Some dates just accumulate a life of their own, and August 15th has apparently decided it belongs to mountains, bikes, and whatever creature happens to be sleeping next to me. Back in 2002 I was juggling Mount Snow powder with an online hockey league, because apparently even virtual ice couldn't compete with real snow for long (I'll Be Out ... Going to Mount Snow). By 2005 I'd traded skis for boots, hauling myself up Saint Joseph Peak on a sixteen mile, six thousand foot slog (Back From Saint Joseph), then paying for it with a sleepless night spent worrying about dog sitters and front page code (Cant Sleep).
2007 found me building a cyclocross bike with the reverence usually reserved for Arthurian legend (2007 Cyclocross Laundry List), and by 2009 the ambitions had mellowed into TieBo naps and brewery meetups (Mumms The Word). 2012 was distraction and single track therapy (Distracted), while 2014 gave us mushrooms on two separate occasions, one literal, one geographic (Shroomin again, Going to the park).
Then came the fat bike PR that questioned everything I thought I knew about training plans (WNA @ Wheeler Discoveries), a gallery I'll let speak for itself (NAEC Day Two), a quiet Beartooth morning with Buttons and Snuggles (Bearthooth Morning), forty two seconds of cloud watching (Eagle Creek Clouds), a technicolor van rolling through Missoula (Missoula's Technicolor Dreamcoat), and last year, a goat refusing to yield the racing line on Sheep Mountain (The Sheep Mountain Grand Prix).
Twenty three years of the same restless pull toward trails, peaks, and the occasional questionable bike purchase. Turns out August 15th never really changes, it just keeps finding new mountains to put me on.