With the orange blossoms and everything else blooming around here, my pollen allergies are in high gear. I bought Zyrtec last week, but it doesn’t work for me. All it did was make my already dry mouth drier. My eyes were still itchy and burning, I was sneezing and constantly blowing my nose. I went back to my old standby – Opcon A eyedrops, Flonase and neti pot rinses. It’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement.

On Sunday, Donna and I rode the Spyder over to our old neighborhood and visited with our friends Lana and Joel. We sat out back on the patio and had a couple of cold ones while we talked. It was an enjoyable afternoon – until my allergies started getting the better of me. Joel and I discussed updating my operating system to Windows 10. Joel was a beta tester and he’s a computer expert – so we planned for me to bring my laptop over sometime to run the update on their wifi.

On Monday morning, Donna and I played pickleball during the open play from 8am to 10am. Donna went home at 10am but I stayed for the 3.0 round robin session. We had 16 players that presumably were level 3.0 or higher. The round robin format sets up teams to play on all four courts. The games are played until one team scores 9 – no need to win by two points. In normal play, you need to score 11 to win and must win by at least two points. With all four games playing to 9, the games went quick and finished at nearly the same time. Then everyone was assigned to a new team and court with new opponents for another game. We played a total of six games in the session. I already played six or seven games, so it was a long morning of pickleball.

End of day step count

I got a lot of steps in on the court and finished the day with more than 16,500 total steps!

An old friend from Michigan, Bill Frahm, flew into Phoenix in the afternoon. He came by a little after 3pm for a visit. We sat out by the pool and had a cold Four Peaks Kiltlifter Scottish ale and talked. Then we drove in his rental car to Barrio Queen restaurant in Gilbert. This is the restaurant that our friends Howard and Sara Graff took us to a couple of weeks ago. We had the guacamole made at our table again. Donna ordered the California enchiladas and I had chile verde. Bill ordered enchiladas mole. Donna and I had the skinny chola margarita again but Bill was more adventuresome and had a margarita made with jalapeno infused tequila. While we were enjoying the cocktails my friend Pat, who also hails from Michigan stopped by our table.

Donna’s California enchilada pate with black beans and calabacitas

My chile verde skillet

On Tuesday morning, Bill picked up Donna at 8am while I went to play pickleball. They were going to meet up with our friend Deb Spencer (Rolling Recess) and hike the Pass Mountain trail at Usery Regional Park. I didn’t want to hike among all of the wildflowers – my allergies are tough enough without that. They picked a good day for hiking – it was cool in the morning and the temperature stayed in the low 70s all day.

Fruits of the Spirit on a tree burl

Along the trail, they passed a tree burl on which had someone placed stones with a set of words that Deb identified as the nine fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).

Giant saguaro and Bill on the hike

When they finished their hike, Deb headed home and Bill and Donna headed up to Tortilla Flat for lunch. I rode the Spyder up there to meet them. I wrote about Tortilla Flat in this post. I thought it would be a fun ride on the Spyder. The road has deteriorated so badly that it wasn’t nearly as fun as I’d hoped. Between all the bumps and heaves in the road and the traffic, it was more of a chore than a joy.

When I pulled up at the restaurant I couldn’t believe the crowd. Parking areas were full and people were milling about on the boardwalk in front of the restaurant. I found Donna and Bill and they told me it would be a 35-40 minute wait for a table. What?! At 1pm on a Tuesday? I’ve never seen that many people there before.

A small portion of the people waiting for a table at Tortilla Flat

I decided against waiting that long for a seat in the crowded restaurant. I was sure the service would be hampered by the hordes of people. Bill and Donna could get a table for two quicker than the wait for a table for three, so I rode back down past Canyon Lake and home.

*Just so you know, if you follow one of my links to Amazon and decide to make a purchase, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!