from rscottjones

Today is our 10-year anniversary. Over that time, Jen & I have visited:

• 5 continents
• 55 countries
• 50 states
• 5 US territories
• 277 national park units
• 300+ craft breweries
• 1,268 US counties

…together—requiring 150 flights and 100s + 100s of nights away from home.

That’s a helluva first decade!

Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor at night - OTD during last year’s 100-day adventure.

It’s always fun to fly over the Lower Salt River, our summer oasis on the edge of Phoenix. Here’s what my paddling stretch looks like, from west to east.

The first shot shows Granite Reef Dam, where some of the river is funneled into canals that feed the Valley. The Central Arizona Canal crosses here too. Red Mountain is the prominent red butte. I only occasionally paddle this last 3-mile section, preferring to end at the parking lot near the far right of the photo—the Phon D Sutton Rec Area, at the confluence with the Verde River coming in from the north.

The next two photos show the river course leading back to Saguaro Lake. This stretch is about 11 miles. My put-in spot is just downstream of the dam, right as the road curves west (left).

The final photo is a bonus: it’s Roosevelt Lake, the original impoundment of the Salt River that gave rise to Metro Phoenix. You can see the Salt River entering from the bottom right corner of the shot. The reservoir is one of four—Roosevelt, Apache, Canyon, and Saguaro—along the Salt River.

Hong Kong bamboo scaffolding - OTD from last year’s 100-day adventure.

Liberty Square Archway and the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan - OTD during last year’s 100-day adventure.

Had an impromptu breakfast with a buddy this morning, and decided we should do a quick hike afterwards. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Pima Canyon at South Mountain Park & Preserve. A major benefit of Phoenix life is that we were at the trailhead maybe 6 mins later. Nice to get outside!

Thanks to Justin Searls for releasing POSSE Party, which will crosspost your blog posts to a bunch of social media platforms—freeing you from their grips without severing your friendships. It’s a free, self-hosted (docker-based) app, worth of your attention.

It’s that time again—another month in the books. Here was my November 2025 in 10 photos:

More cardiology appointments, and hopefully, a long-term solution on its way: I’m set for ablation surgery in mid-December. I can’t wait to get back to normal.

A birthday walk in the mountains, after finally getting the go-ahead to do some light hiking. Boy did I need some time on dirt!

And a big ass birthday beer pour at AZ Wilderness Brewing. I’ve never made it down for this special 52 ounce pour reserved for one’s birthday, so it was fun to finally do it, especially with several friends.

Friendsgiving - an annual event with some good friends.

ASU Football, as seen through Becci’s glasses. I think this marks 12 years that she’s been on my season ticket account.

Coffeeneuring with Jen

More ebike adjustments and accessories, this time while watching some football after finally getting a working antenna for our tv. Long live free broadcast television!

I managed to diagnose and fix our broken washing machine!

Visited with my mom several times this month, including this coffeeneuring stop. We also hosted her for Thanksgiving dinner.

Pregame tailgating, as I completed my 39th year as an ASU season ticket holder. Our team was held together with duct tape this year, but it was fun to spend pre- and post-game with these folks (and a number of others not in the photo).

Watching the Duel in the Desert at some ungodly hour while sick in bed in Taiwan - OTD during last year’s 100-day adventure.

If you’ve followed along on our misadventures in replacing our windows and getting shutters, you may recall that the entire fiasco was to finally end today, with the installation of the delayed shutters and the 5th (and final) attempt to fix the window install.

Welp, we’re on to round 6 in 3 weeks.

“Wait for a while”

I looked back in my photo library to post today’s OTD photo from our 100-day adventure last year, only to discover that I took exactly zero photos. I was quite sick and didn’t leave the hotel room. We’ll see if that holds for tomorrow’s post, too. It was a rough few days.

Just renewed my membership at SunDevilSource. I’ve been a paid member for 232 months now (and I was a member of competing ASU forum communities prior to that)!

Whenever I hear about “sports twitter” I always shake my head—the best communities are, and have always been, the single-topic ones. The ones that create their own culture, their own inside jokes, their own shared history, their own unique personalities, their own traditions, their own unwritten rules.

We simply don’t need everything crammed into one feed.

Quite happy with this vehicle-specific magsafe phone mount by Course Motorsports. We’ve always struggled to find a second phone mount for Jen’s car that actually works okay (there’s really only one spot that works well), but this thing fits perfectly. Install was mind-numbingly easy, too.

I recently bought a vacuum sealer for sous vide and freezing meat, and damn I can’t believe I waited so long to buy one. Also added a dedicated sous vide container and set up an always-ready spot for it.

Taipei - OTD during our 100-day adventure.

Today concludes ten seasons of ASU football games with Jen - Go Devils!

Old meets new - OTD during last year’s 100 day adventure.

This is the first year we took the Coffeeneuring Challenge seriously enough to actually complete it.

For the unacquainted, coffeeneuring involves:

• between October 11 through November 24, 2025,
• ride your bike 7 times,
• to at least 6 different places (you can repeat 1!)
• at least 2 miles round trip every time,
• max 2 rides per week,
• drink 7 total cups of coffee (or another approved fall-type beverage), and
• document your coffeeneuring

Here are the full rules for this year’s challenge, as well as my own summary page (Jen has one too).

• Ride 1: Wren Südhalle
• Ride 2: Wren Südhalle, Part Deux
• Ride 3: Kolache Cafe
• Ride 4: Buzzed Goat
• Ride 5: Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
• Ride 6: Cotta Nosta
• Ride 7: Hillside Spot Cafe
• Bonus Ride 8: WhereUBean Coffee

Our prior two attempts were interrupted by travel, illness, and/or intensive prep for our 100-day adventure. We could have completed both of them, had we understood the rules to mean that we needed at least one ride per week, as opposed to simply a total of seven rides. So when we missed a particular week, we had assumed we had failed and simply gave up. Whoops.

Not this year, though. While my exercise and heart rate restrictions limited the length of our rides, it also kept us from traveling—and that meant that we were home on the weekends to do some coffeeneuring. Not only did we not miss a week, but we even snuck in a bonus ride too. Not bad for a non-coffee guy like myself—though yes, I did sub in some fall brew beverages. In fact, I could have only done fall brew destinations, but Jen really wanted to do all coffee ones, so we ended up in the middle.

While only one of our rides was longer than 5 miles, the rest were much shorter affairs: usually around the 3 mile mark. That was due in part to the aforementioned restrictions, but also simply because our targets just happened to be pretty close by. But our goal was never about getting in mileage as much as it’s simply getting out on the bikes. I suspect that next year’s rides will look quite a bit different.

The big change this year was also using our new Lectric folding ebikes. We’re still dialing in a lot on the bikes, especially the accessories (gah, finding a suitable back rack and/or pannier setup has required countless orders/returns). But they were a please to ride, and accounted I think for some of our excitement in coffeeneuring this year.

Overall, we had fun doing the challenge and I anticipate that we’ll continue to give it a shot every year for the foreseeable future.