Today seemed to be a "baby step" day, a least in the visual sense. Not much in the way of visible progress, but a critical labor-intensive job knocked off so the project can move forward. In a nutshell, after pulling the tub and shower out of the old bath, we had two problems; a) the old tub drain was no longer needed, and b) the existing shower drain (somewhat in the middle of the old shower) was too far from the wall to be used for the new bathtub. So today took care of removing the old tub drain and moving the shower drain over a few inches for the new tub drain.
A "before" shot from the end of the day yesterday.You can see the old tub drain sticking up, as well as the old shower drain.
"After shot", end of day two. Hole jackhammered in the slab, old tub drain pulled, shower drain moved and changed to fit the new tub drain, lots of nasty termite stuff chucked into the hole, new concrete placed to plug the slab back up.
Overall after shot.
Tomorrow, he'll start building the deck for the new bathtub!!!
A pack rat, also called a trade rat or wood rat, can be any of several species in the genus Neotoma, but most commonly the Bushy-tailed Woodrat (Neotoma cinerea). Pack rats are prevalent in the deserts and highlands of western United States and northern Mexico. They also inhabit parts of the eastern United States and Western Canada. Pack rats are a little smaller than a typical rat and have long, sometimes bushy tails.
When it comes time to clean up a bit, it's amazing the little treasures you turn up while you're sorting all your various piles of stuff into separate, completely different piles of stuff. I had that kind of day today... and it's probably only going to get nuttier.
Various 20+ year old bike water bottles. I'm not sure how rare that Team LeMond water bottle is, but I've never seen another one. And who out there can offer up a vintage 1989 Biking Across Kansas water bottle!!!
If you've never ridden a bike in Kansas, it's the home of the 20 mph average ride...30mph on the way out (with the wind) and 10 mph on the way back (against the wind).
The clip-in pedal collection... vintage noted if you make the picture bigger. The oldest pair I have is the red and white Look pedals in the left center. Those were my very first clip-ins I got in around 1987 or so. I remember taking my bike down to Arlington, TX with me on an extended work assignment and trying out my new pedals in the parking lot of the hotel that night.. When some co-workers drove into the lot, I looked at them, waved, and promptly cratered into the pavement. Pretty standard embarrassing first-time clip-in story.
How 'bout those babies? Greg LeMond sported these things for the first time in the 1990 Tour De France. He was sponsored somewhat by the Scott company, who made the famous clip-on aero bars that LeMond used to win the '89 Tour by 8 seconds. These bars were another innovation (that didn't catch on quite like the aero bars) called the Scott Drop-In Bars. I gave them a try for a while, but I just never did get used to riding in the horizontal drop position. And they weigh more...
Quite the assortment of climbing hooks... I got all the varieties here... grappling, Leeper, captain hook, Moses, cam hooks, cliffhanger, pecker, logan, etc.
Sometimes you gotta cowboy up, right?
Lately, Tuesdays and Thursdays are my days to bike to work. This morning, in spite of the fact that the forecast called for some pretty extreme heat, I manned up and biked in to work. Exit time came and I headed out the door.. It wasn't much of a record-setting ride home and I took it sort of easy on the way. In any case, I have to thrash through the mess of parents picking up their kids at the school on Coral Gables and breaking all sorts of traffic laws in the process. It becomes a gauntlet where I've been lucky I didn't get doored, and I nearly went through a guy's back window last week when he slammed on his brakes in front of me to make an illegal right turn so he didn't have to sit in line and wait like everyone else. Some amazing stuff. It was like a rainforest with the sweat pouring off my bike helmet. 17% might not seem like humidity to people from other places, but it's about twice what we normally have around here!
In any case, I got a shot of the latest weather report (see above) off my phone after I got home. Ouch. There's a big monsoon storm brewing out there as I type this.
The weekend finally got here... we were supposed to head for Joshua Tree to help out R&S with their kitchen cabinets, but as the week progressed, there were some relatively negative temperature reports originating from their direction. In the end, we opted out of a potential sauna-situation. So we decided to toss the stuff in the camper and head to Flag on Friday afternoon. We had some daylight left by the time we got up there, so we headed for The Pit and hiked in to get some climbing in before dinner.
