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Yesterday we crossed from Italy into Switzerland on foot, which is a crazy thing to say. I ate an energy bar on an international border, while staring down a valley where I could see another international border. Wild. It was a very pretty hike, but it was the first time my fear of heights kicked in. I had a panic on this one part where I had a hard time putting one foot in front of the next and moving my poles. It was something about the angle of the trail and the very steep we were on. But I pushed through and once we turned the corner up the switchback the feeling subsided. ...

We’re going to take advantage of the free bus to go for a short hike today. This way we’ll get to see some of the scenery, but not have to be out all day. Courmayeur is absolutely lovely, and our hotel here is amazing. I’ll report back again this evening.

I’m so very glad we decided to go do a shortened day hike today. The scenery was the most postcard-worthy things we have seen yet. We took the bus down, and after about 2k of solid uphill we were rewarded with the most amazing panoramic view I think I have ever seen (this shot doesn’t do it justice, the album has the pano shot I took). We had a light lunch of spec and brie sandwiches, an espresso, and a delicious piece of apple cake. ...

Day 2 started well. Generally we had our nutrition better situated and our water plan was better (definitely both could be better). Amazing views crossing the Col de Bonhomme. Once we were done with the climbing, however, we realized that we only had 45 minutes to make it to our taxi. I also misread the instructions so I thought we had less distance to where the taxi was. At some point on the descent Carrie and I decided to split up and I would try to get down as quickly as possible to hopefully catch the taxi driver and try to convince him to wait for Carrie. It was during this process I realized there were several more kilometers to go down than I had previously thought. I went hard and when I got to the taxi guy (who was still there, thank goodness) I had to use my very bad French to make sure it was our guy. He eventually smiled and told me not to worry and that he would wait for Carrie no problem. ...

I’m very excited to start hiking but I’m also pretty nervous. We’ve been planning this for so long and now we are about to just start walking to our next hotel that’s 9 miles away. Crazy… Our time in Chamonix has been great. Glad we get to come back here one more night at the end. I will hopefully figure out the Garmin links today. If not I’ll hope to get them going tomorrow.

Today was something else. The short version: we didn’t eat enough and probably didn’t have enough water. All things that can be fixed (former cyclist Taylor is judging current Taylor for making such a rookie mistake). The views were amazing, however. And honestly, I felt pretty great other than the last hour. The internet isn’t great here, so this will be text only. The hotel we are at is super cute and supper was included which was nice. ...

For those following along, we had a great couple of days in the Netherlands. 🇳🇱 We are currently traveling to Zurich to see some friends there and tomorrow we head into the Alps at Chamonix in France. 🇫🇷 Will report more once we get settled in Chamonix.

[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“4032”] Henri (the black one) and GiGi (the gray one) relax in a rare moment of snuggling that didn’t lead to fighting. We’ll miss our kitties on our trip, but they’re in good hands! [/caption] ...

I always thought to myself, “Yeah, I have goals…” But I never wrote them down, or told anybody about them, or really thought much about it. I mean, there were big things I knew I wanted to do… get married, graduate from grad school, get a job, etc. But I never really thought about it on a yearly or monthly basis, “What’s the thing that I need to be doing right now?” ...

Well, today is the last day of 2019, and it appears that I didn’t write anything here all year. It was an interesting year for various reasons. Some good, some bad. I always used to put a picture of Pierre on these posts, but unfortunately we had finally say goodbye to our little old man this year. It was tough - I had had him for 17 years. That’s 17 years of coming home and having him run up to me and say hello. That’s a long time to all of a sudden not see him. ...