I got a super powerful bicycle light (32 watts) and rode my bicycle around
the base at night, sometimes going out at midnight because of my erratic sleep patterns. This was helpful in relieving stress and the light was so powerful that the normally rude taxis on base would yield to me, thinking I was a motor vehicle. One chilly Saturday morning I did 16 laps of the base, or, 100 miles. I began doing laps on that hill next to the gym which I'd raced up so many times(photo below), after Aaron told me he did it in a minute and fifty seconds on his bicycle. I couldn't let that go unchallenged, so I tried it and was able to shave a minute off his time. It gave me something fun to break up monotonous rides--ride the base, ride the hill, rinse, repeat. I'd start at the gym crosswalk on about a 6.4% grade, accelerate as hard as I could without popping a wheelie, and usually exceed 22 miles an hour by the time I hit the tight elbow-turn that flattened out to around 4% at the halfway point, then back up to around 6.5% grade at the finish. How fun it was to pass cars uphill, even if my legs turned to spaghetti and my tongue was hanging out.Things were painful, tolerable, and my memory
was back. I remembered my cats, "my girls" whom I knew missed me. I drew
this picture of Moo in my work notebook and keep it in my wallet now.