Spring Time

Alisha says: At the beginning of March my mom came to visit us for a few days. She taught me how to cook dutch oven peach cobbler and dutch oven potatoes. They turned out delicious!

Tucson has experienced a very mild winter this past year. To tell you the truth, I don't know if the temperature even ever dropped below 32 degrees F. We are truly spoiled. We finally got one really good rainstorm and this awesome rainbow could be seen from our backyard when the sun came out.

Dave and I took a break from road biking, mountain biking and hiking for a day and went caving at Peppersauce Cave out by Oracle. It is a fun cave because it isn't too big that you worry about getting lost (although I still get all turned around) but you can still spend about 2 hours in the cave to explore all of it. There are some big open spaces and some tight squeezes. After caving we decided to take the focus up the fire road backside of Lemmon. Since we don't have a four wheel drive vehicle Dave likes to test the limits of our city cars occasionally. The road was in good shape and we didn't have any problems.

I had the opportunity to host three of the riders from the Optum Pro Women's Cycling Team while they were in town for a few races and a training camp. After being hosted myself by kind people while I was racing pro it was great to be able to get to return the favor and be the host. We had our regular winter visitor, Lauren and her awesome teammates Janel and Denise stay with us. They cleaned up at the races. Lauren lapped the field solo to win the Old Pueblo Criterium.

Hiking, Gem Show and Chicken Feet

Alisha says: The last few weeks of happenings include mountain biking, road riding, trail running, seminary teaching, an epic hike, a trip to the gem and mineral show and trying new foods. The weather has been pretty incredible lately, it has been perfect hiking weather so we got out and hiked a few trails that are close to where we live. Last Saturday we had planned to go mountain biking but then last minute we changed our minds and decided to do a hike that we had talked about for a while and wanted to do before we left Tucson. We hiked up Finger Rock trail and then made a loop out of it and came down Pima Canyon. It is classical Catalina mountain range hiking, tough, steep terrain, with great views. Although the distance of 12 miles really isn't that long, the hike still took us just over 6 hours of hiking time because of the terrain with a little under 5,000 ft. of elevation gain and 5,000 ft. of elevation loss. I was pretty tired by the end and my legs were sore for about a week but we were both glad that we did it.

Some of Dave's family came down from Phoenix recently to go to the famous annual Tucson Gem and Mineral show. This year the focus was on Silver, Gold and Diamonds. We walked around and around looking at all sorts of neat things. I liked the red rhodochrosite and Dave enjoyed the case that showed replicas of all of the famous diamonds (although he made it clear that he still hates diamonds).

For Dave's school it is the time of year when the U of A brings out potential candidates for the program next year. We hosted one of the potential students. We went out to eat with all the PhD students and candidates for Korean food (two of the current students are Korean). Luckily they helped me pick out something delicious and I ate my whole dinner with chop sticks. The next day for lunch we went out with Mike and Cherry who are Chinese for dim sum. Dim sum is kinda like a brunch type meal, anyway so they bring around these carts that have various items in small portions and then you just pick what you want and they stamp a paper at your table to keep track of everything. Then they put it in the middle and everyone shares it. Dave and I tried lots of new things, some were tasty but I have to say that the chicken feet that I tried were not. Dave would not even try them and that was probably a good idea. I don't know they were just bony, grisly and tasted like feet. I do like to try new things though so it was a fun lunch that we followed up by going to see the really funny Lego movie.

Hit The Ground Running- Part 2

Alisha says: One thing I've always wanted to do before we left Tucson was to go visit the San Xavier del Bac Mission that is located south of town. It is often called the Dove of the Desert and was built in the 1700's. It was founded as a Catholic mission by Father Eusebio Kino. The church's interior is filled with painting after painting and statue after statue. It is amazing how much artwork they fit with not one inch of space being wasted. Because it was hard to communicate with local natives they depicted the story of Christ in artwork. The church has been through a lot, including a time when people lived and built fires in it so that the soot covered all the artwork. Everything has had to be cleaned and restored very carefully and is an ongoing process.

We decided to go to a University of Arizona hockey game one night which actually turned out to be really fun. I found it a little funny that the U of A even has a hockey team because we live in the desert. We had really good seats that put us right in front of the action. It is an intense sport as we saw several body checks against the boards and even a few players were sent to the penalty box for various reasons.

The highlight of January had to be the premier screening of Half The Road: The Passion, Pitfalls and Power of Women's Professional Cycling at the Loft. It was directed by good friend and Tucson local Kathryn Bertine. It is a documentary about most of the issues in women's cycling today including equality and was really powerful. I helped Kathryn gather some of the photos that were used in the film and was also featured for a moment telling a story during an interview. It was amazing to be a part of and I am super proud of Kathryn and all she has done.

Hit The Ground Running- Part 1

Alisha says: So there was no easing into the new year, it felt like we hit the ground running and now it's almost February. My pro cycling friend Lauren has been staying with us to do some training in the great Tucson weather so I have been having fun getting out a lot and enjoying my last winter here of riding in the sunny warm desert :(.

