Ragnar Del Sol 2010  -  Feb 28th, 2010 8:55pm

An almost endless string of events had to occur for me to participate in this years Ragnar Del Sol.  If my I hadn't turned down the job I did to take the job I have.  If I hadn't met McCoy there, if he hadn't met Jon, if Jon hadn't turned to running when he did.  If my life or theirs had taken one of a million other turns I have no doubt that I wouldn't have had one of the best experiences of my life.

I've talked about the Ragnar here before.  Its a 200 mile long relay race where teams of 12 go 24-7 from Prescott to Mesa (the long way).  I've been training hard to prepare for it this last month or two since McCoy invited me along.  I've also been wondering most that time if it was going to be enough.

In a sense, anyone can finish the Ragnar.  All you have to do is walk a couple of miles.  But to really finish - to experience this absurdity as it was intended you have to run it out, eat/sleep/live in your van and deck your ride out in as many bad puns as humanly possible.  For some that's easy, but for others like myself who are new to this running business - the 14 to 20 miles that's required in 36 sleepless hours is no small accomplishment.  Fortunately I had one hell of a team to keep me laughing and loving it the whole time.

While there are 12 people on each team, your real tribe becomes your van-mates.  Our van (van #1) was made up mostly of my friends from work: Cupp, Scott, Nemo and McCoy.  McCoy also recruited Meredith to keep us honest and heterogeneous.  We were a bit worried at first that Meredith would feel a little overwhelmed by our special brand of comradery, but by the end of the trip she was definitely one of us.

We actually started the adventure a little early and after a well calculated pre-race dinner of wings and pizza we crashed out at my folks place in Prescott.  To bad that we didn't get up there till almost midnight and then everyone was too juiced to sleep much.  Luckily, the freezing morning air woke us up a bit and by 7am van 1 was officially running the Ragnar!

Props to Meredith for taking the first leg.  It was nearly dark and well below freezing when she started with about 10 other runners.  She took it on like a champ though, and just like that it was time to hand the Ragnar slap-wrap off to Cupp for leg 2.  He has run exactly twice since our ski trip due to the broken limb, and no one was really sure how he would do.  He really set the bar for our team though running out the entire uphill leg and finishing breathless.  The only words he could utter upon finishing were "hold me" HA!.

Nemo was next - we all owe him big time for taking on the hard hills and the longest runs of the day.  Hes a freaking ironman though so he handled it like a pro and by the time I got the "baton" we were well ahead of schedule.  I didn't want to be the slacker of the group so I pushed hard too.  The cool air, the adrenaline, the props from my teammates who stopped on the road ahead of me and cheered me on helped me put in my first sub-9 minute mile ever and an overall 9:30 min/mile pace.  Finishing up that first run and handing off the baton to Scott was the best feeling ever.  All that work brought to fruition - not alone but with friends all around.

Running though is only half the story.  Life in the van was as much a part of this journey as anything.  While 1 person runs, the other 5 move ahead to the next exchange point and basically goof off for 36 hours.  We consumed mass quantities of bugles, beef jerky, gatorade and all manner of power goo/cube/bar.  We told stories, talked about our runs, mercilessly made fun of each other and did out best to survive Nemo's odiferous eminations.

When McCoy finished his first leg it was time for the first full van exchange.  This is where Van #2 takes over and we are supposed to sleep/eat.  In reality this is where Van #2 takes over and we get drunk.  After the handover we spent a little time with our other half and then headed for the bar.  Some randomly cool establishment between Prescott and Wickenburg served us beer, played terrible country music an gave us a thankfully warm place to meet some of the other crazy bastards who participated in  this thing.

To sober up, we headed to the next exchange point and some folks pretended to sleep while the rest of us grilled, played hackey sack and generally goofed off some more.  Before long the sun was setting and it was back to the track.

Running at night across the desert was unforgettable.  We had to have flashlights and reflectors but the full moon provided most of the light that night and our ipods/androids kept us all company through some really long runs.  The only thing that put a damper on the fun was that one of the runners and a volunteer were hit by a car while trying to deliver some water.  Last we heard they were screwed up but not dead.  The police had to shut down the freeway though so things got unsurprisingly hectic as they routed everyone past the accident/closure.

