We arrived back in Park City on September 24 after our first significant loop of the Northern Rockies, covering some 5,400 miles in the Euro hippy rig.  It was an incredible start to our adventure, but it was time to refuel, reorganize, and get re-acquainted with our growing little ski town and our good friends that are so fortunate to live there, as we once were.  It’s been over 2 weeks since our last post, which is indicative of a couple things.  First, we were much busier in PC than we could have imagined.  I had images of fishing multiple days, heading for a visit to my old friends at Smith, and mountain biking my ass off.  Well, none of that really happened.  Second, the cell service here in California is spotty, at best, which was originally odd to me until we consulted with the female version of Cliff Claven of PC,  Susan Richter.  Susan says it’s because the fine people of CA have a “NIMBY” issue, and for those of you that have never heard that acronym before, it stands for “not in my backyard”.  This essentially means that cell towers are relatively sparse because people in CA don’t care to want to look at them.  That makes perfect sense to me, but I suspect that Californians are the first to bitch about their spotty cell service, and I guess I will just get in line behind them.  That will be my first official jab at California, but certainly not the last, because frankly, it’s just too easy.   That said, there will be plenty of time for that because it’s a massive state (republic), and I am getting way too far ahead of myself.  Back to PC, our visit was awesome.  It made us appreciate even more what we had when we called PC “home”.  Great weather, beautful mountains, tremendous friends, and quite literally the best variety of mountain biking on the planet.  I’m sure we will find other places that compete with PC on the mountain biking level, but we won’t find anything that really compares.  Home base for our stay was at Carmen and Paul’s new home over near Trailside, the home formerly owned by Sue and Joe.  The sale of the home was consummated by one of the most complex, seemingly random, and contingent real estate deals that I have ever seen, but congratulations to the 6 people that made it all happen.  The result is yet another great remodel to an already great location…it would appear that Carmen and Paul have a tremendous knack for flipping.  It will be interesting to see how long this trend persists before they quit their high-powered jobs and join us on our excellent adventure.  Carmen and Paul are some of the most gracious and caring people we have ever met, and we are extremely thankful to them for having taken us in for a few days.  Despite repeated bantering by Carmen, and despite Paul’s insistence on interupting our stay by flying jumbo jets across the Pacific Ocean, we did manage to sneak in only a couple rides right out the back door of their home.  What a treasure, and what phenomenal  rides…it was a great and simple reminder of how awesome the riding is in PC.  We were also treated to the fine cuisine that only Carmen seems to be able to dream up.  It really was like we were staying in a 5-star, St. Regis Hotel, except it was the sales and marketing department that was catering to our every need.  We even had an opportunity to bring my pizza oven out of the basement for a pizza night.  Paul was gracious enough to find a nice little shrine downstairs to store our little gem.  Susan, Jules, and Simon were kind enough take time out of their busy schedules to join us last-minute on a school night to partake in the pizza revolution.  We also got together with Heather and Casey at Maxwell’s for more pizza on Friday night and we had a blast yucking it up with those two crazy cats. Speaking of crazy cats, we also had the good fortune of running into our niece, Vanessa, at Maxwell’s. And luckily enough, she was waiting on our table. Thanks, Vanessa, it was great to see you. We were able to get our laundry done and a number of small, but significant improvements to the van and the trailer.  We also offloaded a bunch of unnecessary stuff at our storage unit, and backfilled that with more important stuff (booze).  The German Ping Pong Champion from 1978 (Carmen) forced us to play hours of drunk pingpong in the gameroom downstairs.  It was a leading proposition by Carmen for sure, and being only moderately amused by the situation, I decided to wait until the waning moments of the rubber match before I turned on the afterburners and kicked her ass.  It was something that I really didn’t want to do, especially in her own home, but it needed to be done.  I just hope Carmen has been able to return to a normal sleeping pattern, or find other, less-athletic victims, or both.  Speaking of afterburners, Paul was able to spend 3 nights with us before we sent him out on a recon mission in his Boeing 767.  On his return from Hawaii, Captain Sanden maneuvered his 767 in and around Lake Tahoe to ensure that the mountains, lake, and breweries were ready for our arrival.  Word has it that he also barrel-rolled his 767 to acquire imagery for us, sort of like how Denzel Washington did it in that corny airplane movie called “Flight” about 10 years ago, but apparently Delta is still looking into it.  Nice flying, Captain…the recon was instrumental for our eventual visit to Tahoe.  We would have loved to have stayed longer, but the road called on Saturday, September 30, and we left Starview Lane much like we did on August 3, with a weird, deja vu kind of feeling.  The short story is our stay was simply awesome, and thanks again for having us, Carmen and Paul.  And thanks to Susan, Jules, Heather, Casey, and Simon for spending some time with us.  We miss all of you, and we miss our sleepy little ski town, but the show must go on.  And some dumb-ass has to write all this bullshit, and I am happy to volunteer.  Now, before I lose this weak, California cell signal, over and out.  More ramblings to follow…please stay tuned!