Another weekend, another tube trip.  We didn’t have a whole lot to do, so we rallied the troops and headed to Coloma for another relaxing trip down the river.  Actually, it was “moderately” relaxing.  I’m not sure it was because the water was up or down, but the river was significantly faster.  We went through a few stretches that left me thinking “Yeah, maybe this isn’t exactly tubing conditions.”  Indeed, the vast majority of the floaters are on big commercial rafts.  Eh, I’m a cheapskate, what can I say.  It is cheap entertainment to be sure.  Twenty bucks a tube, (Which have somehow now survived three trips down the river,) eight bucks to park, few bones in petrol to get there, and you’ve got a full afternoon of good entertainment.  Granted, a few bumps and bruises to go along with it, but it’s to be expected.  Only two of the crew dumped this time, I think our tube skills are improving.  Afterwards we stopped by a place called Marco’s for a few slices of pizza, then headed on home to nurse our wounds.  Hopefully they heal by next week, as we’re planning to hit it again.

Wow, Wednesday already.  A day late and a dollar short, as usual.  I worked the better part of the weekend, which I am guessing nobody has any interest in hearing about.  Heck, I didn’t even have any interest in it, but that pesky mortgage kept me motivated.  I did have a nice day off Sunday though.  The weather cooled off significantly, so I fired up the smoker and threw on a 12 lb. brisket I’d come across at the grocery earlier in the week.  Pretty uneventful, yet enjoyable day.  Lots of hanging out on the patio watching TV, staring at the smoker.  I guess I did have a little excitement getting the cooker running.  Little fire-safety tip:  When starting your charcoal, do not set the chimney in the mulch bed, especially when it hasn’t rained in two months.  OK, I’ll grant you, that might be a common sense item, but my brain moves a little slowly at 6:30 in the morning.  Man, that stuff went up like a bunch of dry wood chips, which makes sense considering it’s a bunch of dry wood chips.  Whoops.  Adds a little color to that part of the landscaping I guess.  As for the brisket, it came out pretty well.  If I had time I’d have left it on for another 2 hours, but we invited company over so the “done” time was driven by that.  It was certainly passable, needed just a bit more time.  I’ve still got the point in the ‘fridge, so it’ll go back on soon for a big burnt-end dinner.  High hopes for that.

Ahhh, I needed a good three-day weekend.  Actually I’m a little worse for wear, but that comes with advanced age I guess.  We had a good time of it, all things considered.  Friday sort of escapes me, although I’m sure we did something.  I’ll have to backtrack with the wife on that one.  Geez, speaking of advanced age, my memory is horrible.  I do recall that we walked up the street and caught a fireworks display at nearby Town Center.  It was a passable effort, I’ve certainly seen more elaborate shows.  Got us out of the house I suppose, there’s something to be said for that.

Saturday we went to a birthday party at a friend’s house in Folsom.  Whew, it was a heck of a party.  For some reason I had envisioned a few people sitting in the house chatting, but it was a full-on back yard bash.  He had an awesome pool and several covered areas, I definitely had a little backyard-envy going on.  He had a barrel cooker running, similar to this setup, and what seemed like an endless variety of meat coming off it.  He shredded up a few pork butts shortly after we arrived, then out came some of the best carne asada I’ve ever had, then several pans of chicken.  Whew, it was a feast.  Lots of people showed up with with various sides too, there was definitely plenty to eat.  (I was empty handed of course…  Nobody filled me in on the details.  No swimsuit either.)  Good times at any rate.

Sunday, in the “slow learner” category, we once again went river tubing.  As I limped painfully through the house this morning, it occurred to me that I well might be too old for tubing.  Indeed, I spent some time researching inflatable kayaks this afternoon;  They look significantly more comfortable.  We had a great time though, and I’m sure we’ll end up getting talked into it again.  Cheap entertainment if nothing else.  I once again took a few good shots from assorted trees and boulders along the way, but at least I managed to stay right side up this time.  After that adventure we headed back to our house and grilled up some decent fish tacos, then somehow ended up breaking out the long-dormant Rock Band game.  Too much fun for me, it’s turning into a long Monday.  I’ve got some pictures of the day’s activities but mercifully forgot to upload them, sorry.  Just look at last week’s, pretty similar day.

