We’re here in Dover still, and still catching up on all our tasks. Before we left on our trip, we opened a new company called Traveling Roses, to reflect the changes in our lives. We are really happy because we have now managed to get our domain name changed and all the hosting issues solved with our website. It’s been an incredible learning curve. As I am writing this, Chelsea is busy updating our graphics files and all the related references on our site. She’s even hoping to have finished the updates on our Google map by the end of today.
Chelsea’s bike was damaged on the recent shipping – she got a good-sized dent on the frame, and the derailleur hangar was broken as well. We had done a fair amount of maintenance on them, but hadn’t really gone over everything yet. Mark went out last week for a mountain bike run, and we threw our bikes into the truck too, and went out for a ride. It didn’t last too long, as Chelsea’s bike started shifting all by itself, and it was just too annoying to be any fun, so we quit after only about 5 miles. It was seriously great to be out, though, as the weather has been spectacular, and we actually got to ride hills! We realized that we really haven’t ridden any hills since last year – our ride so far has been predominately flat. New Hampshire and Maine have lots of hills for us to ride, and we are really excited to get out and ride them.
Mark has been our go-to guy for the bike maintenance, but he’s been in school full-time and working part-time, so his time is pretty limited. He just finished another semester yesterday, and has taken off for a few days in Arizona, so we are here cat-sitting and continuing our projects. Mark has about a week off after he comes back, and we are going to tackle a number of projects with him – a media campaign; thorough bike maintenance and overhaul; repacking our travel gear and photographing the process; getting promo photographs of both Chelsea and Rosemary for use on the site and for media; and a fund-raising campaign. We’re getting all of our work done before he returns so we can plunge right in with the rest.
Signing off from Dover NH