The Christmas Letter

Dave says: Merry Christmas to all our family and friends. Here's our yearly Christmas letter.

November

Dave says: November was a crazy month. Fortunately the busyness of the end of the semester is mostly over so I finally have some time to reflect on everything. The month started with a quick trip to Seattle to present some research at the Society of Judgment and Decision Making's annual conference. I traveled with fellow PhD students Mike and Dylan and we had an enjoyable time. The presentation went well, the weather was surprisingly good with no rain, and we even got to see a bit of the city over the course of the weekend.

I returned home to begin running some super-intense research in the lab that had me constantly running around for the next week. As a result, I got sick with a nasty cough that lingered for the next month. School remained busy with my toughest semester ever with papers, presentations, and exams in addition to all of the research outside of class. The biking didn't fare so well in the meantime despite some beautiful weather here in Tucson.

For Thanksgiving we went up to Phoenix to see my family. They are mostly settled into their new house and now that the weather is here they are remembering how nice life can be in the desert. For Thanksgiving dinner, we drove up to my uncle's newly purchased cabin up by Winslow about 2.5 hours north of Phoenix. It nice to see everyone and the meal was great (especially Alisha's sweet potatoes).

Our Own Tour

Alisha says: If you live in Tucson and ride bikes there is a time that starts in September and lasts through mid November where there is an increased number of people out riding and whenever you get stopped at a light with a fellow cyclist the question always comes up "so, you out training for the tour?" The "Tour" they are referring to is El Tour de Tucson and in some people's mind your are not a real cyclist unless you've ridden the tour. While El Tour is a great event, raising a lot of money for over 20 non profit organizations, and bringing thousands of people to boost the economy and enjoy great weather, this year it just wasn't something I was interested in. There are a couple of reasons for this, after finishing a long racing season all I wanted to do for a month or so is to just ride my bike for the pure joy of getting outside and pedaling my bike, with no efforts on tap or certain hours to put in, but to just ride, and the second is that a 111 mile hammer fest with 5,000 of my friends just sounds like way to many people.

Our friends the Toussaints invited us on a cycling/camping trip over the same weekend as the Tour and so it was a great excuse to have something else to do that weekend. We started in Tucson and rode the 85 miles to Lake Patagonia. It was a tough ride, we had a head wind the whole way. Roberta drove our camping gear and met us there. We enjoyed an afternoon of food, playing with the dogs at the lake, and an evening around the campfire with more food. The next day we were very happy that the wind was still blowing the same way resulting in a sweet tail wind the whole way home. Unfortunately, Dave has been battling a cold and decided to skip the ride but still rode out in the car and camped so at least he still got to come along for some of the the fun.

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.

Trip Home

Garden Harvest - Yum

 

My amazing mother and niece

 Sunrise on Angel's Landing at Zion

Alisha says: I find that when I am forced to take a break from my bicycle it is better if we just part ways for a while. I went and visited my family for two weeks to relax and catch up. My sisters both came for a visit also so I had tons of fun playing with my nephews and niece. We went swimming, had a Halloween themed dinner and harvested the last of the garden before it snowed, yes, there was actually a small amount of snow on the ground one morning.

My university cross country team had their home meet while I was home so it was fun to go see my high school and college coaches and watch the race. I have to admit that standing there before the race started I got butterfly's in my stomach as I recalled all of the many races I'd run. Coach Houle even let me start the women's race, starters gun and all!

I also had fun hiking with my childhood friend Shannon. She is crazy, she works nights, then picked me up at 5:30 am and we cruised to Zion National Park and were standing on top of Angel's Landing in time to watch the sunrise. We still made back in time for her to make it to her 12 o'clock class for an afternoon of school. So much fun, wish we lived in the same city!

Amidst all of the fun I had a gum infection resulting in a trip to the dentist with a root canal in the near future, a small cold, and the stomach flu. Yikes, I hope that's all for awhile.

Returning home I found that a spider had decided he liked my bike also and had built a web on it. I dusted it off and took it out for a nice 80 miles to get reacquainted.

Pima Canyon

Alisha says: We decided to mix things up last Saturday and go for a hike. We met Alex at the Pima Canyon trailhead right as the sun was coming up for a nice hike through the desert. It had rained the evening before so the air was a little bit cooler and the trail was still a little damp. I love the way the desert smells after it has rained. Alex almost stepped on a huge four foot plus gopher snake who was hanging out on the trail and we also saw a huge millipede. We also saw a group of people hiking with their two pet goats. We are looking forward to doing some more hiking now that the race season is over.

 The snake is on the right side of the trail in front of Alex. We wanted him to get closer but he didn't like that idea.

Saturday night the biggest rain storm since we have lived in Arizona hit Tucson. There was tons of lightning and it just poured for quite a while. A lot of the streets were flooded and I even got to see water running in the Rillito River for the first time.

The Blue Loop

 Ready to start day 1: Larry, Carolyn, Roberta, Doug, Alex, Dave, Alisha

 Mmmmm, delicious sag stops! Why yes, I would like a sandwich in the middle of my ride :)

 Cooling the legs in the creek

 Dave and Alex walking on the Catwalk

Alisha says: Dave and I had a really fun Labor Day weekend. We hooked up with Doug, Roberta, Alex, and Elizabeth and about 50 other cyclists for the GABA Blue Loop Cycling tour. This was such a great event. 

Day 1: We started in Clifton, AZ and rode to Glenwood, NM where we camped for the night. The afternoon was filled with getting milkshakes in town and then hiking the Catwalk.
Day 2: Glenwood, NM to Alpine, AZ. We rolled into camp and had just enough time to shower and set up our tent before it started raining. It was all good though as we had a nice nap and then played some intense games of UNO.

Day 3:The last day was a 100 mile day with some more climbing and quite a bit of twisty descending. It was a good change of pace to just ride for fun and enjoy the scenery. We especially enjoyed stopping at all of the sag stops (there were three everyday) for a soda or some snacks. Total ride distance was 214 and 17,000 ft of climbing.