/Now

It’s finally cooling off here in Phoenix, and that means more time spent outdoors locally. Fall is the slow season for travel for us, in large part because half of the weekends involve ASU home football games.

In the last month, the federal shutdown has canceled my wife’s scheduled leave, and a bout of pneumonia while wrestling with heart arrhythmia RX changes has canceled mine. It had already been a rough summer of cancellations, so this was especially frustrating. But luckily now that the weather is turning, we can start doing some more local things outdoors.

We just bought folding ebikes, and I suspect we’ll make good use of those in the coming weeks, especially as we adopt some new local cycling quests, like participating in this year’s #Coffeeneuring and section-biking the Sun Circle Trail.

On the home front, we’re in the midst of several home upgrades, most notably replacing all of our windows and adding plantation shutters. The house has been in a bit of disarray for a couple months now as that process slowly unfolds. Next up, we’ll turn our attention to our backyard to make it more usable for the cooler weather, and I’ll finally get around to purging my dad’s remaining possessions (mostly clothes and such) that we removed immediately after his death. We’ve punted on purchasing a new vehicle this fall, opting instead to continue to use my 2015 Outback for road trips while we determine our next adventuremobile.

Our hope is that we’ll be ready to get back to a full travel schedule in the new year.