Wednesday February 1st, 2017

The exercise:

Write about: the landslide.

Max has come down with Kat's cold and it hit him pretty hard today. So we generally tried to take it easy today, keeping the boys home from their usual afternoon with Kat's parents in order to avoid infecting them. We had some family painting time, which was pretty fun, and slipped in some outside time in the sunshine as well.

Our water was off for most of the day (about 11 to 6), as there was a leak in the system somewhere. Once they had it fixed they turned things on again... only to discover another leak.

We are hopeful that they are done messing about with our water, as that was rather severely inconvenient. And also gave us a new appreciation for the usual ready availability of running water.

Mine:

He had trained for years for that day. Sacrificed so dearly, both financially and personally. How many opportunities had he missed in order to pursue his one, single-minded goal? Countless.

Countless.

If you had asked him if it was all worth it, in the end? I think he would have said he would have done it all again without changing a single thing. He had no regrets. He was content in his choices, in the life he had chosen to live.

If you had asked me, on that fateful morning, if I thought he was going to win the race I would have said yes. He had put in the work. He had done all he could have to prepare for that day. He deserved to win. He'd earned it before the starter's pistol had even gone off.

So it's a shame, really, that he never got the chance to show the rest of the world just how deserving he was. But then, who could have seen that landslide on Harris Mountain coming? None of the competitors, certainly.

You could have asked any of them, I suppose... had any survived.