Back to Phoenix and a friend gets married

Leaving Flying Flags felt like the end of a large part of our trip and this was all planned in advance as a precursor to our large and long (45 day) European trip starting in October. We left Buellton on September 3rd and stopped at the Kellys in Long Beach for a couple of nights to gather some stuff we needed for Europe from storage. Things like sweatshirts and other colder weather clothes. Then on to Phoenix to stay at The Motorcoach Resort, a nice RV resort in Chandler that only allows motor-homes (no trailers or 5th wheels).

The day after we returned was the small private wedding of Butch Leiber and his now husband Hi Lin. Butch is a very close friend and one of the key reasons we have so many friends in the Phoenix area. As long as I’ve known him he has wanted to be in love again and this is it. It was a very nice small private service with 36 guests held at the Gladly Restaurant (Butch’s favorite hang out) with a bunch more people showing up after the main event for cocktails and an open party. Our oldest son, James, is getting married 2 1/2 weeks after Butch so we decided to stay in Phoenix for the next 3 weeks.

In an another post I talk about some of the problems we had there, but otherwise we used the opportunity to connect with some old friends and I was able to play golf a few times with my old golfing buddies. We had JB Barrick and his wife Cindy over for dinner one night in the coach and that was great. We also had Noam and Nick come one night. And we went out to dinner with Richie and Darryl one night. Mostly it was catch up time including my going into the office. And one of my Phoenix highlights was dinner with Deon Arnold one night at Z Tejas. One fantastic woman I must say both as a friend and long time co-worker. As nice as it was to see these people I certainly don’t miss going to an office very day.