The Bald and the Beautiful

After a night in what seemed to be a godforsaken small pitstop outside LA we stopped to eat breakfast at Denny´s in Victorville. I of course decided to do it the all American way and ate pancakes with maple syrup, eggs (sunny side up) and a glass of fresh orange juice. After digesting the somewhat “vomiting” breakfast we took to the road with two goals in mind; Lake Havasu City and Williams (outskirts of Grand Canyon).

Pit stop on Route 66

Getting to Lake Havasu City took us about 4 hours from Victorville. We had a pit stop on the way to fill petrol, and it became evident that the car used more petrol than it should. As the car´s engine constantly needed to do 3500-5000 RPMs in order to keep up with traffic we got more and more frustrated with the situation; however, first we wanted to relax a bit by Lake Havasu, have lunch and do some shopping before decided what to do with the car.

Lake Havasu City is famous for many things, the London Bridge and spring break parties to mention two. The first is supposedly the original London Bridge purchased from the City of London, disassembled and reassembled, all in an effort to make it a popular tourist attraction. The latter took place the weekend before we arrived, meaning we did not get to see the “infamous” spring breakers and rowdy boaters with ‘girls gone wild’ aspired passengers … and needless to say any topless women We ate lunch at a Barley Brothers which is famous for brewing their own beer in the actual bar. Since I was the designated driver I only had a small beer … a good one!

So, after a descent meal and some taste of the local beer, we decided to move on. Lake Havasu City as any other place has its shopping malls, and before we could go trekking in Grand Canyon we needed to buy some descent shoes. Later on, irony would have it that we should have bought more than shoes. Done with the shopping we drove out of town, made a pit stop at a gas station where I bought a couple of nice caps and some orange juice for the roadtrip ahead.

As mentioned earlier we had this bad feeling about the car using to much fuel, so we decided to call Avis to check if there was something we had missed. To cut short we ended up driving back to Lake Havasu City, spending 1,5 hours more than planned, and got a Chevrolet Trailblazer in exchange for our Ford Escape. Interesting enough, the Ford Escape is a hybrid car that turned out to use twice as much fuel as the Trailblazer … go figure! To us it seemed the transmission was all f####d up.

EconoLodge in Williams, Arizona

On the road again with our new car we headed towards Williams. Making good milage, we ended up in the small town of Williams. We drove the strip to look for a place to crash for the night, and ended up at EconoLodge. A nice place with free internet access and breakfast included (double room with two queen-size beds for $100).

Irony! Getting to Williams, and stepping out of the car told us one thing … this place is cold. So, as I mentioned earlier we should have bought more than shoes for our walk in Grand Canyon, or done enough research to know that Grand Canyon is not the same as Las Vegas when it comes to temperatures, and brought proper clothing.

Anyways, now it´s early morning in Williams, and we are about to see one of the greatest sights in the whole U.S. Freezing a bit will hopefully not cause any of us to say it was not worth it

To be continued …

Front of the house

My wife and I moved into the house we currently live in about ten years ago. Since then we have had many a plan on how to “fix” the garden. We have usually lacked the long-term plan. That is, we have had many ideas, but many of them have been dreams which lacked the ability to see them through.

We have had many a day during the past ten years where we have, with youthful ambitions, started a project that in the end was just a waste of energy and our friends´ patience

The best example is what we did some odd years ago when our son was about 2 years, and our first daughter was newborn. We had invited a bunch of our best friends to help us with the Big Dig (not to be mistaken with what was known as the Big Dig in Boston, MA) … We managed, during a couple of days, to clear the whole backyard which amounts to about 250 square meters. This may not sound as such a difficult task, but add a muddy and slippery hillside filled with trees, bushes and whatnot … and a couple of young ones that needs your attention every 5 minutes. It was a fun time for all of us, tiresome, but fun. We cleared the backyard in what today seems like a world record time with our bare hands and some old shovels. Most of the shovels broke in the end due to the heavy mud lifting . In other words, it took some effort, but we cleared the backyard and set ourselves some new goals for making sure we did not have to clear it again for a long time. The idea we came up with was as simple and naive as the result. We covered most of the backyard with bark. To be honest, it looked fairly ok the first couple of months, but after a short while it looked nothing like we expected. Today, most of the garden has returned to its previous state. A lot of weeds and small trees popping up here and there.

So, to the present and with the latter in mind, we once again set out to “fix” the garden; however, this time we thought it was best to start with a plan, and the right tools. We decided not to invite all our friends, although that´s not all true as our tenant works his ass off for free (we provide food and shelter ), but we wanted to do this project alone and without the agony of making to many hasteful decisions along the way. To make things easy we decided to work on the lower part of the garden (picture).

As always we started out with an idea, an idea that meant we would realize the long-term goal of having a proper garden, and with this part of it, a proper lawn. A lawn is said to be easy-peasy, but we soon discovered that there was a lot of work ahead before we could spread the first seeds on our new lawn. To make things “easier” for ourselves we decided to start work the day before the Easter holidays. Lucky as we were we managed to rent the proper machinery (rototiller) Tuesday and get six tons of shell sand delievered the day after.

Using the tiller was one thing, but eventually we managed to get a hang of it … literally! It did not take long before all of the soil was prepared enough for the shell sand to be spread out; however, there was this tenant. Eager as always he persuaded us to do things the right way, which of course meant the hard way. We then started to remove all the roots of the old hedge that ran along the garden wall. In addition we removed some old plants and tree stubs here and there which we had cut down ages ago. Then came all the stones that we certainly did not want our lawnmover to chew on (we have already tried that with little success … it died on us). Once done with all the digging, and more digging, we needed to cover the whole lawn with shell sand, rake and level/smoothen it to prepare it for seeding.

The actual seeding has not taken place yet, neither has the other “mini-projects” that came along. In additon to the simple task of getting ourselves a new lawn we also figured that we needed to extend the small garden wall that holds up the walk-way going around the house. This means we have to build a foundation and a small ramp as well for the lawnmover to get access to the lower part of the garden (front of the house). In addition we also decided to create a sandbox for the kids which will hold two-three tons of sand … that is if my prognosis for these things are correct and I get my will when it comes to the actual layout and build.

Stay tuned as the garden unfolds and gets its long needed facelift.