Movin' on up...

Well not to jinx the whole housing situation but we are in position to close the sale of our house in Tucson later this week or early next week. We just spent a lovely weekend in Tucson loading up all of our remaining belongings into a Uhaul 26 foot "Superhauler" and I drove it up this morning which was a real treat. The truck is surprisingly powerful and has no problem pulling 60 mph up the monster hills of I-17 as you climb up from the valley. Now we just have to figure out where we are going to put all of our junk. We took a ton of stuff to Goodwill before we left Tucson but now that we have to find places for the rest of our stuff we may be donating some more stuff. Downsizing and simplifying is a good ideal to strive for anyway albeit sometimes hard to attain. We now have a real bed in our spare bedroom which will be a lot nicer for anyone who cares to come and visit us and the old futon mattress fits conveniently under the bed so there is a spot for little kids that visit also. While we were in Tucson we went to the movies and watched Charlie Wilson's War which was really good and very informative historically. The message at the end is all too familiar. I would highly recommend seeing it.

Recovering from the festivities

Christmas is now officially over and the craziness is quickly subsiding. We arrived home a few days ago from Kansas City where we celebrated another Christmas with Anne's parents. Anne was feeling particularly crazy after receiving some great clothing items. She had to excuse herself and put all of the items that she got on at once but I think she was flustered because she forgot that the underwear goes under the rest of the clothes so she had to compromise and put them on the outside. While we were in KC we received and offer on our house in Tucson and unless something goes wrong we hopefully will have it sold within the next week (more on that when it happens for sure). We will be heading out tomorrow to retrieve the rest of our stuff which we are hoping we have enough time to load up (and maybe go for a ride or two). We saw a few movies some at the theater and some at home. Here is a list of what we saw:Walk Hard the Dewey Cox Story, Juno, Good Night and Good Luck, Night at the Museum, Van Wilder the Rise of Taj and maybe some others that I don't remember. I enjoyed them all. Juno had some dialogue during the first half of the movie that was attempting to be way to hip and was on the ridiculous side but the second half made up for it. Good Night and Good Luck was very interesting from a historic perspective and the cinematography was really interesting. The other movies were just good old fashion comedies which of course I enjoy more that Anne.

Back from a trip to the Homeland II

On the day that Anne and I left for New Mexico to celebrate Christmas with my family the cold had finally come in and the moisture was turning to snow. I snapped a photo from the hospital on the way out of town and got a good idea of the cold that I believe is here to stay. Today I got up early and hit the slopes for day one on my season pass. It was around 0 degrees with the wind up there and only the Sunset Lift was open which made it very crowded and I only stayed for a couple of hours. You can only ski the same 5 runs so many times. On our trip to NM we first went to my parents house where my brother's family joined us for a Christmas celebration. I got a good picture of my two nieces riding around in Hannah's Christmas present from my parents with my Dad looking on. The next day was spent making traditional tamales with my grandma Rose. I took a photo of Anne at her station where she was in charge of spreading the masa in the corn husks then she would pass them to me for the red chile pork and I would then wrap them in another husk and tie them then I would pass them on to my grandma and she would put them in the pressure cooker and steam them. Anne and I went to Santa Fe for a Christmas celebration with my grandparents on my mom's side. We went out to a great Italian dinner downtown Santa Fe and the next day played some heated dominos. I got my grandma Nancy's french bread recipe which I made today with whole grain spelt flour instead of white wheat flour. Tonight at dinner I will test it to see how it came out. It looks and smells really good. After some time at my grandparents it was off to Rio Rancho for a couple of days at my brother's house with the nieces which was a great time. On the way home we decided to go through Tucson for skis and miscellaneous other stuff so by the time we got home we had turned a 4 hour trip into an 11 hour trip so today I have been trying to get some stuff straightened and put away.

It could at least snow if it's gonna be cold

I woke up this morning and looked out the front door and what did I see? You guessed it....RAIN! I can't believe how much rain we are getting with this new storm that is hitting this weekend and the one that hit last weekend. It just refuses to snow but at least it is snowing at Snowbowl (I hope). I saw on the news that an oil tanker in Korea is spewing its 3 million gallons of oil into the ocean right now due to some poor boatmanship. The good news just keeps pouring in. On a lighter note I saw an interesting graphic on the bottom of a six pack of Alaskan Winter Ale that shows the state of Alaska places over the lower 48 and just how huge Alaska is. It is quite different from the maps we are used to seeing where Alaska and Hawaii share the same page and both put together look smaller than Rhode Island. I threw in another picture from the backcountry below Truchas Peaks taken in November at about 12000 feet as friend Robert and I ushered in winter. It was between 7 and 8 PM and the sun had been down for about 3 hours and you can see how comfortable it is as I'm wearing my down jacket and I'm nestled into my down sleeping bag. Who says winter camping is no fun? I am noticing right now that the news is of course talking about the same thing over and over and that is the Omaha mall shooting which is to be expected since the press hangs onto stories like this until they can't hang on any longer. No wonder that the bastards that commit these atrosities know their actions will make them famous. Lastly a note on gun control (I'll share some of my personal views of course). I don't think that total gun control is the answer and although the "right to bear arms" is one of our rights living in this country (although our country was slightly different when our forefathers came up with these rights) I do have one thing to say. Assault rifles are designed for one purpose; TO KILL PEOPLE! Way to go NRA glad that you fight so hard to make it perfectly legal to have assault rifles in everyone's closets. That's it I'm off the soapbox.

Mud, mud, mud some rest and a squirrel

Today I pulled the Turner out of the garage since it was a balmy 55 degrees and sunny here in Flag and headed out for the trails. I had made it about 1 mile on pavement when the mud started and continued until I was spit out onto the gravel in Buffalo Park which was totally saturated and it felt like riding through wet concrete. The end of the road in BP transitioned into more three inch deep mud single track that was, what I imagined, just the beginning of the slop. At this point I decided just to make a u-turn and head for the main road back home. Today was day 8 on the bike so I just decided to clean up the Turner when I got home and call it a rest day. The biggest tree squirrel in the world was busy gathering food while I was in front of the house and I was worried that it would carry any small children away that happened across it's food gathering past.

"And what business is it of yours where I'm from, Friendo?"

I have read a few books lately that were all great. I had to read No Country For Old Men before I went to the movie and successfully pulled that one off and was able to catch the movie over the weekend. The movie was very good and I felt the major parts of the book were in the movie at least enough to give people a good representation of the book. The Climb is also a good book and if you read Into Thin Air than this book is a must read. The book Bobke II is a compilation of journals of Bob Roll's daily life when he was a professional cyclist while in Europe competing and his adventures both abroad and domestically. I also got the movie 300 which I thought was pretty awesome especially visually, it was just a cool movie to watch. Anne's mom gave us these cool advent calendar stockings and went through the trouble of making sure there were yummy chocolates in all of the pockets. I have been riding the trainer quite a bit due to my cold that is lingering on. The snow and moisture finally came to Flagstaff over the weekend and it made it easier to deal with the trainer. Tomorrow it is supposed to be in the 60's so I will head out for a long mountain bike ride. 60 degrees in December is ridiculous. I think it is supposed to be almost 80 in Tucson but what can you do? I hope everyone out there is well and is dealing with the holiday season accordingly.