The Rides

Tuesday (the day after the cold ride I wrote about last week) was low key. I took it mostly easy in case I wasn’t quite over Monday. The next day Russ and I rode together. He was stiff and didn’t ride as well as he expected. I rode a little further than he did and sprinted for a bit of the extra, but we’re still evening out and that’s a little less common when we ride together. About four hours afterward I was feeling lousy, don’t know if I was still recovering from Monday’s chill or if it was something different.

The week has had a lot of timing between rain and washing trail trash off the bikes. It feels good that we’re getting better about bike maintenance. The plan was always to be better when we got project bikes, but the time to form better habits is now. We’ve both felt like we were fighting some low level illness and haven’t pushed as hard as we would have otherwise.

The Project

Russ vectorized the logo in prep for using is in all the places we will use it and ordered insulated cups engraved with it. They were actually pretty reasonably priced. They would engrave your Yeti if you brought one in, but we opted for a less expensive option, and if you do this yourself, shop around. There’s a wide range of prices. We got ours from a trophy and engraving shop that was doing their own work rather than a reseller who had to add middleman profit.

I’m about to hit publish and this awesome logo is still not at the top of the website, but I expect it to be there really soon. Russ has been picking up a little html to get it into the banner and we are looking at the “it needs to look good on the phone or on the laptop” aspect of it all. It feels a little odd to have the logo in the physical world and not on the website, but we’re making progress step by step, inch by inch.

And now it’s time to get out there and ride before the rain comes.

Have a glorious week, and we’ll see you on the trail

Yesterday was sunny. The high was in the 60s, glorious day for a ride, right? But, I had school bus duty and an appointment to finish my dental crown right in the middle of the school day. I needed to get my miles in early.

I was ready when the bus left. I had loaded the bike, filled the bottles and packed the best gloves I had. I got off a little earlier than my best hope. I saw that the temp on the car said 37º and that was lower than I was expecting, but I kept driving, thinking it would warm a little before I got there. I got to the trail right about official sunrise, no increase in temp, no change in my determination to ride. That’s one of the biggest things that leads to disaster BTW, neglecting or refusing to update actions based on new data.

It was rush hour. I’ve never noticed the humming roar of traffic on 400 being loud enough to hear from Big Creek, but in the winter when leaves that muffle sound are gone, I’m more likely to hit the trail for the evening rush hour instead because it’s warmer. In the evening, traffic is more spread out and there’s more ambient noise to mask highway noise.

As I got the bike ready, I figured that the ride would be short, but not as short as it was. The path had not been cleaned since some high wind or wind/rain event. It was thick with sweet gum balls, a nemesis to narrow tires and ankles. There were a lot of small branches and some tree falls. The path was cleared of the big stuff, but the small stuff littered the whole way.

My visor was fogging. It does that when I try to cover both my nose and ears with a neck gaiter. The jacket I keep in the car was plenty warm. My feet and legs were okay, I think, even though I put on the lighter weight riding tights with patches of mesh and didn’t change once I realized which pair I had. It was my hands that caused the problem. I didn’t go far or fast. It wasn’t possible to dodge the sweet gum ball carpet, even if I had been able to see much through my fogged visor. I kept taking it off and wiping, but I still caught several balls that shifted my back tire an inch or three.

I turned when I thought my hands would be miserable by the time I got back, but I misjudged. It was already too late. The Raynaud’s Syndrome hasn’t caused me much trouble since that day I was photo documenting the record flight in North Dakota and learned that “seeing stars” was real. I took my gloves off that day so I could feel the camera shutter button. This morning’s 37º was a great deal warmer than the temps out west and I didn’t remove my gloves this time, but they were cool weather gloves, not proper winter riding gloves, there was the wind chill, and I was exposed for longer. When I got back loading the bike was a challenge. I tried a variety of things to warm my hands in the car, knowing that doing it too fast would be a problem.

Russ was working a temporary day job to earn a few dollars. I intended to text him that I was in the car and ok, but I wasn’t going to attempt that with fingers that felt like I’d grabbed stinging nettles. When I pushed the “call Russ” button on the dashboard screen I hadn’t even been willing to try to take off my helmet. After our call, I was sitting at a traffic light and felt nauseated, then dizzy. I remembered the N. Dakota stars and pulled into a shuttered office building parking lot beside me to wait for it to end. Thankfully, there were no stars this time and shortly after I decided to try my hands on the helmet clip, I started to drive again. When I came home to shower, I made sure the water wasn’t as hot as I wanted it to be, and when I laid down to rest after I set the alarm and dressed first so I’d be willing to get out from under the covers and keep the dental appointment.

