Saturday 8/17 - My pool shift started with helping a trainee learning the computer in the morning. And then a new employee (Melissa) came in real early for a review of the computer and to let me off work by 1:30.
Joe and I were on the road to Nashville by 2:30.
When we arrived at Dan and Val's, Dan was out mowing the lawn.
We were greeted by Dan and Val's new dog, a four year old Grey Hound, Tango, off the tracks in Florida. He has run 112 races, never winning any, but making it to the podium a few times, and was retired in April. Dan and Val adopted him a month ago, from a foster home.
Tango is a very sweet boy, calm, fairly curious, and amazingly muscular. He had some difficulties adjusting to the change in lifestyle, and had lost some weight, but is now gaining it back.
We brought a bin and two trunks of Dan's stuff (I had found in the bunk room) that he had a good time going through. One find was this old toy Mom had made for each of the grandchildren, where you try to get the little wooden man to stand at the top of the bar. Notice to the back of Dan, Tango is enjoying one of Dan's old stuffed toys, Stewie.
He made a good pillow for the dog.
Or not...
Me with my new 'grandson.'
Then we went into the main area of the plaza where a band was playing. After enjoying the music for a bit, while I did a little dancing, the others had ice cream.
We got to Jean's office 90 minutes before she got off work. She gave us a quick tour of the mostly empty floor. Not many employees work on Sunday.
There was a minor league game to start at 1:00 so there was already street and parking activity 14 stories below us. What great views there were from around the office.
Jean's desk is tucked back in kind of a dark corner. But the whole office area was really quite nice.
To kill time while waiting for Jean to get off work, we went for a little self-guided tour, going along the river walk.
The Truckee River goes right through the middle of downtown. The walkway is on both sides of it.
The river splits at Wingfield Park, going around both sides of it. And it is a beautiful green space.
This was the day of the Duck Race and Festival at the park, for the Humane Society. We bought two duckies.
The band wasn't quite ready to play and we needed to get lunch before going to Jean's, so Joe pulled me away from the park. We found this lovely restaurant (Liberty's) and were still able to listen to other nice music while we ate.
After lunch we walked back to the parking lot.
A selfie of us in front of a fountain along the river walk. Jean was already heading for home, but had to make two stops.
We arrived at Jean's house before her, and were greeted by Bruce, her landlord. She rents a sweet little studio apartment at the end of his big shop.
I took these photos a few days later, to show the inside of Jean's place. This is it, except for the bathroom.
Then we headed up the hill (a quarter mile) to Katie's house.
Seen left, Joe meets Whiskey, and right, Katie and I.
After a tour of the KT ranch, we invited her to dinner and then came back to Jean's for some downtime. I was almost done with my book and was suffering from jet lag (we had been up since 1:30am Jean's time). So I spent an hour in the hammock, finished my book and napped.
Jean skewed the vegetables and put them on the grill with hamburgers and hotdogs. Joe, Katie, Jean, and I sat out on the patio and enjoyed a great meal.
Then we played Scattergories until dark, having a fun time.
It was a leisurely morning. I was amazed at how cool it had gotten overnight, a 30 degree drop in temperature, from 91 to 61 degrees. Jean opens her windows at night and closes them in the morning and her place stays cool all day. There is no humidity that needs to be removed from the air. It was absolutely lovely.
Joe headed to his poker tournament at a casino in Reno, and we went up to Katie's ranch a little before 9:00.
These are Katie's three Icelandics.
Jean helped me get Whiskey brushed and tacked. He is a 26 year old, 16.2 hand, American Saddlebred. A gentle giant, but gets in your space like Zorro does. I was strict with him from the start. I felt comfortable doing everything but lifting his feet. They were ginormous. Then Jean got Tryggur, one of the Icelandics ready, while I 'test drove' Whiskey in the round pen. I ended up dropping the English saddle stirrups real low because I am of the western world, and ride that way. His gaits felt so different from Amiga's, but he likes to go like she does. I kept it all controlled and mostly slow.
Once Jean was ready, we rode around Katie's for a minute before hitting the trail. This (video) is of us heading out towards Katie's back gate which put us on the Toiyabe National Forest property.
Tryggur is a 15 year old, 13 hands, very cute Icelandic.
The flora and fauna was very different than our deciduous forest. The terra had lots of rocks like us, but was a lot more sandy. And the air was very dry.
We rode to the top of one ridge and got some great photos of each other and of the spectacular view. Jean took the panoramic photo below, which distorted Whiskey's head, neck, and reins.
The day was heating up fast. It was a very dry heat, not making me feel hot and sweaty like back home, but I got more dehydrated and tired than normal. We stopped and rested the horses in the shade every so often, and rode for about 90 minutes.
I had a fantastic time riding Whiskey. He was fun, and such a good boy.
