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| Dorf high above Phoenix atop Camelback
Mountain |
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One of the benefits of having soccer players in the
family is the opportunity to travel to exotic, distant locales. In February of
2008 Nick's Mequon (WI) club was entered in the SCdelSol Presidents Day
Tournament in a frigid Phoenix, AZ. With Yumi's demanding class schedule
it was decided that I'd go along since Yumi would have to fly back on
Sunday while the tourney ran through Monday. I'd be the designated baby
sitter for the flight back to an even chillier Wisconsin.
As things turned out, potential bad weather back in
the badger state and due to the fact that Yumi could not miss class on
Monday required that Yumi catch an even earlier flight back home so as to avoid the bad weather. Got all that?.
The tourney did not go as planned for Nick's team as they managed
only 1 win (on PK's) and scoring no goals for the weekend other than during
warm up.
In the meantime, mother nature thought it would be
fun to force us to endure unseasonably cool temperatures most of the weekend. I took
the opportunity to begin my annual trimming of the fat by climbing Camelback
Mountain on Monday morning. As I write this 2 days later, my legs are
still feeling it. A hike with a 1300' vertical gain over just about a mile,
might not have been the smartest way to begin training, but nobody ever
accused me of being a genius anyway. The payoff for my sweat: a great
view of a smoggy valley of the sun.
I was totally smoked by an old guy who said he makes the climb 3 times, 6 days a week. To make a long story short, he made it up and back twice and was on his third trip up before I even got back down. In my defense, however, I did spend some time at the top taking pictures and talking to a couple of other guys who were hurting more than I was. Also, I tackled this while wearing Teva's which actually earned me some strange looks and a few comments from the locals. Whatever.
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| The view from Camelback Mountain was worth my suffering one of the coolest weekends in Phoenix history |
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I returned to the soccer complex, woke up a still-asleep Nick and checked out of the motel. There were still 2 games left to play and the day was shaping up to be almost balmy with temps in the upper 50's.
Nick and I returned to a blizzard in Milwaukee right
on time at 12:15 AM on Tuesday, spent another half hour waiting to get
off the plane and another half hour waiting for our bags. We finally made
it home by 3:15 AM.
A special note of thanks goes out to the flight crew
who managed to get the plane back to earth in one piece in what proved
to be a difficult landing.
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