After the appointment I came home. So did my daughter. That’s when I remembered that she was doing afternoon bus pick-up and I could have had a long balmy ride after my dental appointment.

So, now I’ve had a good recent lesson on getting fixated and I also know that I shouldn’t attempt rides in the 30s, not even the high 30s, until and unless I have better protection. I seem to be fully recovered from the lesson and I plan to have a better experience today. I was thinking that would be with Russ, but the job was bigger than expected and he’ll be working again

That’s it for this week. Have a glorious Valentine’s Day with a trail and/or a person you care about!

The Training

Training was good, as good as weather let it be. The weather had whiplash level change with the recent very cold front, and now the daffodils are blooming. It feels a little like spring is here early. There was intermittent heavy rain and mud on Big Creek trail, but we got in plenty of riding and plenty of mud on the bikes. Right now we’re commuting to the trail more often for shorter rides. It approaches the time commitment we’ll have later with longer rides and fewer commutes, especially with road construction slowing the drive. That feel sluggish on a productivity level.

The weather was a reminder of the effect of high relative humidity on southern winters. Most people think of high humidity combined with heat when they think of the south because it can cause heat stroke, but the humidity can also make you feel the cold temperature more in the winter.

When temperatures drop below freezing, the humidity will be low because the air can’t hold much water. When the temps are low, but not below freezing, humidity is a bigger factor. One day this week Russ rode in shorts and I rode in knickers fairly comfortably in the high 40s, but were really feeling the cold in the mid 50s with full length warmer clothing two days later. If there’s low lying fog, or you’re trying to get a ride in before the rain, high relative humidity is no surprise, but some days it can be almost that high with few visible signs. Relative Humidity is always good to add to the all season list of things to consider in your weather check when planning rides.

The Project

Russ did some work on the video, but mostly worked on the logo. Prioritizing our tasks is a balancing act between training, learning or remembering software skills, the importance of completion and managing short term non-project needs. None of this start up stuff is outside our capacity to do well, it’s just not as fast as we’d like it to be.

I pulled out old files and photos of the logo concept I began with and Russ started working with it. The original idea was to make something referring to the pair of trails in our top level of the project. Elements that referred to Chief Ladiga, one trail’s namesake, and the Silver Comet, the other Trail’s namesake were challenging to combine. It needed to be simple, scalable, appropriate, original and all those other things that make a good logo.

Trying to bring in a highly recognizable reference to the less well known trail named for a chief there are few images of and whose most well known act was to sign over the last Creek lands in the state was a challenge. Just when we had something we were working out, it occurred to me we were building a logo based on a project level we might not make. At the lower levels, we won’t be focused on these trails exclusively. If we stayed with the logo we were working on, but only made a lower level of the project, it could look off target at best, and misleading at worst.

Russ was completely on board with the about face. We shifted logo design toward the reason KarenGoes.com was chosen to replace UnlockingAtlanta.com several years ago, it’s something that can change directions when I do without requiring a new url.

Our finished logo will soon be the upper left corner of the website start page, but getting it there is requiring Russ to learn a little coding. It’s good for now and translates well for later. It’s clean, simple, and it will be scalable when we gets it vectorized. The graphics reflect interest in cycling, geography and mapping while remaining versatile and generic enough for direction, gear and chain elements to become abstract rather than literal. It also contains the url.

We’re Working on a Sale

My remaining time this week was put toward the big Etsy Stock clearance/ car repair/ new tooth for Karen/ anti-hoarding/ computer replacement/ new tooth for Russ (why does tension have to show up in the jaw?)/ kickstarter advertising budget/ repair the burst pipe/ empty the storage unit and get rid of that bill/ unemployment/ de cluttering/ take back my basement and my sanity sale.

I’ve actually been working on this sale for weeks, (and will be every week until I’m done) separating the things to sell now from home, putting them in boxes that are easy to take up and out for the sale, organizing what’s left. My previous work in Estate Sales helps, mostly in pricing confidence.

Best case is probably that we get rid of a lot of stuff and fund maybe one small need on that list of recent challenges. We have some big ticket items we’re willing, happy even, to part with, but some are only going at market price. In truth, hoping that this will finance more than the smallest single of those needs is more ambitious than funding the kickstarter itself. The greater Atlanta area is a tough market for selling these things because there’e so much competition from wealthy people downsizing and moving.

