apAdventures

Not too shabby!

Morphing a gymnastics comp weekend into a family adventure:

posted by ARR

This is the mantra that’s been in my head this last week. Temps have been soaring here in the desert but we’ve been embracing it, getting outside to play as much as possible. It was over 80 degrees on Monday! But then I woke up this morning, looking forward to hitting up some local boulders with the family before embarking upon the cooking and baking and chaos of preparing our traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner. I woke up to….RAIN!

Oh cozy Christmas Eve day. What a perfect early Christmas present! ❤️

posted by ARR

Silas is a legit racer these days. And he’s all man-boy. When did this happen?!

posted by ARR

Silas and Ivan had a blast with Aunt Holly & Uncle Joe (photos below). Now back to school, tomorrow. Sheesh! Where did the summer go?!

posted by ARR

…the three favorite parts of staying with Uncle Joe and Aunt Holly for the week. The kids had so much fun they weren’t able to pick just one.

posted by ARR

How lucky are these kiddos? An Aunt and Uncle that live in Park City, an invite to stay with them for a whole week, and new mountain bikes!

posted by ARR

This weekend Paul, myself, my sis Holly, her boyfriend Joe, lil Morgie and our friend Matt headed up to Flagstaff, AZ for some fun in the cooler temps. We camped at the campground on Upper Lake Mary and bouldered Friday and Saturday at Priest Draw. The beginner duo (Holly and Joe) is climbing strong, I must say. We showed them the classics and they ate them up, one by one, until the skin on their fingers was toast. Paul is currently working The Receptionist, v10, and making strong links (falling while “answering the phone” – for all you familiar with the climb). I’m working Anorexic, v6, and slowly sussing out the moves. Paul and I have a trip to Canada coming up soon so unfortunately we may not be back to the Draw for a little while. No biggie, our projects will be waiting when we return.

Sunday, Holly and Joe sped off with their mountain bikes to the Mt. Eldon trails, Matt sped off with his bike to Sedona, and Paul, Morgan and I headed up to Mt. Humphrey for some Imogene training. So far in our training, our runs have been successes. We’ve completed every trail run that we’ve set off to do and have loved every second. Well, today’s run was a bit less of a “success”. We hit the trail this morning at 9:30am. Way, way, WAY too late. We had planned to run a 12 mile loop that included the high point of Mt. Humphrey at 12, 000+ feet. About 6 miles in, however, as we stared up and up and up at the peaks above, we made the decision to bail. Yes, BAIL. Believe it. To sum up our position: we were low on water and hot as hell. Running above treeline in this kind of heat would be too much for little brown dog Morgie, and us too I suppose. So we turned around and ran/walked the 6 miles back to the car. Out-and-back runs = blah. 90+ degrees when your psyched to bag a 12,000+ footer = blah. A tired dog with tired legs and that oh-so-pitiful look of “take me home please” = blah. But, knowing that this stellar loop with amazing views exists and is only a short 4 hour drive away = CAN’T WAIT TO COME BACK AND TRY AGAIN!!!! 😀

Sorry for the apadventures neglect. Things have been quite busy around here lately. So this entry will be a quick a dirty summary of what we’ve been up to over the past few weeks:

1. Grit. Grit is our new bud living in our guest house. She’s here from Germany for a few months working at the university. I met her at the gym one night and turns out we have a common friend from Germany. Small world. Anyway, not only are we psyched that she’s as psyched as us about climbing, but she also likes to run! and run and run and run. Grit, Paul and I just ticked off a 7.5 mile’r this evening. Whew. Paul and I finally broke the 7 mile mark…just barely. 🙂

2. Climbing. Climbing has been stellar as usual. We’ve been frequenting Flagstaff lately. Hitting up Priest Draw. The weather up in Flag is gorgeous…crisp fall wind and getting rather chilly at night. Can’t wait for the aspen leaves to turn. Last weekend Paul, myself, Grit, and Morgan went up with Miles who is real good fun. He helped develop the place a (few) years back and showed us some stuff we’d never seen before. Cool! Paul is still taking it easy on his finger that he tweaked back in May. But how easy can you take it when you’re climbing on Priest Draw pocket roofs? 😉