There is so much more but Its all kind of blurry and nothing I can say will really get the experience across.  The van has been returned to its plain white past, the clothes have been boiled, and we've all had some unconscious time.  Still its hard to think of much else - the experience was the definition of amazing.  Thank you McCoy for setting this all up and to Meradith, Cupp, Nemo, and Scott for being the bad mofo's they are :)

For anyone interested - here are our final times/stats for Van 1:

Runner	Leg	Distance	Up	Down	Start	Time	Pace
-------------------Set 1-------------------
Meredith	1	3.6 miles	+178 ft	-164 ft	7:00 am	31:00 min	8:36/mile
B-Cupp	2	3.6 miles	+500 ft	-200 ft	7:31 am	40:00 min	11.06/mile
Nemo	3	6.6 miles	+829 ft	-879 ft	8:11 am	63:00 min	9:32/mile
Robo (me)	4	5.0 miles	+203 ft	-874 ft	9:14 am	48:00 min	9:36/mile
Scott	5	5.3 miles	+32 ft	-619 ft	10:02am	45:00 min	8:30/mile
McCoy	6	6.1 miles	+72 ft	-367 ft	10:47 am	48:00 min	7:52/mile
-------------------Set 2-------------------
Meradith	13	6.3 miles	+0 ft	-277 ft	5:30 pm	53:00 min	8:24/mile
B-Cupp	14	3.4 miles	+6 ft	-75 ft	6:23 pm	32:00 min	9:25/mile
Nemo	15	8.7 miles	+54 ft	-394 ft	6:55 pm	80:00 min	9:11/mile
Robo (me)	16	4.8 miles	+27 ft	-350 ft	8:15 pm	48:00 min	10:00/mile
Scott	17	7.4 miles	+228 ft	-404 ft	9:03 pm	64:00 min	8:38/mile
McCoy	18	3.3 miles	+261 ft	-159 ft	10:07 pm	28:00 min	8:30/mile
-------------------Set 3-------------------
Meradith	25	8.5 miles	+406 ft	-181 ft	5:13 am	78:00 min	9:10/mile
B-Cupp	26	4.2 miles	+453 ft	-76 ft	6:31 am	45:00 min	10:42/mile
Nemo	27	7.1 miles	+0 ft	-886 ft	7:16 am	57:00 min	8:01/mile
Robo	28	3.4 miles	+9 ft	-236 ft	8:13 am	34:00 min	10:00/mile
Scott	29	3.4 miles	+226 ft	-147 ft	8:47 am	31:00 min	9:07/mile
McCoy	30	6.3 miles	+386 ft	-329 ft	9:18 am	58:00 min	9:12/mile

Idiot-A-Rod 2010  -  Jan 24th, 2010 10:46am

I'm tired, hungover, my knees are killing me and I'm pretty much covered from head to toe in pudding.  Today may not be so great, but you have to pay for glory and yesterdays Idiotarod was truly glorious.

Quick refresher: The Idiotarod is a 4 mile shopping cart race.  Carts must be found - not stolen and returned when your done in good condition.  Teams are made of 4 runners, 1 passenger, and each team has to choose a theme and decorate/dress up accordingly.  The actual race is separated into 4 legs.  At the end of each leg you check in, then after 20 or 30 minutes you check out and haul ass to the next stop.  In the middle and sometimes at the end of each leg is some crazy ass drinking challenge.  There's also a bonus challenge at some of the stops which knocks extra time off your total.  Sabotage and bribery are perfectly legit as the point is more to have fun than win, but everyone still gives it their all to come in first even if prizes are only given out for a bunch of randomm stuff like last place and best cart/theme.

Amy, Jon, McCoy, Cupp(broken hand and all), and myself reformed the same team from last year.  We've been looking forward to this for quite a while.  Lunchtime talks about names/themes have probably been going on since October.  After a lot of back and forth we finalize on a name: Section 8 and a cart design: A Tank.

