For the next 30 days I will be embarking on a 30 day challenge: Eating Clean. I did this once before with great success, but after my challenge, and maybe even before, I slipped back into bad habits of eating whatever and whenever, but mostly just not eating at all.

So what exactly is eating clean? I’ve posted the principles below. I’ll be posting a bit about my progress beginning tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Clean Eating Principles

• Eating a mini-meal every two to three hours (5 to 6 small meals per day total) to keep blood sugar level and prevent hunger
• Combining lean proteins and complex carbs at every meal
• Avoiding all over-processed and refined foods (especially sugar, white rice, and white flour)
• Avoiding saturated and trans fat, instead consuming healthy fats
• Avoiding soda and other sugary juices and drinks
• Avoiding high-calorie, zero nutrient foods (i.e., junk food)
• Eating proper portion sizes
• Drinking at least 8 cups of water every day

That’s it! You can do that. Why don’t you join me?

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We took our last camping trip of the season last weekend up on the Mogollon Rim in Arizona. It’s not my favorite place to camp because the pre-defined camping sites really don’t give a feel of camping in the wild, and it’s a bit of a hike to get down to the lake. I prefer a bit more wilderness and a lot less people when I’m camping.

But camping up on the rim does offer a great view and lots of hiking and mountain biking trails to explore, so that is exactly what we did. On Saturday we set out in search of the Military Sinkhole, which we figured would be on either end of the Military Sinkhole Trail. We went in both directions, and after 1 hour and 45 minutes we were exhausted and still hadn’t seen any hole.

We did find some other great things to photograph however, and it was a great workout.

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C and I took another quick road trip this weekend to escape the heat of the valley. We usually try to get out of town early in the morning before it gets too hot. But this trip was different because we were going up to Strawberry to see my buddy Alan (@cogdog). So we didn’t leave the valley until around 2pm, and it was screaming hot! By the time we got to Payson around 3:30pm it was still hot. We didn’t get a chance to cool off until a few hours later when we were finally able to sit out on the deck in Strawberry and enjoy the view of the greenery. Elevation is 5,889 feet in Strawberry, which is considerably higher than Phoenix. Yet it still gets pretty hot during the day.
Strawberry is a beautiful quiet little town. There are estimated about 1000 residents, but @cogdog said not all are full time residents. I like the town because it’s less than 2 hours from the valley, and it’s a beautiful ride up, especially the ride between Payson, Pine and Strawberry. I tried to capture a little of that in my video I shot.

We had a great dinner and lots of fun with Alan. I can’t show you how much fun because I’ve been forbidden to show you the videos of the two dancing, singing and guitar playing fools. Tis a shame, because they’re pretty funny.

Road Trip to Strawberry, AZ from Coop on Vimeo.

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We checked the weather before we left to make sure we wouldn’t get any rain since we were riding our motorcycles up. Slight chance was the forecast, so we took our chances. The ride up was beautiful but as we got closer to Prescott Valley we noticed the ominous dark clouds above our heads. As luck turns out, we actually missed the storm. When we got to PV, the ground was wet and the air chilly. The storm had just passed through, so we continued on into Prescott to grab a bite to eat. The same situation greeted us in town, where the rain has just passed through leaving wet roads and a just rained smell.

After our lovely dinner at Murphy’s in downtown Prescott, we back tracked to Walker and our friends cabin. Our luck ran out as soon as we turned off the main road headed for the cabin. We got a lite rain as we rode the last 5-6 miles. It was hard to see through the windshield. Why don’t bikes have windshield wipers? I wonder. But we made it and enjoyed a relaxing weekend in the pines.

Here’s a little video I shot of the ride and our accommodations:

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You have to understand first that romance novels always follow a pattern. I personally hate that, so when I find a book that doesn’t, I instantly love it. The pattern is that there is a long build up for the couple to get together. Then they do and there is always great sex. Next there has to be something that happens that breaks them up, and the story ends, of course, with the couple coming back together to live happily ever after. Generally the break portion of a book is the part that always angers me. It’s always something stupid that makes them split. Well, H2H had an interesting plot twist.

A year prior to the couple in the book getting together, one had a heart transplant and the other lost her twin sister to an anneurism during child birth. Turns out that there was a strong possibility that the heart the main character received was from the other’s dead sister. And this, of course, freaked her out and she just couldn’t bare to be with the woman of her dreams if that was the case. She explained it as feeling like she was making love to her sister. I didn’t see it that way.

People donate organs to loved ones all the time. I thought it was a wonderful coincidence that if she did indeed have her sister’s heart, what a joy she was able to help save her life. I also thought what kind of karma was that that she actually made the decision to donate her sister’s organs and now the woman she loves is alive because of it. And to think that you still have a piece of your loved one with you all the time. Obviously that was not the mindset of the main character.

So she freaks out. Okay, but she really does nothing to find out the truth. That wasn’t believable to me. And it took so long for her to even talk to the woman she loved, to tell her how she felt. She just didn’t say anything. Sheesh! That made me mad.

I still liked the book though, and I appreciate that the canned part was actually a little different from the norm.

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Monday was a cool day here in Phoenix. It never made it over 100 degrees, so I decided I would go for a hike. I loaded up all my gear and headed out. I’m a gadget girl, so I had lots of gadgets with me including Nike Time + Distance GPS unit, Flip Mino, and my Blackberry Pearl.

I snapped photos with my Pearl and shot some video with the Flip, and just overall got lost in the moment. I ended up hiking 3 miles through the preserve, the whole way Twittering, and sending photos to Flickr and Utterz. It was fun. I got to feed my technology addiction AND get some exercise.

Hiking Phoenix Mountain Preserve from Coop on Vimeo.

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