I closed my last post on Friday saying that Mike Hall invited me to join him at the Gooding and Company Auto Auction. Mike had VIP passes that gained us free entry and the run of the place at Scottsdale Fashion Square. The first part of this post is car picture heavy. If you have no interest in rare, expensive automobiles, you may want to skip down past the photos.

Mike picked me up here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort and we arrived in Scottsdale around 4pm. We were waved right into the show area after showing our VIP wristbands. Right at the entrance, a beautiful yellow 1967 Ferrari 300 GTS was on display. I’ll let the photos and captions walk us through some of the cars up for sale.

After we checked out the cars, we decided not to fight the rush hour traffic on the Loop 101 and 202. We stopped at Fox’s Cigar Lounge in Old Town Scottsdale instead. This is a nice cigar bar with a good assortment of reasonably priced cigars and a well-stocked bar with local beer on tap and a huge selection of liquor. We each picked out a cigar and sat at the bar puffing and sipping a beer for the next hour or so. Altogether a very enjoyable evening.

Saturday morning I played in the 3.0+ pickleball tournament. I didn’t have my best day on the courts. We’re having a bit of a problem here with people self-rating and playing in skill level groups they have no business playing in. Most of us tend to rate ourselves high, but we need to be realistic and the organizers need to enforce the ratings through round-robin results. Playing in a tournament where you draw a different partner in each round is frustrating when you end up partnered with someone that isn’t at the skill level being played. I’m not trying to make excuses for not making the finals, but I was a bit frustrated in a few of the rounds.

On Sunday night, Donna performed with the Viewpoint Concert Band in their monthly performance – Donna’s first concert performance in 45 years! I was amazed at how good the band sounded – they only rehearsed together four or five times. Everyone worked on their parts obviously and Donna had a great time and performed well. There were at least two hundred people in the audience. They played 14 pieces in the hour and a half performance. Now they’ve turned all of that music in and will start learning a new repertoire tomorrow for February’s performance. Wow! Donna is really enjoying her clarinet and started lessons with a new teacher just a couple of miles away from here on Monday.

I played in the 3.5+ round robin pickleball group Monday morning. We split into two random groups. I had a good draw and scored a perfect total of 66 points by winning all six of my games. It was an encouraging day on the court.

Shortly after we arrived here, I saw a guy doing some paintwork on an upscale American Coach in the row behind us. Before I could talk to the guy, he was gone. Later, I found another guy I mentioned in my last post to do some paintwork for us. On Friday, I saw the first guy again. This time he was re-caulking the seams and accessories on the roof of the American Coach.

I introduced myself and found out he was Scott Hancock. Scott used to be the Service Manager at an RV shop here in Mesa. He relocated here from Elkhart, Indiana where he built and finished RVs at the Forest River factory. Resealing our roof was on my to-do list. I figured it would be a day’s work to remove the old sealant and lay down new urethane sealant. You don’t want to use silicone sealant on an RV roof. Flexible, self-leveling urethane is the way to go.

I asked Scott what he would charge to reseal our roof. He told me if I would buy the sealant he wanted to use, he would do the work for $75. Deal! I had to order the sealant – he likes Sika brand SIkaflex Pro Select polyurethane self-leveling sealant. I found it on Amazon and had six tubes delivered by Sunday.

Scott resealed the roof on Monday. It was good thing. The sealant had ample to time to cure before rain moved in early this morning. I looked at the paintwork Scott did on the American Coach. I asked him what he would charge to do the paintwork I originally planned to have done by Perfect Touchup & Recondition. Scott quoted me a price that was $500 lower. I cancelled the job with Perfect Touchup & Recondition and scheduled the work with Scott.

After a weekend of temperatures reaching the low to mid 70s, we have a wet and dreary day today. The thermometer isn’t likely to exceed 60 degrees. We should dry out tomorrow and the daily highs will be back in the 70s in a few days. Nice!

*Just so you know, if you use this  link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, 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!