Lame Post

The sole purpose of today's post is to make sure that the navigation bar that appears automatically to the right of this blog shows at least one blog post for the month of May.  I like to think I have been lazy about updating because we have been busy with living life.  Anchorage is greening up, summer is upon us, the days are long, the summer deck flowers are ready and eager to be potted, and we've been eating dinner most nights at 8:30 or later because the evenings were made for running and biking.

We also spent a nice week in New Mexico.  I've been meaning to go through the post processing of the trip photos, but that task has also fallen by the wayside (see explanation above).  A few pictures, though:

The Organ Mountains, outside of Las Cruces, NM.  Pretty rugged and, as it turned out, pretty starved for water and prone to flame.  A fire on the opposite side of the range had effectively closed the entire mountains for the duration of our visit.

Characteristic wildlife, gorging itself on sugars.

Because the Organs were closed, we got out and about in some of the neighboring mountains.  Here, hiking in the Robledos Mountains, with a view into the Rio Grande valley.

Just a pair of evening pictures from Mesilla.  I can't predict whether or not I'll follow up with a full trip report, with thrilling tails of hiking in the Gila, touring remote back country byways, chasing wild turkeys, and sampling steaks from New Mexico's only beef ageing room.  If you are interested in the full slide show, send me an e-mail.

Otherwise, note that lovely wife C completed the Gold Nugget Triathlon for the second time this year, and improved her times in every category (swim, bike, run, and transitions between the three).  The Gold Nugget is the oldest all women's triathlon in the country, and is a pretty cool event.  It is a very welcoming scene.  Because the swimming takes place in a pool, there is no mass start, and participants begin their days at staggered times based on a randomly selected start time.  You end up with women on high end Cervelo time trial bikes passing women on luxury cruisers, with every imaginable bike in between.  Some are very competitive, others effectively walk the swim in the shallow end, take their time on the bike, and walk the run.  The focus for a lot of participants is simply completing the course, and the event seems to have done a great job of pulling people off of the couch and giving them a fitness goal.  Because of time constraints imposed by doing the swim in a pool and the logistics of moving wave after wave of women through a limited number of pool lanes, registration for the Gold Nugget is capped somewhere around 1,400.  Nevertheless, the event has sold out in tens of minutes the last two years, and continues to attract new competitors every year.  Of course, being a women's only event, I got to spend the day sitting on my duff, just the way I like it.