My buddy Tim called a few weeks back and asked if I wanted to go see Lynyrd Skynyrd at the Arizona State Fair. Felicia seemed less than excited about it and I think Tim's wife Karen didn't leap at the chance either, so it turned in to boy's night out. So Tim, Tom and I met up down at Honey Bear's BBQ off Thomas Road, had a bit to eat and then headed over to the fairgrounds.Concerts like these are kind of interesting... there's a lot of older, overweight, hairloss victims that go to these "classic rock" concerts, and it's not a great idea to stop and think about how you might fit into that category. Better to just go and enjoy the music. The concert was pretty good, although Johnnie Van Zandt better start taking better care of his voice. They played a little over an hour, camped out backstage while the crowd screamed for an encore, then came out and played "Freebird" for the finale. With the advent of the camera phone, there were lots of people taking pics and video the whole time (us included), so 'scuse the quality of the photos.
Final day!!! Never thought we'd say that, but it finally came! The remodel crew showed up this morning to install the shower door and the miscellaneous other stuff (toidy paper holder, towel racks, towel rings, and robe hooks). Sweeeet!!! They said the custom door looked awesome, so I was pretty stoked up to see how it came out.
The custom shower spray shield/door was something we had worked out way early in the design for the bathroom. We wanted it to be a wavetop with chiseled edge. Chiseled edge might be something you can picture. If you've ever been in a place called the Elephant Bar, they make extensitve use of glass partitions with chiseled edge. Alas... when I went out front to see the finished door... no chiseled edge. It was just cut and polished. When I asked about it, the guy said the manufacturer balked on chiseling the edge because of the pattern. Apparently, they have problems with the whole sheet of glass basically exploding in the tempering oven if there's too much fracturing going on.A debate ensued after the head remodel dude showed up and we ended up just throwing in the towel. There comes a point when you just want the damn thing done and we passed that a couple weeks back. A delay likely would not have changed the outcome and it would have cost us more weeks. It never all works out like you wanted, does it?
The final view to the right... towel rings and door in place.
Final view to the left. Towel racks installed.
The towel rings. Hoooo-weeeee!!!
Towel rack! Party over HERE!!!
Shower door and inspector #24.5 verifying quality.
Looking back the other way. Why have a handle?
Good question... see photos below.
The top edge of the door was supposed to reflect the mountain-top pattern of the tile. 
One of the two robe hooks.
The shower door spray-sheild/door is on hinges, so it swings out away from the tub (both directions, actually). This was designed to make it easy to turn on the water and get the temperature right without having to lean in around the door.
Door fully opened...
So what is the deal with puppies and rolls of toilet paper? Must just be the tactile nature of the roll... soft, chewy, shreds into a bazillion pieces, makes a complete and utter mess. The stuff puppies live for, right?When Riley was a puppy and he got ahold of a roll once. He's never been much of a "shredder", so his approach was completely teen-ager. He proceeded to paper the whole bathroom. You could hardly scold him for his transgression... he was so cute and you just knew he had the time of his life making it happen.Ginny's loving that roll... but she's so busted.
This picture shows Riley protesting the appropriation of his chewy stick (rawhide) by Ginny. She gets way down on the floor and then creeps up to him while he barks at her and I yell at him to shut up. Inch by inch, she crawls up and eventually takes over the stick. He's such a weiner.
We finally had a weekend out of town. Originally, we'd talked about taking the camper and going up north for camping and climbing, but we hadn't been out to see Russ and Susan in a while, and the plan changed to Joshua Tree somewhere mid-week. It might have had something to do with my birthday and that J-Tree has trad climbing. We headed off late Friday morning with our usual crack-o-noon start. We managed to kill the rest of the day with magaritas, baseball, and a nice birthday dinner. By later that night, my throat was hurting and my voice was nearly gone. I'd had something creeping up on me Thursday, but it waited until Friday to leap.
Saturday, I got up feeling like complete crap, like the garbage truck had run over me and then back up to take another shot. Climbing... nope, not happening. Later in the day, we did get up enough motivation to drive around a bit looking at houses over in Joshua Tree. We turned up a couple interesting prospects. Unfortunately, found out just after we got back that the one we were most interested in was already in escrow. Story of our lives.
