Total insomnia last night. Not bad, almost two weeks without reportable insomnia. Sleep hasn't always been great; there have been frequent incidents of fragile sleeplessness on both front or back-end, but not rising to insomnia. Even though that kind of sleep meant not getting a good rest and fatigue usually in the evening.

Last night, already exhausted and nodding off all night, I put on a CD with the timer set, as usual, extended the time as I continued to remain awake, and when the entire CD played, that's when it's officially insomnia. So then I put on one of my yearly mix CDs, which at least makes sleeplessness enjoyable as those songs include songs I love and never get sick of.

I might have been able to fall asleep during that CD and slept the rest of the way, making it only front-end insomnia. Except for the dream.

Upon reviewing the tracks later, I found that I did fall asleep for 2 tracks, but I remember the tracks that were playing when I went into the dream, so I was in a twilight state at that time.

There's a bit of insignificant precursor before it became The Dream. A portion that looked like a gas filling station before dawn. A portion there where I was wondering if my music was playing too loud and disturbing my non-dream neighbors here, being concerned because it looked in the dream like I was blasting the music.

Then I was in a suburban house, an offshoot or morph of the gas station, during daytime in a sparsely furnished den or family room. I was making a round of the room when I ran into some spider webs. There was a large pillow on the floor so I dropped down on it to wipe off the webs.

When I got up, I realized the pillow was quite dirty and I had all these specks in front of my face and thought I might need to jump into the shower. But I soon realized a bunch of the specks were baby spiders and looking closely at the pillow, it was covered with baby spiders.

That's when things quickly escalated and the spiders started growing in number until they were a seething swarm of frenzied spiders of all different sorts carpeting the floor. Then there were other people who I don't know, but it felt like we were renting the house together.

Someone got the idea to burn the furniture that the spiders were on and a fire was started and I yelled at them to do it outside, especially when I noticed a bunch of car tires on the pyre that was quickly becoming an inferno.

I stepped out of the room just as another housemate was arriving wondering what was going on and I encouraged him to tell the others to put the fire out and to take the fire extinguisher with him. I was pro-put out the fire, but in retrospect I realize the ONLY solution to the problem was to burn down the house. Burn it. Burn it down.

When I stepped back into the room, the fire had been extinguished but the spider problem remained. They weren't crawling over us, but they were still a seething mass and any object that had been on the floor were now riding on top of the mass as if on waves.

The spiders were aware of us, and when someone poked a stick at the mass, they reacted. There were so many it was impossible to move anything without killing them. The dream ended with me asking one of the housemates, "You know I'm afraid of spiders, right?", and him almost sarcastically answering, "Yes, I know. If there's anything I know about you, it's that".

Upon waking, my thought was, "I'll take the insomnia".

So I lay awake for several more hours, first listening to another mix CD and then a lecture on Tibetan Buddhism by Robert Thurman. Then same as last time, instead of getting up close to 9 o'clock, I tried to drift into twilight sleep and see if I could investigate dreams in that state.

At one point, I do remember in a dream thinking that I was in a dream, so that was successful from a lucid dream perspective, but the nature of the dreams became totally bizarre and hostile. It was almost as if my unconscious was testing me after realizing I was in my own dream.

I don't remember them clearly enough to relate, but enough impressions to recall that scene after scene, I found myself amidst hostile people, trying to maintain calm. Actually, as I just wrote "amidst hostile people", I remembered that is a projected experience in the Tibetan-described bardo death experience.

Not suggesting it's objective, as my subconscious could be projecting what I'd read in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I do know that in the dream I never reminded myself that this was all projections from my own mind of reality, as the book suggests training towards.

Since last Tuesday's bout of total insomnia, which turns out was a one-off, sleep has been good. Full nights sleep; although the effects of that one-off insomnia episode may have had continuing effects of fatigue during waking hours.

Then last night's sleep was interrupted by a nasty bout of back-end insomnia. Went to sleep alright but then woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

Although interesting was that at 9 o'clock, when I should have gotten up and proceeded with sitting, I continued to try to get some sleep. I couldn't quite get to sleep, but I would fade into a twilight sleep where I could dream, and the dreams were totally bizarre. My brothers figured into many of them although that's all I can remember about them.

It made me think that back-end insomnia may be an opportunity to explore that more – trying to get into that shallow dream state where I'm experiencing dreams but slightly aware that I'm not fully asleep and trying to turn it into a lucid dream.

I've been working out at the gym regularly, so it's not about physical fatigue. I should be sufficiently tired to get to sleep. But not.

Redefining a "total insomnia" night, it's not necessarily not being able to get to sleep at all, but also includes a night of both front-end and back-end insomnia. Last night I consider total insomnia.

It was more than the scare I had a couple nights ago. It manifested ultimately in a long period of time laying in bed listening to music, having turned off the sleep timer. I did eventually fall asleep, but at what point I have no idea.

Then after 6 o'clock, after two and a half, three maybe hours of sleep, I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep at all and listened to CDs in their entirety. Back-end insomnia. Both of them equal total insomnia.

Since this is the first night of insomnia for this bout, if it turns out to be a bout, I was alright after getting up. Actually I didn't do what I've said I should've done, which is once 9 o'clock comes around, get up and do morning sitting.

At 9, I still lay on my bed seeing if sleep would come and for two hours, every twenty minutes or so I would wake up from a dream, having fallen into a shallow sleep.

