We've Made A Big Decision

After 12 years of riding around North America together we have decided to sell the bikes. We have ridden across Canada and spent 6 weeks on the east coast as well as  riding to Ontario 5 times. We have been to Sturgis as well as ridden the Oregon  coast a few times. We have really enjoyed these bike but for the last couple of years we didn't really ride that much. Most of our friends that ride have either moved away or have sold their bikes . We think it is time to move on but we have agreed that if we miss them a lot we will buy a couple of new ones. If anyone out there knows of someone looking for a good Harley please call me. We are selling them at fair market price.

                                              Mine is a 2004 Ultra glide Classic

Ruths is a Heritage Classic

Back In Recovery

So I had an appointment with a plastic surgen Monday afternoon. I have had a small blemish on my cheek that was up against my nose for quite a while . My vanity finally told me to get it removed and when I went to the Dr. he did some tests and found out that it was a Basel Cell. It is a type of cancer which doesn't attach to organs so that is good but it is important to remove.  I went to the hospital on Monday afternoon for minor surgery and had it cut out. I just hope it heals and doesn't leave any/much of a scar. I am amazed in how I went from a pretty boy in early March to the poster child for stitches in late March. Actually , when I consider how large the incision was and that it was only 48 hours ago I am quite happy with how well it is healing. It can always be worse.

I received this video from a friend the day before my surgery and it gives a strong argument to looking at alternative cures for cancer . I wish I had gotten this a few months back because I know I wouldn't have considered the surgery until I tried some other ways to fix my problem.

Click Here To See This Short Video

So I am just hanging out at home this week because I am too vain to go out and get stared at. I have never baked bread before and even though it is in a bread maker and very easy to do I am proud of how my first attempt turned out. I spent about one hour on the net trying to decide which recipe I wan going to do and I think I made the right choice. Next time it is going to be whole wheat . Not white.   Bread Makers Rule.

Ruth was out this afternoon seeing a friend and by the time she got home I had my favourite spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove and fresh bread cooling on the kitchen counter. This sauce takes about 3 hours to make and simmer down but it is worth every minute of the wait. I love my cast iron frying pan that Ruth got me for Christmas.

What a great meal. I love to eat good food.

This Was A Fun Build

 Ritmuller is one of the finest pianos coming out of Asia according to the Piano World. The company was started in Germany in the late 1700's and was bought by Pearl River in 1995. They hired one of the two most renouned european piano designers to bring the Ritmuller piano into the 21st century about five years ago. These pianos are so wonderful I am planning on putting one of them into my own home once I sell the Steinway I have presently. Two weeks ago I had a couple from Vernon come to the shop and pick a nice 5'3 grand for themselves. He is the piano player and he was very impressed with the tone and action of this Ritmuller. She loved the pianodisc system and we all agreed that this was their new piano.I spent the next two weeks building the piano into a player . I love doing this conversion. They play so great when done.Here I have the key bed out of the piano. I love how they come apart.

                              The key bed is back into the body with the speakers and all the  electronics attached.

I sent the new owners of this piano a video of how well it sound's and play's before packing it up and delivering it to their home. Click here to see the video they received.

Here I asked my friend Dana over to help me roll the piano back onto its legs and the first thing he does is put a set of ear protecters on so that he doesn't have to listen to my instructions. I really think that you get what you pay for. He doesn't know it yet but I am looking for a new helper.

Here we are rolling the piano back onto its skid for the delivery to the new owners home. I appreciated the help doing this. I don't like doing this on my own.

Here Ruth and Dana are getting ready to give the big Heave Ho.

This is a very hard push to get these grands into the trailer. I want to figure out a way to have a winch drag them up the ramp.

I do love this new trailer. Lots of room and easy to manoeuvre once inside.

So I put the pictures of this move in an earlier blog. It was a nightmare doing this move. The piano had to go out 75 feet from the edge of the cliff and down 75 feet. The boom on the crane had trouble going out that far because there were wires overhead that restricted them in the angle of the lift. He got the boom out about 72 feet when the back outriggers on the truck started to loft off the ground. It was a very scary crane job but if anyone can do a job like this it is Carlos Crane in Kelowna. He and his son are great.

They were there at around 1:00 and got all set up

Look at the waves on the lake. The wind was wild from the south. We had to do a tether up to the piano so as to stop the piano from swinging like a pendulum on the end of the cable.

I had hired a coulpe of the movers from Cidel Moving in Vernon to help and they were great. Nice guys who knew what they were doing as well as they listened to what I wanted. One problem I have had in the past is that when I have hired movers to help me on a job they don't listen. I actually had the owner of Sunshine movers tell me that I am just a salesman and that he is the mover so he would appreciate it if I didn't tell him how to do his job. I had to laugh at that one because in my 42 years of doing this I have sold more than 7500 pianos and have personally moved many of them to the new customers homes.

Check out the video here.

This is an absolutely beautiful home on the lake and they love their new Ritmuller Grand piano with the pianodisc system controlled by the iPad . It is very cool.

Saturday Afternoon

Ruth wanted to walk to the Minstrel Cafe for dinner tonight and I didn't want to. I don't like the dark and I  don't like walking home in the dark for 6 kilometres on a full stomach and a couple of glasses of wine. The compromise was a nice hot tub and a hike up the mountain behind the house following  the canyon along Lebanon creek. It is a beautiful hike. We came across an old site where some kids had their fort. This reminded me of my childhood.