I was going to help Jean with some outside chores, but was wiped out after the ride. Plus it was the heat of the day. So after lunch we rested and chatted a lot, catching up on life. We did work in the shade at removing a small shrub and preparing a spot for Jean's newly scavenged wooden crate, she wanted for a compost bin.
Then we picked up Katie and went to a yoga class, down the hill in Verdi. These metal horses were outside the studio. We did a lot of muscle toning in addition to stretching. I kept up fairly well, and learned some new strengthening exercises for my core, especially the lower abdominal muscles and my inner thighs.
Joe got knocked out of the tournament earlier than hoped for so ended up coming 'home for dinner,' which was salads we each custom made for ourselves.
As the sun set, I walked the one mile private road Jean lives on. I went up the hill (mountain) first, getting a good view of Verdi in the valley below. Then I went past Jean's place and all the way down to the bottom of their road. A deer had scurried across the road near me, which kind of made me jump. Bear are in these parts and it was dark by the time I got home, so I had been on high alert.
Tuesday 8/20 - It had been another great night sleeping with the windows open and temperatures in the low 60s. Because the days heat up fast, we got started fairly early. Joe's next tournament didn't start until late morning so he helped us by drilling drainage holes in the wooden box.
We three went up to Katie's (who soon left for work) and did some chores while waiting for the horses to digest their morning feed. We scrubbed and refilled Whiskey's 100 gallon water tub and cleaned manure out of the loafing sheds.
Joe left and we stopped chores to saddled up our horses at 9:30. Soon we were on the trail, this time to ride down to the pond.
It was another beautiful day and we had a great time riding together.
I took lots of photos of us.
In this (video) we are approaching the pond.
We made a few rest stops in the shade so our horses wouldn't get too hot and tired.
Arriving back at the KT ranch, Jean shuts and locks the gate.
We had had another wonderful ride, going almost 3 1/2 miles, in almost two hours of time.
He looked great.
Jean sprayed for weeds.
And I continued work on manure.
I would much rather live in a western world than the technological world I struggle in. Tuesday my Facebook account got hacked when I tried to open a spam video which looked legitimate. And Friday I spent way too much time trying to get these photos in the correct location on this blog post. Ugh!
Joe had gotten knocked out of the second tournament too soon to win anything, and came home as we were getting cleaned up for dinner. He took this photo of Jean and I sitting on our finished project.
I am not sure what got Jean and I laughing.
How wonderful that Jean and Kate's childhood friendship is still so close. And how nice of Katie to share her ranch and horses with us.
I went for another evening walk to help digest all the food and two beers I had consumed.
esday 8/21 - Jean left for work at 5:30am. Once Joe was up (eightish) we went hiking on the trails Jean and I had ridden. We only went a couple of miles. 
Back at Jean's, we cleaned up, packed up, and had an early lunch. Seen below, Joe is picking burs out of his socks as he rests in the hammock.
We were soon on the road to the rental place at the airport in Reno. Once the car was dropped off, we headed for our gate. I had an hour to work on this blog post and Joe read while we waited for our 1:00 boarding.
Look who (what) sat by me on our first flight.
We had a 90 minute layover in Salt Lake City, the town that haunts my memories with Courtney's illness.
We grabbed an early dinner and took our next flight to Nashville. Loosing two hours, it was 9:30 when we landed. Dan took us to his house where we got our SUV and drove home. How can sitting in cars, airports, and airplanes be so tiring? Home just after midnight, we both went straight to bed.
It got cloudy a few hours into my shift and the crowd thinned. The skies cleared off but were still threatening, so I only had a few brave souls the rest of the evening.
Joe made it to Louisville and I was able to close thirty minutes early. I went to bed before 9 pm, to the sound of the rain.
Friday 8/23 - I woke at 3am, after six full hours of sleep, and got up because I knew it was hopeless to get back to sleep. I fought blogger for hours, trying to download photos and then get them positioned where I wanted them on this page as I typed in the text.
I sat here way too long, but thankfully I had interruptions with dog walks, playful kitties, messaging with Britney and Jean, texting the 'girls' here to organize a night out, and making trips to the kitchen.
After lunch I left the technological world and went to the western world for some horse time. I enjoyed a great ride on Amiga.
It had started raining before I left the barn, and a heavy downfall occurred soon after I got home. I was meeting up with some friends and we were going to eat on the patio at Spikes and listen to the singer, but got moved indoors.
Dinner was good and there was even some dancing to the country western songs.
Micki and I decided to move on to Reds, in search of better music to dance to. We sat with Melissa (from the pool) and listened to several ballads and other slow songs, including country western. It didn't work for us, so then we went to Mega Bites.
We ran into Penny there, and had fun dancing.
The smoke filled room and loud rock music still wasn't what I was looking for, but I made the best of it and had a fun time anyways. When the band took a break, several line dance songs were played and I enjoyed doing those. Micki and I left before the band started back up and I was home by 12:30.
I'm not exactly a little bit country and a little bit rock 'n roll. I am more like a mix of western, 50's and 60's, and island music.
