And They're Off...

 Brad and Mikey, veterans

Brad left for spring break today in Greece, Craig and I will be packing tonight for our trip tomorrow to Motel 6 in St. George.  Brad and Mikey, after spending last years spring break in Italy with MJ and J, the tour leaders, are dubbed veterans.  Last year there were only six students who went, this year there are about 18 or so, which called for three airport shuttle vans at MJ's house this morning.  Craig went to see Brad off, he said MJ was captain of the first van, J captain of the third and Brad and Mikey were made captains of the second van, guess which van is having a great time all the way to LAX!  Hmm on second thought I vote for MJ's van, Captain Brad and Captain Mikey's van is probably all asleep.

Rescue Bike

Last summer we got a new dog, he is a rescue Viszla, we love him to pieces, he's not a Jackie replacement, he's just Kaptain, so different, and he really has patched a hole in our hearts.  It was quite the process to get a rescue dog, you have to fill out applications, be approved, etc.  When he became available we had to be at the LA shelter at a certain time to apply for him, darn we were too late, someone was ahead of us.  The rescue people then told us they really wanted us to have him and if #1 wasn't in line right at opening time on the next trip he would be ours.  Yay, who would know that you have to be there right at opening time.  He is ours, he's part of the family.  I am relatively sure he was a rescue dog because he must have ruined an important dinner party.  Being used to a small dog (who thought she was a big dog) I was completely surprised the first time he stole food off of the counter, he was really well behaved in all ways except for that and we still haven't been able to break him of this, we just don't put anything within reach of him on the counters, except when we forget, which seems to happen quite often.

Yesterday we had a humongous garage sale (not at our house, we were just the helpers) for the Scout trip, they are going to Philmont this summer and doing a horse packing trip, when low and behold, look what turned up at the garage sale, as if there are not enough bikes in the Wright garage, entryway, bedrooms etc.  Brad fell in love with this gem, it's an old steel frame something, fixie.  In fact this Bianchi green (but not Bianchi) bike reminds me of adopting a rescue dog.  It was Kaptain's lucky day when we got him from a high kill shelter, he is loved and spoiled, he actually has quite the great life.  And so it was this bikes lucky day, he already has a new saddle, a borrowed wheel from Brad's race bike and a list of must haves from the bike shop.  I have lost count of how many bikes we own and I think that soon this bike can move to the stable in the garage.  

Just stand on your head...

I know, I know it's upside down, but I have spent way too much time trying to rotate it.  This was our sunrise view outside our hotel room in Scottsdale this weekend.  It was absolutely stunning.  I went to a dental conference with dad, you know how I love those....but it was really good.  We had a little adventure getting there, it was about 10 miles outside of Blythe and we were chattering away when I noticed that it seemed like the car needed to shift, ahem, well it was the transmission fluid overheating.  We limped into Blythe luckily, and discovered via Siri there are no car rental places in Blythe.  So we went to several auto parts places to see if we could get some transmission fluid, they were all closed.  Dad said a prayer and we saw a sign for K-Mart and headed that way, lucky for us there was an open auto parts store right by K-Mart, unlucky for us, it seems that the trans fluid was not low.  The guy at the auto parts store told us about a 24 hour garage and once we weighed the option of the 24 hour garage or a night in Blythe we decided on the 24 hour garage.  Surprise!  You can rent a car in Blythe, the garage had a Nissan Altima with 200,000+ miles on it they gladly rented to us and sent us on our way.  When we got back on Saturday night it seems, they flushed the transmission, they couldn't get the old filter off, but the car seemed to run.  There were no promises we would make it home, but whew we did, next up this week is to get the Pilot in the shop.