On Two Wheels: The Ride on Blue

There’s something about a motorcycle ride that clears the head in a way no therapist’s office ever could. Don’t get me wrong, therapy has its place, but there’s no billable hour when you’re out on Blue—my Harley, my stubborn old machine who’s been around for a while but refuses to show it. She’s older, sure, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She’s covered in chrome that still shines like she just rolled out of the showroom. The kind of shine that catches every bit of sunlight, blinding anyone foolish enough to stare too long. Blue isn’t just a bike; she’s a statement. She’s proof that old doesn’t mean tired, that years on the road don’t dull the sparkle if you know how to care for something.

Laura and I layered up before we set out, because October in New Brunswick doesn’t play nice. The air had that bite to it, the kind that slips through gloves and zippers just to remind you that summer is officially gone. I’ll be honest, I’m not much of a fall rider. The cold and I don’t get along. But still, we got on Blue, and the moment she rumbled to life, that vibration shaking through the frame into my chest, I knew it was going to be worth it.

We met up with Wendy and Carl—good friends of ours, good company on the road. Carl’s brand new to the bike life this year, and it shows in the best way possible. He’s still in that honeymoon phase where every ride feels like freedom bottled up and unleashed on the highway. He looks good on his bike too, fits him like it was made for him. His grin doesn’t leave his face the whole time—we’re talking full-on, ear-to-ear, “kid on Christmas morning” energy. Watching him brought me back to my own first rides, when every kilometer felt like you were cheating death and winning at life at the same time. I miss that feeling sometimes. Now, for me, it’s more of a trusted ritual. But seeing Carl’s excitement brought a little bit of that spark back.

The Fundy Parkway was our playground that day, and it didn’t disappoint. That stretch of road is something else—curves, climbs, and scenery that feels too big to take in. We stopped at a few lookouts, because you can’t not. You pull over, swing a leg off the bike, and walk to the edge, helmet in hand. The view hits you like a wave. Cliffs dropping into ocean, forests blazing with fall color, the coastline stretching out like it has no end. And down below, hidden in that rugged mess, is the Fundy Footpath. Treacherous, legendary, calling my name.

Looking out over it all, I caught myself imagining what it’ll be like down there on foot. Not just admiring from a safe railing, but actually grinding out those climbs, scrambling rocks, cursing roots and mud, feeling every ounce of it in my legs. The Parkway gave me the bird’s-eye preview, a trailer for a movie I already know I’ll star in.

The ride was chilly, sure. The kind of chill that makes your knuckles ache and your shoulders tense up. But it wasn’t miserable. It was one of those “good cold” days, where the sun was still out, warming your back when the wind wasn’t clawing at your jacket. And we made it back before the sun dipped down. No night riding for me—never been my thing. The light stayed with us all the way home, stretching golden across the fields as we wound our way back.

We stopped at Adair’s Lodge for supper—good old-fashioned country food. Nothing gourmet, nothing dressed up, just hearty plates that hit the spot. Meat, potatoes, maybe a piece of pie if you had room. That kind of food tastes better when you’ve got a chill in your bones and road dust on your face.

By the time we got home, the sun was sliding low but still hanging on. We parked Blue, chrome gleaming like she was showing off one last time before the season ends. Another ride in the books, probably the last long one before she gets tucked away for the winter. And as much as I’ll miss it, there’s comfort in knowing she’ll be waiting, polished and ready, when the warm weather comes back around.

Blue hasn’t let me down yet. And honestly? She looks too good to ever start now.

The Fundy Footpath: Terrain of the Mind

From the lookout points along the Fundy Parkway, the world doesn’t look real. It’s too jagged, too sprawling, too dramatic to belong to one small corner of New Brunswick. You stand there, hands on the railing, wind whipping off the bay, and it feels like someone cut a piece out of a national geographic magazine and taped it up in front of you. That coastline is raw. It’s not gentle, not forgiving, and definitely not the kind of landscape that says, “Hey, come take a nice little stroll.” No, the Fundy Footpath looks like it was designed by someone who hates comfort and enjoys watching people suffer.