So we get about 45 minutes up the mountain when we happen to turn around and saw some black clouds coming up the lake. We decided to head back to the house.

I had a tough time keeping up with Ruth on the hike down but she would kindly stop and wait for me on a regular basis.

The white caps were getting quite large on the lake. The wind really picked up and we got a mix of  hail , snow  and rain. It had turned ugly really fast.

We were both very wet and cold by the time we got back to the house but our reward was a nice hot tub and our flannel  pyjamas. It was a great Saturday afternoon. I want to finish the day by making dinner and watching a movie . In my books this is a perfect Saturday.

I did notice this strange picture in my camera when I unloaded it tonight. It looks like some sort of sasquash running thru the bush in a rain storm.

Friday Was A Busy Day

The first order of business this morning was to head up to Summerhill Winery and fix their grand piano.I don't like having to work on this piano because of where bit is located. Steve Cypes had me move it into the Pyramid last year for an event he was having and it has stayed there ever since.

Its cold and dark in here.He wanted the pyramid to be as authentic as possible so there is no metal or electricity in this building. We have to drag in an extension from outside if we want light. The candles and torches just don't work for me.

There are ropes hanging down from the peak that are strung over pulleys. When Steve first built the pyramid he had a platform suspended from those ropes that he used for meditating on. "Yeah" for Pyramid Power.

So someone somehow ripped the lid off of this grand piano. The screw holes for the hinge were totally stripped so I drilled them out and plugged them with maple dowels. It worked perfectly. Took an hour.

Next stop was the Apple Store. They released the new iPad today. What a great invention.

I baked a cake this morning before I left . Today is Mike's birthday. He didn't know that I remembered it was his birthday and he and his wife came over for a surprise birthday dinner . It was a nice surprise for him. I love Angle Food Cake. This was the second one I have made this week.

Saturday morning and it looks like this is going to be an indoors day.I just took this picture thru the office window with my new iPad. The camera on this latest iPad is very good. Its one of their improvements.

Started As A Jack Day , Ended As A Carrie Day

I got Jack at noon. Ruth and Carrie had an adventure with some friends and it was not convenient to take Jack. I didn't mind. The kid is a lot of fun. We did some errands and then headed home for lunch. He eats anything that I make for him as long as it is a scrambled egg or peanut butter.

                                                                 I love watching him eat.

After lunch we constructed an Angle food cake for his moms birthday and then played outside for a while . I finally talked him into going for a nap but first he dug up 6 books to read. We climbed onto the bed and read 5 of them. I had been saving the best for the last but he was starting to doze off just as I was about to read him the book called " I love My Grand dad." Timing is everything. I should have read that one first. He slept for 2 hours . Such a cute little boy. We had a nice day.

So my youngest baby is 34 today. I am so proud of her. She is a great daughter. She is a great Mom. You should see her on a stage.

                                               She is also a great dancer.

We made a nice dinner for carrie's birthday. Jack and I made an Angle food cake for desert and when the girls got back from their birthday adventure Jack helped Ruth do the whipped cream for the cake.

While we had our birthday dinner Carrie and Brad put Ellie into her bassinet beside the table. She was watching me while I was wanting to take her picture so I covered the flash with my hand as I did this. I didn't want to have the flash go off in her eyes. That is the reason for the darkness. She is the most beautiful little baby girl I have ever seen.

I loved the look on Carries face when we told her how old she really was.

It took a long time to light this many candles.

Ruth knew that Jack would want to help so she put 4 candles on the real cake for him to blow out.

He was busy trying to help everywhere.

I love when the kids come over. It was a nice evening.

My Vernon Challenge

I was in Vernon this morning tuning the Steinway that is in their Performing Arts Centre.

When I left there I headed out to where we are craning my latest Grand Piano install next Tuesday.
The place is really something. It is down 75 stairs and out 75 feet from the edge of the cliff. I don't know why people build in places like this. They have lived here 17 years and she was telling me it isn't fun bringing home the groceries in the winter when it is snowing.

Once on the deck it is still quite a distance to get down to the lake. That is why they installed a lift. Now I'm not too crazy about heights and I certainly didn't care to get onto this contraption to go down to the dock.

Once we get the piano craned down to the house we still have one more flight on the outside of the house to get it to the level we are setting up on. I wish my old buddy Dale was here to help with this one. It should be fun.

A Week On The Treadmill

Ir was another busy week where I didn't get anything done. I'm not complaining because everything I did was fun. I guess it is because these days I am very conscious of the fact I am on the right side of the grass. On thursday night I was woken up by all the yard light going on. I grabbed my camera and ran outside onto our pool deck. There were 5 deer just outside the gates eating Ruth's shrubs. I am going to have to get a better system to capture their pictures if they keep coming back after dark. All the picture shows is the flash in their eyes.   No Bucks tonight.

A couple of hours later Ruth woke up and saw the most beautiful moon.  We really need a better way to take night time pictures.

So I managed to get a picture of Shirley and Shellie on our hike this morning. ( Shellie is on the right )
Shellie and I walked together for most of our morning hike . I find it a bit of a work out being with her because her pace is around 10 miles per hour.

So this morning we walked up the canyon ridge that is opposite from our house. I love this hike and I also love the view of our house from across the canyon. Hard to believe this is kelowna.

It was a beautiful morning. No wind . Slight rain and crisp air.   Wonderful.