A Sad Day

It started as a very good day in our household - T got his cast off! - and we celebrated with breakfast and coffee in Stowe. Then, we came home and rallied on what is hopefully to be a stellar tag sale - we organized, priced, and prepped. We decided to cap off this day with a beer downtown, and that is where we learned the news: Dave Blumenthal did not survive yesterday's collision with a car. Our neighborhood, town, and the greater cycling community - and outdoors community at large - is devastated. With this, we are going to go outside, find something beautiful to look at, and think how lucky we are. We're lucky to have the fortunate lives we do and to have now. When we try to make sense of someones death, we both turn inwards and we look to others. For me, I'm amazed at how life works: we talked with Dave the day before he left - he was so excited - and we wouldn't have known this was the last time we would talk with him. I talked with his wife and daughter the other day in the neighborhood. I told his wife we were following his progress, and his daughter peered out of her stroller to tell me her daddy was in a big bike race; she was elated. My heart breaks for them; my heart breaks for how short life can be. And I marvel at how we will just never know what the future holds.

Tristan and I try to show that life is what you make it; we try to inspire others to enjoy the now. We are not very concerned with status symbols, resumes and titles, fancy degrees, hours logged at work, or other markers of "success" as the modern world would define it. These are not the things that matter; these are not the things that you take with you. In the memory of Dave and in the spirit of a life lived with only the next adventure in mind, I am going to solidify the importance I place on enjoying the now, in the spirit of adventure, and in loving life and what it gives you.