Life Updates

So, my three weeks off is coming to an end.  It’s been an amazing whirlwind of activity that has moved us closer to our dream of the open road than the last few months combined.

This week was a slow return towards normalcy. I personally spent most of the week doing client work, cleaning email and getting business work taken care of after the craziness of the last two weeks.  Kind of nice to write some code again. I didn’t think I would miss it so soon.

I think there is an inverse correlation between the frequency of blogging and how busy someone is. The silence here should be indicative how exactly how insane the last week was for the both of us. However, as far as making progress on our dreams, this was the best week yet.

We started off at a fairly calm pace. Mark and I did a large quantity of tree pruning, replaced one wall of paneling on the old detached garage and finished getting the porch squared up and ready to go. Grace continued getting ready for our estate sale which was scheduled for this last Saturday.

It’s been amazing to see what can get done in a week if you can get the time to focus on it.  I started this week with a laundry list of home and garden tasks, some of which I had been ignoring for years.  I end this week with some major projects done and progress on many others.

The major task of this week was my front porch which has been long needing to be re-decked. With diligent effort, Mark and I were able to finish this, which is the most daunting of my repairs, within the week.

It’s been a frustrating few weeks for me on the home liquidation front.  Partially, I felt stuck in a rut of analysis paralysis; constantly planning and no action.  However, mostly it just not finding time to get anything done. Between my day job, my side work on Fore & Aft Design and just the stuff that we have to do to keep our lives afloat, there just wasn’t enough hours in the day.

For me, it started with a dream of boats and wide open spaces. While growing up in Oklahoma City can’t be described as exactly living in a concrete jungle, it also wasn’t the exactly the great wide open either. I then spent several years in Chicago, which really was the concrete jungle before returning once again to Oklahoma.

And yet, my favorite memories are of traveling through wide open vistas, whether family camping trips through Big Bend, TX, backpacking in New Mexico or any number of bicycle trips. After seeing quite a few of those American vistas, I thought the next wide open space to visit would be the ocean.

#30DaysofBiking Day 22

I guess the best thing about day 22 was that there was nothing unusual about day 22.  It was the first day in awhile were I just rode to work and back.  The headwind on the way home was a bit strong, but it wasn’t too bad.  Little did I know what the next day had in store for me.

#30DaysofBiking Day 23

I thought it was supposed to be spring.  It’s not supposed to be near freezing with drizzle and harsh northerly winds.   Thankfully, I haven’t put my cold weather gear away, but I sure wish I could.  The ride to work was painfully slow with one point where the wind almost pushed me backwards.  However, it was still a nice ride, and as always, after about the first 5 minutes, I got warmed up and it wasn’t too uncomfortable.  I just hope I can quit wearing all of this gear regularly soon . . .

Still haven’t been able to get back completely into the regular posting schedule, but thankfully I’ve been able to keep riding!

#30DaysofBiking Day 19: Just Another Day at Work

I continue to get most of my cycling through my daily commute to work.  The big change I’ve made is to start riding more and more in my work clothes instead of always wearing a change.  My short ride is only 6.5 miles and, at least during the spring, if I take it easy I can arrive at work, refreshed but not horribly sweaty.  I think we cyclists can often make our rides too complicated and think we need more gear and kit

After a very long and tiring week, I’m finally getting a chance to catch up on my #30DaysofBiking posting.

#30DaysofBiking Day 13 - Failure

And then I have to start with a failure on my 30 day goal. As I’ve long been reporting, I have toiled away on the replacing of a sewer line. While it has been a great learning experience, a fantastic workout and the source of innumerable Cool Hand Luke jokes, it was also drug on much longer than I would have hoped or dreamed. Saturday was hopefully going to be my last day of moving dirt and finally this long project could start becoming a distant memory.

It was great to be back at work, even though there is much upon which to catch up. I was too tired last night to get all of my stuff ready for my commute back to work, and to top it all off, I slept in a bit too late this morning. No time to find all my ride clothes, pack my lunch, check the air pressure, etc. etc. So instead I did something most unusual, I just hopped on my bike in my work clothes and just rode to work. The temp was about 40 degrees which allowed me to pedal at a decent pace and still arrive to work fresh and happy. It’s an important thing for me to remember that I don’t need to over think my ride to work. Of course, in July when it’s 90 degrees at 6 am, it’s a slightly different story.