I sit here alone at the Intrigued HQ. The staff is home enjoying the holidays with their families, there is a warm glow from the single light above my desk, a completed stack of performance reviews sit in the outbox, a nice cup of peppermint white hot chocolate steams by my open laptop and the pad of paper with the end of year to-do list only has one item left unchecked – a final post for the year. Looking back, this has been quite a year. So many bright spots along with some struggles I would just soon forget. On the positive side, I am once again very proud of our posting efforts this year. A quick count shows 77 total posts for 2025 (including this one) with Brad bringing you 23 of those from his (and Jan’s) work in the field. Each of those take a significant amount of time from the captures in the field, image processing, storyline, editor review, legal review and the general administration to get them out to you – a heartfelt thank you to everyone that gets this Intrigued gear to rotate.
Then there are the tougher aspects of this year. Although the ankle break technically happened in 2024, the surgery and recovery (ongoing) took up a bulk of this year. Duration wise, this is the worst injury I’ve had to deal with in my lifetime – which is saying a lot as I have had my share of mishaps. As an update to this saga, my surgeon gave me the green light to start running on flat surfaces. He tapped the brakes on the trail running and wants me to hold off 6 weeks before that level of stress. Bittersweet on that as I already had my trail shoes sitting by the door for when I came home. Swapped those out for the pavement shoes and now have a few sloooow runs under my belt. Pain..some…endurance base..atrophied…a huge smile on my face – DEFINITELY. Still a long way to go, but it is a hard to put into words the feeling of freedom that was felt.
And that feeling of freedom is exactly what led me to pick this particular series for the last post of the year.
Hit the jump to learn more about these tropical sounding residents of south Texas.
Continue reading 2025 Comes to an End
Life Intrigued 