Monday Lunchtime Quarterbacking

Morning weigh-in: 174.5#, 12% BF

 

Back In The Game: The weekend turned out to be pretty nice, and of course that meant I'd be making up for lost time... I had off on Friday so I went out for a nice medium-sized road ride, basically a mashup of my old Hellertown/Williams Twp and Mud Run "benchmark" rides. Almost exactly 45 miles, and almost exactly 3 hours, not great but not bad considering the hills, headwinds, and traffic I had to deal with at various times. After the ride I met Anne at Wired; I left there to go on a towpath ride with some friends, but just as I was about to start it it started to rain, and I was tired, and radar blah blah... I made a few phone calls, killed the towpath plans, hopped in the shower and -- the sun was shining again when I got out. Oh well, no biggie except I canceled a group ride over the nonexistent rain.

 

Saturday was Raystown Lake. I was up at 5:30 AM, and driving by 6:30, met the VMB contingent at their campsite and I'd guess we (me, Doug, Bob, Rich and "wolverine" Mike) were riding by 10:00 or so. Awesome place, and the trails were very different from the type I'm used to: somewhat wider & smoother, but twisty and with a lot of up-and-down; the climbs were big but they had plenty of built-in breaks, and the downhills had plenty of opportunities to become airborne. Deceptively simple-looking stuff, aerobic and tiring at speed.

 

Mike's bike suffered a mechanical and he had to turn around, then we ran into Kevin and Mark from NJ. Mark turned out to be lightning fast, and he and Rich -- and how did he get so fast all of a sudden? -- managed to wear out the rest of us chasing them. When we got to the trail junction which was sort of our point of no return, some of us (Rich and Mark, plus Doug and Kevin a little further back) continued on, but Bob and I took the return trail. I needed lunch!

 

We got back to camp, relaxed and had something to eat, hanging out with the rest of the VMB crew (Heidi and Dawn, and Mike who was stuck with a broken bike), and then I decided I had to get in a few more miles, it was now or never so I hit the smaller (and less complete) Eastern section of trails. It was nice over there, not as nice or as finished as the first trails I saw, but I was tired so I might not have given them my all... Five more miles or so, at a very slow pace -- did I mention I was tired? -- and I was done for the day. Pack and go, and I was home by 8:00 or so, just in time for the evening's drama.

 

Back On The Boat: My plan all along was to try and get my full 120 miles in, despite only having three days (in a row) to do it this week, but when I woke up on Sunday I was all about kicking back. While Anne went to get her mom, I sat down at the computer and put in two solid hours on that MTO program. I have no idea yet if it will pay off, but I am now about down to about an hour's worth of coding before I'm finished. In terms of my map obsessions, I also made a few wrapper scripts for gpsbabel.

 

After that came Mother's Day. Anne drove her mom down for a visit, and her sister also came down, and after breakfast at Blue Sky (highly recommended) we checked out the downtown Art Fair. Some coffee at Wired, some tea and conversation at home, a pretty nice end to the weekend. Dinner was salad from the garden.

 

Tonight I'll be hitting the road.