White Mountains

Went to the White Mountains for Hallpass Weekend. It was awesome and the fall colors were just starting to come out. Here are just a couple pictures.

Hallpass weekend

Its been sometime and nothing too different has happend. I applied for a different job with Banner Hospital and just had another interview. It was a panel interview with the techs there. It went pretty well and it was pretty relaxed.

I'm heading up to Pinetop/Lakeside this weekend to go hiking and basically road tripping. My wife is out of town so it's my annual Hallpass Weekend. I'm stoked about heading up there and hiking and biking, and just exploring. I'm going to Sunrise Ski Resort, for 15$ you can get a all day pass on the ski lift so you can get easy access to the trail system up there or if you want, tackle all the down hill stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX_xtE8Gs7A, and think, these guys were high.

Cheers,
MJ

For my brother

Apache Trail

I just wanted to post some pictures of the Apache Trail. I thought this would be a good gravel road race. It's only 18 miles one way but it's some of the coolest scenery that I've seen in AZ. Bonus part is that it's only about an hour from my house. I don't know what someone would have to do to get a race going there. Who knows there's probably something already there.

Lava Tube. "good name for G's V"

I haven't posted anything for awhile. My life is pretty much the same all the time with work/wife/home improvements. My wife and I went to Flagstaff over Memorial weekend with a couple of friends. It was pretty fun and we stayed at the Monte Vista hotel that was built in the 1920's. Actually about the whole main street was built in the 1920's except for the window at the Incahuts store that I broke. It was an accident and I was never charged for anything so it wasn't that big of a deal. Well while we were there we went to check out the lava tubes.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, northern Arizona was a hotbed of volcanic activity, (which eventually blew its top, leaving the San Francisco Peaks behind) dominated the landscape. Some underground flows hardened into natural tunnels, which is what we hiked through. My wife had heels on so she sat out, but my buddy and I took the plunge and went through. There's a couple of rooms in the cave that have 30 ft ceilings. It was worth the trip, but it wasn't that big of a deal.

Cheers,

MJ

Intro

I'm not much of a blogger and I actually make fun of my brother, http://happytraining.blogspot.com, a lot about his blog and how much time is put into writing on it everyday. Well this is a slippery slope because in making fun of him I'm making fun of the millions of people that blog and connect through blogging. Some people actually get paid for their blog so I guess who am I to judge? And now that I have spent more time on my brother's blog I have found myself spending more and more time on my stupid blog.

My brother, Paul, is huge into mountain biking. To really call it "mountain" biking is a pretty big stretch. To his defence though he can't help this. He lives in Iowa so there's no mountains per say to bike on, so he and a bunch of other people bike on B class gravel roads. Sometimes in the winter when it's so cold your car is pissed off at you for even thinking of starting it. And they also enter in a race that is basically unfinishable (not a word, I know) http://transiowa.blogspot.com. (man look at me advertise!!) Which I find pretty funny. Wouldn't it be better to just have a 150 mile race? Then you could have someone actually come in first because they beat somebody. Not because they are the world record holder for the fastest time across Iowa and the only one that finished?

Now I'm not dogging on my brother and his biking buddies. I'm basically married to my work and partying it up on the weekends with my wife. Besides, I'm just jealous of my brother's self-disipline to his hobbies, and working and partying is all getting very old and predictable for me. That's why I've created this blog. I live in the best region of the USA to be a mountain biker and I need to start getting some miles in on my mountain bike (which has more than one gear, but that's a whole different post). Paul has sent me a couple of races out, http://www.mountainbikeaz.com/, here that are going on, but they look a little long and tough for me, but they do have beginner class so that should work out.

Well the Sales Rep just showed so I better bail.

MJ