Hiking

Dave says: We have been doing some fun hikes in October. This weekend we went up Sabino Canyon and finished on Mt. Lemmon via the Box Springs trail. It was 14 miles of uphill with some good views and a tough middle section where the trail was steep. However, as I learned from an earlier hike with Alex and Sam, uphill is still often preferable to downhill. A few weeks back we hiked the window loop up Ventana and down Esperero while Alisha was in Utah. We learned that the knee-breaking downhill on the Esperero trail was the toughest part of the hike and planned an all-uphill hike for the future.

We also did a shorter hike last weekend up the Douglas Springs trail including a fun section of bouldering up some dried waterfalls at the end. We've also been doing some cycling although things have been a little more relaxed in the "off season." The Trisports group has been doing El Tour training rides and we have also been hitting the Tuesday Gates Pass and Thursday Dove Mountain rides.

In spite of the fun pictures, I have been a workaholic recently as I have been pushing through my toughest semester yet. When Alisha took two weeks to go to Utah, I took the opportunity to work 10-12 hour days. Recently my thesis project was approved by my committee in a time-frame a year ahead of the norm. However, I have been feeling the weight of a variety of research projects, intense weekly class readings, and a large number of required papers and presentations. In fact, I'm off to Seattle to present at a conference this weekend.