The Christmas Letter

Dave says: Merry Christmas to all our family and friends. Here's our yearly Christmas letter.

November

Dave says: November was a crazy month. Fortunately the busyness of the end of the semester is mostly over so I finally have some time to reflect on everything. The month started with a quick trip to Seattle to present some research at the Society of Judgment and Decision Making's annual conference. I traveled with fellow PhD students Mike and Dylan and we had an enjoyable time. The presentation went well, the weather was surprisingly good with no rain, and we even got to see a bit of the city over the course of the weekend.

I returned home to begin running some super-intense research in the lab that had me constantly running around for the next week. As a result, I got sick with a nasty cough that lingered for the next month. School remained busy with my toughest semester ever with papers, presentations, and exams in addition to all of the research outside of class. The biking didn't fare so well in the meantime despite some beautiful weather here in Tucson.

For Thanksgiving we went up to Phoenix to see my family. They are mostly settled into their new house and now that the weather is here they are remembering how nice life can be in the desert. For Thanksgiving dinner, we drove up to my uncle's newly purchased cabin up by Winslow about 2.5 hours north of Phoenix. It nice to see everyone and the meal was great (especially Alisha's sweet potatoes).

Our Own Tour

Alisha says: If you live in Tucson and ride bikes there is a time that starts in September and lasts through mid November where there is an increased number of people out riding and whenever you get stopped at a light with a fellow cyclist the question always comes up "so, you out training for the tour?" The "Tour" they are referring to is El Tour de Tucson and in some people's mind your are not a real cyclist unless you've ridden the tour. While El Tour is a great event, raising a lot of money for over 20 non profit organizations, and bringing thousands of people to boost the economy and enjoy great weather, this year it just wasn't something I was interested in. There are a couple of reasons for this, after finishing a long racing season all I wanted to do for a month or so is to just ride my bike for the pure joy of getting outside and pedaling my bike, with no efforts on tap or certain hours to put in, but to just ride, and the second is that a 111 mile hammer fest with 5,000 of my friends just sounds like way to many people.

Our friends the Toussaints invited us on a cycling/camping trip over the same weekend as the Tour and so it was a great excuse to have something else to do that weekend. We started in Tucson and rode the 85 miles to Lake Patagonia. It was a tough ride, we had a head wind the whole way. Roberta drove our camping gear and met us there. We enjoyed an afternoon of food, playing with the dogs at the lake, and an evening around the campfire with more food. The next day we were very happy that the wind was still blowing the same way resulting in a sweet tail wind the whole way home. Unfortunately, Dave has been battling a cold and decided to skip the ride but still rode out in the car and camped so at least he still got to come along for some of the the fun.

Hiking

Dave says: We have been doing some fun hikes in October. This weekend we went up Sabino Canyon and finished on Mt. Lemmon via the Box Springs trail. It was 14 miles of uphill with some good views and a tough middle section where the trail was steep. However, as I learned from an earlier hike with Alex and Sam, uphill is still often preferable to downhill. A few weeks back we hiked the window loop up Ventana and down Esperero while Alisha was in Utah. We learned that the knee-breaking downhill on the Esperero trail was the toughest part of the hike and planned an all-uphill hike for the future.

We also did a shorter hike last weekend up the Douglas Springs trail including a fun section of bouldering up some dried waterfalls at the end. We've also been doing some cycling although things have been a little more relaxed in the "off season." The Trisports group has been doing El Tour training rides and we have also been hitting the Tuesday Gates Pass and Thursday Dove Mountain rides.

In spite of the fun pictures, I have been a workaholic recently as I have been pushing through my toughest semester yet. When Alisha took two weeks to go to Utah, I took the opportunity to work 10-12 hour days. Recently my thesis project was approved by my committee in a time-frame a year ahead of the norm. However, I have been feeling the weight of a variety of research projects, intense weekly class readings, and a large number of required papers and presentations. In fact, I'm off to Seattle to present at a conference this weekend.

Trip Home

Garden Harvest - Yum

 

My amazing mother and niece

 Sunrise on Angel's Landing at Zion

Alisha says: I find that when I am forced to take a break from my bicycle it is better if we just part ways for a while. I went and visited my family for two weeks to relax and catch up. My sisters both came for a visit also so I had tons of fun playing with my nephews and niece. We went swimming, had a Halloween themed dinner and harvested the last of the garden before it snowed, yes, there was actually a small amount of snow on the ground one morning.

