Friday Update

What a week!  A long holiday weekend, lots of exercise, archiving, getting drenched.  It sure was adventuresome!  LOL!

The holiday weekend had hubby and I hitting the Rail Trail here in town twice.  We decided to check it out on Saturday since it's a great place to ride without having to worry about traffic/cars.  Saturday we managed a nice 12 mile ride, starting in town, reaching just beyond the Howard Tunnel, and back.  Not too shabby!

How nice is this? The scenery is awesome and with all the shade, it's so much cooler than being out on the streets or at the park!

 Howard Tunnel - A little scary going through since there's so little light, but a really neat feature of the Rail Trail.

Saturday and Sunday we had holiday BBQs.  Had a lovely BBQ with a friend and boating in the early evening.  Then we anchored the boat and watched fireworks.  How's THAT for fun?

Monday brought us back to the Rail Trail for another ride.  This time we parked at a different station and managed 14 miles (in the same time we did 12 Saturday.  Go us!).  Had a really nice ride again.  A little stickier than Saturday, but I'm telling you, that canopy of trees really helps!  Had an enjoyable ride.

Hanover Junction Museum - Abraham Lincoln changed trains at this stop in November 1863 on his way to Gettysburg to give a speech.  ;-)

I look like such a dork!  Riding the Rail Trail.  I brought my own water bottle along since it was hot and I knew we were aiming for 6-7 miles one way.  Hanover Junction was great as I refilled my water bottle there for the return trip!

In archiving work, I finally finished off the George Washington research I had been doing and got that in the mail.  Phew!  Wednesday, I paged for the research room, which is such fun!  Basically, if you come in to do research, you look up the information you want, write it down on a call slip, then either an archivist or a volunteer goes into the big tower and gets it for you.  I spent a lot of time going up and down the tower getting boxes, maps, and books.

Pennsylvania State Archives

I also got to get back to my 1918 Influenza research.  I know I'm weird, but it's fascinating.  I'm currently looking through patient admission records through the War Department and determining how many were admitted for Influenza.  July and August had maybe 4-5 people a week.  Late September picked up with 20-25 per week.  I'm now up to October 6th and the number of patients being admitted is up to 40 a day.  I really enjoy finding information on the Influenza Epidemic.  

The weather around these parts have been HOT.  But, I have been trying to up exercise by walking more throughout the week.  I've arrived a little earlier in the mornings to the archives so I can add some miles in.  I then head out at lunch for a 15-30 minute walk, depending on how much time I have.  And then in the afternoons I try to do the same, walk a little bit more than just the half mile to my car.  In a normal week, I would walk 3 miles.  This week, with some concentrated effort, I walked just under 7.5 miles.  Not bad.  It would have been more had a deluge of rain with lightening and thunder not opened up on my head Thursday.  As I left the archives, on the advice of the National Weather Service at 3:30 p.m. rather than at 4:00 p.m., it POURED.  It was supposed to start raining until 4:00 p.m. (thanks NWS!).  I got soaked.  I suppose it wouldn't have mattered adding in that extra half a mile, but the thunder and lightening were a bit scary.  But, not bad for trying to add some miles in during the week!

And all of this comes to the lovely surprise of losing 2.8 pounds this week!  Yea!  So, since the beginning of May, I'm down 10.4.  I'm very happy with this.  I have a goal weight in mind before we hit Jamaica and I want to hit it.  I have 27 pounds to go!  23 weeks to lose 27 pounds.  This equals out to 1.16 pounds a week.  That seems manageable.  Let's up so!