Forecast

Yesterday, after a vigorous yoga practice using the primary series Guruji-led Ashtanga yoga DVD, I did some gardening, then rode the tandem with Mimi to a doubleheader softball game; afterwards, we pedaled a couple miles to our sponsoring bar for celebratory libations, then cycled home. In the evening, after dinner, I took a random bike ride around Capitol Hill, looking at people and things before coming home and going to bed.

This morning, I rode my bike up the hill to shop, then came home, changed clothes and bikes, and pedaled to the Vedanta Society meeting, where Swami Bhaskarananda talked, among other things, about how all the pleasures we experience are experienced through the body, which is why they’re temporary and ephemeral and why real bliss can only be found by recognizing the essential One-ness of everything.

Afterwards, I rode home and then, after moving the lawn, took another random bike ride, this time up and down Queen Anne hill twice, doing some recon for an upcoming bike race.

And the whole time, all I could think of was what’s going to happen to me when I can no longer do the things that I do. I’ve probably got only twenty or so years left (at best) when I can pedal about so much and bend myself into the various positions I’m apt to bend myself into most mornings and, with any luck, I ought to live something more like forty or even fifty years more. So, those last two decades, what am I going to do with myself? Sit on the couch and read? (Or more likely nap?) Eat? Take a few more walks?

I wonder how most of us would respond if given a choice of living an extra few years in a state of compromised health or dying quickly while we’re still feeling good. I hope I never have to decide; but I do think if I can’t ride a bike, just shoot me.