Just because I have to work through the week doesn't mean that I'm not having any fun when I'm not in the lab. Last weekend, I attended my first First Friday Art Walk in downtown Phoenix with Chad. There isn't a whole lot in downtown Phoenix with the exception of a lot of corporate and governmental buildings, so I very rarely go downtown. For better or worse, Chad doesn't spend much time down their either and we had a little adventure driving and walking around Phoenix before we found the restaurant where we planned to have dinner. We had a great meal before promptly getting lost again, and thought about just going to the Suns game instead of the Art Walk, as we had no problem finding USAirways Center as we circled around the block a few times. Fortunately for us, we did eventually find the library and didn't have to endure another Suns loss. We decided to play the rest of the night by ear and hopped on the first shuttle that came by without regard to the Art Walk map. We weren't disappointed with the West Loop and enjoyed everything from intricately detailed oil paintings to modern art to photography to a studio filled with nothing but imaginative pinatas. The art was great, but our conversations on our past and future adventures were even better.
On Saturday, Jack and I headed down to South Mountain to tackle National Trail in its entirety. I've hiked National before, but its massive rock steps and steep, hairpinned singletrack have kept me from biking it until Saturday. We headed out on Desert Classic, warming up on the nine familiar miles with speed until we got to the base of the mountain and Telegraph Pass. In order to have the joy of going DOWN South Mountain, you somehow have to get UP it. Jack and I are both very competitive people, and we tried to go as long as we could without "putting our feet down" (ie. hike-a-bike). As soon as the incline started, we lasted less than 50 meters in our saddles, and ended up pretty much carrying our bikes up the long, steep hill. At the top, we rode the road for a few miles along the ridgeline, continuing our journey to the very top of the range, racing roadies with their little gears and skinny tires on the pavement. After we passed the landmark cell phone towers (which aren't all that impressive up close considering that you can see them from everywhere in the Valley), we took a quick stop to enjoy the view and eat a few Clif bars before starting on the piece de la resistance: National. We actually started off on the wrong trail that turned out to not be a trail after all. From our vantage point of the top of a small knoll, we saw the main trail below us... a few hundred meters of scree and cacti separating us from our destination. Jack took off before me, hitting a perfect line down the hill and expertly hopping onto National. I followed behind, hitting every rock on the way down and painfully half-endoing into the scrub. It was a bit of foreshadowing as to what the rest of the ride would be like, but at least I knew what I was getting myself into. Actually, the trail wasn't as bad as I thought... it's just that Jack is much better than I am. It was a great learning ride, gaining confidence with each rock that I would ride up and each gnarly drop that I would hit perfectly. Every time that I had to get off my bike and walk a section, I promised myself that I would try riding down it the next time. Some of the drops were pretty wicked, and Jack and I kept watching each other, hoping to catch one of us taking an equally wicked spill. Fortunately, neither of us hurt ourselves too bad, and by the time we got to the final downhill to the fire road, we felt that we had both improved our skills dramatically. We cruised the last two miles to the truck dodging hikers and bunny hopping rocks on the fast gentle downward sloping dirt road. Jack fixed an excellent lunch of pork, potatoes, and sauerkraut and then I headed out back up north to help Hannah in her rehabilitation. Angel and I played frisbee with her along the shore of Tempe Town Lake, taking advantage of the gorgeous weather and Hannah's knee that grows stronger with every day. ODP will be back in full swing before you know it.
What spring break is complete without drinking and a little bit of debauchery? Ok, well I had four of them during my college career, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Saturday night fulfilled that requirement at Dixon's Rubik's Cube Party. Everyone at the party had on 6 items of clothing, each with a different color of the Rubik's Cube. After a bit of drinking and socializing, Dixon gave the order, and a trading frenzy began with all of us trying to get all 6 items of clothing to be one color. I chose blue... made interesting by the fact that there were only two pairs of blue pants/shorts in the entire party and four of us tried to go blue (yes, out of more than 50 people, only four of us chose blue, yeah for being original!). I ended up the night with three blue socks, several blue belts, and two blue t-shirts, one of which I fashioned into a skirt. All in all, it was a very fun, very entertaining night.
On Sunday, I decided to head back to South Mountain to hike and take some pictures of the spring bloom. I was still tired from Saturday's events, so I decided to take it easy, lazily wandering among the rocks around Hidden Valley. But, even the most innocent of my hikes turns into an adventure. As I was climbing up a little set of rocks, I heard the unmistakable humming that signalled the proximity of a beehive. But there were some beautiful brittlebrush growing along some really cool rock formations right at the crack in the rock where the bees were buzzing in and out of their hive. As I crept closer, lots of questions went through my mind... Do bees get angry if people get close to their hive? How close is considered offensive? Do angry bees sound different than happy bees? Is there any way to tell whether bees are Africanized or normal? ...It only took about 10 minutes for me to find out. About 30 feet from the hive, an happy bee mistook my Camelback for a massive yellow flower and turned into an angry bee, lodging itself between the pack and my shoulderblade. I felt the little guy jam its hindquarters into my shirtless back, and instantly began a little dance that I'm sure would have been pretty humorous to anyone watching as I flailed about trying to remove the Camelback. Angry bee then decided to fly into my hair, making my dance even more interesting, flinging my sunglasses to the ground as I did an impression of a bad 80's rock star crossed wi
th an Indian performing a rain dance, my back on fire as the stinger's poison began spreading across my shoulder. Once I had successfully smashed the remains of the bee into my skull, the angry buzzing stopped and I took stock of the situation. Somehow I had gotten stung twice (is that possible with one bee?), and the poison was slowly tenderizing my shoulder. I walked a little further from the hive and with a little more dancing, managed to extract the stinger from my back. After deciding that I wasn't going to break out in hives and my throat wasn't going to close up (the majority of my family is allergic to bees, and I hadn't been stung in awhile), I continued further into the valley, Camelback gingerly resting on my back. I hiked up a hill and spent the remainder of the afternoon taking in the beauty of the colorful desert and napping on a large warm rock. After a nice relaxing afternoon, I headed back home to fix my first Indian meal of curried rice and daal. I probably could have added half of the spices and been fine, but I thought it tasted good, and my Indian coworkers approved as well.Other than that, my spring break has been mostly spent in the lab, the warm weather teasing me in its perfectness. It didn't take much for Emily Haydon to convince me to play hookie on Wednesday morning and go climb Picacho Peak. Out of the five of us that ditched work and school to enjoy the midweek hike, only Emily Cripe had been up the landmark mountain before, and we all enjoyed the 4 mile trek up the peak. A whole host of wildflowers lined the path on the hike up, and the view of the surrounding desert from the top was incredible.
I wasn't a very good truant, though, and I spent the rest of the day at work. It's been a successful spring break so far, and I should be ready to publish my first, first author paper in the next month or so. It's pretty exciting stuff to say the least, both for the results that I've been getting and the fact that I'll be publishing. Good, nerdy stuff :). Anyways, just one more day at work and then I'll spend the weekend of my spring break outdoors somewhere. Until then, it's back to work!
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