My university cross country team had their home meet while I was home so it was fun to go see my high school and college coaches and watch the race. I have to admit that standing there before the race started I got butterfly's in my stomach as I recalled all of the many races I'd run. Coach Houle even let me start the women's race, starters gun and all!

I also had fun hiking with my childhood friend Shannon. She is crazy, she works nights, then picked me up at 5:30 am and we cruised to Zion National Park and were standing on top of Angel's Landing in time to watch the sunrise. We still made back in time for her to make it to her 12 o'clock class for an afternoon of school. So much fun, wish we lived in the same city!

Amidst all of the fun I had a gum infection resulting in a trip to the dentist with a root canal in the near future, a small cold, and the stomach flu. Yikes, I hope that's all for awhile.

Returning home I found that a spider had decided he liked my bike also and had built a web on it. I dusted it off and took it out for a nice 80 miles to get reacquainted.

Pima Canyon

Alisha says: We decided to mix things up last Saturday and go for a hike. We met Alex at the Pima Canyon trailhead right as the sun was coming up for a nice hike through the desert. It had rained the evening before so the air was a little bit cooler and the trail was still a little damp. I love the way the desert smells after it has rained. Alex almost stepped on a huge four foot plus gopher snake who was hanging out on the trail and we also saw a huge millipede. We also saw a group of people hiking with their two pet goats. We are looking forward to doing some more hiking now that the race season is over.

 The snake is on the right side of the trail in front of Alex. We wanted him to get closer but he didn't like that idea.

Saturday night the biggest rain storm since we have lived in Arizona hit Tucson. There was tons of lightning and it just poured for quite a while. A lot of the streets were flooded and I even got to see water running in the Rillito River for the first time.

The Blue Loop

 Ready to start day 1: Larry, Carolyn, Roberta, Doug, Alex, Dave, Alisha

 Mmmmm, delicious sag stops! Why yes, I would like a sandwich in the middle of my ride :)

 Cooling the legs in the creek

 Dave and Alex walking on the Catwalk

Alisha says: Dave and I had a really fun Labor Day weekend. We hooked up with Doug, Roberta, Alex, and Elizabeth and about 50 other cyclists for the GABA Blue Loop Cycling tour. This was such a great event. 

Day 1: We started in Clifton, AZ and rode to Glenwood, NM where we camped for the night. The afternoon was filled with getting milkshakes in town and then hiking the Catwalk.
Day 2: Glenwood, NM to Alpine, AZ. We rolled into camp and had just enough time to shower and set up our tent before it started raining. It was all good though as we had a nice nap and then played some intense games of UNO.

Day 3:The last day was a 100 mile day with some more climbing and quite a bit of twisty descending. It was a good change of pace to just ride for fun and enjoy the scenery. We especially enjoyed stopping at all of the sag stops (there were three everyday) for a soda or some snacks. Total ride distance was 214 and 17,000 ft of climbing.

Aspen

Alisha says: Aspen is such a beautiful place, one should go there to relax, ride and hike, but only on your own terms because Aspen sits at some serious altitude. Racing at altitude is hard. Several comparisons that were mentioned during the week was that it was like racing through mud, Vaseline or in slow motion, you get the idea. Nonetheless, it still turned out to be a fun couple of days. Teammate wonder woman Kristin Armstrong won the overall. We got to stay with some excellent hosts, Jack and Suzy, whose energy and generosity were amazing. I also got to watch the finish of one of the men's stages of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge and catch glimpses of many of my favorite pro tour guys. I'm looking forward to a little down time to recharge, reset, and get refocused.

The Big Summer Trip

Dave says: Alisha and I recently returned from our big summer trip. While Alisha was off racing the Tour de Toona, I traveled up to Cedar City to see Daniel get his Eagle Scout and to compete in the 100K Fire Road Race. It was fun to do a mtb race as it has been awhile and the course up in the mountains outside of Cedar City was epic. Quite a few people came from out of state and I imagine that this event will grow a lot in coming years. I took second overall which was one of my best finishes for the year.

I picked up Alisha in Las Vegas and we started our drive up through California en route to Bend, Oregon. We stayed a few days with some very nice friends of Alisha's in Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa has some amazing rides through vineyards and beautiful forests on small roads. Yet even in July it was often cold and foggy.

