I hear laughter from a group of people drift out of a cracked window from the house across the street. Someone's radio is switched on to the talk station on a porch somewhere, and I can just barely catch the murmur of a man as he talks insistently about something. We did some spring cleaning: our porch is freshly swept, and Liz planted new seedlings in fresh soil in pots on the ledges. I sit on the rocking bench with a blanket to catch the last of the light before ending the day. Today Liz and I biked to the gorge and hiked down to a sandy part by the Mississippi to lie in the sun and read. While we sat there, a team of rowers rowed right by us during one of their practices as their coach shouted directions to them through her bullhorn. It was simultaneously entertaining and inspiring. Side note: A man with a blue helmet just rode by on a bicycle making howling noises like a dog. Not sure what that was about.
In the last week or so, I've been thinking a lot about physical activity and how people were created to move every day. Because Drew and I sometimes get bored with the sameness of exercise, and because we like to amuse ourselves with challenges and diversions that make it more fun, we have decided to test ourselves with something we are naming (just to make it official) 40 Days of Moving. Inspired by a camping trip, the hot weather, our declining motivation to keep up the exercise in the rising heat, and a whim, we are pushing our limits a little bit and working 40 days of hiking, biking, and running into our daily schedules.
The rules we decided on are these:
- You must either hike, bike, or run every day for the next 40 days.
- You must do one of the above for a minimum of 30 minutes each day.
- You can mix up the days (hike one day, bike the next) or you can do everything right in a row--so long as you work in 12 days of each.
- You get 1 day off a week.
- So really it's 36 days of moving, but you get the idea.
- You must take a picture of where you go each day.
- I will blog about it each day and post once a week so we can't get away with skipping.
- We haven't thought of a good penalty for skipping, so if you have one, let us know.
Easy enough right? The obstacles we think we'll run into are finding good places that are nearby with inclines to hike--because hiking is basically walking unless there are hills and the path isn't paved with cement---and for me, finding fun places to bike to. My confession is that I've never particularly enjoyed biking simply for the sake of biking. If there's a destination, then I'm in. No destination: why are we doing this? So biking, watching for traffic, all the stopping and starting, and having bugs blown in my eyes for 30 minutes sounds incessantly boring and pesky to me, but maybe at the end of this, I will actually be a fan.
If you're interested, join us! We will text you encouraging messages. If not, read about our escapades here. I'm hoping for lots of good think time, and I know that when I exercise consistently I don't feel as emotional or tired, so I'm looking forward to that also.
Well, it's officially dark now, and all the streetlights have flickered on and are glowing a comforting and foggy orange. The party across the street is definitely a surprise party because everyone just yelled "Surprise!" and a girl keeps saying "Oh my gosh, guys. Oh my gosh." Air conditioners are buzzing quietly throughout the neighborhood, and I feel tired. What a Wednesday this was.
Goodnight.