Life in Massachusetts

Well, we made it! After driving the 800 mile trek from Michigan to Massachusetts and choosing the hottest days of the summer for packing and unpacking a moving truck, we are finally settled in our new home. And we decided what better way to keep everyone updated than chronicling our new adventure on the East Coast in a blog!

A little over two weeks ago, the Bartletts and the Doves visited Canton to help Mike and Caroline load the 17' moving truck with all of Caroline's worldly possessions (which consisted of clothes and furniture to fill a studio apartment). Then it was off to the Bartletts to continue adding items to the moving truck, most notably, Mike's bedroom furniture. Relieving the Bartletts of this furniture from their home also transformed "Mike's Shrine" into "The Den." The next morning, Mike and Caroline left Michigan at 6:30 a.m. and headed east. Caroline drove her car while Mike drove the moving truck, speaking with an accent complimentary to its Oklahoma license plate for the majority of the trip. Around noon we stopped in New York for a picnic lunch and parked the moving truck with all of the semis. To emphasize the monstrosity that was the moving truck, please refer to the image at right.

After lunch we continued our journey, until finally reaching Amherst at 9 p.m. (in case you weren't keeping track, that's 14.5 hours...) Caroline, of course, was quite exhausted by this time and assumed that sleep was near, however Mike thought that it was the perfect time to finish packing his old apartment.

The following morning, we finished packing Mike's things into the moving truck (with a brief interlude of getting his couch stuck in the stairwell for a good half an hour), cleaned his old apartment, and around 2 p.m. headed north to the town of Sunderland. Our new lease did not start until noon the next day, but thankfully our good friends Stephanie and Melissa let us stay with them for the night (special thanks to you two!) So, on Wednesday, September 1, we were able to finally unpack our cars and moving truck and begin setting up our new place!

Since Mike and Caroline are both neat-freaks and do not like having boxes everywhere, the unpacking went relatively quickly and smoothly, and by the following Tuesday they were ready to entertain their first guest- Caroline's mom, Carol. On her drive back from vacation in Nova Scotia, Carol stopped to visit for a few days. Unfortunately, Caroline is notorious for forgetting her camera everywhere she goes, so there are no pictures to link with this visit, but a great time was had by all!

This past weekend was very busy, with new tennis shoe shopping on Saturday and water bottle toss-offs on Sunday (oh, right... someone may have raced in a 25-mile mountain bike race...) Once again, Mike and Caroline woke at the crack of dawn and headed east, but this time to Hingham, MA (near Cape Cod) for the Landmine Classic, the second largest mountain bike race in New England. The race was held deep into Wompatuck State Park. Caroline was ready (sans camera) at the start line to watch Mike and his fellow Competitive Edge teammate, Nate, begin their two hour race. Once the race began, Caroline headed, by foot, to the feed zone. A 2-mile hike later she was ready to toss off a water bottle to Mike. Soon after, Mike came around the corner, with two competitors on his tail, and opted to keep going without replenishing his water supply. No worries though because the trail looped around so the racers would have a chance to ride by the feed zone again. After what seemed like eons, Mike came riding through again, and again two competitors were right on his tail, and again, he just rode straight past Caroline. Well, Caroline knew that the 2-mile hike back would take awhile and she wanted to see Mike cross the finish line, so she started back right away.

When she reached the finish line, after hiking a total of 4 miles and without successfully completing a water bottle toss-off, Mike was already there. It didn't matter anyway though, because of course, Caroline didn't have her camera. But for the good news- Mike got 3rd place! Check out the picture of him on the podium below. It was a great way to end the mountain bike season, and get ready for the Cyclocross racing season.



This concludes our first post on the new blog. We hope you enjoyed and please feel free to leave your comments! We plan to post at least once a week, so check back often for updates.