We finally got a Mervin

So after two weeks of searching, we finally got Sarah a Mervin to replace Reuben. From the start, Sarah had her heart set on a Subaru Outback. Outback's are all-wheel drive and have lots of space for backpacking gear, and if you live in Colorado, they are mandatory or else they charge you higher taxes. It's true, look it up. Anyways, we drove one in Albuquerque a week ago. It had 62k miles on it but sounded like crap when we drove it, so we decided against it. We drove another one last week at the dealership. It had 85k miles on it and was fully loaded, but since Sarah wants to cause me stress, she decided not to buy it so that we would be forced to buy on over the weekend when I moved her to Denver. Luckily for me, we had exactly 4 hours between when all the dealerships opened and when we had to meet our realtor, which is just enough time to cover 100 square miles of Subaru's. After a quick search, we found one with 72k miles on it for only $9900. The KBB value was $12,500 but we got the guy to accept $9500 which made our day. Now Sarah is officially a Colorado snob, with her REI jacket and Subaru. Now all we need is a ski rack and we'll fit right in.

Defenders Cup

So as I'm sure you know, Sarah and I are newly-weds, in the sense that we haven't had an anniversary yet, nor been dating for a total of a year for that point. So you might be asking yourself, what does a grossly in love couple do for their very first valentines day. I'll tell you what...

We pile in a 15 passenger van with a bunch of soccer dudes and drive 12 hours to San Antonio, Tx, that's what. Nothing says romance like big tube socks and short shorts.

Since I coach the base soccer team, I decided to enter us into the annual Defenders Cup which is put on by the Lackland AFB soccer team each year. 16 teams enter each year, you play three games to seed the tournament, and then it's single round elimination from there on out.

For the most part, our team had never played together as a full team. Half of us were from my base team, and the other half were from other teams in the area. When we got to the tournament, that lack of chemistry really showed.

The first game we played was against Eglin AFB, which was half Colombian Special Ops guys that were training there. They went on to win the tournament, and thumped us a good 4-1. The next team we played was Brooks City Base. These guys were a bunch of lunch-time ballers with one or two good guys at midfield, but for some reason we couldn't hit the net and lost that one too. The last team we played on Saturday was Hurlburt. Of course we lost that game too, but it was a close one.

On Sunday morning, the actual tournament started. We were seeded 14 out of 16 and were playing the #4 team. As we played each game, our team cohesion got better and better, and we really shined in this game. We controlled over half the game, and had more shots than the other team, but we just couldn't hit the back of the net. In the second half of overtime, an unmarked man came up and got in a header for them, and they ended up winning.

Next year, we'll make sure to start our planning many months out. The fact that we hadn't played together before was very apparent and could have been fixed by playing 4 or 5 scrimmages before we left. I was also really encouraged by the fact that 90% of the goals against us came from penalties and corner kicks, not open field goals. We had the fundamentals, we just needed the chemistry.

A weekend of hiking

This weekend Sarah and I decided to get out of the house for a while and do some hiking. On Saturday, I wasn't feeling very motivated to drive anywhere, so Sarah, Bella and I drove over to Los Lunas Hill. Los Lunas Hill is about 2 miles from my house and towers over the west side of town. The hill is about 650 ft taller than the surrounding landscape and the peak is about 1000 ft over the main part of Los Lunas down in the valley.

The hike is about 3 miles round trip and the path is very wide. It must get a lot more use that I thought. The walk was gradual and it was a lot of fun to enjoy our warm weather and watch Bella run her little butt off.

On Sunday we decided to tackle a little more difficult trail. Since Sarah had never done the Embudito Trail, I decided to take her their and summit South Sandia Peak.

Well it turns out that every arroyo in the valley looks like the trail, and because of someone being stubborn and insisting he knew the trail, we spent about 1.5 hours bushwhacking up through the brush in the valley.

Eventually she made me turn around and we went back to the start and found where the actual trail was. Since we got the late start, we weren't able to reach the summit, because we wanted to get down before dark.

We did make it to Oso pass which is at 8200ft, which is about 2000ft higher than where we started.

South Sandia Flickr

Los Lunas Hill Flickr

Fricken Reuben

So my trip to Vegas go cut short because on Wednesday night I got the panicked call from Sarah that she had broken down 120 miles east of El Paso, Texas in the middle of nowhere. Luckily she has AAA and was able to get towed to a hotel in El Paso and they dumped her car at a repair shop. Sarah told me that her car engine had a hole in it, but I thought we was exaggerating.

(Top View)

I took a late flight home on Wednesday, got in at 2am, and then got up at 5am to drive to El Paso. Once we got there we headed over to check out her car, Reuben, so I could see the damage for myself. Well it turns out that Reuben decided to throw a piston rod through the block.

(Zoomed in)

We looked into getting him repaired, but it was going to cost as much as he originally was purchased for, so we sent him to the dump and headed back to Los Lunas.

(From the bottom)

Now we're in the market for a new car, which is already named Mervin. If you know of a car with lower mileage, less than $6000 and looks like it might be named Mervin, give me a call.

VEGAS BABY

Since I have some of the greatest bosses in the world, Dave allowed me to attend a Military Sensing Symposium held at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. I've been doing a lot more work lately on sensor design for space, so I felt that this conference would help me to better understand the trade space. Two other friends of mine on similar projects were going as well so we knew that we'd have a good time at night.

The first night there we just headed out onto the strip with the goal of walking through all of the casinos. This was my first time, as well as Chris', so we just wanted to see everything. Around 4pm we packed up our flasks and mixed drinks, and started walking.

Once we got to the south side of the strip, Kevin told us about this great meal deal at the Hard Rock Casino which was "just off the strip." After walking for like 3 miles, we got there and ate our $7 steak and shrimp "Gamblers Special." Overall, the price was offset by the long walk and cold weather.

On the way back north through the strip we all ran out of drinks so we decided to stop at this smaller casino and get a few pitches of beer and rest our weary feet. Once inside, we realized they had beer pong for free, so we ended up purchasing 6 pitches of beer and camping out there for the rest of the night.

(In case you are wondering, that IS a flask belt buckle)

The second night we spent at the Belagio playing blackjack. None of us did well so we ended up walking around more and people watching.

Wednesday night we were on our way to the palms, and I got an urgent message from my wife that her car exploded in west texas and I had to come and save her. Please refer to the post titled "Fricken Rueben."