Aloha! Part 1

Alisha says: What a great trip! Dave had an academic conference SIOP that he was presenting some of his research at in Hawaii so I got to tag along and we made a vacation out of it.
Day 1: We flew into Honolulu and got settled in at our condo in Waikiki. We were sharing the condo with five other PhD students/significant others so it was a bit crazy with all seven of us there but we hardly spent anytime there so it didn't matter. We spent some time at Waikiki beach.
Day 2: Started out with a nice walk along the beach. It was really beautiful with the blue water and Diamond Head in the background. Since we hadn't got our bike fix we rented an aqua trike and pedaled around for a bit. In the afternoon we hiked up Diamond Head with Chris and Sara for some great views!
Day 3: Dave and I talked a few of our condo-mates into getting up early and heading to Hanauma Bay for some snorkeling. We arrived at 6:45 am and didn't even have to pay because we were so early. The bay was beautiful and not crowded at all. We really enjoyed snorkeling around and seeing all of the colorful fish. By the time we left the beach was getting really crowded and we were glad to have arrived early. Dave missed his formal graduation and the University of Arizona but the conference held an informal graduation for all of the students who were there. He has put in a lot of work to graduate a year early and I am super proud of him. He is now officially David T. Welsh, JD, PhD. or something like that, he's not to worried about being all fancy but he's earned it.
Day 4: Dave was presenting his research at the conference so I did some exploring on my own. I hopped on a city bus and went and hiked to Manoa Falls. I think they filmed some of the Jurassic Park scenes here.

Waikiki walk with Diamond Head in the back

 View from the top of Diamond Head with Waikiki in the background

Dave, Dillon, Mike, & Cherry at Hanauma Bay

 Dave's informal graduation ceremony

 Dave and Alec (one of his advisers) at graduation

 The Arizona crew at the graduation

 Walking to Manoa Falls

 Manoa Falls

Looking for a place to live

Alisha says: Our blog has really just turned into a travel log. Good thing I love to travel and explore new places. Our latest trip also had a purpose, we took a trip out to Seattle to check out the area and look for a place to rent. We are going to rent and Dave has been looking for months online at places. It seemed like once in a while something would come up that really interested him and then within a few days it was gone. The week before our visit Dave found a house that interested him so he quickly emailed the owner and set up an appointment. We had a few others that we wanted to also check out while we were there.

In order to get more a feel for the area we rented a condo in a cute neighborhood that turned out to be great. Luckily the weather was really nice most of the time we were there and we did a lot of exploring. We drove around countless neighborhoods and parks, went on two awesome 8+ mile hikes (Mt. Si and Solitude Lake), rode cruiser bikes for 50 miles on the Burke-Gilman trail, attended some meetings at the University, watched some rowing races and boat parade and ate at some really great places. We discovered our new favorite place to eat called Veggie Grill and ate there three times during our visit.

We ended up liking the place that we were most interested in and our lease starts in June. It is a small house that is three stories, so small and tall. It is in a great location, close to the University, bike path, shopping and a few parks. Seattle will be a big change for us, some things will be better and others not so much (traffic is crazy!)

Now we are back and things are starting to get real! I picked up a bunch of boxes yesterday and am starting to box stuff up. We have one more trip and when we get back from that we will be in full on moving mode.

 Dave's new office - Paccar Hall

The top of Mt. Si - The birds were really friendly

 Lake Washington

 Our cruiser day ride - Lake Union with downtown in the background

 The arboretum - There were lots of flowers in bloom

 Hiking to Lake Solitude

 Lake Solitude

 Watching the crew races through the Montelake Cut

A boat parade followed to officially start the boating season

Spring Break

Dave says: A few weeks ago I saw a news story that there had been a few incidents over the winter of large numbers of people getting the flu on cruise ships. I'm sure most people who saw this news story were less inclined to book a cruise. However, I thought that this potential negative publicity and resultant reduction in demand looked like great timing in terms of getting a great deal on a last minute cruise for spring break. We may have rolled the dice, but the result was a week of fun (and no illness) on the Mexican Riviera. 

We started the trip by driving over to Malibu where we camped at Malibu State Park for two nights. This gave us time to do some biking and hiking around the area. There were some fun trails including this one to the set where the show MASH was filmed and also some ridiculously steep fire road climbs and descents. We spent a bit of time on the beach in Malibu and also rode our bikes along the coast from Santa Monica to the south on a crowded but exciting path.

We boarded the Norwegian Star for a week of warm, sunny weather and set sail. This ship was pretty nice with good food and some interesting evening entertainment (particularly the acrobatics). My plan was to get to the evening show right as the doors were opening and sit in the very front row, center seat which made for a more exciting experience.

We pulled into Cabo on the same day as three other cruise ships. I thought the town would be completely overrun but it wasn't that bad. We took a questionable boat ride out to land's end ant got dropped off at lover's beach. We hiked back into town by climbing over some rocks and walking for a few miles. Cabo was the most desert-like stop but the rocks were pretty cool here.

The next day was Mazatlan. We booked a city tour with bus rides to the major attractions. These included a famous church, the market, the coast, a museum, and the new fancy part of town. After the tour was over, we went out on a catamaran to an island across the harbor for a fun tour. We always felt safe but there was a strong police presence in Mazatlan with many armored vehicles and police with machine guns.

My favorite port was Puerto Vallarta which has not only beautiful beaches but also a tropical climate and nearby mountains. Here, we booked an atv tour which went through cobbled streets through the rural areas and then out onto some dirt roads. I love driving atvs and it was a lot of fun but I'm not used to driving in a caravan style with tons of dust. After the atv trip, we looped back through the old part of town, along the beaches, and through most of the city for about a five mile walk back to the ship. The town felt like the nicest of our three stops and there was a lot to see along the way.

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.