Bikes!

So this weekend was the annual Tour De Tucson, a massive bike race in and around the general Tucson/Pima County area. Apparently this is a national (and actually international) event that's a "big deal" to professional cyclist as well as sport cyclists of various levels.
Website:

http://www.pbaa.com/!ETT/ETThome.html

If you click on the link that shows you the route, actually just click here:

http://www.perimeterbicycling.com/!ETT/ETTMapCue.html

Anywhoo... if you give that a gander, take note of mile 47 near the upper right of the circuit (Bear Canyon, Snyder Rd, et al). That would be where our house is, like literally... where our house is. The route doesn't take the racers through our neighborhood, but it does go through several near us, and clogged up the two main ways out of ours for most of Saturday. You could drive out if you wanted to, but it's kind of a hassle. We stayed in and walked up the road to take a peek.

Here, we're at the top of a pretty nasty little hill that borders our neighborhood. Many people's butts got kicked here. Not many folks got off and walked it, but people were chugging pretty good.

Here's some shots from back in and around the neighborhoods that the race did take place in Note the dude smiling for the shot in the next pic. We didn't even see it until we got the pictures loaded up on the pc tonight:

Peppers!

So believe it or not, we got our first frosts here in the Catalina Foothills this past week. We were dutiful and covered as much as we could to try to save our plants. Most everything made it through fine, some blackening on the sweet basil being the worst damage other than...

Our jalepeno plant.

I was warned quite firmly early in the week that if a chile plant sees frost, it will rock its world, and wouldn't you know the one plant who's black garbage bag of protection blew off of... was the jalepeno plant.

I don't think it's doomed, but honestly I have no clue. The stock looks green, firm, healthy, but most of the foliage browned and withered the very next day. In an effort to coax the little guy into putting all of his root resources into rebuilding, we did an emergency harvest. Good thing too, half the peppers I didn't even need to cut off, they just broke off withering end stock.

Anywhoo... I thought we had about 20 or so peppers on there. I was wrong.

I didn't do a full count, but it was more like 40-50. We had to pitch some because the birds had gotten at them, but as for the rest. Washed and put out on racks to dry.

From what we've read, this should take 3 weeks or so. Go go Tucson gardening experiment #432.8!

Invasion of the neuroscientists

Erika is at the annual society for neuroscience conference this week.
A picture just to get the scale of the 30,000 people presenting their
work. This is about an eighth of the poster session.

Added a room onto the house!

Old and busted:

New hotness:

Ok, ok... we didn't actually add a room, and no our established washer and dryer weren't busted. They worked fine, actually. They just didn't fit under the counter and ate up half the floor space in our side entry/laundry room. As you can see from the before shot, we couldn't even use that door.

Anywhoo... we'd been looking at all kinds of options for what to do about the situation. A little "thank you" for some activities I'd done (all legit, I promise, ma!) from a source that wishes to remain anonymous allowed us to pick these out yesterday and get them installed today. If you check out the after shot, I even installed a new dead bolt on the door since, you know... it can be opened now.

Oh, and the replaced washer/dryer combo will be going to a good home tomorrow. Nothing wrong with them, so we didn't want them just sent off to a dump or something.

New herbs

Our first attempt at growing herbs from seed - in the kitchen window!

Terrain Titans!

RAR!

Ok, maybe more like "... rar?"

These little guys are crazy small, and modeled after some old school, real deal remote controlled cars from the 80's and early 90's. The one on the left is a cartoony mock up of an old Tamiya Grasshopper, which was my first "real" remote controlled car back when I was 13.

As you can see, I made Erika get one too (made, as in I pointed out that they had one that was a dark blue/purple and it was a done deal). 3 AAA's go in the radio to power it, and to charge the car by docking it on the radio as well. Takes just under a minute to charge and they run for several minutes after. Total hoot. I'm going to get one for work as well.

So it's been a few weeks since this was actually purchased, but it's been very recently that I actually "mastered" some form of barista art (the term "art" is used very... very loosely here). Either way, this thing makes amazing espresso for Erika and I in the mornings:

http://www.mrcoffee.com/Product.aspx?pid=52

It's an actual factual 15 bar pressure-based espresso maker (as opposed to semi-forced steam, which we used to have). The difference in quality of the espresso is night and day. Normal folk may not blog about such a thing, but hey... coffee drinker since the age of 3, so...

Oh, and the beans are Amalfi Coast Espresso from good old World Market. Whee!