However, Santa Rosa wasn't nearly as cold as Crater Lake where we camped next to a giant mound of snow in a campground that was only half open so far for the year due to record snow levels. This high-altitude lake in the crater of an old volcano is very beautiful and is only a short drive from Bend.

After a week on the road, we reached Bend in time for the Cascade Classic. Alisha was in a long breakaway on Stage 1 and helped her teammate take the yellow jersey. Unfortunately, the team couldn't hold it for the rest of the week.

I did the Cat 2 race with Andre and Michael. Though we couldn't pull out any amazing results we had a fun time and rode hard in a huge Cat 2 field. I also was the official babysitter for Alisha's team. Her director Giana's son Sawyer is two years old and has a lot of energy. I entertained him quite a bit while Giana was busy with the race.

The final week of our trip took us back through Utah to see family. We stayed with Richard, Brittney, & Arley in SLC, with Devin, Amber, Quinn, and Owen in Price, and with Wayne, Debbie, Shane, Mandy, Brody, and Elsie in Cedar City. There are a lot of cute little tots in the family right now. It was also our ten year high school reunion and we saw many of our high school friends (and kids) at a lunch at canyon park followed by a dinner later in the evening. We also helped my parents get ready for their upcoming move to Phoenix. After a busy month of July on the road, we finally repacked the Mazda5 to the roof with 3 bikes, camping gear, and all our other stuff and drove back to Tucson.

Where did July go?

Alisha says: I spent the whole month of July on the road racing and visiting family. Dave had a break from school and so we made a road trip vacation out of part of it. I should have blogged along the way because now I feel like writing about the whole trip is overwhelming so here is a quick day by day recap.

July 4th: Flew into New Jersey and drove to Connecticut
July 5th: Drove to Altoona, Pennsylvania
July 6th: Tour De Toona Stage Race: 3 mile Prologue
July 7th: Johnstown to Blue Knob Road Race - 73 miles. I had my best finish yet in a national race and took 2nd on this mountain top finish! http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/tour-de-toona-ne/stage-1/results
July 9th: Blair County Road Race - 91 miles. Due to an unfortunate accident I crashed. Fortunately I was okay and able to finish the race, bad news was that I lost a lot of time in the general classification and broke my bike :(
July 10th: Downtown Crit
July 11th: Flew to Las Vegas where Dave picked me up :)
July 12th: Spent the day driving through California
July 13-16th: Riding in Santa Rosa, CA
July 17th: Visited Crater Lake in Oregon and camped that night by banks of snow
July 18th: Arrived in Bend, OR
July 19th: Cascade Classic Stage Race: 2 mile Prologue
July 20th: Stage 1, McKenzie Pass Road Race, 74 miles. Fun race, I spent most of the day in a break!
July 21st: Stage 2, Individual Time Trial
July 22nd: Stage 3, Cascade Lakes Road Race, 71 miles
July 23rd: Stage 4, Downtown Crit
July 24th: Stage 5, Aubrey Butte Circuit Race
July 25th: Drove to Salt Lake, UT to visit family
July 26th: Drove to Price to visit family, met my new 7 week old nephew, Owen.
July 27th: Drove to Cedar, met my new week old niece, Elsie
July 28th: Went on an ATV adventure, and played with Brody and Elsie
July 29th: Helped Dave's family pack for their big move
July 30th: Went to Dave and I's 10 year high school reunion and Brody's 3rd birthday party
July 31st: Drove home
Whew! Four weeks, 10 states, 4,000 miles of driving, lots of racing, family, teammates. I love my life!

Toona: Stage 1 Podium

Cascade: On race leader Clara Hughes wheel during the crit

Cascade: McKenzie Pass Road Race

Owen

Brody and Elsie

Brody's birthday party

The small group that attended the reunion

June

Dave says: Two weeks ago I went out to the Desert Museum with my grandparents to see a presentation on lightning photography in Tucson. The photographer had been shooting the lightning in this area for 30 years and had some very impressive shots such as the one above. Now, two weeks later, the monsoons have finally arrived with brief-but-intense downpours and plenty of lightning. All of the washes filled with water and the Tuesday morning Gates Pass ride had sand across the road in many places.