I have a friend who had a yard sale to raise money for a charity bike ride. She rented a trailer and took item donations to an alternate location because vintage and preowned sales don’t bring much locally. She cleared $1000, a nice donation, but she also worked pretty hard for it over a few weekends. She earns more IRL.

I don’t have an alternate location, so I’ll frame my sale as best I can to attract people who want vintage for 25% of what they would pay if they bought something I listed on Etsy. What many shoppers want here though (and a lot of other places) is to buy something “worth” $300 for a quarter so they can post it online and brag. I get it. I needed to buy these things that eventually sold on Etsy low enough to pay overhead and Etsy fees with a little something left over at the end or I was paying for the experience. Still, there’s nothing I’ll be selling that cost me only a quarter.

Until next time, have a glorious day, and we’ll see you on the trail.

The Situation

Losing his job gave us some much appreciated freedom to spend team time concentrating on the project, but not as much as you might think. Job search is a full time pursuit as is running a Kickstarter Funding Campaign. One of us will need to be employed really soon. I’ve been out of the job market for a while, so Russ is more likely to be able to get something good enough soon enough.

The Tech

It’s been 5 days since Russ got the ax. He spent the first two getting all his personal data off the company phone and laptop and deciding what to do about a new phone and carrier. It wasn’t a simple wipe. He didn’t have a personal phone and only recently got a personal laptop. He almost never hits delete.

We looked at mobile carrier ratings. For now, he’s going to put an old phone we weren’t using on Ting, a Canadian carrier. We’ll go out and test signal strength in remote trail areas (with an app, not subjectively) . If there’s no significant difference, I’ll can AT&T with pleasure and join him on Ting. Signal strength in rural Alabama where my mother lives is why we kept AT&T past the first few terrible experiences, and fiber in our own neighborhood was why we kept them after the rest. If we still can’t get fiber at the house, at least we can downsize our mobile bill.

Training

Russ has changed flats 4 times this week.1 new tire, 4 new tubes. All things considered, he showed amazing tolerance. In fact, he showed some pretty impressive tolerance just for a guy trying to have a bike ride with no goals or stress. We did finally get some good ride time in though, and some good recovery exercise walks too. One was at Kennesaw Mountain, and another was at a local park. I still got more ride time in than Russ, because of the flats. I expect we’ll have some good riding next week though.

Working The Plan

When we didn’t have weekdays to work together on the project, we were going to take off last weekend and use the office where Russ works (correction, worked) to get away from the distractions in the house and concentrate some long hard hours on the project. We stayed with the plan, but moved the location to the basement at my son’s new house. He spent most of the weekend out, so it worked as intended.

The work was slow. Russ had trouble finding files because he started the campaign video on my computer, where I was also working (and sometimes moving files that I didn’t know he needed to stay in the same file path). Then there was the whole musical computers game, we’ve kept working through introduction of 4 laptops and 2 external drives now (with hindsight instituted protocols). Finding all the parts to remake the video was frustrating, and not made better by “I just lost my paycheck” stress. We had far too much work left to have been successful over just the weekend. I don’t know where the project will go now, but it would be over had he not been let go.

We got an opening, and the void was instantly filled. That time that Russ has between what he was doing an what he will do next may not be enough for one thing, let alone all the things we’d like to fit in it. There are still more hopes and obligations than there is time. We’re still juggling, first optimism, then 20 other things. We’re still hoping it all works out for the best, whatever that may be.

Have a glorious day, and, see you on the trail

Do those last three words in the title make you cringe the same way they do me? I have to poke fun at my life right now. It’s just the only choice I can make.

I am seriously grateful for so many things, from not currently living in a war zone to more small things than I count on a daily basis. So much of gratitude is wrapped up in expectation, and “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” right?

The project has been a long shot from the beginning and we’ve had some setbacks on top of that, a big rash of them lately. I don’t really know if what I’m about to do is just vent, or if there’s some value to others in sharing this. People struggle, and they aren’t alone, but sometimes they feel like they are.

In the last paragraph of my last post I listed several things from Covid to a burst pipe that hit us in the last six weeks of the year. I didn’t mention everything there. My uncle died. He had just agreed to go to assisted living, then fell in the bathroom. A friend and a family member each lost houses in different fires. There’s more.

