What a weekend!

I went up to my family’s cabin/fortress of solitude with my wife, son, another couple and their son. After an early start, we got as far as Pinole when my phone rang. It was the other couple, in their car behind us.

<i>”Kurt, your left rear tire is looking low, you’d better check it out…”</i>

Crap. Luckily, they were following us! We pulled over to a gas station, and as I filled the tire, I could hear air leaking out. I drove over to the garage, and had them look at the tire.

<img src=http://www.kataan.org/albums/misc/20031130tire.sized.jpg border=1>

The tread was coming off of the inside edge of the tire all the way around! Instead of buying a tire on the road and risking a mechanical issue making the other tire go, I paid $7 to the attendant for removing the tire*, we gave my cabin keys to our friends, went home, got our other car, and met them up there.

<img src=http://www.kataan.org/albums/misc/20031130snow.sized.jpg>

The weather was cloudy and warm with little snow flurries. Perfect for building snowmen, drinking some great wine, baking, watching movies, and celebrating my wife’s birthday. We made a nice linguini with shrimp scampi one night, a nice chili with crusty french bread another night, made macaroons, had a wonderful rasberry cheesecake, drank a couple of decent reds and somehow managed to not touch a 1996 Silver Oak and 1997 Caymus cabernet.

My dogs did not want to get left behind up there, so when I opened the trunk to load up the car, they jumped in. Seeing as they normally ride in the back of our station wagon, I guess this makes good dog sense.

<img src=http://www.kataan.org/albums/misc/20031130trunk.sized.jpg border=1>

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<i>* Talk about adding insult to injury - charging a guy $7 to take a tire off when he knows I’m going to be paying $150 for a new one somewhere else! That works out to $840/hour!

It’s not like I’d have had them remove the tire if I knew they couldn’t fix the damn thing.</i>