Carrying On

Yesterday was another relaxing day in Usery Mountain Park. The weather is turning warm here, in fact the last couple of days we have had to run the air conditioner off and on all day. Nice to have power for these warm days. We had Mick and Jeff over for supper last night. Hot dogs sound like pretty poor fare but with the price of wood in Arizona it is no small investment to cook a few dogs over the fire. And of course Brenda had to make a little potato salad, the best, sorry Phyllis, that I have ever eaten as well as doing a few of those Puerto Penasco prawns on the barbie.

Earlier in the day we got some cleaner from Mike and Michelle in the Discovery next door to us and used it to spiff and polish the bus. It is called the Solution and I have no idea what is in it but it sure works. In fact it does the windows and stainless steel so well that Brenda claimed it for her own and I had to get another bottle to keep for myself. Mike also had some polish that seems to do an OK job of polishing out the scratches that we have acquired heading out into the desert this winter.

Today I ran over to Mesa and bought some polish of my own and then came home and worked on those scratches for a while. Didn't get them all done but it will certainly give me something to do on these slow days. This afternoon we ran over to Dairy Queen for some emergency ice cream to help ward off heat exhaustion. That managed to hold us until supper. I had read in Rod's blog about the Organ Stop Pizza place and Nina from the Discovery newsletter recommended it again today so we figured what the heck today is as good a day as any to try another pizza place. The pizza was great but the big attraction is the Wurlitzer organ that they play there for the customers entertainment. It is a massive instrument that seems to take over the large room that was custom built for it. Here is an excerpt from their material that does a pretty good job of describing it.

"In the theatre, the organ was a style 260, having a three-manual console and 15 ranks/sets of pipes. Organ Stop purchased the instrument in the early 1970s and undertook the mammoth task of rebuilding the instrument. Several additions were made to the instrument by acquiring parts from other ill-fated Wurlitzers. The resulting 23 rank organ was installed in our original facility in 1975. The enlargement and improvement of this instrument has been an ongoing project... In 1997, a larger four manual console was added to the instrument. The new console is an exact replica of a "Fox Special" French case, ornamented to match the famous Brooklyn Paramount Wurlitzer. This is the largest console type ever designed and built by Wurlitzer. Through the years, several rare sets of pipes have been added to the organ, including a massive set of 32' wood diaphones (visible from the front of the building). As of 2006, the organ boasts nearly 6000 pipes. The massive quantities of wind required for operation are provided by four huge turbine blowers (visible from the outside of the building in the blower complex). The resulting instrument is the largest Wurlitzer theatre organ in the world!"

The patrons tonight seemed to be in large part Canadians and as we were entering the restaurant the organist was doing a fine job of playing our national anthem "Oh Canada" followed off course by the "Stars and Stripes" but by the look of the license plates in the parking lot and the reception of Oh Canada it seemed it the election was decided here tonight Stephen Harper would be the President.