Cornhole is so hot right now.

Jordi dragged me to a pub called The Canadian Brewhouse for a cornhole showdown. It was my first time playing (to my recollection), and I was simultaneously excellent and terrible. My beanbags either landed in the hole/halfway into the hole or missed the board entirely. Jordi’s cornholing skills were more consistent; however, I would’ve been a star of the brewhouse if it weren’t for the Men’s 200m Breaststroke finals showing on the TVs.

Only Jordi witnessed me swishing the beanbag into the cornhole. That bag shot right into the middle of the cornhole without as much as grazing the rim. To use the Washington Post’s description of Léon Marchand’s Gold medal winning swim: It was aggressive. It was audacious. It was unprecedented.

I did not earn a medal or the admiration of Jordi’s co-workers, who were all focused on chowing down the company-provided pub food. Of course, I didn’t get to indulge in any of that as I gave up alcohol five years ago, and I’ve been on an involuntary liquid diet since June 15th.

Out of everybody at Jordi’s staff party, I was the most invested in the Olympic events shown on the TV. I attempted to strike up a conversation with Jordi’s co-workers by asking them which Olympic sport they thought was the most ridiculous. I’d asked my co-workers the same question earlier in the day.

Golf and equestrians were the most common answers. That was when I gleefully introduced the sport of solo synchronized swimming to people. That is until I learned the sport was axed after the 1992 games. I tried convincing a colleague to cast a YouTube video of a solo synchronized swimming route on the TV in the bike shop’s customer service area to fool people into believing solo synchronized swimming was still a thing and the Olympics were still being filmed with a potato. He did not oblige.

Between these Olympic events, on August 1st, Jordi celebrated his birthday while I panicked over my unfinished birthday gift to him—even the cherry pie I’d planned on making him didn’t happen until the 3rd.

When I told the roomie of my kitchen plans, he remarked, “Huh, that’s a less common answer to ‘what’s your favourite pie?'”

“Says the guy whose favourite cake is carrot cake.”

Not as attractive as last year’s cherry pie:

Jordi claimed he preferred the taste of this year’s pie. I used the same recipe but snuck in some Rainier cherries and used more lemon juice.

I spent far more time perfecting the main gift, which I still need to finish. It’s a fridge magnet which took about $200 in labour hours to create. It won’t be ready for showing off for another 28 days, as that’s how long it takes for Mod Podge to cure. Jordi has seen the magnet, but you’ll be kept in suspense until it’s stuck onto Jordi’s fridge. The details are even more impressive than the latticework of last year’s cherry pie.

After Jordi’s B-Day came BC Day, which was on the 5th. To celebrate, we ditched BC and headed across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Port Angeles. This time, it was Jordi’s turn to mingle with my co-workers. Instead of cornholing, we went cycling. The original plan was to catch the 6:10 am ferry to Port Angeles and ride ~40km on the Olympic Adventure Trail to Crescent Lake. It was advertised as a chill ride for riders of varying skill levels. That was probably true for everyone but me. I made it up to the “Living Room” rest stop, where everybody fueled up on snacks. I brought four energy gels and a small insulated bottle containing kabocha squash soup, which I had saved for the lake.

Once we got rolling again, things went downhill for us all—fun times for all but me. The trail wasn’t even technical by gravel riding standards. The sections with a steep drop-off to one side of the singletrack were too much of a gamble for me. I have no inner ear balance, so when I go over rocks and roots, I lose my balance and hope for the best. Most of the time, I manage to stay clipped in. Other times, I clip one foot out to stop myself from entirely eating shit off of my bike. After the Living Room stop, the singletrack became uncomfortably narrow, which did not lend well to my delightful combination of anxiety and balance issues. I wasn’t having fun anymore: I was scared of my poor bike handling skills sending me tumbling down the drop-off.

Jordi told me I was allowed to be disappointed, but not in myself. I am holistic in my disappointment.

However, I made the right decision to turn around. When Jordi and I returned to Port Angeles, we stopped at the Black Ball Ferry terminal to check the departure times. We were an hour away from the next sailing (12:45 pm). I was hoping Jordi and I could do extra kilometres miles on the roads, but neither of us had the energy to pad in enough distance before the subsequent sailing at 5:15 pm.

While I ate my soup, Jordi grabbed the greasiest tuna melt of his life from The Rail. I still felt hungry after my soup and even more relieved that we’d turned around when we did. The soup and three remaining energy gels wouldn’t have kept me rolling for another 40km.

I’m supposed to return to Port Angeles in less than two weeks to do the Hurricane Ridge climb. My new rim is still somewhere in China and unlikely to arrive before this ride. Ideally, I’d borrow a rim brake front wheel for the day, preferably carbon, because I’m a fancy lady and already have carbon brake pad inserts on my bike. But now I am worried about my nutrition situation. I also worry I won’t be able to keep up with the pace of my usual riding buddies.

I worry.

That brings us to the final point of this jumbled post: I realize the anti-anxiety drugs I’d been taking were effective after all. The doctor who treated my injuries at the hospital the day of the accident advised me to stop taking my anti-anxiety medication while on painkillers. Now that I am out of pain to kill, I’ll be back quashing all that worry with drugs.