Since my last post, Alisha and I traveled to Flagstaff to do some bike racing there. We did a road race out by Sunset Crater which Alisha won despite getting a flat right near the finish. Then, we camped out on the south side of Flagstaff and did a windy circuit race on the next day.

The next week I traveled with Alex up to Show Low to race Bike the Bluff. This is one of Arizona's best cycling events and was a lot of fun. We stayed at Justin's super-plush cabin and had quite a few TriSports riders participating in the event. The RR was a great rolling course while the crit was windy and had a hill in it. I've been watching the Tour de France for the last couple of days and it has motivated me to step up my game as those guys are extremely impressive on the bike.

Alisha has been traveling a lot as well and I have been working on finishing up some research projects at school (although at a less crazy pace than during the semester). We're about to head out on a big trip to Utah and Oregon so hopefully I will finally have some better pictures to throw up on the blog in the next few weeks.

USA Cycling Nationals

The start of the road race at Fort Gordon in Augusta, GA

The race winning break - I am the last helmet in the back of the front group of riders

After I dropped back to help my teammates chase

Alisha says: Nationals this year were held in Augusta, Georgia. I had never been there and wasn't quite sure what to expect. It was hot, humid, and a lot of trees. We also traveled into South Carolina so I can add that to my list of states visited. We met some nice people and had some good hard racing.

I raced the crit, which wasn't much fun at all. It was a flat, four corner course with long straights. We started racing at 8:00 pm with some very dark clouds starting to roll in as the sun was also getting close to setting. As we raced the wind picked up and soon the clouds were right over us. About halfway through the race they informed us that we only had 5 laps to go (total race time was only 35 min vs. if we did the whole 50k it would have been about over an hour). From there it got a bit sketchy as everyone was eager for a chance to be national champ. My amazing teammate Coryn finished 3rd and won the Under 23 Title. Right after we stopped it started dumping rain. We basically finished, gave our bikes to Vince, jumped in the car, and could barely even see the road because of how hard the rain was coming down as we drove home.

Here is our director's Giana's report from the road race:

Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY 12 Animate US Elite National Road Race
Alison Starnes braves the merciless sunshine for a 100 KM effort
June 27, 2011
Augusta, GA

Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY 12 continued their quest to develop the emerging talent on their young squad, racing the Elite National Road Race Championships aggressively. The 120 KM road race course was a circuit around Fort Gordon. Up and down, without any flat terrain, the seemingly benign route had a cruel way of making the 1000 feet of climbing per lap known in the final laps. The undulating terrain combined with the relentless heat made for a challenging day.

Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY 12 kicked things off early with an effective attack from Alison Starnes. Starnes was joined by two other riders, Jennifer Wheeler (Tibco – To the Top) and Kasey Clark (Primal/Map my Ride). The group of three put time into the peloton without an initial reaction from the group. When the gap steadily began to increase, HTC went to the front, joined by Colavita to do the bulk of the work to bring it back.

As the peloton bore down on the group, Starnes attacked the break, and held off the chase for another lap. Finally succumbing to the hard chase behind, Starnes was reabsorbed as the group saw 5 to go. From there the attacks began to fly with HTC desperate to have the finish of the race be anything but a field sprint. Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY 12’s Alisha Welsh, Kristin McGrath, Coryn Rivera, Kaitie Antonneau and Tayler Wiles countered many moves but it wasn’t until 15 kilometers to go that a group of seven separated from the peloton. Welsh made the move, but realizing instantly that it was not a fortuitous one for Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY 12 she sat up immediately to return to help her teammates chase.

As the kilometers ticked away, the gap came down, but not enough in the end. As the group of six sprinted it out, with Robin Farina taking the win over Meredith Miller, the chase was only hundred meters or so behind.

The road race wrapped up a successful week for the Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY 12 Team with two National Championship Jerseys, as well as two bronze medals. The team has a short break now to rest and prepare for the Cascade Cycling Classic, kicking off July 19.

There's a Snake in the House

After the snake went outside it then went up this tree.

Alisha says: So while in Georgia for USA Cycling Nationals I accidentally let a big, like four foot long, black snake into our host house. They said that they have never seen a snake around their house before and the one that did show up I might have let in, oops. I actually hold Ali partly responsible.

