Between Super Bowl and Valentines Day?

What a great super bowl.  Competitive, hard fought, lead exchanges, sentimental favorite overcomes bad first quarter to survive, great coaching, and good company.  We watched at Tate and Jeff's with Chris and Loren and conducted the male rite of passage for Chris's son Henry, first superbowl with the "men".  Henry did good for a kindergartner, lasting almost a whole quarter before being distracted by a flying toy helicopter that was also distracting most of the "men".  Think I saw one too many commercials with men in underwear.  Not sure I would ever say that about women in underwear commercials.

Suzy and I spent the early part of the day doing "drive bys' of homes we had seen on the web.  Amazing how misleading some of those pics can be.  We whittled down from 9 down to two we want to go inside.  Still seeing lots more homes coming  on the market at this time the year as people start to get serious again about selling. 

OK, next up, Valentines Day.  Why does it only get a week between it and the superbowl when the  super bowl gets two weeks run up.  Oh, yeah, not that I am a winter sports guy coming from northern Michigan, but there is some games coming up north of Seattle on skiis and skates and such.  Hope I remember to watch as I prepare for Valentine's Day. 

Seven Months, 26,000 miles

It went by too fast, the last seven months.  We pulled the 5th wheel 12,500 miles and drove the truck alone 13,500 miles.  A little over $6,000 for diesel and another $6,000 for renting RV parking spaces.  Averaged 13 miles per gallon of diesel.  Small price to pay for all the memories. 

We are already thinking about future trips to Alaska, Arizona in the winter, and Washington State Parks.  Also would like to park it at a lake site for the summers.  In the meantime we will use it as a temporary home as we look for our non-mobile house.

I mentioned a close call on the last leg of the trip through California.  As we were pulling through LA, keeping up with busy traffic, I-5 was literally falling apart, huge cracks and holes and I had to drive through at 60 mph. That I night noticed a huge amount of wear on one RV tire in back. Later the next day as I was making a turn I saw that tire scraping, and found it worn to the wires at the next stop. Pulled into Les Schwab and replaced the tire and then made an appointment with alignment shop in Redding. Turns out both yokes holding the springs on each side had broken and was lucky that the tires had not blown or 5th wheel dropped off springs on I-5 at 60 mph. Got it all aligned, balanced, new wheel bearing on one wheel, packed all bearings and back on the road with only one day lost. Got heavy duty yokes replacing factory ones and the new ones have zert fittings so I can grease them and keep them strong. Whew! I can just imagine us trying to head up over the Siskiyous and have it break down there at 4700 feet in the snow. Better then new now.

Gig Harbor

We had wonderful dinner/reunion with Tate and Jeff last night.  BBQ'd some sockeye salmon,  almost seemed like we hadn't left ten years ago.  Tate is walking, limp free, and doing steps, the rebuilt knee is looking good.  I like the way the surgeon made the incision to match the one on the opposite knee.  Very artistic and who needs tatoos when they have matching knee scars.  Suzy waited almost an hour before dropping a grandchild comment, an example of her patience in this area.

We found a great "possibility" house yesterday just looking at some open houses.  It is nice to be able to have so much to choose from and so many areas to look at.  Really great to see all the heather in bloom and all the rhody and azalea buds building strength.