Captain W.W. Stewart with the Boiling Springs Fire District came to Regency Commons today to provide a final fire inspection of the Crunk Physical Therapy building.  He said his people have been busy working with commercial builders.  Although residential building has slowed in the Upstate, commercial building has remained steady.  

Since Unique Builders has been working closely with Greenville County Building and Codes already, he was checking the obvious things like fire extinguishers and emergency lighting.  We turned off the main power to verify that the emergency lights came on.  Two lights did not.  We checked and the units only needed batteries.  Our final punch list has shrunk by one item today.

We are in the final days of putting finishing touches on the Crunk PT building.  The county electrical inspector gave us an approval today.  We are expecting the plumbing inspector tomorrow.  The front of the building has been professionally landscaped, and I must say it looks pretty good.  As soon as we take care of all of the details and gave the interior a final cleaning, we’ll be ready to turn it over to Dr. Crunk.  At that point he’ll be ready to begin moving in equipment and furniture, and set up his new office.  We look forward to having Dr. Crunk and his staff as new neighbors at Regency Commons.

After eight weeks of swim practice for the Greenville Triathlon, I can swim 400 meters in 11:30.  When I compared my time to the time categories for being seeded in the swim part of the Triathlon, I realized that competitive swimmers are many worlds ahead of me.  Then, I watched Michael Phelps win the gold in the 400 meter IM last Saturday night and saw how incredibly fast he is.  He can swim the 400 meter 7:30 faster than I.  Granted, I’m not going to swim as fast as I possibly can because there will be biking and running after the swim.  However, Michael Phelps could swim his world record speed, ride a bike 15 miles at a leisurely pace, and walk the 3.1 miles and still cream me.  Michael Phelps is an incredible athlete who has trained and worked hard to get where he is today. He’s a great role model and inspiration to all Americans, young and old alike.

Our concrete subcontractor is making preparations today for pouring the sidewalks for the Crunk Physical Therapy and the Master Kim buildings.  Its a great day to work outside with partly cloudy skies, low humidity, and temps in the 80’s.  The concrete truck is scheduled for later today to deliver the goods and the guys will drag and finish the sidewalks and stairs.  I’ll keep an eye out for the concrete truck and will try to take some pictures of the guys doing the concrete work.

I took our 10 year old son to the Carolina Panthers training camp at Wofford College in Spartanburg on Tuesday.  He’s starting YMCA football practice tonight, and football has really been on his mind the last couple of weeks.  Although it was blazing hot (the thermometer was hovering around 100), it was a good time for some father-son bonding.  While there, I got a chance to talk to a couple of interns.  They are staying in the same dorm with the players, just one floor down.  Since they are at Wofford 24/7, they get plenty of opportunities to mingle with the players.  As one of them put it, “Although they are huge, professional athletes, they are actually pretty personable.”  As a University of South Carolina fan, I was delighted to see #64 - Casper Brinkley (even if it was his back).  We saw him run a few plays and he looked pretty good.  I hope he makes the team.  After practice, several of the players signed autographs.  Our son got autographs from 6-7 players on his growl towel.  He even has one from Steve Smith.  Some fans told me that Steve has been extra cooperative on autographs since he broke Lucas’ nose with a punch last week.  I was glad I was able to experience an afternoon at the camp with my son.

We have completed the initial grading for the Comfort Suites, and are now working on the underground work for the storm sewer.  Now we are cutting trenches on the site to lay large, corrugated plastic pipe and concrete catch basins for the storm drainage.  After this is completed, we’ll start working on the footings for the building.  This will entail digging more trenches and laying out the areas where we’ll pour concrete for the footings.  In the next few days we’ll be bringing a mobile construction office to the site.  At that point, it’ll really start looking like a full fledged construction area. 

My wife, her twin sister and I made a trip over to the Westside Aquatic Center today to “experience” a 50 meter pool.   We’ve been training for the Greenville Triathlon at the Anderson YMCA pool, which has a 25 yard pool.  We wanted to  get a feel for swimming twice as far before you reach a wall.  Since I’m not a distance swimmer, it was good to know that the entire pool is only 4 ft. deep.  If my arms freeze up, the lifeguards aren’t going to need to use a shepherd’s hook to drag me out of the water.  I shared a lane with a woman today whose husband says he’ll walk in the pool if he needs to.  Although I’m a beginner to this whole Triathlon thing, it just doesn’t sound right to walk any part of the swimming part.   My goal is to finish the entire event without stopping - and live to tell about it

It has been a while since I’ve blogged anything about the Crunk PT building.  We are now in the finish work stage of the interior.  Detail work like painting, final plumbing and electrical done right will make your interior look like a million bucks.  The cabinets have been installed and the painter is applying the final coat of trim and wall paint.  After he is done, we need to put down some carpet and have the final cleaning completed.  While all of the work for the interior is completed, the landscaper will work on the grass and shrubbery for the perimeter of the building this week.  This is a photo to give you an idea of what the interior looks like.

About six weeks ago my wife signed us up for the Greenville Triathlon.  At the same time, her twin sister and husband also signed up, so this is turning into a family event.  The last (and only) one I did was about 20 years ago while I was at USC.  I’m no marathon man, and normally the only bicycle racing I’m involved in is watching the Tour de France from the comfort of my couch.  Fortunately I found a triathlon website that has some sample work outs on it.  Based on the athletic categories on the website, I’m in the class called “Couch to Sprint” (since this is a sprint marathon).  I’ve been swimming, biking, running, and doing combinations of these three according to the training plan.  The trainer on the website points out that my plan was originally developed for his 59-1/2 year old mother, who successfully completed a triathlon.  Granted, you are suppose to have been working out pretty hard 14-16 weeks before going on the triathlon plan.  With less than 4 weeks to go, I’m confident that I’ll be able to complete the swimming and biking.  My goal is to simply finish this event.  I may need to walk some during the running part but I’m not concerned about the time.  We’ll find out on August 17th!

This photo doesn’t look very interesting, but it is a new Comfort Suites on which we have begun the site work.  Like most construction projects, there is a lot of grading work that needs to be done.  Since this particular site has wet lands adjacent to it, we have had to be careful not to encroach on them.  This is no problem for our grading contractor.  He is a combination of engineer and artist.  After we have the site prepped and leveled, we’ll begin laying out the underground electrical and plumbing.  We should be ready to pour the concrete slab in about 4 weeks.  I’ll be posting more photos as we progress on this project.