The last of the steps is now poured. On to the retaining wall - which I estimate will take me a month or two of weekends with a few evenings thrown in. It's amusing to observe the risers on the steps. The bottom one is extremely coarse and each one gets progressively smoother until the top one which is almost perfect. This was to be expected as the bottom step was the first time I poured concrete (except for the occasional posthole). Now I know what it takes to get it right and have confidence that I could pour a nice smooth patio. This is good because I have to do that also. Oh and I'm not worried about the appearance of the bottom step. I already planned that the risers were going to be stuccoed.

It's now late afternoon and I've got the first tier of the retaining wall in for the barbecue nook area. Poured the footing, slammed some rebar into it and lined up the bottom row of blocks. Have a look at the work in progress if you'd like. After three full days of some of the hardest labor I've ever done I'm tired, very sore, and pretty majorly sunburned. Got much more accomplished than I dreamed I could pull off in three days, so it's a good point to call it quits for now and have a nice hot shower and an equally nice cold cerveza.

There's a mad pipe bomber in Fremont. The police don't have a clue. Uhm, 'scuse me but wasn't there a mad bomber in Fremont just a few years ago? Wouldn't that be a pretty good place to start? Here's a bit of trivia - Fremont is one of the largest cities in California. Not in population, but in acreage. It's been a while so forgive me if I'm a bit off, but I seem to recall it stretched from Milpitas in the south through Hayward, sneaking past all those other East bay cities along the foothills.

Stepped into Carrow's for dinner. Also stepped into one of the strangest culture warps I've ever encountered. Silicon Valley vanished for 45 minutes and I felt like I was on the set of a John Waters movie. I'm greeted by Carimela, who has bleached platinum hair with very distinctive black roots. Fried so bad she should just cut it off, but obviously she likes it fried because she's been wearing it like this at least two months. She's studying grammar in between customers. Obviously English isn't her first language, but the lessons must be good because she doesn't have any discernable accent - could be from Santa Cruz. Oh, why do girls pluck their eyebrows out and then paint them on in another place? You don't think that looks bizarre? Back to the restaurant, then there's Armando, who has a pompadour. He'd look right at home wearing gold chains and a shirt unbutonned to the waist in 1970 except the hair is 1955. Then a dark-skinned dude with an ego the size of Mt. Everest is parading around in a glitter & sequined red-white-blue flag vest and cap and making sure every customer and every employee acknowledge his coolness. It's Carrows, but he thinks it's a stage in Las Vegas. And then the manager looks like he should be running a Woolworth store - in 1947. If this weren't strange enough, it's right next door to Motel 6, where a cute Asian prostitute in hot pants is chatting with a biker dude in a pickup truck. It's not a customer, because they're just chatting and still are when I leave. Prostitutes are rare in these parts, not that they don't exist - but they generally get their business by telephone and don't walk the streets; so you never see them.