking out some small stocking stuffers.

 Wood bowls made by Kiri's dad.  Pretty amazing stuff.  They're tiny wood squares glued together into rings, which are stacked, and then lathed.

 I snapped a quick picture of Kiri's dad with a potential customer.  I didn't want to scare her off by acting like paparazzi.

 A shot looking out at the back yard.  I like coming here to check out the house, it's very beautiful.

Soon it was time to go.  And we headed out the front gate.

We had lunch with my parents and then Kiri went shopping.  I decided to take a quick ride through Gate's Pass before the sun went down.  I've written about this area before.  It's a small passage through the Tucson Mountain's on the west side of Tucson.  It's probably my favorite quick get away because it's so close to our house.  I pulled into the visitors area to snap a few pictures of the surrounding desert.

More Saguaro cacti then you can count.  The more you zoom in, more of them seem to pop into existence!

I wanted to see if I could get a good panoramic picture of the road coming through the pass.  In order to get a good view I had to hike around a small hill.  Keep an eye out for those jumping cacti:)

 Ok, so this is looking east, back towards Tucson.  You can make out a little bit of town right before that far mountain range which are called the Rincon mountains waaaay in the back.

 And here's the panoramic starting at the picture above and looking to the right.  You may want to click the picture to get the full effect.

From here the road stretches off into Avra Valley.  I usually hang a right out there and head north for a little while then cut back east through Picture Rock pass.  It's a good hour loop if you just want to get out and ride.

What a Saguaro looks like after it's died.

And now I have to hike back around the hill

Well that's about it.  Sorry I couldn't fit more motorcycle images in.  Hoped you were mildly amused by my pictures from a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Until next time!