Up and going a whole lot earlier than normal, or that I really wanted to be, but had agreed to run an errand this morning and woke up at 6:30 and couldn't get back to sleep again. The errand was to meet my sister-in-law over at the old family home and pick up a key so I could help keep the lawn and bushes watered until the house was sold. Also had to pick up a couple boxes of stuff that had been inadvertently left in the house last fall when I left on the trip back east. No problem though, it was actually nice to see the house cleaned out again and realize that it was really a very nice place to grow up in. Lot's of memories left in that place, some not so good, but most were just wonderful. Stuck around long enough to reprogram the sprinkler system's so who ever was doing the watering wouldn't have to drag around a sprinkler and hose for the 2-3 hours it would of taken. Now you can just turn it on and let it cycle through all the zones while reading a book on the back deck.

   Finally got out of Denver after 1:00 and headed for Longmont to do some more errands up there. Did a quick stop at the storage unit to add to and pick up a few more things before heading on over to the trailer. Had to jack up and remove one of the wheel's and tire in order to take it over and get it replaced. For some reason this rear tire on the driver side wore out the outside edges before the rest of the tire. It got me back to Colorado okay, but really didn't want to take a chance on it again. The wear pattern seems to indicate that the tire was under inflated for quite a while, and that could well be. I'm a bit more vigilant about checking them now that I noticed the odd wear pattern. But it could also be a problem with the alignment of that particular axle, not that there is a whole lot you can do about it. With this type of axle you can take it in and have them straighten, (bend), it, but I understand that it is hard to get it right and may in fact make the problem worse. I went and had a new tire put on the rim and balanced it so right now I think I'll just keep a closer eye on it and maybe rotate the tires a bit more so they will all wear a little more evenly.

    Drove on back to Denver afterwards through the afternoon rush hour traffic. Of course now days rush hour actually starts around 3:30 in the afternoon and goes until nearly 7:00, so it's kind of a hassle no matter what. Met my friend Tom at the movie theatre and he and I went in and watched the movie 'Rock of Ages'. It's about an aging heavy metal band singer, played by Tom Cruise, who is kind of washed up. Evidently based on a play, it was a musical, which I wasn't expecting. The sondgtrack was also mainly heavy metal tunes which I grew up being pretty ambivalent about. But we both really had a great time watching it and were both surprised at not only knowing most of the songs but how many of the actual words we knew. Tom Cruise was wonderful as were Alec Baldwin and Cathrine Zeta-Jones and all the rest.

   Afterwards we wanted dinner, mexican food again, but being after 9:00 on a Wednesday we found that our favorite place was already closed. We ended up at a new place for me that was still open for another hour, but only for drinks and appetizers. So that is what we had. We had a good time talking about what we have both been doing the past 10 months as well as setting up a few things for the near future. Looks like he and I will be taking off on July 31st to do the Missouri River up in Montana. We haven't done a trip with just the two of us for more than 40 years so this ought to be interesting. If we don't end up killing each other it should be a good shake down cruise for a trip we want to do in the near future, which is to paddle the whole Missouri River again from Ft Benton Montana down to at least St Louis.

    But it's late now and I'm about to fall asleep right here. There are crickets singing outside, as well as one here inside in the spider cage, and they sound real nice. More errands to do tomorrow, but for now it is off to bed for me.