I enlisted a couple of my friends Palmer and Wilson to help with the engineering this time - especially on the cannon.  I think our build of the shuttle last year was nothing short of miraculous, but it was a push to get it all done in 1 night.  This time we had a few weeks to put something more substantial together and we succeeded beyond all of our expectations.

"Tanky" was officially born on Sunday January 17th.  His creation required the following items both purchased and found around my garage:

• 1 Shopping cart (acquired with the help of my folks on Christmas day)
• 4 cardboard boxes
• 6ft of drain pipe
• 1 4" to 6" pipe converter fitting
• 10 small paint buckets
• 1 mortar mixing tub
• 4 foam core boards
• 1 garbage disposal mount
• 2 gold stars
• 1 license plate
• 1 fire extinguisher (bought in the middle of the night off a Craigs List post)
• 3 rolls of duct tape
• 12 glue sticks
• Zip ties
• Green, white, and black paint

Check out the pictures and I'm sure you'll agree that Tanky turned out absolutely brilliant.  Props to everyone on the team for putting their heart into it.  When we rolled up to the race yesterday we were already pleased with our design.  After about half the competitors came by just to say how much they loved our cart we were absolutely glowing.

Like last year, Jon had spent the night prior filling condoms with tapioca pudding.  New to our arsenal though were beer powered squirt guns and our secret weapon - a huge CO2 fire extinguisher hidden in the cannon of the tank.  Other competitors had water balloons, squirt guns, bags of watery fudge and their own secret weapons like skunk oil(unbelievably horrific stuff).  Fortunately, everything stayed pretty civil while we waited for the start of the race.

We wandered around admiring everyone's creations.  The Disco Pimps were back with their rendition of studio 51, the Chickens had their giant nest, the CUNTS returned in all new pink underthings and our friend and coworker Spohn even showed up with some kind of giant Christmas tree cart thing.  The amount of energy people put into this race is a testament to just how unbelievably fun it is. Random people who stumble into these proceedings are always dumbfounded.

All the runners on the team this year(myself included) have been training for various races for the past few months so when this thing kicked off I wasn't surprised to see us take an early lead.  I was a little surprised however at the sheer amount of pudding, water ballons, silly string, and whip cream that got thrown around.  We all looked like we had been in a war by the time the race was over.

Tanky fared pretty well for a while and the CO2 cannon was 11 kinds of awesome.  Anytime someone got in our way we just blasted them!  As things progressed though we lost 1 fender and track then the other.  The cannon also kept falling out which meant I had to carry it half the time.  Still it was much more sturdy than most of our competition.  The biggest issue we faced was weight.  There was a challenge where you had to push/carry the cart (passenger and all) through a sand volleyball court.  Between all the tank stuff and the fire extinguisher this was a nightmare. In the end I had to hold up the front of the tank while everyone else pushed completely burning out my legs in the process.

We kept in the first couple spots drinking hard and running harder throughout the race.  Being out front meant we had to figure out where to go though and the map this year was a Greek tragedy.  We kept going the long way or the wrong way alltogether.  All the running and the drinking took its toll on me and even though we ended up finishing first, I was running well behind the other guys and there is some debate as to whether or not we got disqualified at the finish line.

The best part of the race may very well have been the after party at the Bikini Lounge.  Camaraderie, booze, and lots of cute girls made for a really great time.  There was a 2nd after party at a house after the lounge but I was pretty gone by that point.  We bailed right after the awards ceremony (Dicso Pimps won best cart again grrr) and briefly took Tanky to the grocery store for some food.  When we finally made it to Amy's house for Jon Tencza's birthday party I was done.  In no shape to drive, I crashed out on the spare bed which brings me to where I am now - recovering on my couch typing this.

Amy, Jon, McCoy and Cupp - you guys are the best.  Thank you so much for carrying my ass on this one :)

Return To Sunrise  -  Jan 19th, 2010 3:16pm

I had such a good time skiing a few weeks back, when the opportunity to go again presented itself I jumped on it.  So this last Friday after work, Alek, Kellie, Cupp and me headed back up to Sunrise.

