Furlough Fridays 2 & 3

Once again, it has been too long since we have posted anything to the blog. This is partly because we have been pretty busy and I was trying to get the old site moved over to here. This posting will focus on what I have been doing on my furlough days. Since most people in my office tend to take furlough days on Fridays, we call these unpaid vacations "Furlough Friday"

The second Furlough Friday was during Dawn's spring break, so we spent the day hiking up Camelback Mountain in Phoenix. It is an amazing hike that is pretty tough. From the top of the mountain you can see pretty much the entire valley from Scottsdale to the east and Glendale to the west. Dawn did a great job hiking up the mountain and we had a nice little lunch at the top while taking in this great view.

The third Furlough Friday I spent on a long solo bike ride. The idea was to do a lap around the iconic South Mountain that dominates southern Phoenix. When you watch an NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, or PGA event and they have a scenic view of Phoenix, it is more than likely a picture from South Mountain. I have been working to get my old road bike running again, and this was the first trip for the bike. The route took me south and then out into the Gila River Indian Community, it was amazing to go from city to desert so quickly. Eventualy I came around the mountain into west Phoenix and then on the way back home decided to take a recommended detour and bike the 8.5 miles up the mountain to the TV towers that can be seen from almost the entire valley. It was a strenuous ride up, but the view was worth it and the ride down was exhilarating. At the end of the day, I biked over 75 miles.

Below are some pictures from these two days:
Camelback Mountain


Lap Around South Mountain

Moving the web site

We are moving the web site to a new location on the internet. We have decided that it does not make sense to pay for the MobileMe service when most of the services that we get are offered around the internet for free.

So the blog is moving to: http://thecrawfordsinaz.blogspot.com and the photos will be at http://picasaweb.google.com/srcrawford

All of the blog posts and a lot of the photos have already been moved over. This site should remain available for most of April.

Please make a note of these changes.

There is a hole in the rock

This past weekend we went hiking in Papago Park in Phoenix. Papago Park is located in Tempe and Scottsdale as well, and there is talk about a grant being issued to develop the park into something grand like NYC’s Central Park.

Papago Park is home to the ancient The Hole in The Rock, a formation where nature has literally carved a hole in the rock. It is believed that the Hohokam people used this formation as a solar clock a thousand years ago. Today, you can walk up to and through the hole.

We spent the rest of the day hiking throughout the park, hiking around and over the buttes. It is amazing to find such a beautiful desert landscape in the middle of such a large metropolitan area.

We have uploaded some pictures in the AZ fun album of the day.

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,