WEEK OF THE RACE

​Wow. What an absolutely stressful week.  I will state that this week was easily the most stressful week of my 26 years of life.  Why? Thanks to Chase Mortgage our closing date got pushed back two consecutive weeks because of their incompetency.  The bank waited until the last minute on the original close date to say they were missing paperwork, which we had already sent to them.  Fine, we had another weekend to easily move out of the apartment.  I tried to stay on top of them that next week and by golly you bet they failed miserably again.  Same story as the last time.  They said they were missing paperwork, which we sent emails proving we had provided them the paperwork a month ago…  Coming down to the wire of the rescheduled closing date and they failed to get an official closing disclosure out.  I say official because I received a CD with 3 days prior to closing date but it was a draft so it didn’t count.  This means we had to reschedule one more time.  This time it was the week of the Joe Martin Stage Race.  I had to re-organize all of the moving parts; relocation delivery, closing date and time, closing funds movement, utilities for new house, figuring out how to move out of the apartment.  All of that had to be done in 3 days, on top of working a normal 8-5 job.  Come closing day I was an absolute wreck.  I had a headache for 3 days straight and was physically vibrating from overload.  The text messages below were sent to my wife the day of the closing.  It pretty much sums up the first half of my week.

​Of course everything worked out in the end, but it is just so difficult to see that happening when you are overloaded with stress.  I kept telling myself that everything was going to work out but the stress of everything just kept overwhelming my mental pep talks.  At one point I had to do an hour of meditation to just calm down.  So that all took place from Monday to Wednesday.  Thursday was the actual move date.  There were a lot of moving parts and I was so grateful that my wife was there to help.  The original plan was for me to tackle it on my own but due to some closing issues she had to come out.  I honestly don’t know how I could have done it without her.  It would have been an absolute mess.  I finished moving and cleaning my apartment by 2pm and hit the road to Nashville.  After about an hour of driving my headache subsided and my stress levels dropped significantly.  I was stopping in Nashville to break up the 10 hour drive and to see one of my good college friends.  I got there around 4pm Central time.  Gave us plenty of time to tour the town of Franklin, TN and hit up Whole Foods for some dinner items.  What was on the menu?  Tofu Asian Stir Fry with rice noodles.  We cut up a ton of veggies, mushrooms, tofu, and mixed it all with rice noodles and a peanut sauce.  Yummmm.  I now regret not taking pictures.  I really feel like I should start taking some pictures to add some more content to these longer posts.  Either way, we (as in me) washed down the savory meal with a cheap bottle of cabernet sauvignon.  My buddy went to work and I then went to sleep.  Early to bed, early to ride.

I woke up at 0530 eager to hit the road.  It was about 7.5 hours to Fayetteville, AR.  The drive was pretty easy.  One just takes US40 to US49.  That is it.  Two highways.  I got to Fayetteville at 2pm, quickly unpacked, and went for a spin with my teammate.  We toured the Northern Fayetteville area which passes through the Tyson Chicken Headquarters.  Being a vegetarian I couldn’t say it was too amazing but business is business.  Not a place to rant about Tyson and their subpar morals.  After an easy hour spin we cleaned up and headed downtown to pick up our packets.  We did grab some grub downtown and this understaffed restaurant.  The sad thing was that the food was delicious but they seemed to only have two people working the entire restaurant.  It took 40 minutes to just get some Bruschetta!  But like I said, the food was delicious.  I had this grilled veggie sandwich that had eggplant and cauliflower on it.  We got back to the hotel room around 8pm.  We turned on the tube, pinned our numbers, did last minute equipment prep, and then off to sleepy land.  Tomorrow was going to be a big day.