Last week's training

Monday 6.28 AM 1:57 ride around Quabbin Park PM 0:10 core and weights
Tuesday 6.29 AM 2:15 ride into UMASS via Shutsbury Center
Wednesday 6.30 AM 1:07 ride into UMASS PM 0:57 ride back from UMASS- saw two Moose (giant Cow and tiny calf) on Sand Hill Road
Thursday 7.1 AM 2:03 ride into UMASS via Shutsbury Center
Friday 7.2 AM 2:00 ride into UMASS via Shutsbury Center
Saturday 7.3 PM 6:30 ride from corner of 340 and 66 to near the end of Skyline Drive. Hilly the whole way. Saw a bear about two hour in (see below). I was going to ride the entire way but I stopped to eat at 10:00 pm 6:30 in and fell asleep almost instantly- woke up when only I got a text message and decided to sleep for a while.
Sunday 7.4 AM 4:15 ride from Skyline Drive to Lex via BRPW and Irish Creek starting at 5:00 am- very tired- somehow, I did not sleep well on the ground by the side of the road. ...a beautiful ride nonetheless. PM 0:30 ride easy to and from WalMart to buy a new phone (my 5+ year old one crapped out last night) and a fan for my 110 degree apartment. PM 0:10 core

Comments: A week of maintenance during a rough week of analytical work at UMASS. I got very little sleep (even less than during the semester) but it was good to get back and do some of my old rides- particularly the Quabbin and Shutsbury. I only did cycling workouts this week (though I did think about swimming in the old lake but did not quite make it) and got in a total of 21:34- not too bad except that is was mostly in two days. It was a great week for wildlife encounters with two moose in Amherst (of Shutsbury) and my second VA bear. I got dropped off at the corner of 66 and 350 (above Front Royal) with my driver's final works a joking "watch out for bears". Two hours later, I was heading down one of the many, many hills of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park when I saw two cyclists on the other side of the road- one of whom was gesticulating oddly. She was pointing to a medium-sized black bear in the ditch on my side of the road. I passed by going pretty fast (downhill) less than five feet from it! This is by far the closest that I have been to any of the five other bears that I have encountered in the wild. The pic from this week is a set of four elemental abundance maps of a disequilibrium (reaction) rim of olivine and clinopyroxene surrounding an orthopyroxene xenocryst in a porphyritic basalt from the Uinkaret Volcanic Field in the Western Grand Canyon that I made during the week at UMASS.