Where have I been this past week you ask?  Aye, the Pipes did call me to the highlands ...

From the steps of the Cairngorm Hotel in Aviemore to the shores of Loch Morhlich we have hiked the beautiful paths of the Highlands.

I am dead tired and jet lagged, but God am I smiling!

You'll hear more in the days to come of Scotland and our travels ... I promise.

... and you thought getting up at 7AM to go to work was hard, try 3:45AM to make mess by 4AM and hit the Sagamore bridge by 5AM.  Crazy, but the organizers close a lane of the bridge from 5-6AM, and as anyone around Boston knows a lane closure on the Sag. can cause multi-mile backups.  So ...

Dawn at Maritime

The bikes were waiting, cold and unimpressed by our enthusiasm; another day at the office.

Then, to the bridge.  If you have never been over the Sag it is a solid steel affair about 400 feet in the air over the Cape Cod Canal.  You are up there and can feel the wind and the cars right next to you, the sun rising in the East ... we start up the ramp.  (Note to self, look forward when riding in traffic!)

And then there we were, riding toward the crest, the Canal underneath, the Sun not quite out of bed yet.

(** Yes the crazy angle of the picture is because I'm just pointing and shooting from the Saddle **)

It is hard to enjoy the crossing even with a full lane of blacktop reserved for yourself.  Cars still scream by at 60, yup crew is still back there, Sherry, Kevin and whomever.

Coming down the backside the Sun makes an appearence, nice show.

How can you not be inspired to get your legs moving after this.

Once we dropped off of the bridge we swung around and followed the canal back to the inside of the Cape.

Dawn's early light - and cold, a bit chilly even for June!

And now I just put the camera away and hit the peddals.  It was time to ride and surprisingly I felt pretty good.  Throwing a few hundred miles of training in before this little jaunt did me well and I was, if not rested, fully fueled and pumped to go.

Next stop ... Lunch!

Of course when you are riding at 5AM Lunch is about 9.  Lunch was out in Brewster and you can tell we've covered some distance of the Cape by the change in the landscape from mainland trees to scrub pines and oak.

After lunch it was into the Wellfleet hills (yes the Cape is definitely NOT flat) and by some houses with an Ocean view.

After struggling over the Wellfleet up and downs, its the rolling mounds of Turo, and then on to P-town where the last twenty miles of the ride is guaranteed to have a 20mi./hr. headwind.  Watch out for the flying sand...

By the dunes outside of P-town. (Nice thumb!)

At the end of the ride, after a much needed shower (what no masseuse?) you can wander in to the town to see the sights;

Beaches and a town that is always a festival ... I think it was Portugese blessing of the fleet.

... and while waiting for the ferry

you can catch the harbor activity ...

Yes, there's faces painted on that boathouse ...

Unfortunatly this is not our ride ...

... and the ferry pushes off and we try not to fall asleep from exhaustion.

Well, burnt, tired and sore we head home ...

Thanks everyone who made this trip special; Holly ( www.wildsideadventuresports.com ), MS New England (http://www.msnewengland.org ) and all my crew ...

The GMG is a 150 mile charity ride from Quincy to Provincetown Mass. to benefit Multiple Sclerosis.  On June 26 and 27 myself and 1,000 other riders, having raised $1.1M in donations hit the road.  Here are some photos from that ride, many taken from the saddle ...

Mike is sooo ready for the ride ...

The Potty Peleton! Isn't that Lance up front?

In the chute ...

Only when you need it will it fail.  I had picked up the pictures of the Great Mass Getaway at lunch and was going to 'Xangafy' them when I returned home from work.  Desire and anticipation must produce a significant field strength, enough to fry my CD-ROM drive.  I arrived home, booted my home built PC.  I made the swivel in my office chair like I did a thousand times before, leaned over and pushed the button that would open the CD drive.  Nothing.  I now did what all elevator button pushers do innate understanding; the more you push the button the faster the elevator will come, relays be damned.  I pushed and pushed.  Never mind the power light was out, I knew that if somehow I could generate enough current by pushing that switch everything would be alright.  Damn.