And yet—I can’t wait to get on it.

The Parkway is smooth, paved, friendly in its own way. You lean into the curves, take in the views, and it’s like the province is showing you its best side. But down there, under the cliffs, hidden in the forest and rock, is the real deal. That’s where the trail snakes along the water, climbing and dropping like it’s daring you to keep up. When I looked down from the lookouts, I could trace the coastline in my head, imagining the climbs, picturing myself gasping for air on one of those ridiculous inclines, legs burning, sweat pouring into my eyes.

It’s funny how perspective works. From up top, it looks almost easy, like a board game path laid out across the landscape. You could fool yourself into thinking, Yeah, I could knock that out in a weekend, no problem. But I know better. I’ve read about it, I’ve studied it, and I’ve heard enough people curse the trail to know that what looks like a peaceful line from above is a boot-chewing, ankle-twisting beast when you’re actually on it.

And that’s the draw. That’s why it excites me. Because if it were easy, it wouldn’t mean anything. If it were just a casual walk in the woods, it wouldn’t have the same weight. The whole point of the Footpath is that it’s unforgiving. It’s meant to test you. Every rock, every root, every ridiculous climb is there to make you question why the hell you ever laced up your shoes that morning.

Driving the Parkway, I got the preview. The cliffs, the ocean smashing against the shore, the endless forest. It was like the trail was mocking me from below, whispering, See you soon, tough guy. And I swear, I smiled. Because I want that fight.

The plan, as it stands, is to take it on from Sussex to St. Martins. The opposite direction most people go. I don’t know if that makes it harder or easier, but honestly, does it matter? Hard is hard. That’s what I want. I’ll probably do a test run early next spring—get a feel for a section of it, break myself in before I commit to the whole brutal stretch. Just to see if my imagination lines up with the reality.

And here’s the thing: it’s not just about hiking. For me, the Fundy Footpath is a mental metaphor waiting to happen. That trail is life in miniature. It’s rugged, unfair, and beautiful all at once. There will be moments when I’ll want to quit, when my legs will scream and my head will say, Why bother? But there will also be moments when the forest opens up to a view that makes it all worth it. The kind of view you can’t get from a car, can’t get from a picture, can’t even explain properly when someone asks. You have to earn it.

That’s what mental miles are, after all. They’re not about the easy stretches, the flat roads, or the smooth pavement. They’re about the hard climbs, the ones that tear you down just enough to see what you’re really made of.

So when I looked out over the Fundy Footpath from the Parkway, I didn’t just see a trail. I saw a challenge, a promise, and a bit of a taunt. And I can’t wait to answer it.

Running and Recovery: The Reluctant Rest

Taking time off from running feels like betrayal. It’s like cheating on yourself. Every day you don’t lace up feels like you’re giving away a piece of the goal, letting momentum slip through your fingers. For me, the hardest part of recovery isn’t the pain—it’s the pause. Because running isn’t just exercise; it’s therapy, structure, and sanity rolled into one sweaty package. So when I actually took three full days off recently, you know my leg must’ve been screaming at me.

And it was.

The ache starts innocent enough, almost like a whisper at the beginning of a run. A tightness, a reminder. You tell yourself, Don’t worry, it’ll loosen up once you get moving. Sometimes that works, but lately, it hasn’t. By the time I hit the halfway mark, the pain builds into something sharper, running up through the shin, biting at the ankle, sometimes crawling higher like it’s testing how far it can get. It’s the kind of pain that doesn’t stop you in your tracks, but it does force you to think about every single step.

So I made the dreaded call: rest. For three days, I didn’t run. Three days of feeling like I was watching the world go by without me. And yet, I’ll admit it—it helped. When I finally laced up again, I started with small runs, five to seven kilometers. Nothing crazy. Just enough to feel the road under me without tipping into the danger zone. And at the start of those runs, my leg felt better. Not perfect, but better.

