Lovely Month of May

May is one of my favorite months, mostly for the change that it brings. I thrive on change and new experiences, so with the advent of summer months, I'm a happy kid. During the last week, the campus filled with stressed students taking exams, then filled with throngs of parents and families in town for graduation, and then... emptied. As a graduate student, I really do appreciate the summer months - even with the Valley heat. There is truly something relaxing about biking to work without having to worry about dodging cars careening through red lights, hippy kids on longboards, or clueless girls on cell phones who haven't quite mastered the idea of moving two wheeled objects. It's also nice to be able to go to Sack's once again without having to stand in line. The full time residents of the university have the place to ourselves once again, and life is good. Without regularly scheduled lab meetings, seminars, or colloquiums, we are also given the complete freedom to work more efficiently. It doesn't mean that we necessarily do, as the academic atmosphere is much more relaxed during the break, but the freedom and the lazy days of summer do make for a very enjoyable few months.

I started my first day of "summer" on Saturday with Jack, exploring the desert that surrounds the area known as Pima Dynamite in Scottsdale. Jack used to ride the sandy singletrack quite often to train for dirtbike races, but many of the trails are now closed to motorized traffic,* so he can no longer ride his favorite 70 mile loop. It's too bad, as the trails are incredible, though tough for those of us whose two-stroke engines don't require a gas-oil mix. It took me at least half an hour to warm up on the surprisingly difficult trail. Although the trails didn't appear technical, the sand coupled with boulders and a little bit of elevation made the first part of our first loop tiring. It was definitely worth it though, because after we rounded a small mountain, the trail was all down. Jack and I had a blast zooming around boulders and down and around a hard packed rollercoaster surrounded by red blooming ocotillo and yellow palo verde. As I was following Jack and enjoying a particularly winding downhill section, a baby fox that wasn't much bigger than two fists darted across the trail and stopped scared in its tracks right in the middle of my line. I tried to brake, and let out a scream as I felt a bump under my back tire. Jack doubled back, assuming by my fearful scream that I had gotten bitten by a snake, while I hopped off my bike and watched the little guy limp off into the bushes. Although we both tried to scrounge him back out of the brush to make sure that he was ok, all we managed to do was startle a rabbit, so we had no choice but to hop back on our saddles and continue along our way. I felt really bad for the baby, considering that I spent much of my childhood watching my mom (Happy Mother's Day, I love ya!) move turtles off the road and having never hit anything bigger than a toad with a car, much less a bike. The rest of our first lap went without mishap though, and we had so much fun that we took a second one around some different singletrack. After more than two hours, Jack's tubeless back tire had started to deflate, so we took one of the fire service roads along the powerlines back to the truck in the company of dozens of dirtbikers, quad riders, and mountain bikers happily sharing the beauty of the trails.

Saturday afternoon was spent at my advisor's house for one of his incredible parties. He provided his house, pool, and a grill FULL of marinated beef and chicken while the rest of my lab provided a keg of Newcastle, dozens of side dishes, live music (provided by Ryan and his band), and lots of party spirit. We spent hours eating, playing with the lab's many kids, swimming, and sharing stories of the past year. Towards the end of the evening, Dr. Mor broke out the champagne to toast our graduates (we had five this year, including a master's and four undergraduates). And then, after much anticipation, he revealed to us that... he HAD indeed acquired tenure at ASU. All of us erupted in a huge, relieved applause. I was so happy for him and the rest of our lab, as ASU has some pretty bad politics revolving around tenure, and had he not been granted tenure, all of our futures at the university would be in jeopardy. Our celebrations went long into the evening until I pulled Dr. Mor's youngest shivering son out of the pool and headed back home. Hannah, Ryan, the keg, and I spent the rest of the evening chilling at the house.

On Sunday, I had planned to get some work done around the house and American Fire, but I am a water baby through and through, so all it took for me to abandon my work was a phone call from Suda promising a free day at the Sunsplash Waterpark. It was Honeywell's employee appreciation day, and Brandon, Phil, Suda and I had a great day being kids - racing down waterslides, relaxing in the lazy river, screaming on a free fall tube ride, getting shot around a really cool water cauldron, eating popsicles, and just generally having an incredible watersoaked day.

After a fun, exhausting day, I went home to change, grabbed my climbing harness, and headed back out - this time to Camelback mountain to join Pierre, Evelyn, Hannah, and Erika for a bit of climbing and rapping on one of the many boulders in Echo Canyon. Pierre taught us how to tie brakes, attach ropes, lower ourselves down, climb up, and belay on the real rock. For hours we enjoyed scrambling all over the boulder and drinking tea until we had to break out headlamps and head back down to the parking lot.

Overall, it was a great weekend with lots of diverse fun. Wanting to squeeze one last adventure out of the weekend, and taking advantage of the fact that neither of my roommates were home, I decided to do a little bit of experimenting with my Indian cooking. I won't go into great detail about the disaster that ensued, but I will just say that I learned many lessons from my ordeal: a). you are supposed to roast sooji before you boil it, otherwise it turns into a mushy paste that looks (and tastes?) like glue, b). I haven't quite figured out which Indian spices go with what, ie. mustard seed goes with everything, garam masala doesn't, c). gluey paste mixed with spices and chicken still doesn't taste good, and finally, d). a hefty dose of ketchup will save just about any meal. Satisfied with a jam packed weekend, I went to bed with a gurgling stomach and a happy heart, excited about the first week of summer ahead of me.

* As it turns out, Saturday was the last day for ANY motorized traffic on ANY of the Pima Dynamite trails, due to the lobbying of the Sierra Club. It's really a shame, as the motor guys out there are respectable riders and are the ones who made and maintained the trails in the first place, so they don't deserve a $1200 fine for using public land.