Our first winter storm?

I had a great weekend up in the Fossil Creek Wilderness with two Hoosier friends, (http://dogsnotonmywindshield.blogspot.com/2009/10/verde-river-valley.html) but now am back to another week of humdrum. Now a cold front from Alaska is due by tomorrow, bringing cold winds. By Wednesday we'll get cold rains and snow in the higher (5000' and up) elevations. Will that front dip south far enough to affect us, or will it linger between Tucson and Phoenix, like many storms do, because of the high mountain ranges that surround the Valley of the Sun?

I called Linda to let her know that she and Mike may be better off to leave earlier rather than later, as that area is prone to flash floodings and her van will have a hard time making it up the dirt road for six miles. I left her a message on her cell phone. She won't get that message until she reaches high ground. Hopefully they will do that before tomorrow.

Time to get my tomatoes picked and my strawberries covered for the season. The cold is coming early this season.

The flu continues

School is back in session this week and with it the calls to come in. Yesterday I worked half a day at the middle school where, once again, one of the gals recognized me from the Bisbee era. She was now at this school because she had gotten expelled from the other school through the fall. In the meantime, she's in town with her dad.

When I had her last year she was a feisty preteen. Although she talked back to me, I liked her. Coming from divorced parents she was fighting her own wars and gave her leeway. What eventually got her expelled is her temper. She fights with anyone who crosses her.

Still, she is a sweet person once you get to know her, and when I had time we chatted.

"We'll talk later!" she said with a smile as school was let go for the day.

Today I thought I was going back to that school, but instead got a call for High School English. This means I can wear the same outfit as yesterday's!

The kids from yesterday were pistols. One class was aghast when they learned that I didn't watch TV in the evenings. Now that TV stations have converted to HDTV, all we get is KVOA-NBC out of Tucson, on our 20-year-old black-and-white TV. It's enough for the morning, mid-day and evening news, and any special documentary NBC may show, but I've gotten so used to not getting interrupted by TV anymore. I enjoy the more quiet evenings.

But not being interested in reality TV shocked many of the kids. "What do you do in your spare time?" asked one boy. Oh please! So I rattled off my interests: "I hike, I travel, I garden, I read, watch documentaries and do a lot of research for my college courses!" That did not impress too many youngsters.

Hurricane Rick died to a tropical storm sooner than expected. Although I see southern storm clouds over the horizon, no rain is forecasted for us. It's breezy outside but at 6am it was still 62F; still warmer than usual for this time of year. Cooler temps are predicted for later this week. I don't have class tonight but need to spend some time back in the library as I have two papers due in two weeks. I want to do well.

The Bisbee Stair Climb

This 3-mile run around Bisbee's old stairs is such a fun event. Every third Saturday in October this event takes place. With today's warmer-than-usual temperatures and sunny skies it was an especially well-attended event.

But in some ways it wasn't as well organized as it could have been. Granted, I didn't pre-register for this event, paid $50 (!) to participate, and for that price I got a bib number that had been replicated, and the man who wore the other bib number by the same number (1755) got to wear the chip timer. For $50 I got three gulps of water, an apple and half a banana. And because I didn't get a chip timer, I ran without an official time. If I wanted an event t-shirt I would have had to pay an additional $15. No thanks!

Volunteers work hard for this special events so I'm not going to pounce on them, but the organizers did run out of water at the finish line. If participants wanted to eat anything substantial after the event, they were strongly encouraged to buy stuff from the Bisbee market, where Budweiser sold for $3 a plastic cup. (Even Chuck, one of the organizers, said to the crowd "You can't be magnetic and drink Bud!")

There was a large turn-out for this run. The three-mile course runs through Old Bisbee and targets the five longest stair climbs, thus the name of this event. (Although only about 15% actually goes to maintaining the historic stairs, most monies collected go toward the Boys and Girls Club of Bisbee and for the all-male drug detox center south of town.) This is my fourth Bisbee 1000 and I've yet to see ANY improvements on the old crumbling stairs around Old Bisbee.

The growing number of participants is now causing bottlenecks at every stair climb. At the second climb off Main Street one of the volunteers yelled at us to "Move Over!" but on the narrow stairs there wasn't much room to "move over" for the faster climbers on the left.

We jogged, walked and ran all over the ridges of Bisbee. Local musicians got out and played their music for us, some of which was quite good: blues, rocky tunes and bluegrass were dominant styles. A local band, "Train Wreck" played old rock and blues tunes at the finish area by the old Courthouse, where the old Bisbee Market pushed its food and drinks on people. I didn't buy anything because of the high entrance fee for this event.