Of course, by the end of the runs, the soreness crept back in. That’s the frustrating part—you can give the body what feels like plenty of time to heal, but the moment you ask it to perform again, it reminds you who’s really in charge. Still, I take the small wins. If I can run with pain that doesn’t cross the line into injury injury, then I’ll take it.

The mental battle is worse than the physical one. Every runner knows the difference between sore and hurt, but when you’re in it, those lines blur. You start bargaining with yourself: Maybe if I change shoes. Maybe if I run slower. Maybe if I just ignore it. But ignoring it is what gets people in trouble, and the last thing I want is to wreck myself before the real training even begins.

Here’s the catch: telling myself to “take it easy” is like telling a dog not to bark at the mailman. It doesn’t compute. My default mode is to push. But this month, I’ve been trying—emphasis on trying—to throttle down. Shorter runs, slower pace, listening to my body. I say that like it’s noble, but let’s be real: it’s not out of wisdom, it’s out of necessity. My body flat-out demanded it.

The runs I have managed—those five to sevens—have been good in their own way. There’s a different rhythm to running short when you’re used to long. It’s over before you settle in, like the warm-up is the whole workout. But there’s value in that too. You appreciate the steps you do take, the moments where it doesn’t hurt, the little flickers of strength that remind you the engine is still there under the hood.

So yeah, I took time off. Yeah, I’m running shorter. And yeah, it still hurts. But the way I see it, that’s part of the process. Recovery isn’t glamorous. It’s not inspiring. It’s just necessary.

And the whole time, in the back of my mind, I’m already thinking about the next big stretch, the next training block, the next long run that’ll push me back to the edge. Because rest is fine, but running—even limping through it—feels like home.

Core Workouts and Abs of the Future

Here’s the thing: runners talk a lot about legs, shoes, and lungs, but nobody ever warns you that your stomach is about to become a war zone. Somewhere in the middle of my “take it easy” phase, I decided it was the perfect time to add core workouts. Because apparently I’m incapable of true rest. My brilliant plan? One hundred sit-ups a day. Just like that. No buildup, no gradual plan, just boom—let’s turn into Rocky Balboa overnight.

The result? My abs hate me. Or at least, whatever muscles are buried under the extra insulation I’ve been carrying hate me. Let’s be honest—right now, it’s not so much abs as it is a vague soreness somewhere between ribs and hips that reminds me every time I laugh, sneeze, or bend over to tie my shoes.

It’s funny, though, because I keep telling myself that somewhere under there are muscles just waiting to show themselves. Like a contractor waiting for the drywall crew, I keep hoping one day the project will finally be revealed. But right now? It’s just pain. Deep, constant, sharp pain that feels less like progress and more like punishment.

The thing about sit-ups is they sound simple. Everybody did them in gym class. You lay down, you crunch up, you go again. But when you’re cranking out a hundred in a row, suddenly it’s not simple. Suddenly it’s a negotiation between your brain and your body. Somewhere around number thirty-five, the questions start: Why are we doing this? Who signed off on this? Didn’t you say we were taking it easy this month? And by the time you hit eighty, you’re pretty sure you’ve made a horrible mistake.

But here’s the kicker: I’ve kept at it. Three days in a row now, one hundred sit-ups each day. And yeah, I know it’s not the “proper” way. I know form matters, pacing matters, rest days matter. I’ll sort that out later when the training plan kicks in. For now, it’s just me against the burn, one crunch at a time.

The hilarious part is how quickly this decision has changed my day-to-day life. Suddenly, coughing feels like a stab wound. Getting out of bed in the morning feels like an Olympic event. Even sneezing has turned into a nightmare scenario where I half expect to tear something vital. Laura caught me groaning just trying to pick up my socks the other morning, and I had to explain it wasn’t the run, it was the sit-ups. She shook her head and laughed, which didn’t help, because laughing makes the pain worse.

