Pining for the Fjords

One of the perks of Chris coming back to W.L. Gore and Associates was the great relocation package they offered us, and it included the services of a fantastic realtor, Melissa Howe at Berkshire Hathaway.  Melissa showed us tons of great properties and was a true pleasure to work with during our house search.  Eventually, after looking at around 30 different houses, mostly in the historic areas in Mid to Uptown Phoenix (Willo, Encanto, F.Q. Story), we put an offer in on one we saw at an open house our very first weekend in town (when Chris had recovered enough from almost being murdered by the fish ).  On 3/14 (Pi Day!  We won't forget that anytime soon), we signed the 8,000 pieces of paper necessary for the transaction, and around noon, the house was ours! How about a tour of the new house?  As a note, these are all pictures from Zillow (hence the fish-eye lens in all of them); once we finish all of our "moving in/setting up" chores and give the place a tho...

As you guys well know, for the past few years, we've run the Ragnar Trail relay with a good group of most of our closest buddies.  We've done McDowell (the local AZ race) several times, and one year, we even ventured out to California, to complete Los Coyotes (#neveragain).  We decided to take the show on the road for 2019, and in early June, we'll run the Ragnar Trail in Snowmass, Colorado, just outside of Aspen. In case you're not familiar with it, Colorado has crazy amounts of mountains, and they are rather tall.  Accordingly, the elevation profile for this race is bananas.  We'll probably die of altitude sickness, or at least have fun getting all woozy from it.  In an effort to train at altitude and somewhat mitigate this issue, about half the team headed to Flagstaff in late February, for a long weekend of trail running and hanging out with our respective fur-kiddos.  Flagstaff's elevation is about the same as Snowmass, plus it had the added advan...