So, Let Go. Jump In. Oh Well, Whatcha Waiting For?

I wrote this whole long blog post yesterday, and then it all disappeared. Sigh.

Today I'm going to write about my 2018 firsts. If you're new to this blog, I like to try and do new things every year. It's not that I think it's going to make me live longer, it's more that it will make the rest of my life more interesting and me more engaged in it. Some of my "first time" things are pretty small and some of them aren't in my control, but they are things that take me out of my routine and keep me from getting in a rut.

Here is my list of new things for 2018:

My first first was going to the Sports Column for the first time. It's a big sports bar/ restaurant in downtown Iowa City. I never went in there in the 80's because I was angry and not into the jock scene in college and as I got older, I wasn't as angry in general, but I'm still not into watching ball sports that much and hanging out with a bunch of drunken frat boys or ex-frat boys has never been all that appealing to me.

Now, though, my son-in-law works there and Coadster worked there last year and Stinky had her bridal shower there last spring. Turns out, it was just fine to hang out there and the woman working behind the bar was sweet and adorable and very good at her job. Of course, I'm sure it would all be very different there if were to drop in on a football Saturday...

Thanks to In His Image Photography for the photo.

This was my favorite new thing last year. I got to help give the bride away on Memorial Day Weekend. It was so hot that day and there were some family dramas going on, but it was a lovely ceremony and the reception was so damn much fun.

Thanks to our friends Heidi and Garry, I got to try paddle boarding for the first time on the Fourth of July. I didn't do it for very long, but it was a great work-out and I definitely want to do it again very soon.

For as often as we go to Clear Lake, last July was the first time I ever visited the crash site where Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens met their demise.

We were surprised at just how many people were out on a very warm day hiking through a cornfield to check it out.

Winter started early in Iowa and in November we had quite a bit of snow and ice for a while. The last few years I have slipped while trying to run on the ice and the older I get, the more damage that kind of stunt can do. So, this year, I gave John and old pair of running shoes and he put screws on the bottom to keep me from slipping on the snowy sidewalks when I ran. It worked like a charm. I've been told to keep an eye on them though, because when the screws wear down they can lose their grip.

In December we went to Louisville for a week. We had some great firsts there. The first first in Louisville was that I walked across a bridge into another state (Indiana) for the first time. I've ridden my bike across a bridge on the Mississippi to another state, but never walked.

We also went to our first cat cafe in Louisville. Tea and kittens. How did we not do that before?

We got to do two firsts in one adventure when we rode electric assist bikes for the first time in a cavern. I've never ridden a bike in a cave or a cavern, and it was really cool when we did.

At the very end of December we got our house reroofed and in the process, we had them install our very first sky tubes (like a sky light, but smaller and less likely to leak). Our dormer room only has one light, so the three sky tubes make a huge difference as far as giving us more natural light up there.

Thanks to Anas El Tuhami for the photo

The biggest first for 2018 was helping to start a new bike/sport team. There was some shit that went down with our old team and originally when we quit it, we thought we might just do our own thing without a team or I thought I might join a Des Moines women's team that I love, but we had some people ask us if we would want to start our own team, and so we did.

We got to pick out our own kit, which is a lot harder than I thought trying to get 12 people to decide on a design or colors. We put on a time trial series this first year that went pretty well, we got some new members by the end of the year and we're now expanding to put on another race this Summer where we race around a car racing track in Cedar Rapids. It feels so cool racing a bike on a race track.

Anyway, as you can see from the photo above, I'll be just as big a spaz on our new team as I was on the old team.

I had some pretty good firsts last year and I hope to have even better ones this year. I hope you all do fun stuff that might also scare you a little bit, so you get the most out of your lives too.