7AM and what's that noise?   "It must just be the garbage men," Stacy muttered and rolled over in her hungover stupor.  BUT WAIT!  Garbage men don't knock on the door!  What the H_LL is going on here?  When we answered the door you won't believe what met our eyes.  It was a group of "friendly" citizens obstentively on our porch to welcome us home from our trip.  It seems that they'd learned about the Riding4Beer tour and were so excited  - we're still not sure what about -  that they offered us a free breakfast at International House of Pancakes if we'd just go with them - we never pass up a free meal, so we did - BIG MISTAKE!

As it turns out, they are outreach workers for the Betty Ford Clinic in nearby Rancho Mirage.  Once they had us in their car our visions of blueberry pancakes disapperared into thin air.  There was no IHOP in our future. Instead, we were given pamphlets to read, paperwork to sign and driven to the facilty.  In case you have any doubts, this did not end in a friendly manner.  We may be allot of bad things (we are) but we are not quitters! (ok, except for hair school, the Cleveland Institute of Electronics, American Truck Driving Academy and third grade).  We bailed from the car as it slowed to enter the grounds, began yelling for help in Spanish at the guys mowing the lawn ("CERVEZAS! CERVEZAS!) and safely escaped with them in a flatbed truck with only the promise of free beer and to not disclose their immigration status.  WHEW! Close call!

The rest of the day was relatively calm, but then again, it is only Monday.  We had plans to go out and watch Monday Night Football at a sports bar, but that just seemed like too much effort after the earlier excitement.  Instead, we opened a box of frozen General Tso's Chicken and popped it in the oven (it's low fat, low calorie, and you can get a 10 lb box at Costco for $9 bucks!) Then we cracked some beers and kicked back in the hot tub.  Actually, the weather here has been so hot (110+ every day) that we didn't even need to hook up the propane bottle and heat the spa.  That's good news because it's almost empty and the folks at U-Haul won't refill it until we pay our bill.  Oh well, tomorrow is another day and we have definite plans of hitting the town so we'll see what happens...

    
We barely escaped - Fortunately we know Spanish!                                  We just LOVE Italian food - don't you?

    
"Only a 30 pack?  I thought we're celebrating!"                                                "I got your Betty Ford right here!"