I am alive... just busy!

So, yeah. It's been a very busy couple of weeks, and I know I've been slacking on the blogging... so I'm going to catch up in one big go. Here it is. :)

Two weeks ago, summer really arrived in Phoenix. Biking to work any time after 8 a.m. is torture, and no matter what time I bike home, I am dripping in sweat by the time I get to the house. Even our Tuesday evening mountain bike races have an added element to them. But, it's good training for what will be the norm until October. So, when Jack, Hannah, and I headed out to the McDowell Mountain Preserve at 8 a.m. for a ride around the competitive tracks, we knew that we were going to be in for some serious heat. We first rode the 9 mile Long Loop, which was great training for all of us: Hannah gained her confidence back on the mountain bike, Jack and I played around with climbing up and hopping rocks, and we all got an incredible workout on the steep hills. And since none of us had ever been on sport loop, we headed over to the 4 mile track. It is probably my favorite loop now in the Valley: it's just four miles smooth hardpacked singletrack filled with twists, turns, drops, and rolling hills. Despite the heat, it was a great time, and we even tooled around on the technical loop for a little bit before heading back to air conditioning and fruit smoothies. Jack and I spent the majority of the afternoon playing volleyball in the pool. At around 3 p.m., I realized that I was exhausted after a full day in the sun, but instead of taking a nap, I headed out to Benedict Park for an ultimate frisbee hat tournament. My team had a slow start and we lost our first game, but we came back and crushed the next two teams. By finals, I was completely knackered, but still managed to play a bit against the stacked and undefeated champions before going home and crashing.

On Sunday, I was still exhausted, but weekends are too precious to just spend indoors, so I dragged my butt out of bed, filled my Camelback with water, lunch, and a good book and drove out to Saguaro Lake. The oppressive dry heat was laughing at my feeble attempts to hike out to the cove, but somehow I slowly managed to walk the three miles before I plopped down on a secluded little sandy beach on the crowded lake. I spent the remainder of the day swimming, reading, and just generally relaxing.

The next week was another busy one in the lab. All of us in the Mor lab scurried around all week trying to get last minute results before making posters and presentations for a conference down in Tucson. This was severely inhibited by a seemingly harmless incident down in our growth chamber. When we noticed that the temperature in the normally hot, humid chamber where we grow our tobacco was cold, we called a facility maintenance guy to come fix it. On Monday night, he came out and fixed it... while breaking a mercury thermometer in the process. He casually mentioned it to Pierre and went along his merry way. So, on Tuesday when we were going in and out of the chamber, we didn't think anything about it until Pierre mentioned the thermometer to our lab manager. And then all hell broke loose. We weren't going to do anything about it except call Environmental Health and Safely to sweep up the mercury, but they made all of us who had entered the chamber go over to the Health Center to get mercury poisoning tests. We filled out paperwork and waited for the doctors over there until we were told that they didn't have the correct tubes to collect our blood. So, they sent us over to Tempe St. Lukes Hospital. There, we filled out more paperwork, waited some more, got our vitals taken, were asked a lot of questions, and then told that we should be fine, and to just go home. While they were typing out our paperwork, an ASU police officer came over and asked us more questions. He sent over 6 of his police cars and a Tempe Fire truck to our building, and evacuated the floor, blowing the entire thing completely out of proportion. It was a broken thermometer for goodness sakes! So, 4 hours after we had gone to the Health Center, we were finally released to go home. The next morning, we were told that we had to go BACK to the Health Center because they now had the correct collection tubes. So, we filled out more paperwork, had our vitals taken AGAIN, and then had our blood and urine taken. It was not my idea of a good time, and by the time we were done, we had wasted almost a full work day so that they could tell me that I probably had more mercury exposure in my post-Papago race fish tacos than in the actual mercury spill.

On Thursday, I got out of the craziness of the lab and headed down to (the Mexican border) Sierra Vista for a library presentation to a group of summer reading program kiddos. It was a great group of about 60 kids ranging from kindergarten to middle school, and even though it was our first real (ie. paid) presentation since the race, we manged to do really well - without even going over the slides together before the presentation.

