Stars shining bright above you

Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"

Birds singing in the sycamore tree

Dream a little dream of me

Say "Night-ie night" and kiss me

Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me

While I'm alone and blue as can be

Dream a little dream of me

Stars fading but I linger on, dear

Still craving your kiss

I'm longing to linger till dawn, dear

Just saying this

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you

Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you

But in your dreams whatever they be

Dream a little dream of me

I am starting to learn, that even after 3 years of marriage - you can always top your best date. Yesterday, Aaron and I put 4 hours of riding, then Max Raabe and the Palaste Orchestra, and Sushi on the #1 Hit Charts of Dates! Needless to say, after such an eventful day (date) I crashed hard and was sound asleep on the couch by 8pm last night. I couldn't get Max Raabe's romantic melodies from the 20's and 30's out of my head. It was such a great ending to an eventful week of SNOW! We finally got snow that stuck to the ground for over a day. I think it was the first since October of last year.

When the snow came. I just couldn't imagine what to do for my training as 'indoors' was a foreign place to me and my trainer was somewhere buried in the basement. I searched and searched for the thing but couldn't find it, thus I resorted to the rollers for my workout. Later, Aaron went looking and found the trainer in plain sight - but in anyway I found some inspiration riding indoors by watching a documentary on art, and making art (a documentary on riding rollers) with my GoPro camera. I think you will understand by watching below, why I would opt to be outside....so much better!

Then Saturday was my 20 minute threshold test. It was raining all night so the roads were wet but just warm enough it wasn't freezing. So, being that my threshold test is very important, I knew that my best time would be outdoors, so I headed to the shop with Aaron and some friends and began my warm up. And let me tell you...that's when it surely heated up! Ask yourself, have you ever rented a movie and when you started watching it, you realized that it wasn't what you thought...or much more inappropriate that what you imagined? Well, usually when we ride the trainers, we watch something from Netflix to entertain our brains from the numbness of moving nowhere. Our friend Phil and I were on the trainer when Aaron turned on a movie, and left to go fiddle with his bike. All of a sudden the most graphic images came up with little black boxes to sensor what was going on. Phil and I looked at each other, "What did he pick out?!" I thought it must be a preview or would end soon, but no, the graphic scenes continued, "AARON!!!" I screamed for him. "WHAT IS THIS?!!" He didn't answer. This was getting awkward. I jumped off my bike and ran over to remove the video, still yelling for Aaron. I closed the screen and saw he had picked, "This Is Not Yet Rated." I shook my head, googled "Paris Roubaix" and started watching Phil Liggett from the 1980's commentate on the race. Much better.

After a good warm-up I hopped off the trainer, threw on my leggings and rain coat, packed my bike to the car and drove to Sharon to complete my effort. It was wet and cold, but I knew that I felt great. I started with slush on the roads, but there weren't any cars out so I was able to move to the center where it was much drier. I pushed hard for the first 10 minutes, took a right hand turn and kept going. Soon the nausia crept in and I realized that I was pushing my max. My legs started to feel heavy and cold from the wet roads, but I pushed on. With only 3 minutes to go, and realizing that my power was dropping, I gave it all I had and stood for a sprint finish. I felt my stomach wanting to give way, but it didn't. I rolled back to the car, dried off, and drove back to the shop for a day of greeting people and selling bikes.

Then Sunday came. Aaron and I had waited for months to go on this special date. Back in November, we had seen a PBS special on the Max Raabe concert and couldn't help to hop on the computer and buy tickets to his show, right then and there. This was our first time at the Symphony Hall and our first time dressing up (for a date) in over 18 months!! We woke up early, met our friends for a 4 hour ride, hurried home, and got ready for our big date in the city.

As I type this, I am still day-dreaming about Max Raabe. The 20's and 30's were definitely playful and romantic. Songs that were bittersweet of love and pain. I could see my old friend, Elmer Norlin, smiling down on me in approval as when I'd go over to visit him, he'd play his old CD's from that era and tell me, "Melissa, this is real music."

It sure was!