This time we weren't going it alone.  Kyle and 2 of his friends Anhill and Harry were going to meet us up at Alek's cabin.  We would also be putting in a full day plus night as the mountain would be open from 4:30-9:30 or until people started freezing solid.  Well... most of us would anyway.  Some folks had already decided the bar in the ski lodge was a better option for the evening.

Once everyone arrived, we decided to spend the night in the most preparatory way possible - drinking a case of beer and playing Super Mario Wii.  While absurdly fun, the decision proved to be less than sound in the morning.  Fortunately, skiing is a good motivator and everyone managed to packed up their gear and get moving without too much herding.  We arrived at the mountain just after 9 for and geared up for the day.

I spent most of the morning with Alek and Cupp who was snowboarding for the first time.  We would meet up with Kyle, Anhill and Harry later.  Kellie opted for the half day and would be chilling up at the lodge until ski-school started.  Cupp did really well that morning and went from the sliding down the bunny-hill to actually snowboarding on the main mountain in just a few hours.  Learning to board/ski is rough work though - so while he and a few others took a break, I took the opportunity to get a bunch of solid runs in.

I spent the remainder of the day alternating between hitting hard runs on my own and skiing with various packs.  It wasn't long though before the day was over and we headed into the lodge to eat and throw on more clothes for night skiing.  They only shut down for about a half hour so by 5:00 we were back out on the slopes.

This was what I was here for - skiing at night and I wasn't disappointed.  Even though it was getting really cold, there was no wind and the lights on the mountain made everything look absolutely incredible.  Only a few runs are open at night but it was enough - especially since I spent the bulk of it running down the ski-park.  Harry and I kept one upping each other run after run until we were both shooting off of the full 12ft ramp and making it past the flat-top.  Unfortunately before I could get any pics or video of this, we got the call that Cupp broke his hand.

I don't think anyone was surprised.  Cupp is kind of injury prone and he was worn out long before dark.  He kept saying each run would be his last.  Eventually he headed out on his own and that's when he took a hard fall on his arm and broke the boxer bone in his right hand.  We decided it would be best to wrap it up for the night and get him to the emergency room.  So we called it a game and headed out for the Showlow hospital.

In the end it was kind of fun.  Brian wasn't injured too badly so we left him there with Kellie while the rest of us grabbed some food at Wendy's.  He eventually got his X-rays and a temp cast/sling and we made our way back to the cabin to warm up and dry out.  Everyone was pretty wiped and crashed out early.  Alek and I stayed up for a while playing one of his his psychotically complicated board games, but even this didn't last long.

We packed up early the next morning, cleaned up the cabin and went out for breakfast before making the long drive back to phoenix.  They will have night skiing again in a couple weeks - I think I'm down for another round.

Preparing for Ragnar  -  Jan 12th, 2010 3:52pm

No, its not the name of some deity who will reign destruction upon us in 2012 - John Cusack has already done this.  Rather, The Ragnar Relay is a race I'll be running next month.

Much bigger than my last run, the Ragnar is a 200 mile relay race from Prescott to Mesa.  Each team consists of 12 members and each team member will run 3 legs of the race.  The remaining members are carted around in 2 vehicles which drop/pickup at the various hand-off points.  The whole shebang should take us around 36 hours to complete and I plan on being little more than a pool of goo at the end of this one.

Fortunately not all of the legs are even and I agreed to join this fiasco on the condition that I took the shortest of them.  A 5 mile up/downhill battle, then two 4 mile runs on fairly flat land. I'm probably more at fault for joining McCoy on this one than he is but I prefer to think of this as his doing as I sleep better at night.

I'm now running about 3 miles - 3 times a week.  This is a huge improvement from where I started on the 10k, but I feel like I need to get that up to about 5 miles a day before I'm good this time.  You can track my progress/damnation on my runkeeper page if you like.  Wish me luck :)

First Ski Trip Of 2010  -  Jan 12th, 2010 3:05pm

The last thing I need to post on to catch up the poor souls I subject to this site is my latest ski trip to Sunrise.