We’ve taken some financial hits. The pressure for me to get a job instead of pursuing this project is real, and getting more so every day. Toyota wants $5K for repairs (no, the Highlander doesn’t have half the miles it’s supposed to sail through). All of my big ticket purchases in recent years were “unlucky” models. I don’t buy first year models, still these brands with the super reliable reputations let me down. How big a deal these replacements are is entirely dependent on whether one has a generous financial buffer or plenty of disposable income. I’m completely average in that respect… These last few years took my buffer. Choosing the “unfortunate” year/models of Toyota, MacBook Pro, Galaxy 21 plus, and Nikon stings. Getting the wrong DSLR camera was the least problematic and totally on me, but being 4 for 4 on a tight budget really stinks.

The Thing That Brought me to my Knees Wasn’t Any of That

Coping has a lot to do with expectations. If I was in a war zone, my coping mechanisms would shift into survival mode and positive expectations would disappear. How heavy things feel has so much to do with the status quo or what a person thought would happen. Sometimes it isn’t even that an event couldn’t have been predicted, but that a dreaded place in life has arrived.

Mom hasn’t kept “regular” wakeful daytime hours in decades and often stays up all night. My sister shares her driveway, so she’s right there, but Mom doesn’t always have good mobility or carry her cellphone. She decided to change the AC filter after everyone went to bed and sat on a low seat to do it. The knee bend required to get up was too acute and there were no arm holds. She couldn’t get up, so, she got on the floor and made her way over to her recliner instead, then got tired of trying to get in it, grabbed a pillow and a throw and slept on the floor. In the morning, she was rested enough to make her way over to her cellphone and call for help.

Mom didn’t seem to feel bad about it. She’s told everyone. We all felt terrible for her though. She was stiff after and had a few rough days. I remind her sometimes that she can come up here when she needs assisted living. She doesn’t want to come to Atlanta though, and she doesn’t “get” me. Mom says we shouldn’t talk about the things we disagree on, but you know how that goes. If I can get her talking about when she was young, our daily conversation can be pretty nice, and some times she tells stories I haven’t heard.

Mom was recuperating from her night on the floor during our short, late holiday visit. I thought we’d all spend time telling our favorite stories about my uncle who just died (and there are so many stories to tell about the biggest character in our family). But, we actually spent most of the time catching up on undone preparations for the gathering. There were so many needs and wants flying around it was more like like whiplash than a party. It had been that way the year before too. I wanted to think everything was going well. It was so hard to make it happen. I went home thinking that changing the date had secured a treasured family gathering, and by the time all was said and done, I was wondering if it would ever come together again. I still do. The car ride back was quiet. Even our granddaughter was quiet.

Russ and I had words on New Year’s Eve. I think we each needed extra tenderness from each other and were both too frazzled to give it. That night I cried after everyone was asleep. It was intense. I’ve talked a couple of times about crying on this site, and I’m not really embarrassed about that. If you need to cry, cry. Not at work, do it at home. It’s healthier than a lot of other coping mechanisms.

I may not be embarrassed about needing to cry, but, it’s uncomfortable to be with someone in pain when you can’t do anything for them. I didn’t want anyone to have to listen to me. I don’t know that I’ve ever cried like I did that night. When there’s someone in every corner of the house it’s hard to find privacy, but the dam needed to burst.

I’ve been meditating a lot and concentrating on breathing, so that had it’s influence. I was trying to inhale through my swollen nose to force the passages open and reduce the chances that I’d get a sore throat, Then I wailed, first into my hands, then into a pillow when my hands weren’t enough to muffle the sound. I don’t know how long I cried, but it was a long time. I failed at keeping it to myself. The next day, Russ said he couldn’t tell what was happening and it scared him. After all that, on New Year’s Day I felt physically exhausted and terrible… and I felt the need to cry again, as if it had been years since I’d had a cry. I didn’t though, and haven’t since.

So much has been piling up. I still haven’t put all of the woe causing events out here for public consumption. Of those things I’ve shared, I’m sure anyone going through any of it can fill in details at least as taxing as my own.

I’m having trouble treading water, much less getting where I want to go. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the next year, whether I’ll have a successful high activity project I believe in, one that actually does make a difference to people, or a job that keeps me from getting even a healthy level of exercise. The stuff we’ve had to deal with swirling around with all our unknowns may be the problem that sent me over the edge, but, it was my mother I was thinking about through all the tears. Parents are the people who taught us about the world. They are the giants through whose eyes we learned to see. They give us more than genes.

