selecting a starting state or how to serialize a machine

[Jason]

I am finding more uses for ragel all the time :-)
Now I am experimenting with using a ragel to model work flow logic.
For example, a document has an associated state, approved, rejected,
pending, etc. So I want to load the document and "post" events that
will drive the document status to new states, triggering actions
along
the way.

So the question is: How do I tell a ragel machine I want to start at
a
particular point (where it left off before)?

Do I just archive the entire machine variables (fixing up pointers of
course)?

thanks,
Jason