3. Training. We’ve got the campus board up!!! Grit and I started building it the weekend before last, Paul stained it with some nice weatherproofing stain, and just before we left for Priest Draw last weekend we finished it off. It stands tall and proud out back by the mamma woody, looking oh-so-good. The woody has been stripped and re-set. Courtney, Grit, Paul and myself spent a night last week eating those new peanut butter double stuff oreos and setting new problems. And this past weekend we picked up some cheap 2nd holds from Voodoo. Now if we could just find the time to get some cushy mattresses so we don’t have to “Climb At Your Own Risk” each night.

4. Biking. What?! More biking you say? Well, kinda. I *finally* succeeded in getting myself motivated to ride my bike to work and back last week. I only did it 1 day though, so don’t ooo and ahh yet. My butt was waaaaay to sore to climb back on the seat so soon. We’ll see how this week goes.

5. Morgan. Cute.

6. The adobe. Still hanging in there. Our list of home fix-up to-do’s keeps growing. The bathroom sink has been clogged for 5 months now. Brushing your teeth in the kitchen is not so bad…..

7. The old ball and chain. A major smoochy smoochy weekend is coming up for Paul and I. Oct 2nd will be our 1 year wedding anniversary! Amazing that one year has already gone by. What a fine year too at that. If the upcoming years will be anything like the first, I think it’s safe to say I made a real darn good pick with that Paul, heh heh. Anyway, we plan on spending it in Yosemite. CAN’T WAIT.

Here we are in Flagstaff, Arizona, sippin’ coffee and resting our weary selves at the Late for the Train coffee shop. Our extended weekend started off yesterday, Friday. We slept in at home in Tucson, then packed up our climbing gear, running sneaks, and mtn bikes and hit the road. “Whoa, wait a sec, mtn bikes?!” you say? Yes, I’ll admit, we’ve pretty much given up the mtn biking scene since we moved out west…..for the sole reason of obsessing exclusively over climbing. But lately we’ve had the itch. And we *finally* acted on it.

We arrived in Flag a little later than expected on Fri, so we decided to set up camp and finish the day off with a beautiful run along Lake Mary. Absolutely beautiful.

This morning we headed to Priest Draw for some bouldering. I guess the Flagstaff boulderers are late sleepers b/c we were literally the only ones there until about noon. Sweet. I had the boulder problem Anorexic all to myself. Highlight of the morning was me FINALLY sending the V4 traverse on the warm-up triangle boulder. For those of you that have seen our “Desert Bouldering” video, this is the problem where I fall at the end, right before the finish. Falling at the end was a trend for me many many times….so I was psyched.

Paul found this two move wonder near The Egyptian. First move is a dyno. Second move is a heinous mantle top-out. I got great butt crack footage of him beach-whaling over the top of the boulder, hehe. Once you grab the top of the boulder, you have to throw a heal up and then basically turn a lock-off into a mantle all in one motion, cause there’s no holds on the top. I was planning on opting out on trying this one, but since I was laughing so hard at Paul’s dramatic finish, he said “Now your turn.” The dyno was a no-go for me. But I make-believed the dyno and tried the mantle…..and did it!!! Must be all those pushups are paying off.

We bouldered from about 8am to 2pm, and then drove up to Shultz Creek trail to see how hard we could get our butts spanked on our mtn bikes. We started off up this super super rocky/bouldery single track. DAMN we’ve lost our skills!!! This trail is HARD! Turns out, we were on some Burrito Barfer trail or something like that….one that’s rated with skulls and stuff for the hardman biker. Whoopsies. Now where is that trail Miles recommended (the classic 5.9 of mtn bike trails, as he puts it). Pedal around a bit more, and finally we come to Shultz Creek trail. Stellar dude. After a mile or two we had our game back and were bouncing along through some modest technical sections. Waahooo! Why was it again we’d given up on biking? Oh yeah – too much time bouldering at Hueco. 😉

Well, that’s the scoop for now. We’re going to chow down tonight and get some good rest and do it all again tomorrow.

Here are a few pictures so far.