So Nurse Tech Cindy wakes me up at 5 am...

.... and by 5:30 I am out the door. It's still full night and I have nothing to do until I meet my friend Tim for breakfast. I go over to the Boone Greenway for a walk. It is remarkably peaceful that early in the morning waiting for sunrise. In the mountains there is no real moment of the sun popping up but simply an increase in light. The Greenway is a paved walking/biking path along the New River Valley as it cuts through the mountains around Boone. You walk along the flat valley floor surrounded by low ridges on every side. At that hour all I could hear was a faint hum of traffic nearly drowned out by the chirping of birds and the rippling of the river. Walked all the way out to the ruins of the old electric dam power house. It looks like an old medieval keep and lends a suitably romantic air to the place.

It makes up a bit for the cement man hole emplacements for the sewer system that erupt out of the valley floor here and there. They look like turrets of old Renault battle tanks abandoned from some forgotten war amid the cow pastures.

I don't think I will see the sun come up at the Greenway again, but it was a nice way to start the day. After breakfast I went to my office and took a nap.

And another one when I got home this afternoon.