Sunday, our ever-expanding quest for amusement took us on a 30-minute drive to Coloma for a good ol’ Float trip.  (Friday and Saturday were irreparably marred by work, I’ll just skip those days.)  Our first stop was at a sporting goods store along the way to pick up tubes and life vests for the trip.  This was a moderately pricey stop, but everything survived the day so I suppose we’ll get more use out of them.  I sincerely question the need for a life vest on the very calm river, but I guess rules are rules.  Anyway, we got there some time after noon, met up with some friends, blew up the tubes, and hit the water.  Not much else to tell…  We spent the next several hours meandering leisurely down the fine American River.  Other than a nasty tangle with an ill-placed boulder, (which I lost,) it was a relaxing, uneventful trip, which we intend to repeat in the near future.  The weather forecast for tomorrow is 109 degrees, so the nice cold water sounds better all the time.  That’s about all I got.  I’m a bit worse for wear today, so I’ll just post some pics and call it good.

It’s officially summer time, yeah!  Since we’ve had triple-digit heat for weeks now, and a total of about nineteen drops of rain this year, I’d say that means about squat.  Kids are out of school I guess, but again, that’s not something that affects my day-to-day existence.  All the same, I’m always in need of a reason to celebrate, so we made a fun weekend of it.

Friday wasn’t a particularly notable day to kick things off.  I sat on the back patio and watched the Royals game, and swatted mosquitoes.  Maybe not too exciting, but it’s how I like to spend my Friday afternoons so I found it quite enjoyable.  We’d also had a handyman come over and install a new TV mount on the back of the house, so I was pretty excited to get the new TV hung and watch that.  Pretty darn cool setup if I do say so myself, I’m pumped.  It’s an awfully nice TV to put on the back porch, but we caught a great sale and that’s just sort of how things ended up.  I tossed a good old frozen pizza on the grill for dinner, which provided a fine meal to close out the day.

Saturday I spent the majority of the day fine-tuning my TV setup.  Which is to say, sitting on the couch staring at it.  I watched several mediocre westerns, a few ball games, and checked out the built-in Pandora service.  The main reason I went with a Samsung over a Vizio was the Internet apps the Samsung comes with.  We watch nearly every Royals broadcast, and rely on our mlb.com subscription for that.  For whatever reason our Vizio TV doesn’t come with it, so we have to use various other means to get it to the TV inside the house.  It’s a lot nicer to just have it built-in and click a button.  Wonderful times we live in, people.  Anyway, that effectively sums up my Saturday.  I also spent a decent amount of time stirring a pot of baked beans on the grill, which helped pass the time.  I have to say, I think it’s the only time I’ve ever fired up the charcoal grill just to cook beans.  But, they’re better with a little smoke in them, so it had to be done.

Sunday we butted in on some friend’s Fathers Day festivities.  Had to play the “oh we’re so lonely, we don’t have any family out here” card, and it worked like a champ.  We scored some ribs, brisket, and tons of other assorted tastiness.  We brought over the massive pot of beans I’d worked on the night before for our part, and a quart of imported Jack Stack sauce.  It was a good day for sure.  We mixed in an epic pool volleyball tournament to work off some of the food, which felt great on a hot day.  I got stuck on the “deep end” team, where we couldn’t touch the bottom of the pool so we spent the whole game bobbing up and down in the water.  This was as opposed to the “glaring sun” team, who had to contend with the blinding sun right in their eyes.  Hey, it made things more challenging that way.  We won, for the record.

Here’s a short video of Teagan helping me water the dead spot in the lawn, and a few weekend pics:

https://youtu.be/pDNyzLpEDEk