Now frustration took over.  I built this damn thing and I can take it apart.  Not with little glee did I pull the cables and pop the cover.  I could disect this thing in my sleep.  If I found its hardwired intestines wanting I would just leave it spread out like some High School frog in biology class; cut open and pinned.

And there it sits now, waiting for me to come home tonight and test its power leads, play Frankenstein with ribbon cable and do the jumper cha-cha with its mother board.

I actually left the machine open because I was getting, well you know, a little ... cranky.  Instead of swallowing the bitter pill of home hardware troubles I put on 89.7FM, grabbed an old Lehane book, and hit the couch.  Yeah, that's it, the sounds of dark wailing jazz and a detective novel.  Maybe someone will get 'whacked' and I'll feel better.

The pictures are on the way, really.  I'm writing this while trapped in my cube at work, send Scotch and a DVD writer, quick!

The ride is done, over, that little 150 mile jaunt from Boston to that fingertip at the end of the Cape, Provincetown.  My legs aren't as bad as I thought they'd be, just some aching when I climb stairs.  I don't know if I can describe the serene exhaustion you feel when you push yourself beyond your normal physical limits.  It's like the world finally is in your hand, everything is within your grasp; time is a river you move over instead of a torrent that takes you away.

All in all it was a marvelous weekend: 1,000 riders, $1.1M in donations.  We are all compadre on this ride, sharing sweat and stories, sharing a common goal to end MS.  Very cool.

So I'm a little 'down' now, not really low but suffering from the lull that follows the post ride high; too many endorphins are not good for you.  Today I get the pictures back, some posed, many from the seat of my Cannondale - still glimpses of a rolling living event like ripples on a pond cannot be stopped or caught in real time, only imaged and imagined.

Pictures to follow ...

At 7 AM you called to say "Good morning Baby!"  The sun rose
precisely then.  The warm aurora glow of your love opens my
smiling face revealing dew drops of laughter there.

You thought you had no point, just wanting to say hello, good
morning I was thinking of you.  What thoughtless wonder,
beautiful grace, your words and deeds make ready a soft field
to lie down in; Lion and Lamb.

And I laughed and laughed - you touched me so - unexpected
soft kiss right where soul meets flesh, contract, tingle
and fly out of your skin, mind, ecstasy real in the moment.

"I just wanted to say hello!" and I wonder if I can flow back
down the phone lines to nibble at your ear with a "I love you
too!"  You say you were thinking of me.  I know.  We can't
think without thinking about the other.

And it dawns on me.  It is not the big stuff - the flowers,
gifts of Roses and Jewels but the small wonderful poignant,
impassioned, and utterly dull daily minutia that makes
it real and is the measure of us.

I wish you a great day and think of when we will be together
again; I love you too.  And smiling like a fool I sit tall and
straight knowing I am the luckiest man in the world.

Does the chatter get to you?  A million other things more interesting than this.  Waking dreams that pull you in to a reality suductive warm and sweet.  I was not young enough to be given the drug du jour to make us all keep our eyes focused on the teacher, more of the day dreamer than the hyper-active problem child.  Anyone can keep up in High School, just wake up and connect the dots but the meaning of the subject before you gets lost when you only catch every fifth sentance, if your lucky.  Then the years go by and you realize your memory of people and things are less than perfect, obfuscated by a fuzz of all that goes on between the ear lobes.  You hide behind the generic, "Do you recall?  Me, uh, sure," with no clue you hope to put the pieces together later.  Then the doubt sets in.  Can I ever recall a specific face or time.  Please don't ask!  Now the daily stage fright becomes a working principle; when asked don't answer.  Don't show the world you can't walk down the street and remember a set of directions without looking at them four or five times.  The memory is there, getting to it is a struggle with yourself as much as with the Grey Matter Jockey.  You feel stupid as hell, embarrassed ... deficient.

Have I written this before?