Glimmers of Hope

Everyone has their moment from last year when they realized this thing was for real.  For me it was on March 6 when the South by Southwest music festival was cancelled. At that point I knew the Rec. Center, my Crossfit gym and any and all triathlons, Xterra or otherwise, would all be closed, cancelled, kaput as well as pretty much everything else. Around March 17 Goldenvoice and Live Nation, the two major concert booking agencies in the U.S. postponed all their shows. It makes sense that large concerts would be the first thing to be shuttered and will be the last thing to come back online. So when Fauci started making noises on Saturday about concerts possibly starting back up in the fall, I finally felt a bit of true optimism for the first time in forever. Like perhaps that light at the end of the tunnel is for real. The House just voted to impeach Trump, January 20th is coming up quickly and hopefully with it some calm and stability in the days following. January 20th itself is anybody's guess. But hopefully after that the formerly emboldened racists will crawl back into the cracks from whence they came and go back to mostly bickering amongst themselves.

Yesterday's bit of desert-y goodness.

So I think I may set a loose goal of Xterra Nationals this fall. Which is funny because I can barely move at the moment after throwing my back out on Friday night. I actually felt healed today, I was debating where I should ride my bike then while sitting in the car I leaned over to get something out of a bag on the floor and my back went into an even worse spasm. Which is fairly typical for how this goes unless I finally break down and go to the chiropractor. Who is closed on Wednesdays. I was hoping to avoid it, I have no idea how careful he's being and there's already been one outbreak at a different chiropractor in town. But back pain is horrible and debilitating and leads to a downward spiral of badness so I have to go, it's been about a year which is about the longest I can typically go before having exactly this kind of an episode. I have some N95 masks that I bought years ago for work here around the farm. Back when all this hit I was going to donate them to the local hospital but something inside just wouldn't let me let them go right away. I do need them around here and who knows when they'll be available again? The hospital never became overrun so I felt o.k. keeping them and now that they are becoming overrun I think they have their PPE issues sorted out. So hopefully I can get an appointment tomorrow or Friday. Then I have to decide if I feel safe going back to the pool. Still very iffy about that but I haven't been for about a year and it's already going to be ugly. If I'm going to race I have to start building those swimming skills back up right now. Or at least when I can rotate my torso again.

Feels good to feel a little hopeful again.