This run reminds me of a smaller version of the San Francisco Bay-to-Breakers event, although here in conservative southern Arizona you wouldn't see naked old men running down the street because the Arizona Rangers and Sheriff deputies would arrest those in a nano-second. There were a few costumed groups today, the pink Mashed Potato Ladies and the Caped Crusaders out of Tuscon, of which one well-built man was docked in leopard leggins and leopard Speedos with a US flag draped around him.

There were many joggers and walkers who finished almost an hour after I was done, and I walked around the event area to watch people, video some of the cooler sites, and listen to "Train Wreck," a local blues-rock band. A group of nurses dressed in blue t-shirts danced a few nice scores with the enthusiasm of a homecoming cheer-leading team. They were fun to watch.

A woman right behind me near the courthouse square went into an epileptic seizure. The paramedics were right there to tend to her and she was taken away quickly by ambulance. She was still in seizure mode when she was taken away.

I didn't run fast at all. Some of the nine-year-old girls ran faster than I did, but I wasn't expecting to break any records since I haven't trained for this nor have I been jogging like I used to. But I did better than expected although my lungs still gave out after a few steep stairs. Which has me wondering if my doctor is right when he surmised that I may have late-onset asthma? I didn't have this trouble before going to Iraq.

I stayed in town till the awards were passed out. The youngest participant was a five-year-old boy, the oldest was a 79-year-old man although there were many 70-something-year-old women who weren't recognized. The farthest person traveled claimed he was from Vermont, although he looked suspiciously like an active-duty officer stationed at nearby Fort Huachuca.

I didn't come back home till 1:30pm feeling beat. Will I do this event again next year? Maybe, but only as a pre-register because $50 for day-of-event registration is rather steep.

http://www.bisbee1000.org/

http://www.svherald.com/content/news/2009/10/18/bisbee-1000-when-picture-worth-thousand-steps

Chiricahua National Monument

On Saturday I took eight other hikers on a nine-plus mile hike around the Monument, a loop trail that took us from the Massai Point to the Heart-of-Rocks loop back up the Rhyolite Canyon. This hike took us six hours with several water stops, but we couldn't have asked for a better day weather-wise. In the brutal Arizona summers this hike would have been ~HOT~.

I car-pooled with Hanna and Steve to the Monument, with Brenda, Gordon and Georgie in another car behind us. Paul, Marcia and Victor met us at the Monument. At 9:40am we were ready to start our loop, with mild temperatures and a grey overcast sky. Temperatures were in the mild 70s for most of the hike, ideal hiking weather.

Our starting elevation was 6200' at the parking lot. The highest was 6800' at Heart-of-Rocks and the lowest 5800' in the canyon.

I hadn't been to this place since 2003 and honestly didn't remember the up-and-down elevations of this loop, a combination of several trails from the trailhead. The Ed Riggs trail took us down .7 miles around a switchback, then we followed the eastern loop toward Inspiration Point. We came across a juvenile rattler here, a lone snake that was more scared of us as we were of it. (It scammered up a rock and disappeared into a narrow slot to evade us). Lots of various lizards also scammered around the rocks throughout the day.

Inspiration Point was not on my itinerary but everyone wanted to hike this one-mile out-and-back trail for the vistas of red pinnacles and the direct view of Cochise Head. This added another 40 minutes to our hike. We then resumed our up-and-down hike to the Heart of Rocks loop, where balanced rocks became more prominent as we slowly got out of Rhyolite Canyon and on a more exposed and open plateau with views of the yellowing aspens in the nearby Chiricahua National Forest.

It was here, just before the Heart-of-Rocks loop that we took a lunch break, enjoying the views and chatting. The towering rocks around us truly was impressive. I had forgotton how beautiful this place is. We passed rock formations with such names as "Duck Rock, Camelhead Rock, Old Maid, Kissing Rocks, Punch and Judy" and of course the many round-topped pinnacles that years ago would have reminded me of penises but today resemble more cow paddies.

As hike leader I was a little nervous about taking the people on the entire loop as planned. I didn't want to tire them out. My write-up, directly from the book "Hiking in Arizona's Cactus Country" listed this hike as 8.4 miles, but did not include Inspiration Point and the 1.1 loop around Heart-of-Rocks. We hiked more like ten miles, stopping for water and for letting the rear group catch up with the faster people up front. No one seemed to mind the long hike, as we all enjoyed the views and the rocks from various angles. As hike leader I stayed in the middle, making sure everyone made it to resting points and that no one was left behind.