We had just finished dinner and Ali and I were in the kitchen starting to clean up. I opened the door to go outside and right there was a big black snake. I closed the door and had Ali come look. The snake then disappeared so that we couldn't see it anymore. Ali said that it had gone under the deck and thinking the coast was clear I opened the door to go out. Then out of the corner of my eye the snake came from the other side of the door and slithered right into the house and down the hall. Tayler, Kmac, and the hosts were still sitting in the other room at the dinner table so all they heard was some shrieking followed by "umm, we need some help, there's a snake in the house." John wanted to know where it was and all we knew was that it went down the hall. Fearless Kmac, with some help from the dog, found it in the corner of their living room behind the tv. Luckily there was a door that went outside in that room and when they opened it the snake went out by itself. I guess it decided inside wasn't the place to be which I was very grateful for considering my bed for the week was an air mattress on the floor. Needless to say it brought some excitement to the evening.

The next day as we lined up for the start of the road race word had gotten out about the snake and the announcer even talked about it on the start line and called me Dr. Doolittle because I seem to attract wildlife (see previous posts about critters in our backyard).

Summer at Last

Dave says: The last two months have been some of the busiest of my life. The last time I wrote on the blog, I was in Chicago for a management conference. After that, things started ramping up at the end of the semester with research projects, final papers, and exams. However, after the semester ended, the excitement kept right on going.

I finished writing a final paper on a Saturday night and started teaching my first college-level class the next Monday morning. The U of A has 3 summer sessions (aka: more $) and the first, pre-session, goes for 3 weeks with 3 hour classes every day. The good news is that you speed through an entire class in less than a month. The bad news is that it is hard work to prep 3 hours of material every day. However, I really like teaching and the class turned out to be a lot of fun.

The course was "Integrating Business Fundamentals with Ethics and Law" and covers a number of topics that I enjoy related to ethics, law, and business. One of my main goals was to incorporate a variety of teaching methods in addition to lecturing to make the class more engaging for students. Ultimately, the format worked well with PowerPoints, video clips (including some funny ones from The Daily Show, The Office, etc.), student presentations, case studies, and in class activities. I had about 40 students in the class and they were great about getting involved in discussions and making comments. Now that I have the materials, the class will be much easier in the future.

Additionally, I was fortunate to win a fellowship award through the department. I'm certainly not winning any cycling awards right now so I guess academic awards will have to do instead. However, I've still been out on the bike as much as possible. Although the weather has finally heated up here in Tucson, it was absolutely unbelievable for the first 5 months of the year. I still drive to school every morning with the windows down. However, I need to re-train myself to wake up at 5 am so that I can enjoy the best part of the day.

I was also recently asked to work with the young men's group at church. I did this in SLC and it is fun to get to do it again. We have only a few youth in the ward but this means that we get to know them pretty well individually.

Finally, my parents were in town over Memorial Day weekend. The reason - they have decided to move back to Arizona. They are headed to the Phoenix area where the jobs, as well as Christine (and the grandkids) are located. This all happened pretty fast and will make for a busy summer for them. We all knew that they would come back to Arizona but I think that everyone assumed that they would come back to Tucson in another 5 or 10 years.

Mt. Hood

Alisha, KMac, Kristin (overall race winner), Alison, Kaitie, Tayler, Giana (not in picture)
Kaitie and I getting advice on the prologue course
The time trial course in Washington

The break as they race along the Columbia River Gorge, so pretty!!
This is a picture from the guys race but check out the scenery!

Alisha says: While Dave was still busy teaching his summer class I took off on another cycling adventure. My first stop was Santa Rosa where I did a really fun long group ride with my coach/director Giana that included some incredible climbing over the Geyser's.

Then Tayler and I did a 12+ hour road trip to Hood River, Oregon, where we met up with the other Peanut Butter & Co/Twenty12 girls to race the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic. We were treated to a great week of racing. The weather was awesome, the scenery was absolutely beautiful and the courses were fun and challenging. We all worked really well together and came up with some great results. The yellow jersey went back and forth between two of my teammates, Kristin Armstrong and Alison Starnes so the rest of the team was put to work to defend the yellow. I had a lot of fun helping to keep the pace high on the hills. My favorite day of racing was the last stage that included 8200 ft. of climbing. We rode on small forest service roads, through snow banks and down twisty descents. It was epic. I finished 5th in that stage and 7th in the general classification.