My car. My bike. My body. All just vehicles.

Accordingly to the Second Law of Classical Thermodynamics everything wears out: Entropy.

With no attachments to finding my happiness based on intimate objects, people, situations, I bid farewell to my 1997 Saturn SL. It had served me well. Owing no one, I paid cash for it in 1999. The last few years, time has taken it's toll. If a car is taken care of well, it could last 17 years or 230K miles. Thinking that I could have caught some of these maladies earlier, I might have extended it's life.  Perhaps a lesson for my own health.

So, the car has served purpose other than transport; perhaps a reminder for regular maintenance, and most importantly a measure of time. Yes. My life long reflections have centered around the fallacy that we all seem to agree upon in this existence: Time. How much we have, no one knows. But as I was reminded at a friends funeral, it's what we do with that commodity. To what good use do we put it for whatever that duration may be.

During the time of the Saturn; there was Paula, Ginger, and Kerry.

1999 I remember the early morning hours of waking up in Eagle Ridge territories (Galena, IL) leaving at the break of dawn to go deliver my brother Terry's eulogy. He and I had talked about it earlier in the summer. I had asked him what the prognosis was (Laryngeal cancer). He said that he did not want to know...just to be able to wake up every day, and breathe.

2001 The Fall that I traveled through the Moab with Flyer, my beloved golden retriever, companion, hiking buddy. We drove west through Colorado, The Moab, Zion National Forest and Bryce Canyon. We spent Thanksgiving with the O'Hern clan camping in Bryce Canyon. Coning back and stopping to staying in Four Corners, then Manitou Springs, Colorado. Epic trip.

2003 Sleeping in the car with Flyer during a storm. We had gotten trapped in a muddy farm field where we were camping. The Briar Patch; a piece of land that had been converted to a informal Blue Grass festival: I remember a wind shear had kicked up and tore 95 mph winds through the area. Mike and Amy Fenders had just finished playing and I headed back to my tent. The winds knocked down trees around us an flattened my tent.

The Saturn had brought me to Fairfield.

2008 Watching the setting sun while driving ten miles south of town on Highway 1. Receiving a call from my sister to hear that our brother Mike had recently passed away.

Many trips travelling to go camping, cross-country skiing and biking along the Root River Trail  in Minnesota..

Delivered to my last Tour of the Mississippi River Valley, by complete happenstance I connected with Team Evil Wheels - a totally unplanned, eventful bike ride.

This vehicle's lifespan finished at 16 years, 189K miles and many fond memories with all the peaks and valleys that life had to offer along the way.

No attachments, just the measure of what happened during the time of it's service.

Breathe. Move on.

Ayurvedic Cycling

AVC involves using a breathing technique and a sequence of phases of activity as part of one's routine of exercise.

Along with two of my teammates, I have decided this cycling season to make an auspicious break with the way we've been cycling in past seasons by beginning to integrate Ayurvedic principles into our athletic endeavors. We've been feeling that we can use our cycling to improve our overall health and fitness, and that the way we've been cycling in the past may actually be undermining our long-term health goals.


Therefore, we intend to follow the program that John Douillard, DC, has outlined in his book "Body, Mind, and Sport." Douillard has been an elite athlete himself, competing (and placing respectably) in the famous Iron Man Triathlon in Hawaii. He has worked for years in this area of applying Ayurvedic knowledge to athletic activity, and we think his work is a good start for applying Vedic knowledge to a sport we love and enjoy so much.

For lack of a better name, we're calling what we're doing Ayurvedic Cycling (AVC). We don't think of it as the Douillard program, because he didn't invent it himself. Vedic knowledge, he's just figured a way to apply it to modern exercise and sports (for which he gets a lot of credit). His recommendations are the starting point for us.

If any of you also have an interest in culturing your physiology to bring into your cycling a level of ease and effortlessness while maintaining levels of peak performance, then you are warmly invited to follow along in this blog.


We anticipate that AVC will have a very beneficial effect on improving our overall health and longevity as we attempt to age gracefully over the next several decades. We still have specific cycling goals (such as the sub-5hr century), but mastering the process of cycling in the zone (the purpose of AVC) will be our main focus for this cycling season.




Since I'm a beginner at this, I am not going to try to teach, nor try to convince, others that this is what they should be doing. We're all on the learning curve. This is just something that I've decided to do. And, I thought tha others might also be interested, thus this posting.

Here's to a great cycling season, no matter how you ride!

Learning how to slow ones self down is the challenge - just to "be."

Learning how to slow ones self down is the challenge - just to "be."

Downtime....no such thing. Just steady a flow of energy.

This last winter, I stayed active by leading Spin classes at Open Space Studio. Additionally, I rode on Kreitler rollers that I had set up in the basement: some mornings getting up early enough to work up an appetite for breakfast. Staring at the washer and dryer grew old quickly. So, I loaded up music from Podrunner.com as well as some of my favorite bhajan music, onto my iPod.

OK. Enough with the plugs :)

Enjoy one of my favs to wake up to. Om Namah Shivaya by Khrishna Das.

The Om

Returning to ones natural state of being removes any doubts. Therefore we are able to transcend beyond ourselves.