The Joy of Mountain Biking

I am still having a hard time with Franklin's passing. I have good days and then sad moments. I forgot Chewy sends you flowers or a gift when your pet passes and the delivery of 12 beautiful rainbow roses threw me for a loop a week ago. (I'm pretty sure the UPS driver had driven off before I started to cry, but he might also think I'm a crazy emotional wreck.) Yesterday, I got a pet portrait from one of my sisters and the vet office sent me a card everyone signed (there's more messages on the back).


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I am still having a hard time with Franklin's passing. I have good days and then sad moments. I forgot Chewy sends you flowers or a gift when your pet passes and the delivery of 12 beautiful rainbow roses threw me for a loop a week ago. (I'm pretty sure the UPS driver had driven off before I started to cry, but he might also think I'm a crazy emotional wreck.) Yesterday, I got a pet portrait from one of my sisters and the vet office sent me a card everyone signed (there's more messages on the back).


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Such nice tributes especially from the vets office. Just takes some time for sure.
 
I am still having a hard time with Franklin's passing. I have good days and then sad moments. I forgot Chewy sends you flowers or a gift when your pet passes and the delivery of 12 beautiful rainbow roses threw me for a loop a week ago. (I'm pretty sure the UPS driver had driven off before I started to cry, but he might also think I'm a crazy emotional wreck.) Yesterday, I got a pet portrait from one of my sisters and the vet office sent me a card everyone signed (there's more messages on the back).


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Wow, that is so above and beyond, very nice of them.
 
I think I posted this some where before on here and I don't know if it will help I had a pup that passed and the operator of the kennel where we boarded them occasionally knew how much we(and everyone) loved our pets(family members) said to me "if love could save them they would live forever"
We all try to give them their best lives and I'm sure you did
 
I thought I'd post a few updates.

First: I want to thank everyone for all the messages sent when we said good-bye to Franklin... here, text messages, FB, IG, etc etc... I read them all and I am so very appreciative of all the love and support.

Second: Also thank you for all the birthday wishes... 2025 has not been the easiest year to say the least.

All the other stuff:
Work sucks... we can move on.

Vacation: We are still heading to the Grand Canyon for a long weekend in October. I was hoping the north side stuff would open or at least Phantom Ranch at the bottom after all the fire stuff calmed down but, we're less than 2 weeks away and it doesn't look like that's happening... So our plan is to do about 20 miles on the south side.

S. Kaibab to Tipoff... Tonto to Bright Angel... Bright Angel down to the river and then back up. If Plateau Point is open, hit that up on the way back up.

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We've done a few 20 mile hikes in Pisgah which I think are way harder than these trails at the GC so I think we're in good shape and well prepared for this. The fewer miles will also give us some time to chill and take more pictures and really enjoy ourselves... no time crunch worries. I think food and nutrition are all dialed in and the only question is what to wear which will be a last minute call to see what the weather will be like. We have about a dozen people going... some will be running/hiking and some (including myself) will just be hiking so we'll all be in good company.


We also had @2Julianas and @MurderBort come down and stay with us this past weekend and it was soooo good to see them... We took them on a few hikes and tried to show them the best restaurants in Brevard. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hit them all up and they didn't bring their bikes so they're just going to have to come down and visit us again. 🙂

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So I never got the chance to go into much detail about the GC trip. Not sure how interested everyone is now about it... but I'll quickly summarize:

The wild fire issues, construction and then government shutdown made things interesting... but we were able to get into the park for free and we were able to do the loop we planned so it all worked out. Also bathrooms were opened and fully stocked with TP because you know things would get disgusting fast.

Mistakes were made. They always are. Felt pretty well prepared but when I got there, there were a few "I shoulda done this or that" issues. The bottoms of my feet were pretty sore at the end and I was worried I may have pulled a muscle but I was totally fine the next morning... I even ran alongside our friends rental car as they were leaving. I was concerned about how some of our friends were going to do. We did have 2 people get sick prior to the hike, one person was definitely dehydrated and another got a blister on their foot (all in addition to the usual aches and pains associated with a hike like this)... but I can report everyone made it back to NC alive.

I'm not sure if any of our friends who went want to eventually go back and do R2R2R but I think Steve and I are both hoping to still attempt it. I might have to rethink the all hiking strategy and maybe jog a little here and there to move my feet and legs differently so we'll see how I plan that out.

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Gonna throw in my addition here...

Joy killed it. 11 of us total. Due to different abilities and some health issues we split into a few groups on the big day.

8 of us waited for the shuttle that never came. So we watched the sunrise over the canyon, jogged the 2 miles to the trail start and then 7 of us did the big loop. The other 4 ended up all doing 18 miles down to the river and back so they had big-ish days too.

2nd hardest hike I've done all year.

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