The Countdown Has Begun

This week's song of the week.  The classics keep on coming!

I think that I must have been inspired by Maps' dancing before Christmas, as this week I joined the local YMCA!  I have been looking for somewhere to swim since I arrived and found out that the on-base pool had closed for the winter.  At 50m x 25m, the YMCA pool fits the bill nicely:


You've got to go to the YMCA!

It opens at 5am each day, so ideal for a quick dip before work :)  Added bonus: there's a skate park there too!

Resisting the temptation...

One of my US colleagues did a tour at RAF Mildenhall during his USAF days on the C-130 and developed a taste for Caffrey's beer.  He has been bitterly complaining since we arrived that he cannot find any in the US and how unfair it is...  So, I decided to get him a late Christmas present (or an early present for next Christmas) and brought 24 cans back from the UK with me.  He (and his wife!) were very pleased as neither of them had drunk Caffrey's for a long time and on Monday, John gave me $50 of BJ's vouchers as a thank you.


That's a lot of pizza!

I must add that BJ's is renowned for its pizza and the reason that John bought me BJ's vouchers is because he claims that pizza is the only thing that he has heard me talk about!

A few weeks ago, Maps and I decided to move to the top floor of the hotel as we thought that it would be much quieter and the view would be better.  I think that we were correct on both counts.  The only drawback for me was that my new room had a smaller sofa than my old room.  I decided to rectify the problem by switching the sofas, but, alas, I was caught in the process by the housekeeping team and rather disappointingly, I had to swap them back.

However, after talking to the housekeeping team (in Spanish!) over the past few weeks, the supervisor finally took pity on me and when I came home from work on Monday, there was a nice surprise waiting for me:

Chaise longue.  Nice

One of my mates found this picture on the internet of an advertisement for a new TV series being shown on Amazon Prime.  I think that my cover story has been blown!

Not me!

Here's this week's horse of the week.  It was particularly boring; it just stood there eating and wouldn't even say hello.

Nom nom nom


I think that I have finally managed to get my new tubeless mountain bike wheels up and running.  It's incredibly hard to seat the tyres on the rim, especially when they are brand new AND foldable, so I ran them for a week with tubes in to get them properly seated and then borrowed the airline from the on-base garage to get them inflated once I'd filled them with sealing milk:

Out of sight, out of mind :)

There are plenty of tutorials on Youtube and I think that I have watched nearly all of them.  The recommendation from most of them is to buy a special tubeless pump...  ...unless you are lucky enough to have a compressor.  Thank you, Mike!

Once the tyres were on, I needed to head out for a test ride so I drove to the White Tanks Mountains, which are the mountains that I can see from my bedroom window.  There's a $2 entrance charge to the park (rip off) but there are lots of ancient petroglyphs, multi-use trails and...

The Sonoron Loop Competitive Track! 

With...

A technical segment

And...

Wooooooo hooooooo

I made it out on my road bike on Sunday for a 75 mile trip to Biltmore and back.  Biltmore is Phoenix's most acclaimed neighbourhood with some fairly upmarket houses, hotels, golf courses and boutique shops.  I definitely felt at home here!

Different cafe, same order


And finally for this week, I witnessed something totally crazy that got the whole town talking:

Puddles!

The first rain in Phoenix for over 100 days!  Mad stuff.

Right now, it's only four days until Trixie arrives.  Can't wait!

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