...And back to the AZ heat.

Although I greatly enjoyed my trip back to the land of green humidity, I returned to the Valley's dry heat. We've been fairly lucky this year with only a few days above 100, but I returned to full out summer. I spent the week days in the air-conditioned lab screening my (hopefully) Gag expressing stable line plants. I was like a new mother the way I coddled the 152 baby explants. It's taken me over two months of work to develop these genetically engineered cuties, and I couldn't be more proud. I am such a nerd when it comes to these things... but it is a very exciting time in my project. I spent the evenings and Saturday morning moving out of our old house and into Jack's place, and by the time that I swept the floor one last time, I was definitely ready to relax.

It's just too bad that by noon on Saturday, it was hovering around 100. Nevertheless, Kohl and I have a reputation for being crazy to keep, so we headed out for a Greenbelt ride anyways. We had a great ride along the bike path up past Scottsdale, stopping now and then in the shade to cool off. After riding several miles up past the golf courses and parks, we took the canal path back to Old Town for a lunch at Salty Senoritas where we enjoyed a great meal and the return of the misters on the porch. We rode back through Canal Park and back into Tempe in the late afternoon.

That evening, I headed to Dan's house for the annual Missing Links bike swap. If you needed anything at all for your bike, it was there, and someone was trying to get rid of it. It was a great social event with barbecue and lots of stories. My favorite part of the night was when a big group of us were standing around swapping stories, and we all went around the circle showing off our scars that we obtained while riding in Papago. It turns out that I'm not the only one (other than Hannah, of course) who has had a bad wipeout in the park. It was a great event, and by the end of the night I had gotten a cheap 24HOP jersey, a pair of socks, a bike computer, and a smokin' deal on..... A ROAD BIKE!!! Yes, me, the die hard mountain biker, bought a Trek 2500 with full Dur-ace components (brakes, derailleurs, shifters and cranks). It's a beauty and a wonderful addition to the family of bikes that Jack and I have in the garage (we have 3 each, plus his 4 motorcycles). So, bring on the streets and triathlons and long morning rides. I can't wait!

On Sunday, Angel, Christie, and her friend Amber and I returned to Tonto Creek for some more in-depth adventuring. Hannah took a big group out there for Memorial Day weekend, but with more than a dozen people and several dogs, they didn't get to explore the canyon as much as they would have liked, and so Angel and I were excited to see what else the beautiful place had to offer. We hiked to the creek and didn't even stop at the Narrows, continuing on further upstream to where we spent some time jumping off of smaller cliffs and swimming around. From the vantage point of our jumping ledges, the larger cliff that Hannah and I scouted the first time loomed upstream. Since Haydon had jumped it when they were there last weekend, I needed to validate my coolness and jump as well. The first time that I stood on top of the cliff, it was windy and cold, and the water looked like it was miles below us. When I climbed up there again, it didn't look any less far, but at least it was warmer. I stared at the water for more time than was necessary, and it almost cost me the jump. I have to admit that my legs were shaking as my mind began nominating me for the Darwin Award. But, I had to do it. Finally, I leaped off of the rock wall into nothingness. I think I reached terminal velocity sometime between the initial leap and my water shoes smacking into the deep pool. It was the best rush I had experienced in a long time. Truly awesome. Even though my nose was bleeding from the impact, the jump was fairly harmless and sooo much fun. I wanted to go back up again, but since we still had a lot of exploring to do, we continued on upstream. We boulder hopped our way up for awhile until Christie and Amber decided to hang out on the warm rocks, and Angel and I continued up further. Just a few hundred meters up from where the other two stopped, we came to a massive deep pool that had an equally massive slick granite boulder sitting smack dab in the middle of it. It was too much to resist, so Angel an I slid around for a few minutes in an attempt to scale the slippery beast before pulling ourselves up to the top. The slide down was awesome! Every face of the rock was slidable, and for the next hour, we hauled ourselves up and slid down like little sea otters having the time of our lives. When we realized that the other two weren't going to be joining us, we continued our explorations by climbing the cliffs, jumping back down again, and then heading more upstream. We finally came to a waterfall as the canyon walls closed in. The water was flowing fast, but I managed to swim under and behind the falls and finally managed to climb the slippery walls adjacent to the fall until I was above it. Looking up from the falls, I realized that the best was yet to come. Angel stayed behind, but I just had to keep exploring, so I went another 3/4 of a mile beyond the waterfall. Around every corner and above every rapid was a new area that awed me. Similar to Salome Creek, smooth pink granite abounded with smaller waterfalls and many additional slide rocks. I could have continued on forever, but I eventually turned around to join the group again. The return trip to the waterfall was great fun, and I just let the water carry me down the slick rock. By the time I got back to Angel, I was worn out but very satisfied with the day's explorations. I jumped back down the cliff and we rejoined the others for a bit of lunch and the hike/swim back. The creek would be absolutely perfect if it wasn't for the stream/string worms. These little black suckers attach themselves to every single rock by use of a small silklike thread in the fast flowing current, and when you try to slide down the rocks, they come with you... all over you. By the end of the day, we were all covered in the creepy little worms, but it was worth it. We hardly had to walk at all as we just let the current do all of the work. Finally, after a few more cliff jumps, we made it back to the Narrows. Several drunk guys were jumping off of ledges bigger than the one I had jumped before, and we wanted to get out of there before we had to witness someone really hurt themselves, so we collected a bit of their trash that was lying around and headed back to the trailhead and then Phoenix. I spent the evening chilling (literally, after Cold Stone ice cream and the sunset, it was actually quite cool in Phoenix) with some friends at Suda's pool and then called it a weekend.