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july 13, 2000 First full week in "Flag", starting on projects... (more)

july 10, 2000 Weekend biking, cratering, elking... (more)

july 8, 2000 Settling in, walking the town, an Escalante movie... (more)

july 7, 2000 The eagle has landed! in Flagstaff, Arizona... (more)

july 15, 2000
This was quite an enjoyable and relaxing weekend, mainly because Natalie visited me from Phoenix. We had an exquisite dinner at a local restaurant called "Down Under", which specializes in food from New Zealand. Apparently the owners found their way her to Northern Arizona quite a few years ago. we had a wonderful meal of spring lamb and venison. Since Natalie will also visit for two weeks when I am in New Zealand, we thought this would be a good opportunity to get our palettes warmed up.

Also during the weekend we enjoyed a play, saw a bad movie, did some hiking, and just took it easy. The long overdue summer rains finally came. In Arizona we call them "monsoons", although they are not at all like the tropical storms from the south Pacific, but more related to the collision of moist area flung north from the Gulf of California which meets up with heated air rising from the desert floor. The storms movie fast and are very strong with wind, but they hit isolated areas.

today's photos

- all photos   o o o o

o o Flagstaff

Workwise, I've started programming on our interactive experiment, mainly by the animating of the round balls that will represent gas particles bouncing around inside a variable width chamber. I updated this a little bit this afternoon.

Around 4:30 it was time for some exercise, so I hopped on the mountain bike and rode through town, past NAU, for the trail head to Fisher Point in Walnut Canyon National Monument. The beginning part of the ride is a bit of a maze of different jeep trails, but once inside the Walnut Canyon area, the trail is a screaming downhill of smooth single track. I turned around near the small cave just past the junction of the Arizona Trail.

Riding back was more of a slow haul uphill. In riding through town I was really dogging it, but when I got back to the house I discovered I had a broken spoke on the rear wheel! This was a great chance to go three blocks north to have my bike fixed at world famous Cosmic Cycles (the shop of of "Cosmic Ray").