This was a crazy, awesome weekend. First, my wife and I have been working on us, intensively, for a month. While we both remained committed to our marriage, let’s say we weren’t exactly working for happiness and peace as we could have for the last few years. No blame to either of us, we just needed to change things up. To that end, I started working with a professional last month and, along with some other means of improving my understanding of what it takes to be a better version of me, I’ve been able to make some much needed progress (think page 60 for those in the program). The difference and transformation has been intense, emotional, and difficult. And it’s been entirely worth the effort – and that effort started paying big dividends Friday. It was a breakthrough for us. Something we’ve needed for a long time now.

We had a busy day Friday, so no riding.

Saturday, my youngest had a big tennis match, so we rode early and logged 26-1/3 miles on the tandem before getting dressed and heading over to watch our girl play. That afternoon, I went golfing on an actual course for the first time in a long time, and it was good… though I was shown yet again that I’m not 40 anymore. I was sore Sunday morning. Being sore didn’t stop us from having an awesome ride on the tandem, though. We rolled out with a friend who’d been battling ailments for a month and was finally ready to give Sunday Funday a try. It went smashingly well – especially after I raised my wife and my saddles a millimeter or two (more on that in another post).

After a fantastic Sunday ride of 32-ish miles, we ate an early leftover roast beef lunch and headed out to a bike parade. After that, I texted my daughter to get ready and I headed home to take her to the driving range for the first time. I was excited, not only for having the opportunity to teach my kid to golf and pass on the torch my dad passed on to me, but to work with an empty canvas – my daughter had, until yesterday, never swung a golf club. She had no bad habits to fix!

She started out sluggish at first, as you’d expect, but as the lesson progressed, she really picked up on what she needed to… and she started striking the ball cleanly and putting exactly the right trajectory on the shot. Her first lesson couldn’t have gone better (heck, I wish I’d had that first lesson when I was a kid!). After the golf balls were all down range, we took our clubs and packed them into the car and headed home.

And my daughter has the bug. It is good.