Mitchell, Asheville, ice cream.

So the route of the cross country trip was sort of determined by bike routes that Jeremy wanted to do. He’s a hill climber, so the stop in Ashville was for Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi. The peak of his fitness was a couple of years ago during the pandemic when he was training a lot (sometime up to 15-20 hours a week), but this past bit of time, he’s been unable to train as much (which is good, in some non aerobic capacity building ways), so he’s not in tip top shape which, I think, is a little disappointing to him because he has the mindset of a competitive athlete. Anyways, he made my bar which is faster than twice as slow as the fastest climber, but this is below his own bar which usually is less than 50% as slow as the fastest climber. Anyways, it was a beautiful day (which was not assured a week ago according to the forecast – and is never assured because the hotels are booked and there is the day to do the climb and if it’s raining or snowing or smoggy or brutally hot, it is what is it and you have to decide if you will ride up the hill that day). I made Jeremy promise me that he wouldn’t do climbs in the brutal heat or endanger his health in any way. He also bought a satellite beacon to send me text messages if he’s in trouble outside of cell range.

Elka, back at the air b and b with Katherine, enjoyed a long walk and sunning on the sunny porch.

Jeremy is trying to keep Elka off the furniture, this is the compromise they struck.

They hung out at an Asheville dog park where Elka made friends and the humans made friends too. It’s a very friendly town apparently.

Back at home, Edda participated in the J-games on the yellow team! Team yellow rules, but came in 2nd out of 4.

I spent Saturday with Megan – we went to lunch at Founding Farmers, spent the afternoon working in parallel (she had her laptop) with Edda and after work wrapped up, we watched some youtube (fascinating channel about yellow jacket nest removal – easily an hour doing that) and then we had dinner and headed out to Carmen’s for ice cream.

A gorgeous night hanging out at the local hangout.