My Mental Health Vacation

The last week of May I took off of work for some personal mental health time.

The vacation started off with a small adventure to Angel Fire New Mexico for E’s bike race. He took Fourth in his class and for the first time I got to see him on the podium. (when he uploads the pics from his camera, I'll post them)
In the meantime, here is a bike he wishes he could race on...


We came home on Memorial day and the rest of the week I spent working on my landscaping at my house. With the help of a girlfriend (JH) we laid down close to a thousand square feet of landscaping cloth, commandeered a truckload of ‘free’ mulch, loaded, unloaded, and distributed the mulch and ordered 3 tons of rock.



JH was my consultant behind my landscape plan. I have always admired her yard, and when she offered to help me I took her up on the offer. Without her help, expertise, sweat and muscle that is no way I could have gotten as much done this week as I did. Not to mention the pile of very cool rocks she hauled over to my house to create the border around my bulb garden.


As for the ‘Free’ Mulch we got. There is a program here in our town where the parks department offers free mulch to anyone that hauls it away. Unfortunately we found out after loading up ‘The Battlewagon’ to the brim we were not at the free mulch pile. The free mulch pile was about 100 yards away, behind another fence we didn’t see. OOOPS Who knows what mulch we stole…If anyone from the City parks department is reading this, I’m sorry….



Here is what Three Tons of rock look like in a pile



and here it is almost completely spread out…I am about 95% completed.

After moving rock on Thursday and Friday I took Saturday off of doing anything too physical, instead I worked out my credit card at home depot gathering all the supplies I will need to build Sasha’s dog run in the back yard. E and I went out to dinner and then it was home and to bed early since we were leaving for Castlerock at 5:30 am to ride in the Elephant Rock Bicycle Festival.

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE this bike?

We were both debating if we would do the 65 or 100 mile course, after starting towards Monument and fighting a headwind the.entire.way, we both decided 65 miles would be the way to go.



We met up with my friend’s boyfriend (WC) about halfway through.


Unfortunately my friend (LW) had to drop out early and SAG to the finish line due to her IT band in her knee giving her fits. She was super frustrated and hopes this won’t affect our trip to Iowa later this summer. LW, WC, and I are all meeting Miss Bick in Iowa for RAGBRAI in July.

Now I am back to work and good thing too...My body has been crying for a break.