July 30, 2011

AZT #27 - Blue Ridge Passage

Headed north for some cool(er) riding, yes it was cooler than Phoenix, but we were still sweating like mad in the higher humidity & mid 80's.  We've been wanting to check out another section, or Passage, of the Arizona Trail (AZT) so we decided on the Blue Ridge Passage just north of Payson.  Our group of 6 had never been on this section of trail so there was an air of uncertainty about what conditions we would encounter.  The online trail reports were few and mostly dated, we just had to find out for ourselves.  The plan for the day was to start at the northern terminus of the Blue Ridge Passage just off Rt, 87 @FR138 (approx. 40 miles north of Payson)


 
Locked & loaded

Photo by Phil

Photo by Phil

Seron coming into focus

Good day to be on the bike


One of a handful of gate crossings
Photo by Seron
Photo by Seron

Bottom of our descent & start of some HAB. Photo by Seron

Rescued this poor fella for a couple of tandem mtn. bikers. Photo by Seron

Diggin' in. Photo by Seron

Photo by Seron

Phil rolling on the Fred Haught / AZT. Photo by Seron
Photo by Chuck

Nice to see a bit of water on the ride. Photo by Seron

Photo by Seron

Where's the trail?

Phil. Focused.

Just like that the ferns are gone.
I thought it was supposed to be 'cool' up here!! Photo by Seron

Turnaround spot for the day, looking down from the Mogollon Rim

I'd love to have one of these signs in my garage!!
General Springs Cabin. Photo by Seron


Photo by Seron

It would be nice to have a choice of rides everyday! Photo by Seron

Every limb was covered in dirt after my second tumble.
Photo by Seron
Starting up a 3/4 mile HAB, fun stuff. Photo by Seron

Phil throughly enjoying his HAB efforts!!
Cool overlook that I missed on the way out.

Photo by Seron
When it was all said and done, 32 miles & 4300' of climbing at around 7000' elevation makes for a tired body.  Aside from the 2 HAB sections both coming & going the trail was a really fun ride.  I thought the trail flowed a little better going south to north.  It also helped to know when the tough sections were approaching.  I'll be back to ride this one again for certain.  Thanks to Seron, Phil, Chuck, Jeff & Dave for the great riding company as usual.  The drive home was entertaining as we were all glued to the windshield watching a phenomenal lightning show. One of the best I've seen in years.  Looking forward to our next big ride in the pines for sure.  A few more pics here.

July 14, 2011

Atlantis...A final farewell to the shuttle program

A few months ago it finally began to sink in that the Space Shuttle program I grew up with was coming to an end.  We decided it would be really cool to see one of the final launches, I had yet to witness one live. The second to last launch, Endeavor, ended up having a few delays and was not practical for us flying as non-rev travellers.  So we sight our sights on the launch of Atlantis, keeping a keen eye on the scheduled launch date before fully committing to vacation/travel plans.  July 8th it would be, now we just needed to get there and hope for no delays.

I decided on a safer routing bet, bypassing the non-stop flight to Charlotte (CLT) in favor of a connection in Dallas (DFW) where both flights were wide open with available seats.  Phase 1 complete, but the flight into Jacksonville (JAX) was starting to fill up on us.  While waiting for our name to be called we were alerted to a certain hated rivals ex-football coach in the area, Urban Meyer and his son were also on their way to JAX, ohh, lucky us.  They found a couple seats for us and off to JAX we went.

For launch day we opted to rise around 3am & hit the road.  There was a large estimate of people being there and we thought we may get stuck on I-95.  We really had no idea of what to expect for crowds, so to say we were surprised that the freeway was virtually empty is a gross understatement.  Surely after we exited at Titusville there would be traffic...nope.  We were able to drive up to within one block of the water, circled through town once and found a street parking spot only 3 blocks from Space View Park!!


These signs were all over the place

One of the monuments at Space View Park in the pre-dawn


Tribute to the Mercury Missions

Here was our viewing spot, next to the water behind the brown tent

A very popular truck on this day

The assembly building

Cool tribute to the Apollo missions from Matt's t-shirt!


As we waiting for the launch, we received many text updates from Gary letting us know where things stood on NASA's end.  It was very welcomed as we informed others around us that the launch was still a 'GO'. We really had a nice location to watch liftoff, both food & restroom facilites were only one block away.  As the weather appeared to be holding off the anticipation grew. 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1....
Final liftoff of Atlantis











Atlantis punching through a low lying cloud




Photo credit: Chris Ballance, he had a tripod & was just in front of us.

Photo credit: Chris Ballance


After a few minutes
The launch was a success, something I'll always cherish.  We were all very thankful that the weather held up and did not cause any delays.  The cloud cover ended up being a bonus as well, kept the temperatures reasonable until just after liftoff, but by then we were well on our way back to the truck.
Along I-95n, at least I happened to catch a fast looking car!

Coda welcoming us home

Red just being a ham

Marble doesn't look pleased
Since the shuttle went up as planned, we had a free day for some sightseeing.  We actually slept in a bit then made our way down to St. Augustine for the day.  We opted for the touristy tram tour of the city so we wouldn't miss any of the main historical buildings and to hear some stories told by the tram driver.  It ended up being a really nice way to get a feel for the city, so next time we're down there we now know where we want to go.
City gates

Castilla de San Marcos



We even had time for a quick wine tasting at the San Sebastian Winery


Can't miss this one





St. Augustine lighthouse

Where Catholicism made landfall in the new world

Just above the 4th shutter is a cannonball lodged in the wall

Beatiful canopy road

Many of the walls throughout the city are constructed with seashells

Cool way to see the sights


This is hard to see, but there's a palm tree growing out of this large tree's base!








Zero milestone of the Old Spanish Trail


Matt and I finished off our day with an Arena Football game, the Jacksonville Sharks lost to the Dallas Vigilantes 75-70.  Defense? We don't need no stinkin' defense!!

Great view for the game
Although it was a short trip, we had a blast.  Thankful that everything worked out & went as smoothly as we could have hoped for.  The only hiccup of the trip was on our return home to PHX.  The day started out good enough with a free upgrade to 1st class for the short flight from JAX -> CLT.  Upon arrival in CLT all the non-stop flights to PHX were oversold, taking volunteers on a few of them.  Not a good position to be in when flying standby.  We didn't get on the 9:30a flight, but we decided to split up for the 11:30a one and it worked out.  As I handed Kara the car keys I had no idea it would take me 3 more flights and 9 1/2 hours total to get out of CLT.  In the end I made it home the same day, so it really wasn't a big deal, just comes with the territory.  The full photo album can be found here.
Thankfully these are located throughout CLT