Still, there’s a part of me that enjoys it. Because pain means progress, right? That’s what they say. Somewhere deep down, past the soreness and the swearing, there’s the promise that maybe, just maybe, something good will come out of this. Maybe by the time marathon training really ramps up, I’ll have a stronger core to keep me upright in the late miles. Maybe I’ll even catch a glimpse of an ab in the mirror if the light hits just right.

For now, though? It’s all about survival. Crunch by crunch, sit-up by sit-up, I’m carving out abs of the future. They’re just on backorder.

The Work Front: FYI Doctors and the Final Push

If running teaches me patience, construction teaches me controlled chaos. And right now, at work, we’re in the thick of it—the home stretch. FYI Doctors is moving in. Today, in fact. And there’s nothing quite like that moment when a project shifts from ours to theirs. From the crews who built it to the people who will actually live and work in it. It’s a strange, electric crossover.

Walking the halls today, it hit me: this is the point where every tiny decision, every drawing, every “good enough” or “not good enough” moment we wrestled with actually shows up in the real world. It’s not just concrete and drywall anymore. It’s someone’s workplace, someone’s first impression, someone’s day-to-day life.

The final weeks of a build are always the most brutal. They look easy from the outside—“Oh, it’s just finishing touches.” But those finishing touches are hell. That’s when every trade collides, when painters are brushing trim while electricians are still installing fixtures, when flooring guys are rushing to finish before furniture arrives. It’s an orchestra with no conductor, and somehow it still has to sound like music by the time the clients walk through.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know the rhythm. The stress piles on, the decisions come fast, and every detail feels like it could make or break the job. You’d think after building four stories of structure, framing, plumbing, electrical, all the heavy stuff, that the last week wouldn’t be the hardest. But it is. Because the last week is when everything is visible. There’s no hiding behind walls anymore. If something’s wrong, it’s right in your face.

And yet—this is also the most satisfying stage. This is when the whole thing comes alive. When you walk into a space that was nothing but dirt and steel a year ago, and suddenly it’s buzzing with people, desks, equipment, and purpose. There’s pride in that. It’s messy pride, sure. I’m stressed, I’m tired, and half the time I feel like I’m just putting out fires. But when the dust settles and the lights are on, it’s worth it.

For me personally, this project marks something bigger. FYI Doctors is the last big chunk of Millennium Drive for me. The end of a long chapter. I’ve been on this site long enough to see it grow from an idea into a landmark. And now, watching people move in, it’s a strange mix of relief and excitement. Relief that we got here, that the deadlines were met, that the whole damn thing didn’t collapse under the weight of stress. Excitement because this is what I signed up for—seeing something through, from shovel in the ground to the keys handed over.

There’s a pride that comes with building something tangible. In a world where so much of life feels like smoke and mirrors, where most jobs leave you with nothing you can touch at the end of the day, construction is different. You can point at it. You can drive by with your kids and say, “See that building? I built that.” And that’s not nothing. That’s a legacy in bricks and mortar.

So yeah, it’s stressful right now. My phone doesn’t stop buzzing, my brain doesn’t stop spinning, and I probably won’t sleep right until the dust settles. But in its own way, this is another kind of mental miles. The kind that doesn’t show up in Strava, but weighs just as much.

October’s Shadow: Nineteen Years Later

October is a tough month. Always has been, always will be. For most people, it’s pumpkin spice, falling leaves, and cozy sweaters. For me, it’s a shadow. A month that drags me back to 2006 whether I want to go there or not. This year marks nineteen years since my mom’s suicide. Nineteen years—that number looks impossible on paper. Almost two decades. But the truth is, October doesn’t measure time in neat little years for me. October is a loop. Every fall, it rewinds the tape and presses play on memories I never asked to keep.

The 26th is the official date, but it’s not just that day. The whole month carries the weight. Around this time, nineteen years ago, I didn’t even know yet. I just knew my mom was missing. The uncertainty was its own kind of torment. Days stretched long, every phone call loaded with dread. And then, about a week later, the news came. She had taken her own life. And October hasn’t been the same since.