I'm not sure if those two hours were restful, but I ended going on a 35 mile ride and was fine, except for the heat. It was really, really hot again and by the end of the ride I was really struggling. When I got home I focused on getting my core temperature down, and accomplishing that, I was fine. The effects of insomnia are cumulative, though, so that's no surprise.

Had a front-end insomnia scare last night with difficulty getting to sleep, but then I was able to; and then a back-end insomnia scare with multiple awakenings. Ultimately, I'm declaring it was an acceptable sleep. Less than six hours, which is not great, but the ultimate symptoms of insomnia weren't present.

The weather forecast today indicated it wasn't supposed to rain. There's a typhoon that's not going to hit Taiwan, but will brush by it and I think it's affecting the atmosphere and hopefully disrupting the weather patterns of the past two months.

Anyway, I went out for a ride aiming to complete the 36-mile ride I tried on Thursday. And yes, heat was probably the main factor in failing. Today was a more reasonable Taipei summer heat and I completed it without issue.

Today was forecast to not rain, and even though the rain is supposed to return tomorrow and for the forecast future, I decided to go out on my bike just to see how it felt. I figured with going to the gym, my fitness should be pretty good and I contemplated doing two small climbs to end up in Shenkeng and stopping for stinky tofu and then either a third climb to come home for a 30 mile ride, or take the riverside bikeways home for a 40 mile ride.

Instead, I decided to do my default 32 mile bikeway ride with a 4 mile extension, which is all flat. This default ride is the one I do to check my fitness after long periods of time off bike. When I committed to start riding again at the end of last year, that's all I did for a while. It did feel good being back on my bike, but very quickly I knew I wasn't up for anything. I wasn't going 30 miles, much less with the extension. Those hills were out of the question. I settled for cutting the ride short to a 20 miler and getting home intact.

It did occur to me that even with regular workouts at the gym, none of that compares with the real thing; going out and doing something that can be considered sport. But in retrospect, I think what might have beat me down was the midday heat. It was hot and I knew it. I don't think my GPS has a temperature sensor, but the Garmin ride data includes temperature, which might come from internet sources(?), and the average temperature for the ride is 95 degrees! Significantly hotter than anything I've ridden in in recent memory. Anyway, I'll go back to my policy of riding any day the weather permits, even if it's just one day in a two week period.

I mentioned before that on high school track, my coach noted that I ran the 110m hurdles faster than the 100m sprint. At the time I actually did realize a reason for that. It was desperation. When trained for the 110m hurdles, I was taught that between each hurdle were three steps plus the landing step (or take off step depending how you look at it). So feet hit the ground four times between each hurdle. This was not easy for me. It required a vast stretch in stride to accomplish. And this is going to sound ridiculous if it even makes any sense, but the only way I could complete the race was by hearing the rhythm of that famous piece in "Carmen" in my steps. Doing hurdles for me was "bum-badum-dum/bum-badum-dum/bum-badum-dum...". And in desperation to keep that rhythm, I had to push myself which in the end decreased my time. True story.

Sleep went back to normal exactly one week ago. Every night since has been considered "good". I'm recording this as data to see if insomnia comes and goes in spells and bouts. A good night includes waking up multiple times before my goal (9 a.m. alarm) but being able to fall back to sleep. I also mention as significant that evening fatigue regularly set in, sometimes requiring short naps.

It's now July. The last ride I went on was on April 28. It pretty much rained ALL OF MAY. And then surprisingly it rained ALL OF JUNE. It's raining today.

I could probably count on one hand the number of days that were forecast not to rain and didn't rain. Not enough to establish a pattern of riding. I think I mentioned it's not worth it to get out on a one non-rainy day when thunderstorms are forecast for the next five days.

And that's why I joined World Gym on May 19. I was expecting, with my luck, that I would sign up for the gym, a two-year commitment, and then the sun would come right out. Not so.

The gym has been great. Relatively speaking; my calves are still giving me problems. I'm careful to avoid a major pull, but whenever I try to push them, they get to that point where if I keep going, it will pull and I have to ease off.

Only a few times have I managed slow 30 minute jogs, 3 miles/10 min. miles, before coming close to injury. Then I would try breaking it up and jogging 3 single miles separately, each at about 12 min. miles and just trying not to injure the calf. In fear of making the cow mad.

(Why do they call it PMS? Because "mad cow disease" was already taken)

Otherwise, I fulfill cardio on the elliptical, and do a 30-min. workout where my heartrate gets to where it does when I'm running, which is above 160 bpm. Basically go as hard as I can at any given point while gauging how much more I have to go.

I also do weights and I'm recalling all the way back to high school track how to use the machines. I haven't been in a weight room since then, and I'm surprised I still remember the basics. We didn't do weights often, only when it was raining too hard to run outside, and I don't remember really liking it. I think I would have preferred to go home rather than do weights.

I was a hurdler on high school track, 110 and 400 meter. I think I was sometimes included in 400 meter relays (4x100m), second or third runner (the slow legs), never lead or anchor, but the coach thought it was odd that I could do hurdles faster than outright sprints. Coach Krauthamer droned, "Mr. Li, your 110 hurdles time is faster than your 100 meters". Hurdles it was!

There are also punching bags, and I might get to applying college Tae Kwon Do on them if it's not too embarrassing.