Day 7 of Rest

Well I guess I am being a bad boy these days. I am supposed to be resting up but I just can not sit around doing nothing. The other day, I rode 52 miles to downtown Jacksonville and today I rode 82 miles to the beach and then rode north to another beach. In all fairness the rides are without bags and all the weight of the stuff in the bags so my bike seems to fly by comparison to my fully loaded touring. My speed was usually around 20 to 21 mph today whereas while touring my usual speed was about 4 mph slower and it was much more effort to do that speed than what it takes to go 21 with no weight or wind drag. I also still need to keep in shape for the rest of my ride. I have started doing daily yoga and exercises again now too. I found out when I restarted that my long ride across the country really stiffened up the rest of my body. I was kind of shocked by how stiff I was. It is going to take me a long time to loosen up again. I need to be more diligent about stretching while touring from now on. It is difficult to ride hard all day and then put in a half hour or more of stretching and twisting to limber up. I will have to force myself to do it in the future though. My leg that I tore during my seizure a couple weeks ago is still very stiff and sore. I massaged it to try to get it looser so I hope it heals soon. I had hoped that by now it would be ok. Getting older sucks because everything heals slower now. I saw a nice snake on my ride but I am too slow on the draw for the pic. I did better on a snapping turtle I rescued from crossing A1A which is a four lane highway. He was surprisingly speedy for me to catch. He was not the least bit afraid of me. I was careful not to let him get his head too close to any part of me. His hind feet tried to scratch me but I was able to avoid them. When I placed him back on the side of the road he turned toward me and just kind of stared at me for a minute before he turned tail and ran off into the swamp again. I had to laugh at him as he took off. Then I came across a bunch of cranes hanging around a little open water in the same swampy area. I took a few pics of them but when I got home and looked at the pics they were a bit blurry. I tried to clean the lens of my camera the other day and I guess all I did was smear the dirt around. I cleaned it again after seeing the pics today. I hope I got it clean this time. It is hard to clean because the lens is behind the shutter. I also ran into a Navy chaplain today. We talked a bit about his job which is mostly dealing with a lot of stressed out marines. Then we talked about the extremely high rates of post traumatic stress syndrome in the returning soldiers these days. He was a nice guy and a bike rider to boot. Well I need to go rest now since that is my current job. Enjoy life...more later