Weekly Newsletter: August 4th-10th, 2025

This week, Keith was stuck at home on 24/7 support, Lindsey caught up with some old friends, and we celebrated our friend's 40th birthday! 🥳

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Part 10: Before and After the Camino: Amsterdam, Porto, and Paris Adventures

Keith and Lindsey were able to explore two extra cities while traveling to the Camino. They had layovers in Amsterdam and Paris! They took advantage of the time to explore these iconic cities.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Keith's new 24/7 support duties 👨‍💻 ⏰

The company Keith works for recently introduced a new "L2 Support" duty for all engineers and managers. This means that once every 6 weeks or so, Keith will be assigned the L2 Support role for his team.

During this 1-week support shift, Keith will be responsible for responding to issues that occur with the software systems his team operates. Keith must be able to acknowledge any alerts within a very short time frame which means he must be near his computer during the entire 1-week support shift. This greatly limits his ability to participate in any outdoor activities including hiking, biking, skiing, etc.

This will be a new normal that Keith will need to adjust to. For this first week, Keith decided to focus on cleaning out his office and our "gear room" (more on that in a bit). For future support shifts, Keith and Lindsey will need to plan more indoor activities to ensure that they can make the most of Keith's limited flexibility while on-call.

The annual purge (i.e. spring cleaning)! 🧹 🗑️

Since Keith was stuck at home this week, he decided to kick off our annual spring cleaning effort. Each year, Keith goes through the majority of our stuff so that we can decide what we should keep, sell, donate, or throw away/recycle. This week, Keith focused on his home office and our gear room.

Keith started his efforts with our gear room. This room had collected a vast amount of hiking, backpacking, and bikepacking gear over the years. It had also seen a unusually large influx of new gear thanks to Keith's recent ride of the 2025 Tour Divide. Keith went through a significant amount of this equipment in only a few days. He was able to sell several large/high-value items rather quickly which was a nice incentive to continue on with this cleaning effort.

Keith's home office had started to amass a lot of old paperwork, computer parts/cables, etc. Keith went through all of his cabinets and closet to purge as much as possible. Keith cleaned out several garbage bags worth of stuff that we no longer needed to keep around. Keith also listed for sale some of our old electronics and photography equipment that we no longer use. We are hopeful that this equipment will sell quickly as well.

Lindsey's lunch with friends 🍽️ 👩‍🏫

Lindsey is always excited to meet up with her standardized testing trio from Utah. The three of them met while working for the Alpine School District when we first moved to Utah. Even though none of them are still at the job, they try to get together for lunch several times a year. They enjoy catching up on each other's families and travel since the last time they met. The three of them love exploring new cities and countries, so the majority of their conversations revolve around travel!

Lindsey's solo bike ride 🚴‍♀️🔂

Lindsey set a goal for the year to ride her bike at least ten times. She only rode a couple of times last year because she was spending her time walking/training for the Camino de Santiago. She's hoping to downhill ride at Deer Valley this Fall, but feels out of practice. She was off work early on Friday, so she took a ride from our house to Utah Lake and back. Her goal right now is just to get some time on the bike so her butt and back don't hurt while in the saddle. She's hoping to ride some mountain bike trails in the next couple of weeks and rebuild those skills too.

Checking out the new Daiso store in Provo, UT 🇯🇵 🏠

Daiso is a Japanese household goods store that just opened a location in Provo, Utah. Another location opened up in Midvale, Utah, earlier this summer so it was exciting when there would be an even closer location for us. It's sometimes compared to a Japanese dollar store. Lindsey decided to wait until this week to check it out because she'd seen the long lines and a packed store on TikTok.

She went alone and took her time walking through each isle and trying to look at as many products as possible. The store was larger than she expected and had more inventory than she realized, there was a little bit of everything; beauty, cleaning, storage, decor, gardening, cooking, dishware, stationary, crafts, toys, etc. Ultimately she didn't purchase anything, but has been wanting to add to some Asian dishware she has so she's planning to return soon to pick out something new.

Celebrating a 40th birthday! 🎂 4️⃣ 0️⃣

Our friend, Brandon, turned 40 this week! We were excited to celebrate this event with him and Stephanie at Tuscany in Salt Lake City, UT. This was our second time visiting Tuscany, the first being during the Christmas holiday season.

We had a lot to catch up with them! Stephanie had recently returned from a family trip to Peru, Brandon's family had visited him in Utah, and they wanted to hear all about Keith's Tour Divide experience and Lindsey's trip with her mom. The food and atmosphere was once again amazing but it was really that time spent catching up that made the night!

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

We are finally returning to our scheduled weekly newsletters and posts! 🙌 Keith will be working on posts covering his 2025 Tour Divide experience. Lindsey will be working on posts covering her trip through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks with her mom. Subscribe to our blog so that you don't miss out.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. Summer is in full swing! How has your summer been so far? Are there any particularly memorable moments that you would like to share with us? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