Friday, July 15, 2011

There's a fly in my lemonade

As finished taking rest this morning, I gazed out at the blue sky and two words came to mind: Beach! Weather! I decided right then that I would ride the ferry to the island and zoom around on my bike, eat a picnic lunch, then go to the beach. I stopped at the downstairs cafe on my way out of the shala to buy a vegan muffin, then turned the corner to fetch my bike.

Something wasn't right. Some idiot had nicked the seatpost and seat! *argh* Seriously! The great irony is, these parts have NO resale value. The bike post only fits one obscure brand and model of bike - mine. My seat was the same ugly generic one that came from the factory and it was battered and torn from five years of hard use. This stuff has value only to me, but it appears that some addled drug addict in the neighbourhood didn't get the memo.

Once the thief realised his error, he probably chucked my stuff in a dumpster. *sigh* Meanwhile, I had to take public transit down to the bike shop and cough up a hundred bucks to replace it all. If I'm going to be all 'making-lemonade-with-my-lemon' about it, here's the positive spin: The new post is nicer and it wasn't that expensive. I upgraded to a *superbly* comfortable gel seat and bought a special cable to lock the whole thing to my bike. And I picked up a nifty orange 'JelliBell' for my handlebars. They gave me a 'compassion discount'. I count myself lucky that they had the part in stock and my transportation is secure. I rely on my bike to get around.

From now on, I'm carrying my bike up the stairs to the shala, though. Sheesh!

The beach was awesome! It was a *perfect* day. I couldn't spot a single cloud in the sky! The ferry took me to the far end of the island and that's where I ate my picnic lunch. It's quiet and green there. I laid under a tree reading and eating for over an hour. Then I rode my bike across the islands to the beach and spent an hour by the water. The water was perfect for swimming though a bit chilly (not that this stopped me!). I soaked up lots of sun, gazed out at the blue water and watched the boats. I took the 4:30 ferry back, came home and took a nap and now I'm killing time before my hot class at 8.

Practice was good this morning! With the combination of the moon day, Guru Purnima and Guruji's birthday, I didn't have the balls to break out an illicit Intermediate so I did Primary again, with some under-the-radar Pincha against the wall at the end of my practice, a million UD and a full closing sequence. I've worked hard at my Primary this week and I'm feeling it!

I seem to be back to where I started in my vinyasa-quest. I'm using the blocks for the whole thing, but breaking the vinyasa down into different phases and holding the floats (or trying to). During one of my first jumpthroughs, DT caught my hips on the way up and said "Hold it here!" (of course, I stayed because she was holding my hips!). One thing I've noticed since going back to the skinny blocks is my jumpthroughs are more solid now.

With all of this extra work in the vinyasas, my practice took over 2.5 hours. I didn't want to waste a single transition because it's back to Intermediate on Sunday. I know I'll be focusing on other things.

A report on my Supta Kurmasana project: Last night at vinaysa class, I arrived early and goofed around with LBH, curious to see where I could go with those poses with very little warm-up. I can do them, but it took me three tries to get a deep enough to find the fingerbind in Supta K. This was instructive! It demonstrates that a deeper LBH may be the thing that helps me get my wrist in that pose. So there may be hope after all!


The evenings have been spectacularly beautiful with rosy sunsets and the full moon. Happy Guru Purnima and Moon Day :-)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

No comments: