First off, I'm happy to report that I have ended this weekend at the fighting weight of 127 pounds even. I've been eating and sleeping almost non-stop since Friday night and if I can work some weight training into my routine it's quite possible that I could see drastic improvements in my weight and build only a few weeks.

I've managed to move my bedtime to around 11 o'clock or so, although I haven't been able to move my waking time to anything short of 12 hours after that. Tomorrow morning will begin the day with at least three alarm clocks going off, so I'm hoping I can make a running start out of it. I believe that this small improvement in my sleeping will do wonders for my work-hours concentration. Only an actual work-day (tomorrow) will tell.

Today Elissa and I went out on the NCR trail for a 15 mile ride. I narrowly avoided getting beaned by a giant branch that fell from 40 feet up to the trail, just about seven seconds before my bike and I would have been directly underneath it. Fortunately fate was on my side, and after the shock of it wore off we moved the huge limb out of the path. It wasn't easy--the thing must have weighed about 150 pounds--so we mostly just rolled it out into the brush. I was too shocked to even take a picture.

We also narrowly avoided a huge thunderstorm that arrived about a minute after we made it back to the car in the Paper Mill Road parking area at 17:30. There wasn't a bit of rain before we both closed our car doors, at which point the windsheild immediately began to spot up with huge drops. This was a mean red storm on the radar, and the rain was so thick by the time we made it back to York Road and I-83 that it was difficult to see very far in front of the windshield.

I think the best part of the ride was wading out to a small rock in the middle of some small rapids in Gunpowder Falls and watching the water and world rush by for about half an hour. I sat dangling my feet in the cool currents and skipping stones against the water flow the entire time. The day was nearly perfect for doing exactly that. If I had the foresight to pack more food and water, we might have stayed out on that rock even longer.

The trail museum and restaurant at Monkton Road were open for the season. We got some pretty damn good vegan California Wraps for lunch. Afterwards I shot some great macro insect and flower pictures outside the store and in the small garden behind the museum while we wandered around and let our food settle.

This was the picture of a delightfully relaxing day all around. I'm looking forward to more in the future.

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