Hiking in to The Pit...
One of the segments of the Arizona Trail cuts through the area.
Just to prove that some climbing occurred...
What a good boy!
Climbers below the Swiss Tower (left) and the Mall Wall (higher, on the right)
After a nice long stretch of sleep in our out-of-the-way new favorite camp spot, we headed for The Overlook to see about a bit more climbing. There was a raft of climbers there, some dropping rocks off the top of the cliff, so we were happy to be out of the way down on the far end routes. Apparently, there's been some pretty good rain up there, as the last couple routes we did were completely covered with a fine layer of dirt, making them fairly exciting (as well as disgustingly dirty) to climb. We finished up pretty filthy.
Felicia taking a lap on Dougald's Route (5.10)
This was the anchor of the pair of climbers next to us. A cordelette wrapped around a boulder perched on the rim right above their route. Yikes!!! Normally, I don't like saying anything due to the inevitable reaction, but we mentioned the danger here and they seemed to appreciate the input.
Felicia coming up one of the dirty routes.
A shot down the cliffline of The Overlook.
After nearly a whole summer of being in Phoenix in the middle of the hottest time of the year, we finally wrestled all the house stuff to a standstill and headed north for cooler temps. We drove off into the forest to one of our favorite out-of-the-way spots and set up camp Friday night after dinner in town. Saturday, we got up after a pretty full night of catching up on the sleep, and then proceeded to kill part of the day reading and just hanging out in the peace and quiet. With the temp in Flag running 85 degrees that day, we were willing to stall until the south-facing Overlook went into the shade.
We parked across the road so we wouldn't have to get out of the parking lot before we were good and ready (they lock the gate). It had been two months since Felicia had climbed anything and a month since I'd done anything on the rock. To say the least, we were a little rusty and not exactly bringing our A-game, but we managed a few climbs before we called it a day and headed for town after a quick shower-off at the camper. We had a nice dinner in town and then headed out to our spot to sack out.
Sunday, we repeated the Saturday method, figuring to head to The Pit to get in a few climbs before heading back to town. As we were cleaning up to head over there, the clouds got thick and thunder started up. As we drove out to the main road, a few sprinkles hit the windshield and we opted to just continue on into town for a little lunch before starting back. We decided maybe we better hit the climbing gym in the near future...
Still, it was an excellent weekend. It was great getting off the gerbil wheel for a bit.
Riley had a GREAT weekend! He was a very happy boy!
What's this jam-your-hand-in-a-crack stuff?
I'm going for it!
I left a full-on yardsale of gear in this crack. ...
What a nice corner!!
Who needs the crack in the corner when you have these nice handholds out here on the arete?
The butterfly that would NOT leave me alone while I was reading. This thing would take off, then a few minutes later it was back. It got off the book and would land on my arm, or hand, or leg. It was kind of bizzare. Just call me the Butterfly Whisperer!
This pic should scare off anybody, but not this little guy. He was not disturbed by me at all.
I was able to rescue this beer from the cooler to aid with the unpacking of the camper. It was 107 or so in Phoenix when we landed... hydration is important!
A "before" shot from the end of the day yesterday.
"After shot", end of day two. Hole jackhammered in the slab, old tub drain pulled, shower drain moved and changed to fit the new tub drain, lots of nasty termite stuff chucked into the hole, new concrete placed to plug the slab back up.
A pack rat, also called a trade rat or wood rat, can be any of several species in the genus Neotoma, but most commonly the Bushy-tailed Woodrat (Neotoma cinerea). Pack rats are prevalent in the deserts and highlands of western United States and northern Mexico. They also inhabit parts of the eastern United States and Western Canada. Pack rats are a little smaller than a typical rat and have long, sometimes bushy tails.
The clip-in pedal collection... vintage noted if you make the picture bigger. The oldest pair I have is the red and white Look pedals in the left center. Those were my very first clip-ins I got in around 1987 or so. I remember taking my bike down to Arlington, TX with me on an extended work assignment and trying out my new pedals in the parking lot of the hotel that night.. When some co-workers drove into the lot, I looked at them, waved, and promptly cratered into the pavement. Pretty standard embarrassing first-time clip-in story.
Sometimes you gotta cowboy up, right?