People like to say, “time heals all wounds.” I don’t buy that. Time doesn’t heal—time just teaches you how to carry the weight without dropping it every step. You learn how to function, how to laugh, how to work, how to run, all while carrying a scar you can’t show anyone. Nineteen years later, I can tell you with certainty: the wound is still there. It’s just that now I know where it sits, how it feels, and how to keep moving even when it flares up.

The weirdest part is how predictable it is. I know October will be hard. I know the air will get colder, the days will get shorter, and my mind will start to sink. It’s like seasonal depression with a personal grudge. Every year, I brace for it. I try to prepare mentally, to remind myself it’s coming. But no amount of preparation makes it easier when you’re in it. The heaviness arrives right on schedule, like an unwanted guest that won’t leave until November knocks on the door.

Some days in October, I wake up and it feels like there’s a weight on my chest before I even get out of bed. I can run, I can work, I can distract myself—but it’s still there. It’s always there. And the closer I get to the 26th, the sharper it gets. Anniversaries of loss don’t fade; they etch deeper.

And yet, here I am. Nineteen years later. I’ve built a life, a family, a career. I’ve run marathons, I’ve stood on job sites, I’ve taken motorcycle rides through landscapes my mom never got to see. And in all of that, I carry her. I carry the love, the memories, the ache, and the questions that will never have answers.

October reminds me of the darkest chapter of my life. But it also reminds me I survived it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt—it means I know I can endure. Running helps. Writing helps. Talking helps, sometimes. But mostly, it’s the passing of days. One foot in front of the other. One mile at a time.

So as October ticks by, I’ll do what I always do. I’ll lace up when I can. I’ll take the rides, the runs, the moments of laughter, and hold them tight. And I’ll wait for November. Because once November arrives, the shadow lifts just enough for me to breathe again.

Nineteen years. Feels like yesterday. Feels like a lifetime. The truth is, it feels like both at the same time.

Mental Miles: Humor, Grit, and the Wrap-Up

Life is funny in its contradictions. One week you’re flying down the Fundy Parkway on a gleaming Harley, chrome shining like it belongs in a showroom, the next you’re lying on your living room floor groaning through sit-up number eighty-seven, wondering if this is how it all ends. That’s the essence of Mental Miles. It’s not about being perfect, or even being consistent in the traditional sense. It’s about stacking all the little moments together—the rides, the runs, the sit-ups, the jobsite stress, the heavy anniversaries—and somehow finding a way forward.

Humor helps. It has to. Because without it, the weight of things like October would crush me. When I’m sore, I laugh at myself limping up the stairs like I’m twice my age. When my abs scream, I joke that they’re just abs of the future, currently under construction. And when my leg flares mid-run, I mutter to myself, “Well, at least I’m not doing burpees.”

But grit helps too. That stubborn refusal to quit, even when logic says maybe you should. It’s the same grit that makes me sign up for marathons after hitting the wall at kilometer thirty, the same grit that makes me push through final construction chaos when I’d rather disappear, the same grit that helps me face October every year and keep moving anyway.

That’s the thing about mental miles—they don’t all look the same. Sometimes they’re carved out on the road, step after step, sweat pouring down your back. Sometimes they’re earned in the silence of a garage, packing away a motorcycle for the season. Sometimes they’re found in a quiet office when the memory of nineteen years ago hits and you just breathe through it until it passes.

This week, I put in miles on Blue, miles on foot, miles in the gym, and miles in my head. None of them were perfect. All of them counted.

So here’s where I’ll leave it: the season’s shifting, the bike’s about to be tucked away, the runs are shorter, the work is stressful, and the month is heavy. But I’m still here. Still stacking the miles. Still pushing forward, laugh by laugh, step by step, crunch by crunch.

And maybe—just maybe—by the time spring comes around and Blue rolls out again, or the Footpath finally calls me down into its depths, or the training plan cranks up into full gear—I’ll be ready. Not perfect. Just ready.

Because that’s what Mental Miles are. They’re not about crossing a finish line clean. They’re about dragging yourself there messy, sore, and grinning anyway.