Resurfacing.

Blogging hasn't been high on my list of things to do as of late.  I have a few excuses, one real good one, but mostly it's because I haven't found a "routine" in my new routine.

On Friday 3/31 I came home from work to find my house on fire.  Yep, on fire.  Something I never dreamed would happen.  There weren't flames shooting from windows, etc but rather a ton of thick, impenetrable smoke, everywhere.  I was unable to set two feet inside the front door.  I put the front door in the open position, hoping the cats would find their way out (sadly they didn't) and called 911.  I was on the phone still when the firefighters showed up.  I was still under the impression it was a small issue and we'd be staying the night at our own home.  Four hours later the firefighters left and we were told our house was uninhabitable by the City of St. Cloud.  Before they left the Fire Marshall's gave us a tour. The smoke left an nauseating smell and sticky soot residue everywhere.  The fire started in the basement but two floors up inside of dressers t-shirts were covered in the stuff!

After State Farm took two tours of the house they deemed the contents a complete loss and that the house itself would need to be gutted...say what?!!  This process we are told can take over 6 months.  In the meantime we are at my folks house just a mile away.  Our biggest job as of late is to inventory all of our items.  This entails writing down what we have, find a replacement value (internet searching), how old is the item, then entering it all into State Farms computer program.  Let me tell you this is a tedious process!  We (Jen and I) started this on Tuesday.  We both work so it's been leaving work early, skipping work, or nabbing a hour here and there.  Surprisingly we've gotten a lot done and both have today and Saturday off.

With this drastic change in our lives I haven't made riding or blogging a priority.  The first few days I was just going through the daily motions, swimming in all the stuff we "needed" to do.  I feel we now have our feet back under us and slowly finding a routine again.  Had I missed riding for two weeks because work was busy (which it is) or whatever, I'd be stressing big time.  But having a fire and all it presents I am not freaking out at all.  I do feel a bit soft around the edges but that's my neurotic self.  I hope to start riding, hitting the gym, etc next week.
Since going vegan (plant based) as an experiment about a month ago I've been able to remain mostly true to the ideology.  I have allowed myself some "real" ice cream and maybe a cookie or two as a stress mechanism!  It was that or booze! Ha.

Through this process, thus far, we (my family) have been overwhelmed by the out pouring of support from around the world!  Yes, world!  Being entrenched in the bike industry since 1994 I've built a web of friendships that span world wide.  Now with social media connecting the web my family has received seemingly limitless support in numerous ways.  Jen being a teacher in the District for 18+ years has also received as many well wishes and offers of help.  It truly is amazing and extremely humbling.  And not to leave out our families...they have made our problem their problem.

It takes a village...