Start at the beginning

Happily, the drive down was uneventful, unless you count Gila Mon's substitute schoolteaching stories. In case you've been wondering what goes on at your child's school, Gila Mon informs me that in answer to his survey question, "How would you rather lose your arm -- shark attack or volcano lava?" 70% of the youngsters chose shark attack. Parents can be comforted in the knowledge that I drove him down there in the hot weather with the heater on full blast (nope, still haven't swapped out the thermostat).

Destination time. This was even more difficult than it looks. Lucky for me, though, taking the picture was easy. After I stopped the proceedings -- leaving the others holding the stove on a decayed and bending piece of plywood -- and returned holding a camera and Wagner, I was not the most popular kid on the playground. Someone remarked that of all the reasons to call the operation to an emergency halt, a photo op would not have been uppermost in his mind.

We managed to manhandle all three heavy items into the conex box. Then it was time for rest in the shade. Unfortunately, there was no shade -- this photo is from a few days before (I'd had to take it down just before a storm rolled in). (Damn, this place needs a good cleaning. The owners before the one I bought from lost the property in a drug bust. They were evidently big partiers. You wouldn't believe how many beer bottles those guys left behind.)

Can't blame the spa on the bonghead beerbellies ... that spa is the one that was in the backyard of my house. I loaded it in the back of the truck and was going to take it to the dump when I realized that whatever else it was, this was a structure. You just know that one day I'd be needing some sort of fiberglass spa-shaped structure and wouldn't have one. So now I do, and it cost me only one tail light. (That's how I learned that when moving heavy objects, it's best to have help -- hence the Five Mile Men Reunion.)