Looking back I'm amazed and saddened that I only squeezed in a single ski trip last year.  For something I love so much I spend surprisingly little time doing it -- I'm blaming Canada.

Though this trip was originally scheduled to have 132 people come with and all stay in Alek's cabin only 3 of us made it in the end.  Vince, Alek and myself... well ok - Alek's family was up there as well but they hung out in town while we goofed off on the slopes.  Really I can't say enough about Alek on this trip.  He provided an awesome place for us to stay, food in the morning/night, and great company on the slopes.  I definitely owe him one.

Thats not to leave out Vince - he is great to ski with.  Probably the only person I know who skis better than I do.  He'll ski any run and can go all day without needing to eat or go to the bathroom.  An invaluable skill when you can only be on the slopes from 9am-4pm.  The mountain also cooperated giving us great squeaky dry snow and a sunny albeit cool day.

Tried to take a couple videos on this trip but they turned out really craptacular.  Turns out that its downright impossible to ski well and hold a video camera.  I remember my dad doing that as a kid, he is a talented SOB.  Enjoy the pics and hopefully I'll see some of you out there this weekend on trip #2.

The Phoenix 10K  -  Nov 8th, 2009 6:18pm

Well the results are in and I officially survived!  This morning in just over an hour and 10 minutes I crossed the finish line of my first 10k.

It was an interesting experience to say the least.  Definitely one of the harder things I've done in my life.  Not so much the distance but going from not being able to run a mile non-stop to running a full 10k in just a 2 months.  Fortunately I had some friends to help push me along.  Thanks to Jon and McCoy for giving me some wise words and a swift kick in the ass when I needed it.

I suppose its worth saying that I managed 5k without missing a beat - something I'm proud to say I trained up to.  The last 5k though was just determination and will - there was no way I was ready for this and my body really started to give out around the 9k mark.  I've spent the last 8hrs on the couch drinking kool-aid and coding trying not to move much.  Maybe if I do one of these again some day I'll be in better shape.  I definitely have enjoyed running in the morning but not sure how I feel about the racing right now :)

Well here is a link to my race and some pics I took this morning.  Thanks again to everyone for all their encouragement and kind words.

The Big Sandy Shootout  -  Oct 18th, 2009 8:59pm

A few months back I randomly stumbled upon this website for a machine gun and large caliber weapons shootout called The Big Sandy: http://www.mgshooters.com.

This last weekend a small group of us spent a day and a night at the bi-annual shindig and all I can say is wow.  The daytime shoot alone was worth the drive out there, and the opportunity to see and shoot the kind of firearms they had was simply awesome.  The night-time shootout was truly epic though and I was unprepared for the scale of it all.

To get to The Big Sandy you have to drive about 3 hours northwest of Phoenix.  A dirt road just outside of Wickenburg takes you to a parking lot at the bottom of a hill where you can camp and pay either the $200 shooter or the $25 dollar spectator fee.  On top of the hill is another parking lot bordered on 1 side by RV's and on the other by the actual shooting line.  The line itself is about 1500ft long and sectioned off into 25ft areas where folks setup their guns and shade tents.  They fire off the top of this hill down into a small valley where targets are setup.

Most of the people there were shooters as opposed to spectators.  There were only a few vendors and food and water while purchaseable were pretty sparse.  This was an affair for people who really loved to shoot and you could see the pride in peoples faces as they would talk about their guns to any interested party.  Everyone I met there was very friendly with the 1 exception of the RC plane guy who cussed constantly as he worked on the planes with a set of badly bandaged fingers.

I would have expected a more militant group, but these people had as much in common with hippies as weekend warriors.  They lit off fireworks all night, played disco music at lunch (not a joke) and generally had a great time out there in the desert.  There were a ton of vets who really cherished the weapons they maintained from wars they themselves fought in and the folks at the rental booth were only too happy to show me to load an M-16 and aim a 50cal.  Everyone was celebrating being free in an age where they confiscate your water at the airport and it was something we all noticed.