And Then…

Russ called on the way home from work Wednesday. He asked me how I was doing. I said I was feeling a little bit rattled. He said he was going to rattle me a little bit more because he was going to have plenty of time to work on the project, he was now unemployed.

Keep on Truckin’. Have a glorious day, and I hope we’ll see you on the trail.

When people take a big chance, succeed and talk about it later, they’ll often call it a leap of faith. When people fail they’re more apt to describe it as following fellow lemmings off the edge of a cliff.

I recently saw a quote attributed to Neil Gaiman (Coraline, Stardust, American Gods). It said something about having two choices: to make art, or not to. If you chose not to you might miss the opportunity to make a difference to someone. I’m all over that point of view. Making a difference is the point of doing the video project. It’s the point of life. Finding my way to make a difference to someone is makes anything worthwhile.

I like the quote and it sounds like Gaiman, but I still tried to confirm that it was, in fact, his, because, you know. You can’t trust a meme, and while it’s a great thought, misquoting someone is still spreading things that aren’t true. I wasn’t able to confirm the quote in the amount of time I was willing to put to it, but I did find this commencement speech where Gaiman gives other great advice with adorable impishness.

Some of the things he said made old feelings of missing out resurface. Not in the sense that we’re the same age and he’s so accomplished, both in art and in having comfortable means. Comparing yourself to some of the most successful people in the world is a time tested recipe for unhappiness. But, still, even without using him as my measuring stick, I did feel a sense of non-accomplishment that was mostly career related and completely about where some of my own choices led.

I’ve had a good enough life so far, and caught a lot of serendipitous wonder. Not much of that led to a coherent career or much income, though. I never had the chutzpah to fake it till I made it the way Gaiman did. I married the fall after graduating high school. My priorities always led me to choose family or the road less traveled, and while money can get you the opportunity to do some things, it’s the actual doing of things that I find so much more compelling.

My only real regrets come when I’m trying to figure out what I should be doing financially to prepare for those “golden years” that are closing in so fast that I’m looking at some of them in the rear view mirror. I’m willing to buy into the theory that if you do what you love the money will come, but when people advise that, they’re not talking about being a stay at home parent, which I did a lot of, or a care giving grandparent, which I’m doing a lot of now. So far, I haven’t focused enough on money to see that my life or aspirations are appropriately funded. Choosing not to budget income for myself in the video project I want to do next indicates a failure to learn in that respect. I’ve thought so many times about budgeting a salary for myself, but, due to time, equipment and the nights away from home that keep the project low impact, I’m really nervous about how expensive the project is without it. Yet, if the project is worthy, it seems I should be able to support myself while doing it.

Deciding whether or not to do art is the question that sent me on the search that brought me to a commencement speech that danced so beautifully around all the issues currently at play in my life. I’m not a young new graduate like those in the audience, though. and, there will be creative aspects, but I don’t know that you would call my main video project “art”. Still, I face so many of the same issues. How do you pursue the project that could make a difference and still make a living? My biggest difference from that audience is that I have less time to recover from mistakes that hurt my financial wellbeing.

The decision to do/be or not to do/be is easier if you didn’t make that family starting decision first. Eating Saltines (or nothing) till payday is so survivable if you’re only subjecting yourself to it. Asking children to do without so that you can chase a dream is different. It’s not that I didn’t realize that, but growing up in the rural south before so many of the glass ceilings were shattered, I just fell into what my mother did, marry young and start a family. When I could take chances with the abandon of youth, I took someone’s hand instead. That didn’t work out so well for me as it did for my mother. I keep finding myself at the center of a plot that nearly comes together and makes sense, then falls apart again. I get frustrated when a mini-series does that. Imagine how I feel with it being my life instead?

Neil’s obvious advice is to make the art, to do the thing, to be. That’s what I what I want, to make a difference to as many someones as I can, however I can.

I’m willing to admit that maybe it’s something else that I’m supposed to be doing. I hope it’s the Silver Comet/Chief Ladiga project because I believe in it. What ever it turns out to be though, I hope I find which something I need to be doing soon. It’s not just the challenges of the moment, the rounds with Covid and other illnesses, the burst water pipe, the series of computer failures, the newly discovered thousands I’m about to spend on my car, the unfinished renovation on our fixer upper house, the dilemma about what to do with the Etsy Store, the job and family stresses, or the effort to keep up with training. It’s the limbo that’s killing me.

