Old Town Scottsdale

"You only live once but if you do it right, once is enough."

Scottsdale has a name that usually is associated with money.  It’s not a town that houses lots of housing projects.  Matter of fact, the homes in this town are at the opposite end of the big bucks.

         

Scottsdale is to Arizona what Palm Springs is to California.  Car dealers around here include not only the Benz and Beemer's but also the real cars – the Maserati's, Bentleys, Jaguars and the Ferraris.  It’s not a cheap place to live.  Just being in this established high end town, adds many dollars to the value of the home, the stores you shop, the places you eat.  It’s a prestigious address. 

Thus, since it was so prestigious we decided that’s exactly where we needed to stay.  Our temporary address was in Scottsdale.  It wasn't a high end park but it still was Scottsdale. We decided to hobnob with the other half for a while.  So, what was the name of the upscale resort with the prestigious address we decided to set our levelers down in?  It was the Scottsdale Elks.  All the premier shops are just a short drive away from the park.  Now the Elks  may not be high-end but we certainly had a high-end address. 

Wednesday was a really busy day.  Remember all the buying Terry had been doing recently for himself but yet saying it was for my birthday?  Remember those manly things?  Well, yesterday was my birthday so it was really my turn.  He offered to buy me a drill and this time I turned him down.  I absolutely have no desire for a drill or a hammer or a screwdriver or anything else he might want to buy me like that.  Instead ….  I bought myself a bike!

Now I had wrestled between two bikes.  I really, really wanted the red one because it was RED but the other one had everything I wanted on it including the 700cc tires and didn’t need to have a few of it’s parts replaced.  It was in near new condition.  I figured that would be the logical one.  Oh, we really looked at some fancy bikes but justifying one of them for me wasn’t going to happen.  I don’t plan on riding it in the desert or racing in a race or anything like that.   This little Trek is certainly much lighter than my Adventurer folding bike but not as light as a couple of the other ones I looked at.  I wanted a bike with suspension but I don’t know what the heck for.  I thought it looked pretty spiffy with it.  Besides if I ride along side Lee or Tammi with their bikes, my bike would look like it might fit in. That was important!  This baby has 24 gears ….. I’m thinking I’ll probably use 3 or 4 of them.

My folding bike is at the consignment shop in Quartzsite.  Feel free to walk in and buy it. I would like that.  Would I buy another folding bike?  Absolutely not.  There are definite advantages to them though.  Folding bikes will fit in smaller places easier.  However, they are usually heavier than a bike of the same size.  You also have to work harder to accomplish as much as a non-folding bike.  Unless you’re interested in a top-end folder, I’d definitely look at a non-folding one unless you only have a small space, don’t care about the weight or the extra workout. Of course, my knowledge of folding bikes is limited to the one I bought for $180 and know it’s pretty close to the bottom end of the market.  It had 20” tires which meant each rotation of that wheel put me down the road only about 58 1/2”.  A bike with 26” tires would have put me down the road about 81 1/2 inches.  My new bike has 700cc tires and each rotation of those tires gets me a little over 85 inches.  It’s amazing how much farther it seems I can even coast. 

Check out my new bling valve stems !

Tammi popped into Phoenix on business.  How about the timing on that one?  I took 3 pictures of her at dinner with my phone.  Two were fogged out and the third so dark I couldn’t see it so there you go with that one.  She finished up about 5:00 at work so we picked her up at the airport and headed to Cracker Barrel for my birthday dinner. .  We both had nummy catfish while Terry had his normal vegetable plate with dumplings.

Happy Birthday to me!  Buying birthday presents is over.  I’m going to buy like Shoeless Joe does now and start looking at Christmas presents.  For now on it's going to be Merry Christmas to me!

‘Tis life on the road.