May 2021

May 2021 brought us our first true vacation in over a year which lifted everyone’s spirits. When Carl originally threw out the idea of going to Utah, I was like “Utah?!?!?!”, but it turned out to be awesome and I’d recommend going there to anyone! It was originally planned around the use of some timeshare points as HGVC has a property in Park City. Carl did his magical vacation research and planning and an itinerary was made that included numerous state and national parks with lodging in Torrey, Moab, and Park City. There were daily hikes for the first 5 days, a stop to join in on Conquer 100 with the Iron Cowboy, and then some relaxation and wandering. Utah is a beautiful state with mountains and other rock formations as far as the eye can see. We drove about 1,000 miles total over 8 days (I drove every single one of them) and there were many car rides where you didn’t see a single house, just open land.

The trip included a stop at a random diner where you ordered your food from a phone in your booth that dialed the waitress standing about 5 feet from you. Super cheesy, but we’re all for some cheese. Thanks to Google not having the exactly correct location for one of the hikes we wanted to do, we ended up fording a river and driving on some of the scariest gravel roads I’ve ever been on. (Scary because there were tight turns on a narrow road around mountainous bends where you couldn’t really see as well as jagged rocks that you had to basically stair step the rental car down). There was a time on the drive that we thought we’d miss the trailhead for this hike and done all that treacherous driving for nothing, but thankfully we found it because it ended up being our favorite hike of the entire trip. Hilariously (I can say this now), the way we should’ve taken to get there was a lovely paved road directly to the trailhead.

While in Utah I had the realization that we’d be driving through the area where the Iron Cowboy was completing his Conquer 100 challenge and that people were allowed to join and participate. For those of you that don’t know, the Iron Cowboy (actual name James Lawrence) is an impressive human being who continues to test the limits of the human mind and body by creating all these crazy challenges for himself. The Conquer 100 was a challenge to do a full distance triathlon (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run) every day for 100 days. I’d been following James’s journey after learning about him from an old co-worker a couple years ago. The idea of joining in on any part of this newest challenge sounded incredible so Carl and I added this to our itinerary and were able to join for part of the run (which had become a walk due to James having leg issues early on in the challenge) on Day 66.

Upon returning from Utah, Carl and I both fell ill which was a bit of a bummer. I had to take the first sick day from work of my entire career and Carl ended up home on the couch a couple days later. I was down for like 5 days and Carl for 2 then finally we were better!

For our 12th wedding anniversary we spent a night hopping around downtown Charleston getting a drink and apps at a couple places (82 Queen and The Watch Rooftop) while waiting for a table to open up at 167 Raw (expected wait time: 3 hours). Great time and great food had all around. Definitely wish we could have been more hungry by the time we got a table, but the food was good regardless.

On our actual anniversary I had my first in-person triathlon in over 1 1/2 years! She Tris Hobcaw was a super neat race and it was so great to see a bunch of familiar faces again. I was curious to see how this race would go as although I had kept up with biking and running, I hadn’t really “trained” for the race specifically and had only swam a time or two leading up to it. I got 7th place overall and an age group win so I’ll call that a successful day.

For Memorial Day weekend, our friends Pete & Christen came to visit from Illinois. We spent the whole weekend catching up and showing them around which was lovely. We wandered around downtown Charleston, hit up Ship’s Wheel for some cider, tried our hand at axe throwing at The Bearded Ax (so fun!), and got some beach time in.

April 2021

April was a big month with things finally starting to feel like they were turning around as COVID vaccines became available to the general public in South Carolina. As a result our month consisted of Carl becoming fully vaccinated, me getting my first dose of the vaccine and starting to participate in some more typical life activities. We celebrated one of Carl’s co-workers (Vanessa) getting married, the 1st birthday of Prince Henry (our friends’ son), and started playing volleyball again after taking all of 2020 off. This was all much needed after both of us had been struggling with the monotony of COVID life at various times over the past several months. We even neutered 2 goats that belong to another of Carl’s co-workers and if neutering farm animals doesn’t scream normal Schmidt life, I don’t know what does, lol.

The month did go a bit awry when Roy (Carl’s dad) came to visit and ended up in the emergency room twice in one week with severe arm/neck pain. His one day visit turned into an entire week and his pain left him drugged and unable to drive himself anywhere which was an issue considering that he’d driven 16 hours here from IL so had both a van and a dog here with us. The result was Carl driving Roy and dog all the way back to IL on his day off at the end of the week. We’d previously decided we’d never be driving back to IL again after the drive to move here so this was in direct violation of the Schmidt code. Penalties still being determined. After some time in the hospital in IL, Roy’s pain is under control so that’s the good part of this story.