Date: 2013-05-15
To: All the Puzzle Pieces are known
Miles today: 0.0

This past month has been very, very stressful sadly resulting in very little hiking or Agility training. After getting over my illness mentioned in the previous post, the weather continued to be very soggy and cold. This resulted in our plumbing business workload increasing due to the need to get extra sump pumps installed/repaired. Beautiful thing when you have to hire a new employee in this economy just to keep up. We even enlisted the help of our part-time retired plumber. "All hands on deck".The biggest deterrent to my training though came when I went for my annual physical late April. All my numbers were good but the doctor found a small lump in my breast and immediately scheduled the necessary tests. Being that I was adopted at birth and had only known my birth mother for a few years before her death due to liver cancer, I didn't have medical records handy. I'd recalled her telling me something about a previous cancer she'd had so I went back through all her wonderful letters. Yep, there it was, she'd had breast cancer. Ok, so that didn't provide any comfort. All initial tests were negative but a biopsy was scheduled just to be sure. Thank God that too was negative but now there was all this lost time preparing for my trip.With all that medical stuff resolved I kicked the training back into full gear, hiking every opportunity I could. Last night was the first night I hiked with my full backpack with 17 lbs of weight for a full 2 hour hike. Bandit carried his pack with 6.6 lbs in it. I'm feeling it a little bit today, but not bad, not bad. I will continue to step it up over the next three weeks.Fat Grandma status..... I was not surprised when I got the call today. Fat Grandma has decided his heart just isn't in it this year and he will NOT be hiking. He is laying down some great plans to do some solo hiking this fall. I am sad that he won't be joining us but I can understand where his heart/head are. No fun to hike this trail if your mental game isn't on. So it is now final, I will be going 100% solo this year with Mouse Hunter. It will truly be the year of "Get'er done" and just pound out as many miles as I can physically do.Foster dog Willy update.... Willy has now gone to his Forever Home with a great couple from Illinois. He is doing very well there and they absolutely love him!!! Sweet! I was very worried about placing that boy but his departure sews up one more loose end that needed resolving before I could depart.From out of the past, I got an e-mail from Bill (see April 27, 2011) this week! He, Strider, and Caver all went hiking a few weeks back around Pearisburg, the exact location I'll be hiking this year! How cool is that! What a great trail community!!!Now, with ALL those puzzle pieces all lined up and I can finally complete my itinerary work. I have the first 1/2 of it sorted out pretty well with the remaining 1/2 in a nice outline format. Knowing now that Fat Grandma won't be joining us, I can finally plan my maildrops and complete my itinerary.Plans for the CPE Agility Nationals are coming along great. Details are getting worked and lists are getting made.Late last week, I pulled out all my hiking gear from the basement and plopped it all down in a spare bedroom upstairs. It is now time to spread it out and round up all the missing pieces that have been scattered to the far corners of the house. I know for sure I will need more dehydrated food packets, I'll need to go shopping for specific food items, and I'll need a new water bottle because my old one was broken at Thomas Knob Shelter at the top of Mt. Roger's last year. Finally, I still need those new pants and shirts.So much to finish up, so little time, only three weeks to be exact. Wow!