It was a day for sightings:
Anyway, I read that The Goodyear Blimp is
celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2025, with a 100+ city tour.
And while Google didn’t know if the Blimp was heading to Tucson, it indicated
that given that it’s on tour, it was plausible they could in or near Tucson
today. Well, it was definitely heading
in the direction of Tucson, so I’d say plausibility became certainty sometime before
noon. The site went on to say that Goodyear Blimps are used for public relations
and brand awareness. Imagine sitting in the cockpit…that must be a rush!
Blimp Trivia:
Semi-Rigid Airships: The blimps you see
today are actually semi-rigid airships with a tough internal frame to maintain
their shape.
Size: They are massive,
measuring 192 feet long and 59 feet tall.
Helium: The blimps are filled
with a whopping 202,700 cubic feet of helium, which they need to top off
regularly as helium leaks out.
Speed: The usual cruising
speed for a GZ-20 is 35 miles per hour in a zero-wind condition; all-out
top speed is 50 miles per hour on the GZ-20 and 73 mph for the new Goodyear
Blimp.
Eaglevision: The blimps are
equipped with "Eaglevision," an LED sign technology that allows them
to display bright, multi-colored, animated words and images.
Lavatory: Newer models contain a
lavatory (bathroom), for the first time.
2. Later, on the
frontage road heading east, we saw a van parked awkwardly in the road up
ahead. As we passed it, I saw a ‘Ride to
Pepperdine’ sign on the side; then we could see it was a support vehicle for
some bicyclists. They appeared to be in
the middle of a change in riders. Googled
‘Ride to Pepperdine’ and found this information:
The mission of Greater Than Three is to offer hope and independence to those who have suffered from a traumatic mobility injury such as a spinal cord injury or amputation. This Abilene charity funds sports chairs for individuals who want to find new ways to move within the arena of sport (basketball, pickleball, cycling, running).
Pepperdine Strong Fund has to do with helping those who have been affected by the recent Malibu fires.
After 2 months of training, the cyclists started on March 7 and expect to reach Pepperdine on March 12th. The site indicated that today they rode from Tucson to Buckeye, AZ…about 140 miles. The site doesn’t say how they split the riding shifts, but by my calculations, they need to make more 140 miles a day to ride 1,418 miles in 6 days.
----------biking.
Things we haven’t
sighted yet:
*Sam Elliott (real
name: Dean) riding his bike down Picacho Hwy
*The Traveling
Sheep…not even in their ‘home field’
*Burrowing Owls…we’ve
been out on Hardin Rd. in Marana twice and I’ve been over to Toltec…no owls yet
----------
We took a short walk at the Crossroads Park
in Marana, the location of the Shamrock 5K yesterday. It was about three in the afternoon, the sky
was cloudless and the temperature was in the 80s. Not the best time to be out, that’s for
sure. The Charlevoix kiddos called while
we were out walking…Charlie’s cute little face popped up first and because each
kid gets a turn, the call continued when we got back in the truck. They enjoyed our race video from yesterday
and all kids cast their vote for Grampa being the first one back in camp.
----------
Today we headed back to Bryan and Linda
Shumaker’s because Kim needed Bryan’s help in figuring out the cause and then
what to do about some variations in color on his Spider Nebula image. Instead
of emailing the files back and forth, Bryan just told us to come on over.
We hung out a few hours, then had supper at
the clubhouse in their housing development. It was full on dark with lots of
stars in the sky when we left.
Clear sky for imaging. Tonight, Kim’s doing
the Dolphin Head, which is another faint nebula. That usually calls for lots of hours of data,
which means several nights on the same target to get that data.
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