This has been my first whole week at home without traveling in a long time. I had a chance to get out and go mountain biking today, the first time of the year. It was phenomenal! I went out to Maybury State Park's Singletrack, which is about 4.5 miles. It's my new favorite trail. They lengthened it and added some really technical stuff with rock piles and tree-falls. You get a lot of speed without any really nasty uphills. I'd forgotten how much I love mountain-biking. I love the danger, the adventure, the exercise, the challange, the peace and quiet, the smell of the woods, the sweat, the speed and again, the danger of it all.

Today felt great. I think the cardio and circuit training I did for my legs this Winter paid off a little bit. I'm going biking wtih Bill and Noel tomorrow. I'll know just how out of shape I am then.

I was just in awe as I looked around me today biking. It smelled so good, looked so green, it was just beautiful. Made me wonder how heaven can be better. I got to thinking about something I'd read on the can this morning in the book Epic, by John Eldredge. He was talking about the ultimate restoration of things as referenced in Revelations 21:5 (Behold, I make all things new.) He goes on to talk about a great passage from the end of The Chronicles of Narnia, when everything was restored:

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried: "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.

I got to thinking that what I was blown away by out there in the woods was just a glimpse of what the world will be like once it's restored to it's original beauty. Wow.