During the rest of the week, I continued to fill out worker's comp papers (as I said, it was a crazy mess), printed out my poster, and got ready for our conference. I finally got a chance to breathe on Friday evening, and had a very relaxing time barbecuing, swimming, and making good use of a borrowed SOLS projector for a movie night in Kohl's backyard.

On Saturday, ODP finally got back together again. It's been a long time since the three of us went exploring together, so we decided to go somewhere new. We drove north on Hwy 87 that is our summer artery. In addition to being the road that leads to Tonto Creek and Fossil Creek, it also heads to Payson, where we turned onto Hwy 260 to Christopher Creek. The town of Christopher Creek is a little rustic resort area with lots of campgrounds and cabins, but its namesake creek is the real reason for going up there. We parked along the highway just past mile marker 271 and hiked down the trail past the tall pines and manzanita scrub to the creek itself. Not far from where the trail met the creek, we came to what is known as The Box, where the creek plunges over a small waterfall and into the start of a wonderful canyon. For the next two miles and four hours, we were awed by the incredible oasis in which we found ourselves. The creek blended all of the good parts of our favorite Arizona spots: it had the waterfalls of Fossil Creek, the canyons and smooth granite of Salome Creek, the water flow and rapids of Tonto Creek, and the unique, unexplainable beauty of Havasu Falls. We couldn't stop smiling as we rounded each corner to find a new waterfall, a slide, a wall to climb, or just a new breathtaking view. I know I say it with each new place that we find, but I think that the Box Canyon of Christopher Creek is my new favorite place. After climbing the canyon walls up and around a slippery fall, we spent lunch playing at one of the most beautiful falls, swimming in the massive pool below it, and basking on the sun warmed rocks at the end of it. Every fall was more impressive than the next, and after several hours, we came upon a 50' beast. It was too bad that we didn't have ropes (or the confidence in our independent rapping skills), as it would have been an awesome rappel, so we climbed around the sides of the canyons to avoid it before returning to some incredible rock formations and slots in the canyon. By the end of the day, we were tired, but very, very happy. We managed to find the creek and trail that took us back to 260 and walked along the highway for a short bit back to our car. We ended the day at a little restaurant in Payson (4 course homemade dinner for $12) and checked out the adjacent bike shop. The owner had only been in Payson for 9 months, but had a sweet little hiking/biking/adventure shop set up and has some fun ideas for trails and races in the area. I'm sure you'll hear more about him and the Payson biking scene in the future.

On Sunday, the three of us headed back out for some ODP heat survival training on our bikes in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. We hit Trail 100 at Dreamy Draw at 9 a.m. We were all tired from the day before, and the dry heat in combination with the steep trails felt like it was sucking the remaining life our of our bodies. I was feeling pretty crabby and lazy at the beginning, but fortunately, the training is good for us, and after awhile our bodies became more accustomed to the heat and I started having fun bombing down some gnarly rocky trails. It was a bit too fun though, and I didn't want to turn around even though I knew I had to be showered, dressed up, and ready for our drive down to Tucson for our conference at 11:30 a.m. By 10:00, we tried to get off the trails to cut across Cave Creek back to the parking lot, and ended up traversing up and down the suburban labyrinth instead. By 10:15 I was nowhere near the Jeep, and I started getting a bit nervous. I left Hannah and Angel behind and started sprinting towards Northern, the only road I knew in the area. I finally figured it out and got back to Dreamy Draw at 10:30. I sped back down the 51 and back to Tempe with just enough time to shower and change. I made it to campus with my hair still wet and just barely presentable for the conference, but I did make it.

Two hours later, we arrived at the Hilton El Conquistador Resort, nestled in the mountains, for the Annual World Congress of the Society for In Vitro Biology. It was a very motivational and inspiring day, listening to some amazing scientists present their research and standing by my own poster and explaining my research to others. By the end of the day, though, I was definitely whooped, and we drove back late that night, only to get up early and do it again the next day...