Katch-up

Far too long since posting. So what’s new in the land de Tom?

Well, my sister Tiffany has moved back from Virginia with the family. We are all pretty excited to have them close by, and we had the opportunity to go see them for my niece Chloe’s 10th birthday. The day started out at the zoo, checking out all the animals:

 

I shot photos of animals. On both sides of the glass:

 

Then it was time for the party. Pizza, cake, and presents – everything a girl could hope for.

 

It was a great time, and I’m super glad to have them.

 

The next big thing was going to the Grand Canyon over spring break. Courtney, myself, my sis Nikki, her beau Michael, and our friend Tony headed down to Phantom Ranch for a few days of vacation. As always, it was amazing. We hiked to Ribbon Falls, which was a real treat, as well as up the Clear Creek Overlook.

 

Pics:

  

 

 

Other than all that, it is spring time in Prescott. I’m still waiting tables, I’m now the trainer for any new servers we get, and I’m training to be a bartender. Lots of time out in the woods with the hound, lots of quiet hours at home with Courtney. Life is, as usual, pretty amazing and awesome.

Happy Valentines day, to all the lovers in the world

I’ll just leave this here.

Ummm… yeah.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/flow/#axzz1mHNI26ou

Escape

This is our escape. A few days off in the desert. Reading, cooking, hiking, talking. Nowhere to be, and nothing to do.

It’s not often that I get political.

So I won’t go into depth about this whole SOPA PIPA. If you want info on what is going on, check out this wiki article: SOPA, PIPA (also a great video on PIPA).

 

To help stop these acts from passing, go here, and here too for AZ residents.

 

So yeah – let’s raise a ruckus.

Just a little update

It’s getting awful quiet around here. I have been remiss in my writing duties. Alas, the spark of creativity refuses to hit, and so the blog goes dormant. This is not to say that I haven’t been doing anything. Rather, it seems that I have been enjoying my day-to-day life so much that writing about it is loses appeal.

 

So here is a quick update before I get back to my daily biz:

- I’m still working at The Office restaurant, waiting tables. I’m getting good at it, and having a pretty good time doing it as well. It’s fun to deal with the general population, but I sure do miss the outdoorsy-ness of the vineyard.

- Christmas was quiet. I worked on my sister’s truck and cooked dinner at my mom’s house. We did a small gift exchange, and just generally had a good time. Courtney was in Missouri visiting family.

- By new years she was home, so we went to downtown Prescott and drank with friends to celebrate the next 365 days. We watched the first annual boot drop, and then went home and passed out.

- I’m still being all fit and stuff. For a few weeks we had snow out in the woods, so I was out hiking with the dog a few times. We did silly things like make a snowman:

But then all the snow melted, so I’ve reverted to more running, although I’m mixing it up by running in ‘barefoot’ sandals. Still lifting weights, with Courtney, at the Y twice a week as well.

I’ve also been trying to get out for bouldering whenever I have a day off. I did manage to go climbing with some friends who were in from Oregon last week, which was a blast. I even climbed my first 5.9 route, which was neat.

 

- Other than that, I’ve just been trying to enjoy the quiet moments of life:

 

Hope everybody out there is loving life.

It’s that holiday season.

Courtney and I hosted thanksgiving dinner at our place. After last year’s boring turkey day in Savannah, I was thrilled to be able to have people over to celebrate. Mom and Nikki came over, as did some friends from the vineyard and some friends from the new place of employment. I cooked all day, and we ended up with a rocking feast!

Out of our kitchen the menu was:

-Roasted garlic/rubbed sage turkey breast

-Sweet bbq ham

-Mashed cauliflower

-Bacon wrapped dates

-Roasted root veggies

-Apple/sausage quinoa

-Birdie seed bars

And to accompany all this our friends and family brought:

-Mac & Cheese

-Chicken enchilada casserole

-Classic sweet potatoes

- Salad

- Flourless chocolate cake

- Espresso/chocolate balls

- A whole gaggle of wine.

 

As expected – everybody over-ate, had a good time, drank, and was merry.

I had a blast, and can’t wait to do it again next year!

Oh hey, by the way. I made a book.

 

Yes, after much nudging from friends and family, I pieced together 120 pictures from the trip, and made a coffee table book out of it. I’m pretty proud of the result. Feel free to look at the preview (first 15 pages). It’s up for sale for $36.95+s/h. There’s no profit in it for me, just the fun of having something to hold in my little hands. :)

25,000 Miles o...

By Thomas Check

Book Preview

But everything works out.

My bank account gets ready to run out, but dad sends me a check to keep me afloat. The day it arrives I get a call back from a restaurant. They want to hire me! And so now I’m employed, and trying to figure out how to be a server. And I’m having a blast doing it!

 

Other than that, I’ve been living on the cheap, so it’s lots of walking and exercise, enjoying the changing of the seasons as we go from summer into this:

 

Haven’t been doing much photography, nor have I been bouldering of late, due to dropping temps out in the woods. For now I watch the colors change, I enjoy cooking every night with my lady and our room mate, and simply live life. It’s a good thing.

While I wait, there is lots of this:

Great, so I’m settled. Now what?

That’s the questions running through my head this week. I’ve settled my few belongings in our cozy home. But I don’t know what to do now. I need to find work, that’s for sure. I tell myself that I want to get into the food service industry. I want to wait tables. Why? Who knows? So I put in applications around town, I put on my nicest clothes and submit resumes along with smiles. At the end of week one though, I’ve not heard back from anybody. I’m not sure why this surprises me, why some part of me just expected opportunities to come crashing over me. I should have known that it wouldn’t be that easy.

