Back in August, Macky and I sat down over dinner and starting going through everything we had done so far in the year. We made it to, like, February. It’s been a big, big year. And if our plans for next year come even CLOSE to fruition, 2015 will be even bigger, which means that we are in grave danger of forgetting things. What’s the point of doing awesome things if you forget them?!?!?! Eek! So, for totally selfish reasons, I’ve decided to start doing a monthly here-is-everything-we-did post. Around the same time, Macky and I decided we needed to do a vlog, because we film EVERYTHING and then never use any of our footage. So, voila, monthly wrap up and vlog. Here we go.

Where we were: Athens, Ohio, spending time with my family. Here is a handy map for locating Athens.

What we did: Rode bikes. Built a trail. Went to Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park in Cleveland, Ohio. Hung out with my family. Tortured the family dogs. Helped my family cut down and chop up a bunch of trees.

Training: (Because a surprising amount of people are curious about this) Unstructured, fun base miles. I also got my very own heart rate monitor (Thanks, POLAR!!!) and have started using Strava more than once a century — so if you’re into that sorta thing, you can follow me here. The whole heartrate monitor/strava thing might not seem like a big deal (in fact a certain segment of the population might be appalled that I WASN’T using one before), but it’s actually a huge part of the whole me-trying-to-take-myself-seriously-as-an-athlete thing.

What we ate: Turkey. Lots of turkey. Also, lots of venison. In fact, we even learned how to field dress a deer in my backyard…and by LEARNED, I mean watched someone do it without puking. Tonight, we are going to eat part of that deer. As Macky said, “it could only be more local if it had been standing on the porch.”

The Big News: We bought a home! And by home, I mean a home on wheels. Her name is Great White and she is a 1998 Ford E-250 van. You can look forward to a whole blog post all about Great White in the coming weeks, but here’s a synopsis: she’s in pretty good condition, if you can overlook the rust and the giant gaping holes in the floor. She used to belong to AT&T, so we spent the latter part of the month wrestling out the hideous and clanky utility cabinets and battling the ladder racks. We really REALLY wanted to keep the flashing light that you can see in the picture below, but unfortunately it was so rusted to the ladder rack that even a crow bar wouldn’t budge it.

And now, the moment ya’ll have been waiting for. The VLOG. This is our first stab at vlogging, and as you’re about to see, I feel super awks about it. But we had to start somewhere….Please let us know what you think!