WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR AUGUST 2021

My husband and I "met" online, on a cycling forum, in early 2003. I had posted a question about the Paris-Brest-Paris, a 1200 km bicycle ride with a 90-hour time limit coming up later that year, in August in France, and he replied indicating he was going. That was that. We made no plans to meet or anything.

In late August 2003, on the Paris-Brest-Paris, I was walking through the last rest stop when someone called, "Machka". I wondered who would know that name, and it was him. We chatted for a little while then went our separate ways. He continued cycling and I found a table to crawl under to nap for about 10 minutes before continuing. But over the next year we got to know each other on cycling forums.

In October 2004, I went to Australia with a friend and spent 3 months cycling around Australia. My husband and I met again at the Great Southern Randonnee, another 1200 km, 90-hour cycling event, and then my friend and I stayed with my husband in Hobart for a few days. My friend and I went our separate ways after that trip, and my husband and I got to know each other better online, and through emails and phone calls.

He came to North America in 2005 and 2006, and of course we did cycling events and cycling tours together. We spent a month in Europe in 2007. I went to Australia in early 2008 for a couple weeks. Later in 2008 he was planning to come visit me again, and asked me to marry him when he got there. I said, "Yes".

There's a campground on Goldeye Lake in Alberta, just in the Rockies that I'll never forget ... we stayed there a few days before we got married! We floated on the lake in a blow-up dingy. I ended up with wicked food poisoning from a Wendy's in Edmonton the day before. A massive storm came up in the night and a bolt of lightning struck really close by ... as in practically next to the tent. I had been lying there debating about making another dash to the outhouse when this bolt from above descended!! Lit up the tent and the immediate "CRACK" had us both sitting up and hugging each other!!!

A few days later we travelled to Jasper to look around where we would get married. We chose a dock on Lake Annette as the location, and we decided to include cycling. So we cycled a century (100 miles) first, then cleaned up a bit, and were married by my cousin (then mayor of Banff), with his wife and my parents in attendance. And our bicycles.

My husband returned to Australia 10 days later, and 9 months later, I moved to Australia. During that time, I finished my Bachelor of Education ... and the area where he lived was destroyed by Australia's most devastating bushfire.

February 2009, his place, and the whole surrounding area were wiped out in the Victorian 2009 bushfires. He had set the place up in preparation for me coming, but it was all gone, and he just barely escaped himself. Drove out through the flames.

For a while, he was living in a tent trailer on the property where he worked, and I thought that might be where I would be living too ... but his employer offered us a very rustic cabin on the back of the property about 2 km from "the grid". It had, somehow, survived the bushfire. I came to Australia in June that year, and that's where I spent my first year in Australia ... living off the grid in a remote and rustic cabin!

We heated the place with a large fireplace at one end, and I learned to cook over an open fire with a dutch oven. Water came from the rain. What little electricity we used came from a generator and later solar panels.

When I was able to get a job, it was in bushfire recovery.

We lived there a year before places started opening up in a nearby town, and we found a place with luxuries like hot running water and electricity!

When the area had more or less "recovered", we were a bit burnt out, so to speak, so we popped everything into storage and did a Round-The-World trip for 8 months in 2012. Then in 2013 we moved to Tasmania where we've been since.

Unfortunately, 3.5 years ago, my husband had a workplace accident which resulted in a severe traumatic brain injury. He has made some recovery but will never fully recover. As a result of the brain injury, he suffers from cognitive issues, memory loss, disabling fatigue, loss of smell and taste, double vision, weakness in his right arm and left leg and epilepsy. Then in May, he suffered a heart attack.

So I am married to a somewhat different person from the one I married back in 2008, and I've been plunged into the world of "carer" a role I have never felt I was cut out for.

Fortunately we still love each other and we're together.



Wedding Photos:








The whole wedding album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-bb/albums/72157607097344648