As expensive as these guns are to fire, people only shoot them for a few minutes each day and I was amazed how much time people spent unjamming their guns and working on them.  During the day, the line really only lit up when the target plane flew by.  I have some video below that shows just how nuts that was.  The night shoot on the other hand was a little more intense.  Between the fireworks, the flares and all the tracers, it was only a few minutes after dark before the whole hillside was on fire.  We were amazed that the whole desert didn't go up in flames.  I wish my camera could have captured the color and the intensity of the lightshow that night but its not even close.

There is not much else I can write which isn't in the pictures and videos below except to say thanks again to Kellie, Denny and McCoy who joined me on yet another crazy adventure.  Good friends make even a simple evening hanging out in a parking lot a great time :)

Oh and if your having any problem getting the videos to work just download VLC.

10k Training  -  Sep 20th, 2009 11:20am

When I was a kid, running was just a fun way to get from point A to point B.  It was more entertaining than walking and less dizzying than tumbling.  Then about the time I got my first bike, it suddenly became an undesirable mode of transportation.  By the time I got a car, running was a desperation move, fueled by adrenaline and the sounds of chasing dogs.  So when my friend McCoy invited me to run a 10k with him on Nov 1st, I probably should have said no.

No just isn't my style these days.  So here I am, 2 weeks into getting from the couch to the finish line of a 10k in 8 weeks.  Not only that but the goal is to finish in under and hour!  Not an impossible task, especially considering I have friends who run super-marathons, but one that is going to require some serious effort on my part.  To help me out I'm using an app called RunKeeper.

RunKeeper tracks my runs via the GPS in my phone and then uploads the data to their website.  I can share out each individual run which I'll link up in this post every couple of days.  Check back to see how I'm doing if your interested and wish me luck :)

• 11/3 - 53:02 - 7.37km  (non-stop)
• 10/28 - 17:35 - 2.43km
• Got the man-bear-pig flu
• 10/8 - 30.16 - 4.78km
• 10/2 - 22.12 - 3.66km (non-stop)
• 9/30 - 19:55 - 3.11km (non-stop)
• 9/24 - 30:30 - 4.72km (jacked knee)
• 9/23 - 30:13 - 4.45km
• 9/21 - 28:10 - 4.26km
• 9/19 - 27:55 - 4.09km
• 9/18 - 27:31 - 3.94km
• 9/16 - 23:52 - 3.45km
• 9/15 - 20:12 - 3.04km
• 9/13 - 17:02 - 2.53km
• 9/11 - 12:14 - 1.86km
• 9/10 - 11:15 - 1.59km

Today (11/3) was my last run before the big race.  I was down with some nasty flu like crud for about 2 weeks so its going to be a stretch.  I am feeling better now but while my distance is up my speed is way down.  I think I should be able to finish still, however my goal is now 1hr 15 minutes to keep from killing myself.  I'll try to put up a new post with some photos and the results once I recover.

A Journey To Flagstaff  -  Aug 16th, 2009 8:06pm

I spent almost 6 years living in Flagstaff while I was going to school at NAU.  During that time I learned to love the town, and I thought I had experienced most of what it had to offer.  Turns out I was wrong, as I just got back from a fantastic trip to Flag where I got to visit Sunset Crater, Lowel Observatory, and the Lava Tubes - 3 things I had somehow missed during my life there?

I joined Mccoy and Kellie this time around.  They are great traveling companions - low maintenance folk like myself who are always up for whatever madness might be in store.  We left early Saturday morning and after fueling up with a high density breakfast of SweetTarts, beef jerky, and potato chips, we headed north - straight for Meteor Crater.

For anyone who hasn't been like myself -- Sunset/Meteor Crater is just that... the impact zone for a truck sized rock that hit ages ago.  Its about a half hour northeast of Flagstaff and apparently has visiting hours just like most holes in the ground do not have.  I'm not sure what govt agency runs that place but its apparently underfunded as they require 15 bucks to walk in the gate.  Not the worst spent money in the world as they have a cool little museum and some free viewing scopes, but it was a little odd.  A pretty impressive site overall & stunningly windy up on the rim.

