Twenty-Nineteen

 In celebration of the twentieth year of this blog, I have a few tales to tell. This post is one of them. This series will occur off and on throughout this anniversary year, I hope to illuminate some behind-the-scenes stories and highlights from the blog during this time. Enjoy!

I was digging through the archives and realized that it has been five years since I walked out of Europa Cycle and Ski for the last time. Well.......not exactly five years. That'll happen on December 20th, but close enough for rock and roll, right? 

So, there's a story that I haven't told that really affected things here. That was how I was on pins and needles all year of 2019 figuring out my "exit strategy" for my job at the time. I'd been there for seventeen years, so it was both gut-wrenching, anxiety inducing, and exciting all at the same time. I had to plan when I would be taking things home, like spare tools. I had some Trans Iowa artwork there that I had to go in and take down, which I tried to do when the old owner wasn't there to avoid any discourse about "what I was up to" with him. He didn't need to know anyway as he was essentially being forced to quit due to poor financial status. (I do know this as the owner foolishly told us remaining employees these things.) We knew we were going out of business at some point by the end of 2018. So, that is why this was drug out so long.

I guess it was better than thinking everything was hunky-dory and coming in and having the ax fall. Although I've experienced it that way back in 1993 as well. That's another story....

Plus, it would mark the second year in a row that I would be stepping away from something that was a mainstay in my life for well over a decade. The other thing was ending Trans Iowa in 2018. So, this two year stretch had a fair amount of "suck" going on in the background. 

2019 also marked the first and only C.O.G. 100 event. The last I ever put on.

What a lot of you don't know is that in November of 2019, just five years ago, I saw my mother for the last time. She was suffering from Alzheimer's and was in the tail end of that. She was brought into the shop by chance one of the rare days I was scheduled to work that month. I think I may have worked three days in November. Anyway, because she lived an hour away from me, it was a minor miracle that I even got to see her, although she did not know who I was. 

Then COVID hit and in 2021 she dies. So, due to that and other complications, I never got to see her again after the visit in November of 2019. It was a big blow to me, obviously, and it is why from 2019, into 2020, and afterward, you may have noted a change in tone on the blog here. Well, if you did, the experiences of 2019 had a big influence on me. Losing a job, a vocation, and your mother will do that. 

On the bright side, I was promised a bicycle mechanic job at a new shop which was to kick in on March 1st of the following year. 

And of course, we all know what happened in March of 2020.

Yeah, that was a brutal stretch. Certainly, keeping up the blog throughout all of that was not easy. I kind of hate to even report any of these previous things, but it isn't as though these things did not happen and that they did not affect me and this blog. They did. Hopefully you didn't notice......