Dave has been substituting for the early morning seminary class for about two months now. It is a bit hard to get up early but he is a great teacher and gives some really good lessons. They are studying the Book of Mormon this year. We have a small group of 10 students that come regularly. They are fun kids and Dave has fun thinking of different challenges for them to do while learning scripture mastery. We have had some good games that include trash can basketball.

Speaking of basketball... The University of Arizona is currently undefeated (21-0) and ranked as the number 1 team in the nation!! Lauren and I were treated to get to go to a game with Kathryn, George, and Peter (Kathryn's Dad) where the U of A crushed in state rival Arizona State. Go Wildcats!!

A weekend adventure included traveling to Phoenix and going on a nice day hike with Tom in the Superstitions. This hike included a little bit of everything, trail, walking up a dry stream bed, scrambling, and bush whacking while trying to avoid all the cactus. We really enjoyed a beautiful day hiking around.

The next day of our weekend to Phoenix we met the youth from our ward (Dave is in the Young Men's presidency) at the Mesa Temple to do some baptisms.

After that and some pizza for lunch we went through the open house of the newly completed Gilbert Temple. It is really beautiful both inside and out.

We are moving to...

...Seattle, Washington

Dave says: It's official. After 4 years of undergraduate course work, 3 years in law school, and another 4 spent working on a Ph.D. the end of my formal education is finally in sight as I have recently accepted a position as a professor at the University of Washington in the Foster School of Business.

It was a busy fall with trips to six states in six weeks. The job market is grueling but having this fabulous opportunity at the University of Washington makes it all worth it. UW is a good fit for my research interests related to ethics and I will also get to teach in this area. The position is for next fall and so we will be staying in Tucson through the spring as I finish my dissertation and teach a course related to leadership.

No doubt there will be a transition going from the desert to the evergreen state. However, we were in Seattle this summer and had a great time with all the outdoor recreation. Alisha has been tremendously supportive throughout this whole process and we are excited for this next stage of our lives.

O Christmas Tree

Alisha says: What a great Christmas we had this year, it was wonderful! We kicked things off by traveling with Dave's family to the Grand Canyon. Nine of us hiked down the Bright Angel trail  for a two night stay in a cabin at Phantom Ranch. The most impressive hiker award goes to my six year old niece Kaylee, who hiked the entire 17 mile round trip. The only time she cried was when we were eating dinner in the canteen and the only option for dinner was the stew, apparently she hates stew. Everyone else thoroughly enjoyed the hot stew dinner after a long day of hiking. I absolutely love the beauty of the canyon and enjoyed spending a few days there. We hiked up the Kiabab trail on Christmas Eve.

The hikers: Parker, Dave, Anne, Reena (Daniel's girlfriend), Kaylee, Daniel, Bailey (Katie's friend), Katie.

Christmas day was spent in Phoenix where everyone enjoyed opening gifts and the awesome sunny weather.

The day after Christmas, Tom took Dave and I hiking in the Superstitions. We did a fun loop that included some route finding. The scenery was beautiful and I enjoyed the uphills while Tom enjoyed the downhills. He hikes so fast going downhill that I was getting dropped. The last thing we did before heading back to Tucson was a stop at the Mesa Temple to check out the light display.

Thanksgiving

Dave says: October and November were both busy months for me. I traveled to several universities for campus visits and also worked on my dissertation. I finished my interviews just before Thanksgiving and was excited for a break. The original plan was to go to Moab like we did last year when we enjoyed sunny weather in the 60s. This year, the weather grew considerably worse right at the time of our trip. Our two-wheel drive vehicle barely made it through falling snow into Monticello and when we arrived at Moab there was several inches of snow on the ground. We changed the plan and headed over to St. George instead where they had been receiving rain but no snow. 

While Alisha spent some family time in Cedar City, Aleks and I hit some of the best mtb trails in the area for a couple of days. We started with Church Rocks and Zen on day 1. Day 2 was Barrel Roll along with some new cool trails in the area like Sidewinder and Suicidal Tendencies (ya, there is some exposure on this one) in the morning and Guacamole in the afternoon. We spent all of Day 3 at Gooseberry Mesa for some classic slickrock riding until we were absolutely exhausted. My Pivot trail bike excelled on all this terrain and it was a blast. I even got Alisha out for a loop on the Jem trail.

For Thanksgiving, most of Alisha's family came into town in Cedar City and we had a lot of fun hanging out with them. The kids have a lot of energy and are fun to play with. Every time we see them they seem to have grown quite a bit. After Thanksgiving, we stopped to see my family in Phoenix and had Thanksgiving part 2. We stayed with my grandparents which is always enjoyable and watched Arizona beat Duke. We hung out at Christine's and played with her kids. We also saw my parents and Daniel and Katie as well. So despite some questionable weather at the beginning, it ultimately turned out to be a great Thanksgiving break.