Well… we go back to online learning. Not happy ’bout that.

He said

I know I have shared my affinity with cycling as the main part of my fitness journey in the last year. Sure, it started with the rower well over a year ago. But, as we found our seasonal camper legs last summer at Auburn, and that the Guelph to Goderich Rail Trail was mere minutes away from the trailer. Added to all of that is our camp neighbour and friend Justin was into cycling helping to fuel my interest and giving me an instant ride buddy. Last July, I managed to get a COVID deal on a new bike by a company I had never heard of: Swift Bicycles and that was when the daily commitment began.

I managed to ride that bike every single day from that weekend forward – be that for the 20 km loop on the G2G Trail or the 17 km loop back at home on the Thames Valley Parkway (TVP) – well into November this year before the winter weather brought me indoors to the bike trainer for the offseason. And while I had lost a good chunk of my weight on the rower, it wasn’t until I started cycling that I really saw a dent in my weight loss. In fact early in this year, I managed to drop below the 200 lb barrier for the first time in my adult life. And as much as the weight loss is a nice byproduct, I really just love riding the bike.

To start this season I enlisted my friend Steve to give the bike a tune-up and to tweak some things that needed tweaking. He had the bike wonderfully tuned and tweaked and with the return of temps above zero, I have been steadily riding ever since. That was until last week when a slow leak that meant I had to fill the tire prior to every ride turned into an all out flat tire and something that needed to be fixed. The two-day delivery of the replacement inner tubes meant I was regrettably back indoors on the bike trainer. Yesterday, the tubes arrived so after work and my indoor bike ride, I replaced the flat tube and filled the tires with hope for a return to the TVP. Happily when I awoke this morning, the tires were still perfectly inflated and ready to go!

I am really looking forward getting back up to the trailer and being able to get back on the G2G Trail! We’re awaiting to here when we’re out of the Stay At Home order which I am sure Danielle will have more to share about, but it has delayed the start of our camping season to May 7th, if not the 20th as the add-on 2 weeks announced on Friday. While the title of the update this week does tie in to what I have spent my time doing last year (cycling) it also serves dual purposes because the last few months has been this upsetting rotation of in and out of lockdowns, without really feeling like we’re making the right progress. In fact as we crossed a year in this pandemic, it actually feels like we’re in a worse spot right now. All I can say is they better sort it out in the right direction soon so we get the trailer parked and we can camp!

She said

This week’s COVID news has been horrible this week. The numbers are spiking, the hospital rates are rising at a scary rate. So it was no surprise at all that there was another announcement for more restrictions—an announcement that our stay at home order has been extended and further restrictions. There has been an extension of the stay at home for 2 more weeks beyond the month that we already had. This means that Emelia will be home learning for home for the foreseeable future, there will be even stricter measures coming down the road we are sure.

This feels like a crappy version of the Twilight Zone—a never-ending loop that we can’t seem to get out of. The hope now is that the next six week will bring more vaccines into people’s arms so we can get the hell out of this mess.

Once again we are relying on our physical health to be our way to deal with our mental health over the next few weeks. Emelia and I spent much of our weekend going on long walks and chatting with each other. I adore these walks with her, she opens up and talks my ear off about everything, all her fears, hopes, insecurities, and her proud accomplishments. I love these moments and hold on to these moments, they are a shining moment in what has been a very hard year.

One shining event in a rough week was the release of the results and video of Emelia and Olivia’s cheer competition from earlier this season. This was Emelia’s first competition video competition. She and her team did amazing we are so proud of them. The League competition was a different type of virtual competition. This one was a head to head competition with one other team – there were three categories, dance, jumps and tumbling plus two judges awards. In the end their team won the dance, jumps and more entertaining routine judges prize. We are beyond proud of these amazing kids, they have been through so much and nailed their routines!