After not a great end of last week I had a great week with my friends and even got in some back to school shopping.

He said

From the moment we wrapped up Dad’s Celebration of Life and got all the cleanup done, Danielle & I made a quick stop at the house to pack up the truck and head straight to the trailer was technically our week off had started Friday night after I was done work at 8pm, but we decided with a weekend forecast of heavy rain all weekend at the trailer and at home, to stay for home for the weekend, and head up on Sunday as the forecast was 100% dry for the week! By 8:00pm last Sunday, Danielle & I were relaxing by the fire pit at the trailer, ready to have a week – finally – with not a lot to do!

The hope originally was that Emelia would be able to come up and spend time with us too, but once her work schedule posted, it was clear that there was something every single day of the week that kept her tether to London. The bummer was she wanted to come and hopeful it would work out, but as we know she is very busy with two competitive Cheer teams, work schedule in the gaps and then an appointment Thursday for her back to school hairdo with Jackie. Knowing that I had to work Saturday, and was in a bike race today, we decided we’d stay at the trailer to Friday and come back in time for dinner that night so we could have some of the weekend with Emelia too.

The week at the trailer was the perfect mix of the kind of slow that Danielle & I really needed. We’d wake up without an alarm clock, go for a bike ride and then spend the day deciding if we wanted to do anything other than relaxing. We did do some upgrade work that we wanted to do at the trailer, so it wasn’t all lazy-assery. I managed to add the loft storage shelf in the shed that would give us more, much-needed extra storage space. And Danielle continued to build up her green thumb and add to the garden and curb appeal of the site. There are two things that I am really proud of from this week: 1) the amount of relaxing and just being together we did; and 2) the dramatic change of how the site looks now, compared to how it was when we landed on it.

Now, the bike race today… It was my eighth and final race event of the season. Leading up to it this week I was running into a couple of issues with the bike that were quite concerning. First, my gravel wheels have steady slow leak front and back. Second, the SPD pedal on my non-drive side out of the blue decided to seize up. I patched the tires and borrowed a set of pedals from our good friend Linda so I felt I did all I could do and hoped for the best. Pedals were absolutely fine however the wheels at 5km in, it was clear were still leaking as I could feel them getting softer. After the first, monstrous climb end I decided to use my bike frame pump to fill the rear tire to get me to the finish line. In five seconds I learned what a dud that pump was as I watched it drain the tire and not do anything to fill it.

At this point I this point I thought my race was toast and that I was going to be calling Danielle to let her know I was packing it in, but just before that happened, a coupled arrived on a tandem bike (!) and asked me if I wanted to use a better pump. I took them up on their offer and that got me back in the game! I knew now, with this time setback and that I’d likely be needing to stop at the Aid Station at 22km to top up (I did), that goal quickly switched from beating last year’s time, to just finishing, and I did!! I am so proud that of all eight races I started this season, I finished every last one! And despite not have the pace time for this one or placing, I still accomplished a lot! Like 688m or 2,557ft of climbing. I reached over 50km/h on four descents, and even hit over 70km/h on one!

So while it wasn’t necessarily the results I wanted, I was reminded the one thing that I have felt (and quite proudly) after the completion of every single race: I am able to do hard things!

She said

Emelia had a bit of a crap end of last week, I won’t go into great detail but the one thing I’m so proud of Emelia is how she now can turn negative situation and tries to find the positive. She focused on the good, her amazing friend group was one. She and her girls got to spend a lot of time together this past week and between Bri, Belle, Ashley, Livy and Lexi the girls really had her back. We are so happy with her friend group, the are solid, they don’t play games, they don’t like drama and they solidly have each others back. I was so grateful to the girls and Bri’s mom Michelle that Emelia warmly calls Mama Michelle really built her up this week.

We made sure Emelia was good, had a lot of positive plans in place and then John and I made our way to the trailer. It was an edited week off between the Celebration of Life and John needing to work yesterday but we made the most of those 5 days together. We had lots of chats and even a few FaceTime calls with Emelia but honestly with her busy life it is hard to nail her down. This week she was busy with friends, work and the return to cheer training post choreography camp. From what Emelia told us the practices are already going well and she really loves the routines.

This past week at the trailer was exactly what we needed, it has been a stressful and heartbreaking few months so being able to get up for 5 days being disconnected and taking things at a very lazy pace was exactly what we needed. But knowing us sitting still did not last very long, we still had our daily bike ride but we are still working on transforming the site from a eyesore it was to a site we are really proud of. It has taken so much work but we are so close to being done.

Today was another big day for us, we were up before the sun this morning and driving 2.5 hours to John’s last bike race of the season. I love this series of races, we get to see some familiar faces but we also get to connect with friends. It was an amazing day to wrap up the racing season, even with some pretty big hiccups I am so proud of how well John did. He placed really well and most importantly for him he finished, something I am sure 15KM in he wasn’t sure he would be able to do.