We setup our tents, explored the surrounding area, and then went to Hetch Hetchi where we went on a six mile hike. The hike went over the Hetch Hetchi dam and ended up in a cold, refreshing waterfall. We went back, enjoyed a beer at a nearby restaurant, and then started to cook our dinner. After a few coronas and some smores, we called it a night.

Despite waking up in the middle of the night by an air horn, we woke up pretty early. Apparently a nearby camper left his dog food out, and some bears were looking for a midnight snack.

I was hoping to see Half Dome, Giant Sequoias, and maybe Yosemite Sam on the way out, but only saw some captivating views of the park itself. We stopped at a lake, where Brian decided to fish and Anya decided to swim. As soon as Anya jumped into the water, cheers could be heard from a tour group. Anya then smiled back and waved. Then she saw what they were cheering about. Brian caught a fish! Pretty funny and random.

We took a detour to explore Bodie Ghost Town. (Holy Expensive! $7 per person to enter.)  It was really neat to see this old mining town. Bodie boomed in 1877, but after a few years started to decline. Bodie has a rugged landscape with high desert winds, 100 degree summers, and cold winters plummeting even below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. This town was also known for its crime and villains. In fact at it’s height, over 65 saloons resided in the main street. Murders, shootouts, and stagecoach holdups were regular occurrences.

It was interesting to see the town. And you could definitely imagine how rough the life was in this town over a hundred years ago. If you’re interested, I’d recommend going to Bodie as soon as possible. It barely made the California budget cuts this year. I believe it’s now open month-to-month. (That’s probably why the price was so high.)

We kept traveling and had a picnic with a Cup of Noodles at a gas station in Bridgeport and traveled home. Either way, I am looking forward to going back to Yosemite again soon.

Bridget and I recently had a shindig over at our house. There was so much to celebrate, that we didn’t want to select just one thing. So… with an open house, 2 year anniversary, 1/2 birthday, and a good reason to see everyone – we went to our roots with pura vida affair.

Pura Vida literally means “Pure Life”, but is cl0ser to “this is living!” It’s a Costa Rican term, which fits. We served up some typical (black beans and rice), tacos, and fruit. And we had a strong IPA and/or lemonade to wash it down with.

The weather forgot that we were having our party, and it almost rained on us. Luckily, it remembered and it turned out to be a really nice, overcast day. We had such a good time, we forgot to take pictures. (Sorry Mom.)

The minister was pretty funny. He sported a leather jacket and leather hat, and simply forgot the ceremony speech. He thumbed vigorously through his notebook, and then sighed, and said he could do it by heart.  Even their kids seem to have fun at the wedding.

The Friday night before, our family went out to an Aces game. It was the first for much of the family, including Luke’s first baseball game. I was hoping that the kids could see the giant baseball head sing, “Take me out to the ballgame”, but the Aces gave up 9 runs in the seventh, which is when everyone left.

The Aces couldn’t pull out the win against the 51s, but made up for it with the fireworks after the game.

Ring in the wedding bells,  Pakistani Style! Shahzad recently got an arranged marriage to Gul in Indianapolis. If you’ve ever seen Weird Science, a classic 80′s movie, two guys engineer the perfect woman. Well… I think this must have motivated Shahzad. He found his perfect mate.

He had a reception or walima for his Reno friends in Reno at the GSR (aka Hilton/MGM/Ballys). The food was amazing; the Pakistani wedding traditions were great to experience, and of course, it was great to see our friends and the principal from Glee, Principal Figgins.

After awhile, we realized that Ciscoe seemed to be a local celebrity around Seattle. Then while strolling around in our Kirland-Signature Kirkland Costco, we see our local celebrity, promoting his book, Ask Ciscoe. Bridget and I are suckers and ended up buying it, but also getting his signature: “Andy and Bridget, Oh La La – Ciscoe”

I browsed through it recently, and the book was setup in a question/answer form. A lot of the information was very specific, such as what types of vines to plant. And some of the answers were pretty funny. E.g. “How can I have a garden with low maintenance.” Answer: “Get a puppy. The puppy will dig the entire garden up and you won’t have to maintain much of it.”

I’ll most likely pick this book back up if I have a specific question, but meeting Ciscoe was well worth the $11.99 we paid for the book .

Across the Country for Work
That Sunday I flew into Boston for work. We had a training and it was first time I got to visit my favorite East Coast city since I graduated from UNR. The days were filled with training and work, and at night, I met a few of my coworkers over a few beers.

Back to LAX for Erron’s Bachelor Party
It was interesting to be flying from Boston to LA, when the Celtics/Lakers were playing each other in the NBA Championship. For Erron’s Bachelor party, Tyler rented a yacht and Dave, Chris, TJ, Tyler, Ian and myself sailed to Catalina with Captain Passive Agressive. He was a funny guy to be around because he was the most laid back, uptight guy I knew. Catalina was a nice place to visit, but we had to taxi in on a boat each time we were in the city since we were staying on the yacht. It was cool to hang out on the boat or near the beach bars again. Plus the sailing made it a really different experience.

Erron and Alexya’s Wedding
The next weekend Erron and Alexya tied the knot at the Grove. Bridget posted some pictures, but it was a beautiful wedding and A LOT of fun. It was great to see some people that I hadn’t talked to in awhile.

Party in the USA… up in Frenchman’s
Independence day was spent camping up in Frenchman’s. I didn’t realize how close it was! No fireworks, but we did build a big fire.

Boly and Tara tie the knot
Boly and Tara had a beautiful wedding at Edgewood. Mrs. B made some amazing cookies, like usual and there were some great pictures off Tahoe. However, the smug minister that married them, mispronounced Boly’s last name (somewhat forgivable), and then called the bride by the wrong name (Tara is no Sarah!). He didn’t even apologize. Despite the flaw, they were able to laugh it off with Kev’s speech.

And so it’s been a great kickoff to a still eventful summer.

The symbol predates the Inca culture, which they inherited the symbols and philosophical principles from those people that came before them. The Inca cross is composed of 12 points revolving around a circle.

Each area composed of a few different meanings. The twelve points represented, not only their lunar and calendar year, but also the following points in each “season”

The number four (the cross split in quarters) is also a very strong symbol within the cross. It represented the cardinal points of a compass. Also, they relate it to the four winds; the four directions, and the body, mind, heart, and spirit.

Animals were a large influence of the Inca culture. The snake symbolizes intellect and knowledge. The puma represents courage and internal strength. It also represents present life. The condor symbolizes the balance people strive for. It also signifies the future and possibility of life in another dimension, soaring through the heavens.

Each quarter contained three different levels of conscious:

• Hana Pacha – (Condor/superconsious) The upper world inhabited by gods and other celestial beings
• Kay Pacha – (Puma/conscious) The living world and conscious.
• Urin Pacha – (Snake/sub-conscious) the world inhabited by spirits of the dead, ancestors, etc.

The center in the middle of the cross is the human soul and being, around which life experience happsn.

The circle represented Cusco (pronounced like Costco) as the center of the empire. It also represents Cuzco, the center of the Inca world and the Southern Cross constellation.

“And even more intriguing, at Puma Punku (Door of the Puma) which is the oldest part of the Tiwanaku site in present day Bolivia, the Chakana can be seen carved deeply into many different stone blocks. The stone used at Puma Punku is diorite, second only to diamond inn terms of hardness; the Chakanas are perfectly formed, as if cut by a laser.” [source]

Either way, I found it an interesting symbol that reminds me, not to be lazy.

Then January 2010 hit. With a little motivation and a lot of direction, I decided it was time to finish this project. I wanted to be able to enjoy our courtyard in the spring, so I decided to break ground in January. I had a friend who worked in the landscaping biz, so she helped with the “how to”.

Drainage
This part is where I really needed help. I needed a way to drain all the excess water falling from the roof and the courtyard to the outside. Sounds pretty easy, but you have to think of where the gutters are draining, how many drains you may need, what types of drains (we went through a few ideas), and of course the grade of the courtyard. Even with some direction, I still started to dig a ditch, and then after two weeks of digging, had to re-route the ditch another way since it seemed to work better. I’m glad I started the digging in the winter though. The storms that passed through made the ground a bit softer to work with  (rather than digging through the dry, summer rock).

Concrete block
One of our gutters was under an old concrete footer where a small brick wall used to stand. I had the wonderful challenge of trying to break this piece up. I also had to breakup the entire sidewalk leading up to the door, which wasn’t that big of a deal, but this concrete piece that was buried under ground was quite the challenge. This concrete not only broke my spirit, but also broke a wheelbarrow and a sledgehammer. I chipped away at it, day-by-day, hiding our pieces in the garbage can until one day, the final piece was broken in half and pulled from the ground. Victory is mine!

Sewer Pipe
While I was getting the drainage ditch moving, I was concerned about our sewer pipe. The summer beforehand I had gone underneath the house and found the water near our piping was damp. Well… I had wanted to put in a hose bib near the corner of the courtyard, so I called our plumber to see if perhaps he didn’t seal everything when we did our remodel.

Bad news! The sewer pipe to our blowout valve had eroded and needed to be replaced. To help save some money, I had to dig the entire pipe out, and he was right. The cast iron had eroded and needed to be replaced. One of my “favorite” memories was digging around the pipe while it was snowing outside.  I had a shovel in one hand and a flashlight in the other… I needed to get the digging finished for our plumber, and  I didn’t want to puncture the eroded pipe any worse than it was.

This put a bit of a delay on the project, but I’m glad we did it now rather then next year and have to pull up all the pavers we put down.

Pavers
We went to a business’s “boneyard” and looked to see what pavers they had available. These were the pavers they had left over from past jobs, so we would be able to get a little bit of a discount. But, that also limited some of our options. We came up with two colored palettes that may do the job, but I could see Bridget’s eyebrow start sweating with worry when the pavers finally arrived. She didn’t know how these colors were going to coexist.

Base and Sand
And so it began. We decided to build a small step to separate the two different colors from one another. And so we had two of our friend’s workers come out and compact and grade our base. This would have been a tough job, but seeing how they did it, definitely helped.  We placed some regular 3/4″ PVC pipe down and then poured beach sand over the top. Bridget even recruited a few different people to help for the paver setting party (Her parents, Rob, and even a person from her work).  We leveled everything out and then began placing pavers on top. We had a random pattern, so we moved the pavers together similar to playing Tetris. Unfortunately, we soon ran out of our boneyard pavers.

Round II
Now we had to buy pavers at regular price from two different companies. (Each company sold  the different types of pavers.) We continued to finish the pavers until we got more bad news. According to our friend, there seemed to be a miscommunication on the step. Now, the step was only about 2 to 3″ tall, which is more of a tripping hazard, rather than a real step. We then made the executive decision to remove the step entirely, which meant redoing a lot of the work we already put down. Damn it!

And finally…
The last part of the project was filling the cracks with polymeric sand. This type of sand holds similar to light glue and locks the pavers together. It’s not cheap, either. It had been awhile since we were able to do this, and a few pieces of grass began to grow in between the cracks of the pavers. I pulled these out, and Bridget and I poured the sand.

After watering everything down, everything seems to be in order. In fact, all the hard work seems to have finally paid off. This has been one of the longer, more complicated projects I’ve done, but it’s well worth it.We were delayed by a few things, and I only missed spring by a few days. But late is better than never, right?

Today, we moved our barbecue, two potted plants, and a table there today. Bridget and I sanded the table and stained it, which seems to go well with the courtyard. (Thanks Rob and Shayna!) Now all we need is a glass of lemonade, a book, and some time to relax, and it will be complete.

The Build

The Product