Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where everything changes on a daily basis. It has been a wild ride the last two and a half weeks. There was loneliness, and it was crazy busy and stressful and there were tears and rage and pity parties and a whole bunch of politically charged conversations between us, the in-county staff and the far-removed out of county staff who have been doing reservations and collecting money and writing our checks, but really have no clue what has actually gone on in the county, and who are now wanting to be involved and we are not sure where we fit anymore. Since we promised to stay until new help was trained (which could take until next spring, according to the out-of-county managers, who are panicking at the thought of losing us). And then thee was just the crazy. I have concluded that people who live under the constant high stress of property management are a special breed- they are, by necessity, a little unbalanced. That is certainly us, but we are beginning to conclude it may apply to others in this company as well. B has been trying to drive truck and spread manure, a process that takes both hands, while being available to give us advice on an as-needed basis, which has him frusterated and us panicking, because we don't call him unless we really do need him, and then he is often out in some field without good cell reception or does not hear his phone ring, or is simply to preoccupied to take the call. So if you ask how we are doing, we probably won't lie and say we are doing fabulously. We will say we knew this is how it would be, and it was still more important to us that B stop the creeping of gray into his hair that wasn't there five years ago, that he remove himself from an industry that does nothing but create angry, resentful people with no trust in the goodness of humanity. After a day up here, as wonderful as it is to see each other, he is ready to leave again and go back to where the only stress is trying to get a field done before the evening thunderstorm. A day here witnessing Marci and me falling apart because in trying to do the right thing, the things we thought our absentee bosses wanted us to do, we do the exact wrong thing and have been chewed out for it and now are wondering how we are even going to manage to make it another day, let alone another eight months up here, all he wants to do is escape to where there are no crying women. By the time the phone finally stops ringing in the evenings, Marci and I find it difficult to even finish sentences, our brains are so fried.

I have not been on my bike but twice in the last two weeks. There was a ride one evening up Ptarmigan, then the race last night. I knew I was ill-prepared to race, feeling so drained from all the other distractions, but I went because I was on the roster for my race team, so if I didn't show up, there would be a zero on their points total. Even finishing DFL (Dead Freaking Last) is more points than a zero, so I went, and finding my stores of energy drained and my legs heavy after two weeks of no training, I just settled in and focused on merely trying to catch those immediately in front of me instead of the leaders. About 30 minutes into it, I suddenly realized it had been 30 minutes since I had thought about work, and it had been thirty minutes since that tight knot of worry in my stomach had somehow untied itself. I have never been so happy to have been racing. There was nothing but my ragged breath and the pounding of my heart and the squeak of my bike and the mantra that I whispered to myself with every breath. This mantra changes with every stage of every race and it helps me focus on my breathing and cadence, keeping my vo2 max in an optimum range while focusing my mind. It ranges from "What am..." (on the inhale) "I doing"(on the exhale), to "Catching her...catching her" to "Ride this...damn bike" to "I can...do this" to "stu-pid, stu-pid, stu-pid, stu-pid" (on steep climbs when my nose is over the handlebars, someone's riding my wheel and I am panting in short gasps) to nonsense syllables like "Haloodalee...haloodaloo". Yes, when I am biking, I tend to swear at myself a lot. I do not say things like that until I am yelling at myself to go faster and harder, and even then, they stay safely under my breath, my tongue just barely forming them. Last night though, the words I repeated with each breath were "This is...what I need. This is...what I need." And it was. I came in fifth, the losing a photo finish by a hair's width to the girl who is this year's enemy on the course, friend off the course. I slept soundly last night, in spite of having consumed a caffeine-laced Clif shot, and awoke in a better frame of mind than I have been in a while.

So there is your update. It's not exactly fun up here right now, but we are surviving. We think. Little things like a glass of wine and a bike race (though not in that order), a few minutes to read a book while drifting off to sleep, lunch on a sunny patio make us realize we are okay.