Hiking on South Mountain

It has been too long again. We enjoyed catching Cardinal Fever and we were rooting for the home team in the Super Bowl. There was a lot of excitement in the week leading up to the game and it would have been crazy here had the Cardinals won.

Also in the budget news, it was announced that all ASU employees will be taking furloughs before June 30th. I have to take twelve days between now and June 30th. I am looking forward to taking some long bike rides and getting stuff done around the house on these furlough days.

Dawn is plugging away at classes and the girls are still doing their thing.

This past Sunday we finally went to South Mountain in Phoenix to go hiking. I have been wanting to go here since I got here and we finally made it.

This place is huge! The closet trailhead is a twenty minute drive from the house and the park is home to lots of trails (longest is 15.5 miles) that allow hiking, biking, and horseback riding. We wandered through the Pima Canyon section of the mountain and stopped to take in the sights (see the pictures in the photo album). We visited some of the CCC structures that still remain in the park and found some natural tunnels. From one spot we could see the stadium where the Cardinals play in Glendale, the stadium where the Diamondbacks play in Phoenix, and “A” Mountain at ASU.

Now that the mornings start off in the 50s and reach the low 80s in the afternoon, I suspect you will see more postings and pictures on a regular basis.

Because it is warm in January

We have been experiencing a mild winter so far this year with the afternoon highs being near 70 for the last two weeks or so. Therefore we decided to take advantage of the weather to hike up “A” Mountain on the campus of ASU to watch the sunset. We are planning a lot of hikes over the next several months.

I have also added photos to the ASU photo album since this weekend’s hike was on campus (normally it would have gone in the AZ fun album). In addition, I have added a Family album with some pictures from the weekend as well. Over the next several weeks I will be reorganizing the albums.

Strange week kept getting stranger

Short weeks can be such a pain in the neck. Tuesday was the first day of classes at ASU and everything started off quiet enough. There were no surprises or faculty panicking about stuff not working.

Then there was Wednesday...

The State of Arizona is suffering a major budget deficit and supposedly will run out of money in April or maybe even March. Also, we had a new governor sworn in since Gov. Napolitano is new Secretary of Homeland Security. On Wednesday morning the faculty and staff receive a dire email from President Crow (see email and report at AZCentral). So morale was pretty low and stayed that way the rest of the week. There have been a lot of protests and more details of how bad things could be emerged on Friday at AZCentral.

So on the way home I decided to take a different way home. Usually I bike down a road with a real nice bike lane, but on Friday I decided to go a little further south and bike along the canal. I had never taken this route to go home, but I have ridden it before. There was rain in the area, so what made the ride especially nice was the fact that I was chasing a rainbow all the way home. I felt that everything was going be okay and that hope was still alive.

Until I got to the last street to cross...

As I approached the street I was going to turn on to head home, I found it blocked. Two cars had an accident and somehow both of them ended up in the canal as pictured above. I think that everyone walked away from the accident since I was saw one woman climb a ladder out of the canal and did not see rescue personnel with anyone else. It took them at least five hours to clear that accident. But at least I was able to move on and finish chasing the rainbow home.

Oops... been busy

Oops, it has been too long since I have updated the blog, so I will try to catch things up here and now.

Christmas was a very nice time here, but we missed seeing our friends and family back east. It just so happens that this was the first time since 1994 that it rained on Christmas Day. The good news is that most of the rain came down while we were at the movies, but it stopped right after we got home and was nice enough for the girls to play outside with their presents.

The following weekend was the grand opening of the new light rail. It was the coldest weekend we have experienced here with overnight lows at freezing and high in the upper 40s. However, we still volunteered for the light rail opening. We helped with distributing commemorative t-shirts and directing pedestrian traffic and bypassed riding the light rail since the lines were over three hours long for a lot of the time.

New Year’s Eve was a nice quiet affair at home. It was neat to see that the Times Square broadcast was tape delayed for our time zone.

One of the things that made the holidays interesting was the fact that I worked during the holidays. I am used to getting the entire time off from work between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, but that also means that I do not get the other holidays during the year. However, at ASU we do not get that long break, but we do get the other holidays throughout the year. I took advantage of the quiet campus to get things done.

The last big thing is that Dawn’s mother was visiting with us for the last two weeks. It was nice to have her in town and Dawn and the girls really enjoyed spending time with her.

We have a lot planned for the year and we look forward to posting all of our adventures here,

On the run

This weekend Dawn spent most of it studying for her exams on Monday. However, to make sure that her brain did not turn to mush from all of the studying, we did take a couple of breaks.

Saturday night we went to the Light Boat Parade at Tempe Town Lake and Tempe Beach Park. They had some booths, food, and stuff at the park. However the main attraction was the piles of “snow” setup for kids. Rule number one for these areas was “no throwing snowballs”, so all of the kids (and adults) were throwing snowballs. Then we walked along the lake to watch the fifty or so boats that were decorated for the parade. There were a lot of different boats, but some of the more interesting ones were the kayaks that were decorated with lights. The parade was capped off by fireworks. I have added some pictures to the photo album of the parade.

Then Sunday morning we ran in the Fiesta Bowl 5K. In our quest to get in shape, we picked this race about two months ago as a motivator to keep going. First off, today was cold. It has been the coldest day of the “winter” and race temps were in the upper 40s. I had promised to stay with Dawn no matter what during the race and she promised that we would not finish last. I am happy to say that both promises were kept. We are planning to do some more events like this in the future as milestones to our long term goals.

Thanksgiving... and catching up

Finally getting caught up with the blog. We had planned to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner outside; however, it actually rained for the first time since before Labor Day. So we had to settle for eating inside.

Things have been going along pretty well. I still bike to and from work everyday and Dawn is finishing up her classes for the semester. The girls are busy with school and holiday concerts and we have the tree up in the living room. We fortunate that our tree just barely fit in there.

Ironman Weekend

The Ironman Triathlon was held in Arizona on Sunday, November 23. The Ironman Arizona is one of six races in the US that is a qualifier for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. Dawn and I decided it would be fun to volunteer to help with the race as a way to meet folks here in the valley.

Lindsey had been sick that week so when we went to the volunteer’s meeting on Saturday, she was not able to go with us. Because of that, she did not go with us to hike to the top of “A” Mountain at ASU after the meeting, but Lexi joined us at the top.

Fortunately Lindsey was feeling better and was able join us on Sunday. We were part of Run Aid Station 5, one of the food and water stations on the marathon course. The runners had already completed a 2.4 mile swim and a 112 mile bike ride by the time they got to us. They had 17 hours to complete the course, but the winner took not quite eight and a half hours.

We had a good time and will probable help again next year. I have added some pictures to the ASU and AZ Fun photo albums.