After leaving the crater we made a pit-stop at "Kamp".  A strange roadside hazard that exists just south of the crater.  Not sure what drew me to the place - at first I thought it might have been an active scout camp or something.  As we turned off and drove up though, it became obvious that a former highway stop had been abandoned years ago and become a hangout in the middle of nowhere.  The pictures do a better job of describing this oddity...  A strangely beautiful ghetto.

We eventually stopped off at the hotel, then drove west of Flagstaff to visit the Lava Tubes.  They aren't the easiest thing to find.  The road is marked once you get close, but I didn't see any signage from the highway.  A few miles down a forestry road, we found a small parking lot and something that looked like a great big well.  Even when we got close it didn't look like what it really is - a mile long cave open to public exploration.

This isn't hard core spelunking, but its not exactly accessible either.  The first few hundred yards are pretty treacherous, and the cave is damp and cold (@50 degrees) year round.  Entering is like descending into Golum's home.  Its dark beyond black and something about the structure absorbs sound putting you in a state of complete sensory deprivation.  The cave is one long subway tunnel with a few 3 or 4 foot crawls.  Its almost completely devoid of life and structure save for what the lava left behind.  Its very eerie and a truly magnificent place.

It took us a little over 2 hours to make it to the end and back  - @3/4 a mile.  I loved every minute of the experience, but I was very happy to see sunlight.  Something about the lack of sensory input makes you a little wonky.  I think we were all happy to get on the road and head out towards Lowel Observatory.

I can't say much about the observatory as it was getting dark when we arrived.  I think if I visit again, I'll go before sunset so that I can check out the telescopes themselves.  They seemed like monstrous steampunk creations in the red glow from the observation lights.  We got a chance to look through the biggest one, a 26 inch refractory scope pointed at a star cluster.  Much blurrier than I expected, but still pretty damn cool.

We didn't stay at the observatory long because Kellie was wiped out and hadn't slept in a day or so.  The trip was capped off by a dinner at Beaver St.(their brambleberry brew is my favorite beer on earth) and a breakfast at Bacon in Scottsdale - I'll have to do a separate write up on that soon.  For now I'm spent and its time to take a rest.  Thanks for the great trip guys, can't wait for our next adventure :)

Pool Party Weekend  -  Aug 10th, 2009 2:12pm

There must be something in air which recently triggered everyones need to host a pool party.  I'm not complaining mind you -- I feel blessed to have friends who are both willing to throw these bashes and request my personal brand of mayhem.  Its just that I'd wish they would space it out a little.  This last weekend there were no less than 3 of them - 2 of which were birthdays and thus required my attendance.

The first up was Kellie's birthday which was being held at the Point South Mountain/AZ Grand/Whatever they call it now.  Its a nice hotel on the west side of Tempe and a cool place to host this kind of bash.

A big part of the work gang showed including Amy and her husband Jon, McCoy and Trudy, Cupp, Denny and a whole host of others.  Its always a good time with this group and that night was no exception.  Kellie had a friend who worked at the hotel and kept the booze flowing which was appreciated and consumed by all.  There were no fatalities which is always good - though McCoy did try to give everyone who crashed at the hotel hypothermia by rolling the thermostat to the edge.  It was a great night but maybe a little much for a leadup to the next days shindig.

Fortunately Trudy's birthday at the Princess was a lot more docile.  In fact, the Princess is just kind of a calming place in general - unless your Cupp of course who shortly after arriving rammed headlong into the side of the pool.  Most of the same crew arrived, as did some of Trudy's friends and family - it even began before sunset which is an oddity for anything we do as a group.

The Princess has 4 or 5 different pools and we moved from one of the smaller ones to the southern/bigger pool as the kids headed off to watch a movie in the huge central one.  McCoy, Denny and I made a $60 In-N-Out run and then we spent the remainder of the evening moving between the pool, hot tub, and consuming burgers and fries.  Sure the occasional sparkler went off in someones crotch but for the most part it was just a great relaxing night with good friends.