Some of the people in this neighborhood formed a bike club, so I decided to go on one of their group rides. For an over 55 group, these people are in much better shape than I am. I felt like I was riding in the Tour de France competition. But they are a nice, friendly group. Bruce and I joined a few of them for dinner at a local brew pub later that evening.
The bike trails are beautiful with lots of desert wildflowers, but I may have to go back to riding alone. It's hard to appreciate the scenery when you're racing by. I managed to grab this picture when we stopped for a break at one of the rest stops.
Another thing that's unusual about this area is the severity of the storms. Almost every day dawns bright and sunny, but by about 3:00 in the afternoon, the sky clouds up and dumps buckets of rain. The other day, the weather station said we got 1.5 inches in a little over an hour. After the water receded, we found several loose 2x4s from the construction site up the street that had been pushed down by the rain to our cul-de-sac.
And even though it's hot outside, the rain is often accompanied by hail. Yeeessshh. I always think of Dustin Hoffman's line from the movie, Rainman - "We don't go out when it rains!" Not here, anyway.
Work continues on setting up the house. We finally got a new couch...
though Bruce had to put it together. Rather than wait 6 months to special order one from a furniture store, I just got one online from Wayfair. It's technically a chaise sofa, but kind of looks like a baby sectional. It looks good to me and it's way more comfortable than sitting in camping chairs like we've been doing the last 2 weeks.
Rather than put all my art supplies in the basement, I decided to set up shop in one of the walk-in closets. The master bedroom has 2, both of which are bigger than we had in St Louis. I don't have any windows, but I've got more space than I had before.
I broke my first dish this week. I love the look of granite countertops, but I hate how unforgiving they are to pottery. Luckily most of our dishes are Corelle which is supposed to be shatterproof. We'll see.