 

Unfortunately, the wheels in my head begin to churn out the what-ifs. What if I don’t get a job? What if I end up having to do some miserable retail job to make ends meet? What if this whole thing comes crashing down because I’m flat broke in a few weeks? I become mildly panic-stricken at all the possible things that could go wrong. So I take a step back, I focus on the good things that come with unemployment. I exercise like a maniac, hitting the gym just as hard as I hit the rock. I cook frugal meals every day, and take my expenditures down as much as I can to maintain my meager bank account for as long as possible. I read books, and hike with the dog. I run and walk around this town which is so familiar to me. I soak in the fact that I am here again, after over a year of being a nomad.

 

And I wait.

And then… everything changes. (And oh, I found some photo-mojo!)

My co-workers throw me a going away party. I don’t remember much of it, so I’m sure we had a great time. Everybody having a headache the next day confirms this fact. Our boss lets us go home early, and so I give quick good-byes to all the folks I’ve come to know and admire over the last five months.

 

I go home and I pack all my stuff into the 4Runner, there isn’t much more than when I was on the road. I’m done half an hour later. Sister and I go out for our last dinner together, and after a nice breakfast and coffee the next morning I’m driving a familiar track to Prescott. As soon as I arrive I dump all my stuff in the living room, and immediately begin re-packing for a four day vacation in the north of the state. When I’m done, before I can even realize that I no longer live in Jerome, we throw everything into Courtney’s car and hit the road.

 

We quickly head to Lake Powell, to a camping area called Lone Rock, and setup camp with friends from Prescott and from Massachusetts. We are all headed different directions tomorrow, but tonight we congregate on the sandy shore of the lake:

 

 

The near-full moon provides a nice light by which to admire lone rock:

 

After cooking breakfast and packing it all in, we all get a late start out of the area. Our friends from Prescott are off for a few days of kayaking around the lake, while the friends from Mass decide to join Courtney and I on our next stop – slot canyons. Along the way we stop to check out the ‘Toadstool’ hoodoo formations along the southern section of Escalante:

 

And from there it was just a hop, skip and a jump over to the Wire Pass/Buckskin Gulch slot canyons. It was my first time into a slot canyon and I was super excited to try photographing it. We had a blast:

 

Once we got to Buckskin we trekked upstream along a muddy track that was thankfully created by people earlier that day. It was slick and a fall into the mud was always close at hand, thankfully nobody fell in.

Once the trail came to a watery end we turned around and headed back to the car, me snapping pictures all the way:

 

Once we were out, we parted ways with our Mass friends, as they headed up to Salt Lake City and we headed to a nearby campground for the night where, unfortunately, the restroom vents were blowing our way and made for a bit of a stinky night.

 

The next day, we didn’t know where to go. I wanted to go up into the Escalante monument, but road reports were grim. A big storm had closed one major road, and they didn’t know about the other. In Courtney’s little Toyota corolla we didn’t want to risk it. So we drove out to nearby Kanab, Utah, and grabbed some coffee at the local coffee shop / outdoor outfitter. We asked the great folks there for recommendations, and were pointed in the direction of Kanab Creek Wilderness. We looked up the area in a resource book and decided on the Snake Gulch trail, reported to have lots of petro glyphs and pictograms. Off we went, through the beautiful Kaibab Plateau, and down the cockscomb to the trailhead. The trail was level, and made for a gorgeous afternoon hike:

 

And soon we found little spur trails leading to rock walls. On these walls were some pretty awesome things:

 

 

We hiked about five miles in before the threat of darkness turned us around and we headed back to the car. By the time we got to the trailhead it was sunset, and since we were all alone, we opted to camp right there. Not a bad spot at all, and best of all – no stinky bathroom!

The moon was bright, and I tried shooting a few photos, but it quickly got cold and so we retreated to the sleeping bags.

 

The next morning we decide to call it the end of our trip, and turn southward once more. We stop in the Navajo reservation to snap a few pictures of a graffiti artist’s work:

 

And Courtney plays model for me:

 

From there we stopped into Flagstaff to have dinner with another friend, before finally heading home.  My new home, with the gal I love. Time to move into the next chapter of my life.

 

For all the photos from the trip, check out this link.

A step forward? It feels scary, so it must be.

It’s time for more change. I wake up in the morning and the sun is no longer burning at the horizon to greet me. The hot air balloons start their ascent from Sedona later and later in the day, and the temps are no longer what I would call searing. In short, the summer is drawing to an end. And with that end comes another – my adventure here in the Verde Valley.

 

I have a week and a half of working in the vineyard remaining. The harvest should be done, or close to it, by then which is the time I told myself that I should be moving on. And so I enjoy the remaining days, the picking of fruit which seems so easy compared to so many of the other tasks we’ve been given over the past five months. I joke with my co-workers about all the nonsense that we have done since I showed up, all the other people who have come and gone, and we joke about where we are all going next.

 

I joke that I will probably be back a week after I leave, out of money and begging to get a few hours a week to cover bills. And in all jokes there exists a nugget of truth. I don’t have anything lined up for the next chapter. I know I am moving to Prescott, moving in with my gal Courtney and her current roommate. I am excited about this, but at the same time terrified at the situation I am forcing on myself. No work, and no idea what is available out there. The day I move over we leave for a few days to go do some sight-seeing in southern Utah/northern Arizona. I hope that my photography mojo comes back to me up there, and that I can come back recharged and ready to rock the world. I hope that the ‘universe’ sends work my way in a timely matter. I hope that I don’t have to resort to doing computer work to make my living, although I’m not entirely against doing it if that’s what it takes to stay alive.

 

I’m scared, and I’m loving it.