The weekend was…a weekend.

Sure enough, it rained most of Saturday and Sunday, which the crops I see sprouting along Route 5 certainly needed, though it wrote off those days for the cycling I had so desired.

But, I got the grocery shopping done, made a killer slow-cooker pot roast, dropped into Guitar Center to grab some new cables, drank a little too much beer, and watched some mindless action movies.

In spite of the weather, though, I did get some riding in, 25 miles or so on Friday after work before the rain started, and a gorgeous 46 miler on Monday morning, which I really needed after the rainy weekend. The physical activity is good for the body, of course, but I don’t always realize how much my mental health depends on getting out in the sun, spending time with nature, and simply taking some time for me to clear my head – a couple of times this weekend, I hit that zone where it was just me and the pedals, just moving, only later noticing that I’d just plowed through five or six miles.

That feels good.

And of course, I like catching photos of trail friends, like this little black snake sunbathing on one one of the wooden bridges along the VCT:

And yes, I did more than a little rehearsing for the coming weekend, and was relieved to find that after I shook the dust off, my hands remembered how to play most of the 90 or so tunes we rotate through the Humdingers’ set list, and I loaded up the tablet songbook app with charts for the new stuff, in case of emergency.

Gonna be more of the same the next couple of days, except we need to squeeze a couple of work days in there too, as I need to ensure a couple of projects get sorted before I get to go play rock star, because that’s the way things go.