Elizabeth and Gregg visit

My cousin Elizabeth, her husband Gregg and kids Wynne and Gus visited us in Tucson a few weeks ago, as part of their southwestern US tour.  We slacked on putting some pictures up, but here they finally are.  Here is the best picture David managed to get of Wynne - she always turned away from the camera at the wrong time.

We all went to the Desert Museum, which is a sort of combination zoo/botanical gardens.  David managed to get some good shots of some local birds and cactus.  And of course the cat...

And a super cute picture of baby Gus (as Wynne calls him).  He was rockin' a mohawk naturally for most of the weekend because his hair was growing faster in the middle.  So Elizabeth just enhanced it...

Sausage!

I like sausage. It's good. We made some.

Today's players:

The sausage we're making, Andouille, is normally of a much coarser texture than most commercial sausages, so yes... I hacked up an 8lb pork shoulder by hand.

Mixing in the seasonings:

Casing (Erika was helping with this part and broke off a moment to catch this AWESOME ACTION SHOT):

Smoked and ready to eat. It ain't pretty, but oh boy is it tasty. We're now all set for a winter of gumbo, jambalaya and perhaps red beans and rice:

Bikes!

So this weekend was the annual Tour De Tucson, a massive bike race in and around the general Tucson/Pima County area. Apparently this is a national (and actually international) event that's a "big deal" to professional cyclist as well as sport cyclists of various levels.
Website:

http://www.pbaa.com/!ETT/ETThome.html

If you click on the link that shows you the route, actually just click here:

http://www.perimeterbicycling.com/!ETT/ETTMapCue.html

Anywhoo... if you give that a gander, take note of mile 47 near the upper right of the circuit (Bear Canyon, Snyder Rd, et al). That would be where our house is, like literally... where our house is. The route doesn't take the racers through our neighborhood, but it does go through several near us, and clogged up the two main ways out of ours for most of Saturday. You could drive out if you wanted to, but it's kind of a hassle. We stayed in and walked up the road to take a peek.

Here, we're at the top of a pretty nasty little hill that borders our neighborhood. Many people's butts got kicked here. Not many folks got off and walked it, but people were chugging pretty good.

Here's some shots from back in and around the neighborhoods that the race did take place in Note the dude smiling for the shot in the next pic. We didn't even see it until we got the pictures loaded up on the pc tonight: