The Day that Everything Changed for Cycling

In 2010, Conner and I went to our local start of the AMGEN Tour of California as we do every year.  This year it happened to be in our hometown of Visalia,CA. As we were walking around looking for the team buses, I was stopped by a ESPN Sports journalist and asked what I thought about Floyd Landis's allegations that morning? I stopped and laughed, "Oh Floyd has lied before, I don't believe him" and went on. Little did we know........

We went to the hotel where we waited to meet some of our favorite riders. I remember seeing George Hincapie on a phone call. I remember thinking he looked very upset and maybe a bit on edge, I just chalked it up to maybe his family needed him at home and he was taking care of that. He later came back and was still on the phone but signed for Conner. Little did I know what he was facing that day.

As we went through the day, we as new cycling fans had no clue that we were witnessing the beginning of something so big and far reaching. We just thought it was nothing that day. We just had started watching cycling two years before, we knew nothing of the history of drug use in the sport.

We went to wait at the Radio Shack bus. We wanted to meet Lance once again, we didn't know at the time and he was a big name. I didn't know the pictures I took that day were the beginning of the end of things for him and would have severe repercussions for other cyclists also.

I remember wondering why Dave Zabriskie wasn't himself that day? He is always so jovial but not that day.

This was the first clue something big was happening

I remember watching in awe the world descend on my small town. I went home and started reading up.

the shadow grew that day

After this day, our love of cycling grew even larger and we started becoming better fans. I started reading and researching these allegations. I started meeting other cycling fans online who started teaching me the ropes of being a cycling fan and schooling me on the doping crisis in the sport.

I read so many great articles, listened to many a debate and just observed the process for the last few years. I've met people who have lost their livelihood over this, who are friends with people directly involved and watched them battle. It has been a surreal journey at times and is nowhere near from over. The investigation of Dr.Michele Ferrari is going to be even more damaging for the sport.

I am just a fan of pro cycling, I really don't know much compared to others I know and I am still learning. This story is more for my friends who don't know anything about cycling. I get asked often what I think about everything going on in my favorite sport? These pictures have been flashing through my brain this past week and I wanted to look at them in a new light.

I am sad about pro cycling. I love the sport and will remain a fan. I want to be a part of the revolution changing the sport and still want to support the riders I love. There is also my love of cycling, I just like to ride my bike and there are so many people like my my friend Darryl who are loving the bike and doing great things as riders. There is a whole other world to cycling where good people are doing great things. We need to support them and let go of the negative.

Here are some resources for those who are interested in learning more:

Neil Browne is a great writer. He also has links to the USADA report on his site. I recommend reading the rider affidavits for a chilling view of this doping crisis: http://neilbrowne.com/

Velonews: http://velonews.competitor.com/

INRNG is one of my favorite places to read cycling commentary: http://inrng.com/

Post 700 & Practicing What I Preach

Seven years ago, I started this blog on Myspace with no idea that it would become. It's the little blog that could. It has just grown and grown beyond my wildest dreams. I started blogging because I read a blog that I loved and wanted to do what she was doing. It has been my way of grieving, processing, sharing, remembering and just being Jules. Thank you to my readers one and all, I couldn't have done it without all of you.

What would be my 700th post? A thought that has been running through my head for a few weeks while watching the number quickly approach. A funny story? A update? A long sappy thank you note? 

Last week, my cousin in law Karen sent me a message that my cousin Danny was in ICU at the hospital here in town. She needed me to go down to the hospital since no other family member could get there. I rushed to get ready and head down there. When I got there someone had finally located his daughter Danielle and she arrived at the same time. She doesn't really know me since I am 11 years older than her and our family lived far apart when she was growing up. I introduced myself as we waited to be allowed in. 

Danny was on life support and things weren't looking very good. I explained to Danielle that I was here for her and wanted to support her. Her grandmother was my grandfather's sister and someone I was very close with growing up. She was the head of our family, a great lady who was beloved by all who knew her. The family has really drifted our own ways since she has gone. Her boys have faced huge battles since she has been gone, one gone now and two facing serious health issues. I go because she loved her boys and my mother's heart compells me to love them for her.

During this past week, I have grown to know Danielle and we have bonded while sitting in the hospital at different times. I was able to share some family history and just enjoy getting to know her. I also got to see some family that I never see. It was truly a blessing in disguise.

Danny went home today, he is doing better for now but has a long road ahead of him. Our family has a horrible health history on that side. Every grown adult has faced some chronic illness of some kind as they aged. It is sad today when Danny and I were talking about how many people in our family have battled diabetes and renal failure. Just another reason for me to keep working hard at getting fit.

I write for my friend Stacy's site and last week wrote a piece titled "Support System" about being a supporter to others facing trials. This week I got to practice what I preached and it felt great.  I also have worked hard at living each day, cherishing it and seizing the moment as I promised my friend who recently passed away. I was reading some of her emails today while looking for a piece of info and read some advice she had given.

Life is short. Live each day fully, love deeply and find something to be joyful about each day!

Just Jules Features: Spirals and Spice Jewelry and a Giveaway

A couple weeks ago, I ran into a friend from church Tammy. She was telling me about her new venture on Etsy Spirals and Spice jewelry. I asked her if she would be interested in letting me do a review for her on my blog and she agreed. When I went to review her Etsy store, I was blown away by the work she does! I just thought it would be some simple beaded jewelry but I was wrong!

Spirals and Spice is hand crafted wire wrap jewelry using various stones. Her wire wrap rings are stunning and truly unique. She uses gold and sterling silver wire, wrapping it in a unique form to create a stunning setting for gemstones.

She has a large collection of rings, necklaces and earrings. I love these sea glass opal earrings in her bridal collection. They are gorgeous with the intricate and delicate spirals.

I am always looking for great gift ideas for my friends. These would make great Christmas or birthday gifts. Tammy also does large orders for bridal parties.

Tammy is going to be at the Exeter Fall Festival locally this weekend from 7 a.m to 5 p.m., the details can be found on this website

She is working to make Spirals and Spice a success. She is a hard working mom and a lovely person. 

Please go check out her website http://www.etsy.com/shop/SpiralsandSpice

Follow her on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/spiralsandspice

Like her Facebook Page:http://www.facebook.com/SpiralsandSpice

Tammy offered to make a piece of jewelry for me as a thank you for writing the blog. Since I never do blogs for that reason, I asked her if she would be willing to do a giveaway for my readers. She agreed quickly and pulled out all the stops. She sent me the pictures yesterday and I was blown away!

Tammy is giving a Light Blue Swarovski Crystal and Blue Topaz Necklace in Sterling Silver to one lucky Just Jules reader.

To win, simply leave a comment on this post. For a second entry like Spirals and Spice on Facebook. For a third entry follower her on Twitter. The contest will run until next Tuesday when a winner will be selected by a random number generator.

Goodbye Kitty Boo Boo, My Dear Friend

Two years ago, I read a story on a fiction site I frequently read at. The story was set in the San Francisco bay area, Menlo Park to be specific. I had recently been living at Stanford with Marty after his transplant in the Menlo Park area. I started messaging back and forth with the author Just4ALE on the site. We quickly struck up a friendship.

We moved that friendship over to Twitter. As you see, there is a running theme with me and Twitter. Five years ago this month, my friend Di asked me to "follow" her on Twitter. We were in some of the first 500,000 users on the site. Then I met T in Boston via Twitter and she introduced me to these writers. Being a reader, I love having free stories to read all the time. I started talking to people who read the stories and joined their community.

Fast forward to meeting ALE and the story above. We started tweeting back and forth. I loved when she would share pictures of her dogs, when she would tweet pictures of her fabulous dinners at five star restaurants and her love of 70's classic rock. I am convinced she knew every 70's rock title by heart.

She and I both loved the same kind of stories. I read through her entire favorite list and loved every single one. She was always having something kind to say, never said a bad word about anyone. She was like a big sister to me often mentoring and encouraging me. She would often tell me I was beautiful, she loved when I had my picture with a smile on Twitter. She would tell me she liked the smiles.

Last fall, she got sick. At first it seemed like the flu but it quickly went south. She was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer. She was young and healthy, it just didn't seem possible. ALE was a very private person, who didn't like attention drawn to herself. For a long time, I didn't even know her real name which I later learned was hidden in her handle.

She blessed a group of us with allowing us in and sharing her journey with us via email. Often the emails would start with song titles describing how she was feeling at the time. For the past 11 months, I have been blessed to be on the journey with ALE praying for her and supporting her from afar via email. Last Christmas she gifted us with something from Life is Good. She wore a Life is Good t-shirt almost everyday and wanted us to have something. I got a brown backpack that I use for my swimming and biking.

She was one of the people to deem me a Pollyanna. She would often say that when I would email her positive thoughts about kicking this cancer to the curb. I changed my bi-line for her a few months back. She was a faithful reader of my blog.

This summer, I tried to meet up with her while we were at Sea World but alas that week began hell for her. It wasn't meant to be, we had talked on the phone but never got the chance to meet in person. In September, she confirmed what I think many of us didn't want confirmed. We all hoped and prayed for a miracle but it wasn't meant to be.

ALE often asked us to pray that she would find a "soft place to land" a line from a poem she had shared with us last year. As this last month wore on and things got worse, we all prayed she would find her soft place.

On my birthday, she tweeted me to wish me Happy birthday. She was so selfless like that. We had once read a silly story where the main character called the other character "Kitty Boo Boo" and I had taken to calling her that as her nickname ( everyone knows I love to nickname people) so she started calling me Boo Boo Kitty. She wished me a happy birthday using that name. It turned out to be one of her very last tweets.

ALE taught me grace, humility, outlook, positivity, kindness, generousity, peace, love and joy.She handle this  disease with so much class. She stayed quiet, many didn't even know. She fought so hard all the way to the very end. I learned so much from her. After she emailed to tell us that she wouldn't find her cure, I wrote her back and told her all of those things. I am thankful to have had the chance to tell her just what she meant to me. I told her that I would live everyday the rest of my life for her and live with no regrets.

This past summer, I lived without abandon and she saw that. In many ways, I had already started living for her too. I was reading my email replies to her last night, sometimes they were short and didn't say much after I started working again and traveling. I know that she knew these things and it was okay, she was happy for me.

I am so grateful to have known ALE even for a short time. She made a difference in the lives of so many and she will be greatly missed. Goodbye my Kitty Boo Boo, rest softly.

Thank you Roberta for giving me permission to write this blog. To Mary, Michelle, Dream,Perry for being there for me and letting me talk it out while respecting ALE's privacy. Also thank you to E.L. James for comforting me last week, it meant the world to me and your story that was shared was comforting.

Finding Purpose in the Pain Contributor

Readers,

I have recently been given the opportunity to become a regular contributor at Finding Purpose in the Pain. Being able to share some of the challenging issues of my past with those who are struggling now is a huge blessing to me.

It is no secret that I have lived a challenging life at times and one of the best ways to stay positive is to look for the good in all these things. I can find the good in most anything hence the reason many people call me a Pollyanna.

I don't see these challenges as road blocks that prevent me from living, I see them as opportunities for living, learning and overcoming. I am truly thankful for all of the difficult things in my life and the ability to show others they can be overcome.

I will be making a tab to link all of my posts. I hope you not only read them but share them with others hurting in your life.

Here are my first two posts:

http://www.findingpurposeinthepain.com/2012/10/no-eye-has-seen-no-ear-has-heard.html

http://www.findingpurposeinthepain.com/2012/09/god-heals-brokenhearted.html

I am excited to be asked to be a part of this venture. Stacy is a dear friend and ministry partner. We were pioneers in  online bible studies and ministry together. We are celebrating 10 years since starting this journey. I am thankful for her role in my life and excited to be able to support her new site.

The Best Laid Plans.....

Before I even married Marty, he told me that his plans were to not live in California forever. In 2010 while waiting for transplant, he decided he wanted to move to Peachtree City,GA. We had friends there and loved the area. We planned to move as soon as he was well enough and free from Stanford.

We had a list of plans to accomplish before that move could happen. We traveled to see the area, see friends and family last fall. We loved it and couldn't wait to move. After our trip several things happened and we pushed back our move date until this coming fall. Mainly because Marty loves me so much and I had plans with friends!

After my trip to Hershey it was time to buckle down and start looking for jobs. I got home from Hershey and Marty dropped a bomb on me. He had been researching Tennessee and really thought it was a better fit for us. More value for our money in home buying, more rural areas to buy in and I have family in the state. I was floored, not very happy and kind of ticked. What about all that planning? Where were we supposed to look?    What about our friends in Georgia looking forward to us coming?

He asked me to pray about it, make a list of pro's and con's and talk to people I knew in Tennessee. So I did that and still was uneasy.  During this same time, some doors in the blogging social media world have been opening for me and it seems like a career is coming out of this. I've known this for quite some time but not quite been sure of how to make it work.

Last Tuesday morning, I was getting ready for work and prayed while I was in the shower. My two prayers were "God if social media is the  job for me? show me" and " If Tennessee is your will, open doors there and show us where to go"

I got out of the shower and immediately got a phone call regarding a blog I set up. This was on top of the work I am already doing for a friend. It is so clear I am already doing this job, I just need a way to get paid for it.

I got off work a bit early and noticed a message on my phone. It was from my high school best friend Lee aka Liviu to some of you. He lives in Knoxville,TN and wanted to talk to me about something. I called him and what happened next floored me.

He and his wife Flavia have opened a beautiful furniture store Fig and Company in Knoxville. It is taking off and doing really well. They are really needing help with their blogging and social media. When Lee saw my message he couldn't believe it! He and his wife had been praying for help in this area for the last month. They only opened the store ten weeks ago. No wonder for the sudden change.

I am very excited for this opportunity. Very excited to be able to go work with such dear friend's and especially excited because I believe in their vision for the store. I was blown away to hear these two answers to prayer in ONE day. 

Of course, my heart was anxious to break this news to all of our Georgia friends and our family in Tennessee. At least we will be closer than before and still living within driving distance. 

It's scary making this huge change. Now it is all very real and time to make it happen. We would love your prayers and good thoughts. We've been encouraged by the response we have received so far from family and friends.

We still have some things that need to happen. Our original November/December move date is still in tact. We are praying for a job for Marty, housing and the funds to make it all happen. We know that God will provide all those things if this is meant to be. We are excited for this new, grand adventure in life and can't wait to see what the future holds. We know who holds it, that's for sure!

Isaiah 55:8 "My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts," says the LORD. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.

Now be sure to go follow them on all these pages and see where I am headed.
Fig and Company website www.figandcompany.com
Fig and Company Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fig-and-Company/424483324270270
Fig and Company Twitter https://twitter.com/figandcompany

Guest Blogger: Tired of Struggling in Silence by Lori

I met Lori on Twitter ( notice a running theme with that?) when she kindly orchestrated for Andrea and I to go to Town Hall. I often call her the commander of the Blockhead army. She is truly one of the most generous and kind people I've ever met. I cannot wait for the day when I can go to Seattle and hug her in person. She has truly made a huge impact on my life in a short time. 

She privately shared with me her struggles a few months back. Today for the very first time, she is bravely sharing her story with infertility on Just Jules. Thank you for doing this for me and hopefully helping others along the way. You're truly one of a kind.

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Two years ago, my husband and I decided that it was the right time in our life to start trying to have a baby. I knew that it would likely take awhile for my body to regulate and level out after being on birth control for so many years, so I decided that we'd keep it a "secret" from most people. Part of that was knowing it might take a few months (ha, a few months!) and part was that it would be a heck of a lot more fun to surprise people with the "I'm pregnant!" news than to have everyone know and be like "okay, duh, that was news coming.", right?

 A few months went by, then some more, then a couple more, and suddenly we were at a year of trying. A year of trying means officially "infertile" by definition of most insurance companies. We both went in for testing and discovered a few problems and reasons why it hadn't happened yet. Of course, those issues are being worked on, but they take time and there is no quick bandaid fix. Every couples struggle with infertility is the result of a slightly different medical issue and every individual responds to treatments and medication slightly differently. There are about 10,000 different things that have to happen perfectly, at the right time, for a pregnancy to occur - it boggles my mind that anyone gets pregnant, let alone accidentally!

 With the fact that we were working on fixing the issues, I still decided to keep it to ourselves. It kept feeling like if I told people, we'd totally get pregnant right after that and never had to tell, right? (Kinda like washing your car and it rains the next day!) But more months went by, more friends and family were getting pregnant and resulting in more baby showers, more pregnancy announcements and baby pictures all over Facebook, and more people questioning when we were going to have our own.

 Eventually, I cracked and made a snarky comment back to a friend who suggested that we have kids so I don't have to worry about cramps/period for 9 months (hello, that's what I'd LOVE to do!) and informed her that we'd been trying for 2 years. I pretty much knew that was how the news would get out!

 So the doors flew open on our "secret" and it is quite freeing to have it out in the open. No more secrets, no more avoiding the question, no more planning the avoidance and responses to the questions before going to events that I anticipate being asked. I might have been more stressed over that than the actual process and fact that it hasn't happened yet. Infertility happens (in some form) to 1 in 8 couples. 1 in 8!!! Yet nobody talks about it. Why is there such a stigma on the topic? You can talk about it without getting into nitty gritty details of your sex life, I promise. Every time I've mentioned something about it on Twitter, I've had another friend come forward with their struggle of trying, miscarriages, failed IVF attempts, and successful happy endings. Yet while going through it, we've all felt isolated and been in so much pain.

 The more that couples who are going through it hide it, the less it gets talked about. The less it is talked about, the more awkward it is when it is talked about. When it gets talked about, people have a hard time coming up with what to say and how to react to the situation. Yes, it is hard, yes, it sucks to go through, but it doesn't mean that the couples going through it are seeking your suggestions to fix the problem ("my cousins best friends sister just stopped trying and got pregnant with twins!" is not any help, I promise!!), nor does a canned "it will happen when it is meant to be!" response. It feels like it ends up being a vicious cycle - people don't talk about it because they are embarrassed/hurt/ashamed/whatever, which leads to less people knowing the facts, which leads to less people knowing what to "say" or how to "help" the people in their lives when it does get talked about.

 Remember before that I said 1 in 8 couples struggle with some form of infertility? Think about the people in your life and the couples around you - I'm guessing you know more than 8 and I'm guessing you've heard of very few of them discussing infertility, but I promise you, it's happening.

 Lesson of this all? I'm not sure that I would have done it any differently or announced that we'd been trying any earlier, but I do know that it feels a lot better having it be public. Maybe we should have told more people close to us to avoid at least a handful of the questioning from happening, maybe not - but it definitely helps to not hide it.

 To anyone out there going through it themselves, know that you aren't alone in the struggle. Find an online support group (I'd recommend the TCOYF.com forums!) or open up to some people close to you. It has made all the difference to have a group of friends who were all going through a similar struggle as me. Even as the time has gone by and most of the friends in that group have a baby by now, they know what the struggle is and are still an amazing shoulder to lean on.

 To those of you who are out there who know of a couple going through it, just be supportive. Understand that there may be times we can't attend your kids first birthday party or the next baby shower being thrown might just be too tough to handle. Don't offer us your toddler going through the terrible two's as a consolation to another month of finding out that we haven't conceived yet. And for the love of God, don't tell us to "just relax"! Next time you are about to ask a couple when they are having kids or tell them that it is "their turn", take a step back and think about it - how old are they? how long have they been married? There is probably a reason, whether medical or they just aren't quite ready yet, and chances are, your pressuring won't make them suddenly think "Hey, I hadn't thought of that! Let's go have a baby!" Everyday there is a reminder in our daily life that we're still struggling with it and a little love, support and understanding will go a long way!

 And remember, it'll all be worth it when you see two pink lines. :)

 You can follow Lori on Twitter @BlancoDiddy