Hello again from bright and sunny Flagstaff. Weeks have passed since the last rain/snow shower and I expect it will be a few more weeks or months before we see moisture here again. The bike is covered in a healthy layer of dust from the last dozen or so rides and several hundred miles of prime mountain biking. The weather is perfect and everything is nice while I continue living the too-good-to-be-true life.
This week was pretty busy. Monday, my friend Roan drove up the hill from Phoenix and rented a full-suspension mountain bike for the day. His request was for a jam-packed day of biking—50 or 60 miles would not be too far for him. So I planned out a 50-mile trail route that we could extend to 60 if we felt unstoppable. Well, 31 miles into our ride after 3,500 feet of climbing, Roan said he was done. I was surprised he made it that far because we were doing a lot of strenuous riding 9,000 feet above his normal oxygen level. Once again I was astounded by the spectacular scenery. The aspens and the steep rock faces of the peaks are breathtaking to ride through. We turned around and coasted back to the car and he took me out for a nice steak dinner to wrap up a fine day of riding.
We were abruptly stopped on our ride by a black bear and cub. We heard the mother bear before we saw her; she was huffing or barking or whatever bears do. It’s not really a growl. It was pretty eerie because we didn’t know whether to go forward or retreat. So we stopped. And then spotted her in sitting in a tree about twenty feet off the ground, a cub just above her. The tree was too close to the trail to comfortably squeeze by with her in an agitated state, the slope was too steep to go off-trail, so we waited it out. And she kept up the huffing. She didn’t make any moves to come lower in the tree so I cautiously edged closer, Roan had his bike turned downhill ready to split if things went bad. I made it past without drawing her out of the tree so Roan followed without mishap. A thought came to us later—if her branch had broken she likely would have blamed us and things could have gotten really exciting fast.
Tuesdaywednesdaythursdayfriday went by in a blur. My IT boss graciously let me take the entire month off so I could concentrate on classes. Well, my furniture store boss now gives me 20 hours a week, which makes taking an overfull class schedule really stressful: I have mixed feelings about the work since I desperately need to do well in these classes. AZ does not practice Daylight Saving Time so it gets light at 4:30 in the morning. I get up around 5 and do laundry, homework, and a jillion other things before biking to class which begins at 7:30. I sit in class with only a few breaks until 12:30, then ride home and hit the homework with a sort of hopeless feeling. There is so much of it. I will sleep when the semester is over. Ahhh…
Friday I met a wolf. Yes, a real grey wolf. She was half-tamed and about six feet long. It behaved sort of like a dog, but was extremely finicky. The only way she let me pet her was if I stayed perfectly still and she came to me. The owner didn’t let us inside its high iron fence because it seems the wolf has a tendency to gnaw on people as a sign of affection. It didn’t bark but gave us some nice long howls as we were leaving.
Tomorrow (Sunday) I go to Scottsdale where temps are predicted to be hovering around 110 degrees. Not sure how I’ll survive that. I have a nice hotel room in Scottsdale; one with an iron, large closet, shaded swimming pool, pillow-top mattress, and powerful air conditioner. Monday morning begins my first accounting externship at a Phoenix audit firm. In a lot of ways I feel pretty unprepared because I haven’t had many accounting classes yet—on the other hand, I’ve been studying accounting for a decade already and have a lot of practical experience with project management, costing systems, and bookkeeping.
I just returned from a good five mile run in the twilight. Yesterday we played a round of disc golf and several hours of tennis; this was all directly after getting off of work at 6pm and not having any food since noon. I got home at 10, too tired to eat, and fell fast asleep. This is typical. I’m losing weight that I didn’t think was extra. Running is suddenly fun again.