A horse-mounted park ranger stopped to chat with us near Heart-of-Rocks loop. He had started out in the ranch in the valley, and his horse looked sweaty from the climb up. He does this loop daily, looking for injured hikers and hikers who are hiking with dogs. (It's a $100 fine and a misdemeanor for hiking here with dogs). The many loose rocks on the trail make this section of the monument especially treacherous for clumsy hikers like myself, but no one fell or stumbled today. Brenda and I left our dogs at home for this hike, as much as we both hated being without our four-legged pals.

Illegals now also are found in the Monument, but most of them more in the valley below.

We hiked a continuous downhill after Heart-of-Rocks, hiking in a westerly direction as the pinnacles opened up around us. This was a fun hike in the shady Rhyolite Canyon, but the creek was dry and we seemed to keep on going downhill. What goes down must come up, and according to Gordon we had descended 1000 feet before heading back uphill on the Echo Canyon trail for our final three miles back to the trailhead.

Although this was a challenging hike, I never felt at any time that this hike was strenuous. The hardest part was the first mile going back up the Echo Canyon trail, but once we hit the Hailstone trail we were more on a level ridgeline with the canyon below us. We got back to the parking lot at 4:10pm.

Marcia and Victor stayed at the park since they were camped there, but the rest of us drove back home, stopping in Willcox for dinner at a mediocre Mexican restaurant "Fiesta Siesta" (or something like that)where a bottle of Corona with my enchiladas was $3.75. Food was bland, too, but the company was great. I love having beer and dinner with the hiking group after a good, strenuous hike.

I was very pleased with this hike. I was especially pleased with the turn-out for this hike. I didn't think there would be too many people interested in driving two hours one-way to hike nearly ten miles, (let alone pay $5 a person to enter the Monument) but in the end discovered there are plenty of hiking enthusiasts willing to go out of their way to romp around the pinnacles. Once I got home I realized that the hike we did was more like the "Big Loop" of 9.5 miles, traveling the perimeter of the Monument except for the far northern section of Echo Canyon.

http://www.amwest-travel.com/awt_chiricahua1.html

http://www.nps.gov/chir/upload/Trail%20Guide%2008.pdf

A record was set!

I've now worked three straight weeks at the schools because of the flu. Although the peaks' behind us now, these extra hours are a godsend, since I'm using all the money to pay off my huge US History documentary collection I've amassed via amazon.com.

I've had all subject matters, from history and English to social studies to severely-profound learning disabled students. My style's gotten better as I seem to have less behavior issues with the ages now (compared to last year in Bisbee, for example). Or maybe I'm just taking my job more seriously now that I'm certified to teach?

At any rate these long hours are starting to show on me. Next week's fall break and I'm looking forward to the days off! I have time to focus on my research papers and other errands, like get the home internet connection fixed.

My old friend Jackie's back subbing as well. I hadn't seen her until today when she was a few classrooms from me, but I didn't have a chance to chat with her over lunch because of our individual lunch schedules. She's still not full-time employed at her former job, which is why she's still with the school.

I enjoy being a teacher and I enjoy mentoring these young minds. "Bad" days don't upset me so much anymore, and now it's more like having a "bad hour" rather than a bad day.

Autumn has arrived. High winds blew across the desert at 4am and it looked like rain, but instead we had a breezy day that never got warmer than 77F. The trees in the valley haven't changed colors yet, either. They just turn brown and drop off like our sycamores and maples this year because we never got those late-summer rains.

The flu

The seasonal flu kept me busy these last two weeks, making my free time for college a little hectic. I spent the last four days last week at one middle school in town hard-hit with the flu.

I've gotten better as a teacher, compared to my rough start last year in Bisbee. I met another teacher at the school, also a retired army person, who's working on her master's right now. She hated the high school and declined that place for the middle school, saying that her years as a drill sergeant did nothing in the classroom.

"I thought it would be easy being a drill sergeant, but I had no control over them!" she exclaimed. I felt the same way. It took over a year to relearn how to treat students not like exploitable young soldiers, but as young impressionable minds.

The highlight of the day was Friday afternoon, filling in that last hour for a 7th grade class. Of all the students I have had, one of the worst ones from Bisbee was in that class, now sporting a mouth stud and colored black hair that shimmers blue in the light. She was a hellion last year and she hasn't changed much in the past year. I'm wondering if she got expelled from Bisbee and sent to this town?

I do feel sorry for the girl as she doesn't have a father at home, but her careless ways about her education do get to me. In the end only her mother can teach her the importance of a good education, not any teacher.