Ah, Covid, for some of us, the never ending story goes on. It’s been in the house yet again. This time it got everyone but me, and we’re not far enough along for me to declare myself free and clear. In truth, I could be one of those people who just didn’t test positive. I’ve certainly had more than my share of upper respiratory ills this season. Just no lower respiratory symptoms so far, and no positive tests.

I’ve been washing my hands like I do the dishes in a house filled with super spreaders. That’s because I am the primary dishwasher, and the one in kindergarten, like most kindergartener’s, observes no personal boundaries, and she’s regularly in two different households with pretty different rules.

The high schooler goes to school with 2000 students, and many of them are anti-vax, anti-mask, anti even wash your hands. Then there’s everyone else in the house, they have constant high traffic public exposure through work. I knew the pandemic wasn’t really over. Russ and I got every vaccination and are among those rare birds who are still masking indoors in public, but here we go again anyway. I’ve said that Covid was back in the house recently, but that was when it was just one of us and now I’m saying it again for all but one of the rest of us.

I wash so much, I use moisturizer with pharmacy grade lanolin levels. I’ve used it for decades, ever since I went to a dermatologist for the cracked red hands, but I’ve been using so much more lately. I’ve learned to keep my hands off my face better during the pandemic too, but I’ve had so much sickness in spite of following the rules.

It’s not possible to get too many hugs from your granddaughter, but all those other illness that were suppressed during the height of the pandemic are roaring back, especially through the schools and even more especially in kindergarten. That’s the likely explanation for being so careful, and still getting so sick so often. I wouldn’t give up a single minute with either of my grandchildren…well, okay, they’re not always peachy perfect. But, being there for those times is important too.

Other than hyper-vigilance, I don’t have an explanation for being the only one who didn’t get it (yet), except, well, I did take off to the beach when it became obvious that the only purpose my staying could serve was to infect me. It’s so much harder to isolate if you are normally the care giver/chief cook and bottle washer. The only way to be separate is to leave, and the beach is not that much farther away than alternative locations.

Before that sounds too cushy, we’re not talking beach umbrellas and salt rimmed glasses and the balmy temps further south. We’re talking driving to close beaches and through the National Wildlife Refuge, walking a little on nearly empty beaches, having strangers give you grief for wearing a mask, eating mostly frozen meals in the hotel room and dreaming of one day having frequent access to gulf or ocean blue spaces again. If you stay in a hotel away from the high traffic areas, it’s way less expensive to take off than to stay home and go to the doctor, or potentially the hospital, and way more appealing. In fact, nearly empty beaches, that’s my happy spot.

Russ has some underlying stuff and a lot of trepidation about getting Covid. I wasn’t leaving if it wasn’t ok with him, but he had all his vaccinations, seemed ok and we were keeping in contact. He had instructions to call me back if things escalated. I was confident that I would be able to tell, (or someone else would tell me if he needed me, even if he never did), Everyone else was either vaccinated at least once, on their second go with Covid or both. So, what I really expected was for Russ to tell me if anyone else needed me and someone else to tell me if Russ needed me.

The beach was pretty nice, I headed for the “forgotten” Florida, but was dragging with the upper respiratory junk that I still did have, and pretty stressed too. There were plenty of bike trails, and conceptually I wished I had brought my bike, but realistically, I didn’t have any business using it. There are times when I can ride things off or burn them out. This wasn’t one. I didn’t really even have much of a walk down the beach in me until the last day.

I had gone a recent second round with the scary antibiotics, the ones that have “aortic rupture” as a side effect that is more likely in patients over 60 and also in patients who are exercising. I didn’t ride again until I’d been back home for almost 3 days and now we have drizzling all day rain with sub 50 degree temps. I did just buy some wet weather gear, but not a complete set, and I’m not trying it out on the heels of a stressful illness.

For all of us, we took a few days to take a breath and some naps. We all needed that before the Covid, and certainly needed it once it made the rounds again. So, we took it seriously and took the moment. As such, there’s been little to no progress in the project department. As much as that hurts and as badly as I want to be in ramp up mode, we won’t make it a success if we are as exhausted as we have been recently when we start the campaign.

So we’ll just do our best and keep putting one foot in front of the other. We’ll catch our balance. The last person to get sick still has positive tests. It will be at least a week before we know if I get to avoid this round of Covid for sure. I’m cautiously optimistic.

So, until then, I hope you have a glorious day, and hopefully in another day or two I’ll be back out on the trail.