Thursday, March 19, 2020

Making Due

Today is my first day feeling mostly human in nearly a week. I contracted some sort of sickness last week for the first time all winter. I had naively gotten my hopes up that perhaps I would escape this winter without sickness. Alas, I had no such luck.

While my symptoms don't lead me to believe it was COVID-19, I'll never truly know because testing for the virus in West Virginia was very difficult to come by until yesterday. In fact, after developing a mild fever of 100°F on Sunday, I called my doctor's office to see about getting tested to rule things out, and they told me they could only test me for influenza, which based on my symptoms and their onset/length I most likely did not have.

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Sunset canvas and our house's silhouette 

I had a suite of relatively-minor-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things symptoms that left me feeling just bad enough to be unable to do much of anything productive. While I am beyond thankful to have the horses home for this entire pandemic debacle, being sick myself left me in a pickle when it came to barn chores while I was down and out. I made due though, and while mucking wasn't performed with quite the regularity I normally exhibit, the horses were fed, watered, and sheltered in a more-than-adequate fashion.

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I can't remember if I ever shared this incredibly thoughtful gift to the blog. 

In the days prior to my sickness, I managed to get out and begin doing trailwork to create a some new routes on and around the mountain. With the cancellation of nearly everything I had planned outside of the area over the next two months, I anticipate I'll be racking up quite a few miles on these and other trails in the area. I've done a bit of map studying lately, too, and am cautiously optimistic that I've found a way to rack up 30-50 miles without having to trailer! How cool would that be?

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Personal paradise complete with mostly-full moon & alpenglow

While my illness sidelined me from riding much for the last week, I am still very much on track for my annual goal of riding 600 miles. As of yesterday, my current annual tally sits at a very respectable 110 miles. I've got a solid 9 days of self-quarantine ahead of me and not a lot planned, so I anticipate lots more miles in my immediate future! And hopefully some blogging, too, now that I'm feeling human again.

Hope you all are well and hanging in there during these uncertain times.

3 comments:

  1. It is no picnic being sick or injured when there are horses to care for. Ed is pretty good about pitching in but I try to do as much as I can. It's good to have priorities. they are fed, watered and picked out. sweeping may fall to the wayside as does other things. But they don't seem to notice. I hope you feel better soon.

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  2. Glad you're feeling better! And that last picture is FOR SURE absolute paradise!

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  3. Good to hear you're on the upswing and have quality trail time in the works.

    Not having any backup for farm care definitely adds to the anxiety about falling ill these days. I know I'm really feeling under the weather if I contemplate skipping mucking lol. #nopoopleftunscooped

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