It has/had gotten to the point where I put plans on our calendar in pencil versus pen. Little if anything has/had gone accordingly since mid-March. As October crept closer, I couldn’t help but think what would derail a few days we’d been looking forward to since we spent Thanksgiving camping at Dead Horse Point State Park in 2018, devising how and when to check a box on our bucket list.
And while our plan to ride the White Rim Trail in celebration of our honeymoon had gone through several iterations over the course of nine months — including which friends…
There are those friends you can count on one hand in your lifetime, who you can talk to about anything, laugh with, cry with, dream, hope, and brainstorm with, commiserate with, turn to and trust with every ounce of your being. Those who, in a heartbeat, you would jump in your car, load up the podcasts, and drive 330 miles nonstop to spend a weekend with.
And there is the one friend you’ve known since your late teens, since the days of college apartment living in Boulder, eating cookie dough out of a plastic tub, scraping by with baked potatoes…
A lesson I shouldn’t have had to learn the hard way.
WARNING: The subject of poop is present in the story below and while this may be a longer read than it needs to be, that’s a significant part of the story.
Hard core fatigue and that motion sickness feeling like I was reading in the backseat of a car on a winding mountain road. These were the two symptoms that hit me on July 25th like an athlete in the MLB batting a thousand swings for the outfield. Immediately followed by a complete loss of appetite, where the mere thought of eating, cooking, or even walking into the kitchen made…
I have always been a competitor at heart and have thrived on events that test my endurance — a.k.a a glutton for punishment some might say; so when I signed up for the Rebecca’s Private Idaho Challenge with all intention of conquering the Queen Stage Race this coming Labor Day weekend, my mind, energy, and complete focus turned to specific and more intense training, to diligently reaching new levels of power output and strength, to making sure I had all green boxes in my TrainingPeaks dashboard at the end of each week.
My ‘why’ was to prove I could cover…
“Heather, if I were a film director and I was making a movie about your life based on the bits I’ve read and what you’ve shared, I could without a doubt direct every scene down to the finest detail. But there is something so interesting to me. I wouldn’t know how to direct the characters — because I have no idea how they feel.” — S. Jagger
And so my great big journey began. On a Skype call with Steph Jagger, author of the latest book I simply couldn't get enough of — Unbound: A Story of Snow and Self-Discovery…
Inspired, intrigued, in awe, and maybe just a little bit envious of a memoir I read recently, I couldn’t help but dive deeper. The author’s story spoke to my unquenched thirst for what’s to come down the road, to my endless curiosity, to my competitive spirit, and to the opportunity to explore if there is (or isn’t) a piece missing from my 1,000+ piece puzzle.
Think Eat, Pray, Love meets Outside Magazine meets Lonely Planet. Page after page, the author’s words shared a story of risk and reward, of tenacity and perseverance, of humility and courage, of exploration and of…
Solitude. On its own, the word may insinuate isolation, emptiness, seclusion. But the context within which one experiences solitude can make it a time of invaluable reflection, perspective, inspiration. This past long weekend, I took the opportunity to head northwest on a solo road trip. Seventeen — yes, 17 episodes of NPR’s “How I Built This” later, I didn’t feel drained from this time on the road — but rather longing for more of this time to think, dream, listen, explore the corners of my mind and that of others along the way.
Along the road, I soaked up the…
As I rounded the final switchback on my bike to reach the summit, I wasn’t sure if I was going to burst into tears, smile until it hurt because that’s what I do, scream (or swear) with joy and perhaps a little disbelief, or maybe a combination of them all. …
This was the first bit of commentary slung my way when I posted a photo on June 18th of a big brown shipping box, and announced that “my travel companion to Italia has arrived.” I could back this story up to another time marked by giddy excitement when exactly six months earlier to the day, my first big brown shipping box arrived from Allied Cycle Works.
And while to some these two big brown boxes may seem the same, like any siblings of the human variety born into this world, in my eyes these ‘siblings’ couldn’t be more different.
I often think about (but haven’t questioned) the passionate (some may call obsessive) manner in which I pursue things that I love to do. It’s part of my DNA to go all-in (or on the contrary, all-out). And admittedly it goes in waves. In school it was tennis, field hockey, volleyball, softball, track. Then triathlon, mountain biking, skiing, golf. Then shooting sporting clays (which is really like golf with a shotgun). Then golf again.
And it’s come full circle back to the bike. Where I am happiest and feel most alive. Where I can take an easy spin or climb…
H2 Idaho
A life lived all-in.
