These riders pedal across the country via their bikes each summer and spend a certain amount of time along the way helping construct low-income housing.
The groups of riders have been staying over at the Presbyterian Church for the last few years, and Bill always enjoys getting to know them and hear their respective stories.
This year he's devoted the most time to telling about the engineering student he met from Stanford who shared with him that sometimes she catches herself day dreaming in class only to remind herself that she has the opportunity to learn from some of the renowned experts in the world and that she'd better pay attention.
Always a good reminder in most educational situations.
Before Bill said good bye this morning, I was already starting in on today's session of purging the house, barn and shop for the yard/arena sale at my sisters' tomorrow and Saturday.
Having never done a yard sale before, I've learned that we should not plan to anticipate or calculate how much we're getting an hour for our efforts in finding and preparing "treasures" to sell to customers looking for the best deal in town.
Take, for example, the "elite" laminate flooring odds and ends which have been sitting in an upstairs storage room for eight years. The previous owners did some remodeling and had plenty left over.
I had forgotten about that flooring, probably because, in eight years, I've thrown enough stuff in that store room that the flooring remained buried and out of sight until I started pawing through stuff yesterday.
Well, the flooring materials were in their original long box, and let's just say there was some bulk. I especially noticed the bulk while trying to figure out how to pick up and move that box while in a bent-over stance (there's about four feet of head room at the height of that storage room).
Then, I had to figure out how I was gonna turn around without tripping over all the stuff I had waded through to find the flooring. With a door about 3 feet high, the exit out of the room with the box was gonna be tricky at best.
While plotting strategy for getting both myself and the elite flooring out of the storage room, my back kept reminding me, with piercing pain, how much its hates me when I bend over for more than ten seconds.
During this period, my focus of what kind of price to put on this great find switched to worrying more about how much the doctor bill was gonna be if I did not plot correct strategy and fell down amongst the mess of Christmas bags and decorations, Willie's college books and notebooks and, yes, a tub of Willie's boxers, briefs, socks and several Badger Building Supply T-shirts.
Willie spent a year working at Badger's so he has a good supply of reminders.
My sister told me NOT to call them underwear when I told her yesterday that Willie had a pretty impressive collection tucked away in that tub. I especially liked the pair pictured below. It reminded me of two reasons for motherly pride: Willie was, indeed, a potty-trained college student AND that he has good taste in underwear---oops----Boxers!
Raised that kid right.
Fortunately, God was watching over me yesterday and probably coveting those Boxers, so I managed to escape the storage room with the elite flooring, several pairs of Willie's Boxers and with NO need to use my Medicare.
That allowed me to move on to other items around the place which I would unilaterally designate "for sale."
Again, one should not think in terms of the money coming in; instead, one should consider items going out the door and opening up more space to store more junk---oops---treasures.
For several years, a Eureka vacuum cleaner has been taking up space in the shop off from the house----long enough, in fact, that it took me at least 15 minutes to pick and wipe off the cobwebs and dust.
"You mustn't take dirty items to a garage sale," I thought, especially a vacuum CLEANER. Never mind that this Eureka doesn't exactly pick up dirt, but once cleaned, it IS fairly attractive, and certainly that bright yellow duster off to its side could do some cleaning.
By the time I finally loaded the $5 vacuum cleaner into the pickup, I had spent nearly two hours, taking it apart and trying to figure out why it only sucks up through the hose.
At one point, I almost broke a piece on the vacuum cleaner at which time I figured best not to tinker too much or you'll have to mark down the price.
So, there's a fairly clean $5 Eureka ready for some mechanical wizard who knows how to tinker better than I do.
I'm also betting that certain someone will get the Eureka to the point that it really SUCKS! And, that's a good thing.
I've taken two loads of stuff----oops----treasures over to my sisters' arena. Most of that includes tables where we'll put stuff/treasures and tarps for those tables to sit on.
My sisters have also spent a lot of time with a vacuum cleaner that works (it just could be one of those $1,500 outer space models that some salesman suckered Mother into buying a few years ago---NOT at a yard sale).
Anyway, Barbara and Laurie keep vacuuming the furniture to keep it in mint condition, and then they put tarps over it to keep the pigeons from decorating the chairs and couches, etc.
I think I heard that they might sell that vacuum cleaner too. If nothing else, it's a conversation piece with its "spacial" appearance.
Yup, there's a lot of work to gathering up our junk that, for sure, is gonna be someone else's treasure----the primping, the fixing, the pricing, etc.
And, I'd say there's some learning involved . . . learning that this may be our first and last yard/arena sale.
In all seriousness, there some wonderful samples of quality horse tack, some good buys on gently used furniture and, of course, some elite laminate flooring!
As I said, yesterday with each item---even many of the the 5-centers, there's a rich story, and that's the fun of such an event.
One more reminder: Arena/Yard Sale: Friday and Saturday, starting at 8 a.m. at Tibbs Arabians, corner of Center Valley Road and HWY 95, just beyond the Wood's Two Halves of Beef. No earlybirds cuz we'll probably be vacuuming!
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