Nice array of Joshua Trees in the yard of one of the houses we looked at.
Riley and Ginny playing a little tug-o-war.
Nora being entertained by the other two.
I eventually had to take that thing away from them after they tore off one of the feet and started spreading stuffing around.
Picture doesn't really capture it that well, but this is the great view in the backyard of the house that is already in escrow. Dammit.
The days are starting to blend together quickly... puppy duty makes it hard to find time to update, but since there isn't that much left to go, putting days together is probably good enough. The last couple days the painting has pretty much been finished, the lights have been installed, new doorknobs are in place, and yet we have NO faucets. What is up with that? Good news on the horizon! They were supposedly going to arrive today between 10am and 2pm, so maybe tomorrow night we'll have some running water and Felicia can take her first bath in the new tub!!!
Fun story about multiple trips to get parts and pieces: I picked up the new bronze doorknobs the other day and got new (bronze, of course) hinges while I was at it. I had looked at the bathroom door hinges to make sure what kind they were before I got them. Based on the inventory at Lowes, there seemed to be two kinds of hinges... three-hole pattern-rounded edge, and four-hole-square-edge. I never took a look at the patio door, but I looked at it yesterday after I got home. I'll be damned if it doesn't have FOUR-HOLE-ROUNDED-EDGE hinges. You'd think there would be some sort of standard. That just sucks. Guess I'll have to try again.
The paint we were calling "seafoam" is the color of the day. Felicia says the paint is "too pastel",so I'm guessing this will have to change...
Lookin' pretty near done in that picture!!
Oh wait... where' the frickin' faucets???
Inspector 25 and our newest inspector, 25.5, on the job!!!
That Ginny is a pretty good puppy!!
Check out that sit-stay!!!
Sunday was the Tour de Scottsdale. I'd signed up for it a couple of months ago in a moment of weakness. Training consisted of a max of two days biking to work, and one longer ride on the weekends with Pete and Jen. Pete and I put in a nice 63 mile ride the weekend before and we were ready to roll.
The Tour is around 70 miles (I logged 68.3) with approximately 2000 participants. I never heard any real numbers for this year, other than there were 966 finishers. A finishing rate lower than 50% seems rather bizzare, so I'd guess the starters list was lower than 2000. We headed over early Sunday morning, then drove over to Scottsdale and the start. The race went off at 7am on the dot, with the crowds of riders peeling out slowly, walking at first and then finally getting into the pedals. We cruised north up to Cave Creek, then back on Pima before a nice long downhill run on the Rio Verde hill. We were cruising along down the hill at 30+ mph when someone in the pack of 25 riders did something bad and fell, taking a number of riders down as well. We were on the left margin of the pack and steered clear of the trouble. We don't know what the damage was, but someone was pretty messed up. They rolled at least three ambulances out of Fountain Hills (that we saw).
We cruised into Fountain Hills, made our only stop of the day at the aid station to refill water bottles, then continued. I was feeling the miles as we turned west to head over Shea Road and basically had Pete to pace me up and over. My legs were fading fast, but I managed to hang in there as we cruised over to the climb up McDowell Mountain Ranch Road (that sucked!). After a quick coast down Bell, we turned north again on Thompson Pk Pkway and headed for the finish. We put on a burst of speed headed for the finish line and came in with a time of 3 hours, 17 minutes, and 20 seconds. This took nearly half an hour off Pete's time from last year. I was pretty satisfied with our average speed of 21.3 mph, although the stupid race people logged me as being 57 years old. Heck, I still only took 12th in my age group even with the ten year boost!
It was a good race. We'll be back next year, gunning for the three hour mark.
I didn't get many photos, and none of the actual race in progress, but I got a few.
5:50am. Pete loading up the bikes...
6:30am, unloading the bikes...
Parking lot with everyone getting ready to go.
Post race... Jen and Pete with their finishing medals.
Jen and I checking our medals for gold... no dice!
A closeup of the finishing medal.
Elevation for the course.
We ended up booking around 2800 feet of climbing for the day.
