Every day I ride my bike, of course, and I’ve been gardening for years now, or more accurately lately machete-swinging my way through the property I steward so it doesn’t eat my husband alive while I’m away (and yep, after fifteen years, I let the worms go; there’s a whole story about the night they arrived in my book, Food for My Daughters). For the past year and a half or so I’ve been rollerskating and shuffledancing as well.
But there’s heavy lifting in my near future. Upper-body-strength stuff. Wheelbarrows. Farm tools. Big bags of feed. Lots of lugging (including my folding bike off and on buses) . And I’ll be the oldest person there when I exchange labor for room and board WWOOFing on eight or so organic farms across the USA for Round America with a Duck. (See current route here.)
So I’m cross-training*. Carrying kettleballs (similar to when I carried the 22-pound water jugs in training for Peace Corps Uganda). Jumping rope. Yoga before showering, and by the river, and in a geodome during my two-week WWOOF pilot test (you can read or listen to the first chapter of my book, which includes that farm stay, for free here). And lately I’ve been also doing the monkey bars.
Full disclosure: my older daughter was here several months ago and we were goofing around at her childhood school’s playground and I couldn’t do this. I made it my New Year’s Resolution. Now I can. But the day I won’t be able to do it anymore looms, and I know that every day I skip my diligence I am one day closer to it no longer being possible. A body in motion stays in motion. Use it or lose it, amirite? And so:
*
Round America with a Duck 