I like to travel. I hate being home for too long at one time. If someone offers me a chance to go to Australia, or California, or Tucson, or frick...WHEREVER I can take my bike, I'm going to try to find a way to make it happen. It makes me feel alive. I love new places, I love new people.

I love helping people in this sport. People that I care about. I love helping my athletes.

And sometimes I help so much that I don't have any time left to help myself. Sometimes I say "Heck yea" so much that I have to drag myself home, completely exhausted and sleep for 3 days. BUT I HAD SO MUCH FUN! and I wouldn't take it back, and I would do it all over again, and I will do it all over again.

But boy do I miss my family, and boy do I feel like I'm not living up to the societal image of "MOM." That's the one thing pulling me home every time, I long for my family. If I could take Annie everywhere I would, Troy too. If we could all live like this I would never come home. And in case you were wondering, and not that me telling you is going to put the issue to bed, but my daughter is happy, and I think that the balance is okay, and I fly her to places to see me when I feel like I'm gone too long. I've always been in and out, and maybe when she grows up she will think I failed, but she will know I chased my passion and supported hers tirelessly. She will know that. She will also have lots of stamps in her passport, and will have been to Hawaii every year. So, there's that too...thank goodness for FaceTime.

There is something in me that just can't be held down. That thing in me seeks these experiences and gets tired and fed up with the day in and day out, do the same thing over and over, that life at home yields. I love my family, but I can't be held in one place for too long, I go crazy.

I'm a bird, I like to fly, and I like to help, and I like to ride my bike and run and swim in cool places. And I like to burn the candle at both ends until it's all used up and I have to got to store and buy another one.

It's just how it is for me.

You only get one life.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”

-Hunter S Thompson