Finally - back on the bike

It has been a wild couple of weeks and, at least for the moment, it ended last night. We have had our house up for sale since March 17 as we decided it was time to downsize - do we really need 4/5 bedrooms, does Susan with two knee replacements really need to climb stairs etc etc. So we had an offer from a couple with three young children - sounds like a perfect match, right? Wrong, oh how wrong. They turned out to be the buyers from hell. They fought to reduce the price after the contract was written, they made every single item on the inspection a major issue, they wanted a golf ball warrenty for the dangers presented by a golf course that is roughly a quarter mile away and so on and on. After a couple weeks of this stuff I finally decided enough and our attorney wrote a wonderful little letter cancelling the deal and basically telling them to take a leap...short or long, their choice. We both slept better than we have in two weeks. Meantime we have found a house that we are very happy with. It is the next town over (Princeton Junction where I lived 20 years ago) and it is perfect. All we have to do now is find a buyer quickly in a bad market - hopefully we will not be carrying two loans for the next several months.... The good news is that we will not be moving in the middle of June as was previously planned - that has now been moved to mid to late July. And therefore I am back to considering the possibility of joining up with this year's Cross Country gang for at least a night and perhaps a day of riding. There are two of the folks from XC09 doing the last segment and I would dearly love to have a little mini-reunion. I'm thinking Erie Pa or maybe Hamburg NY at this point - both are just a few hours drive....we shall see what develops on the house front but I'm thinking I can make this happen... Meantime, after all this stress and hassle, and about 5 straight days of rain I finally got back out on the bike today. It was a perfect day - sunny but not hot, just a bit of a breeze and I even ran into Tom R about six miles out. I ended up doing 45 miles with enough hills to remind me that my legs still work and motivate me to get out again tomorrow if we get that sun back. I tallied up my totals for the year so far and was appalled. Typically I would have close to 2000 miles by now - I have a little over 600. I know that the Maine/Florida ride is still a ways off but my hope is to be so ready by then that every mile will be fun...lots of riding needed between now and then.