Gottfried de Purucker in 1940 in the opening chapter of his book Wind of the Spirit wrote:
“There is one thing I learned when I was a boy, and I learned it well, and it has been one of my best friends ever since. It is that I can learn from everything, and that if I allow a single day to pass without increasing my store of wisdom, without enlarging and enriching my inner life, by however small an increment, that day is a lost day in my life.”
In an effort to escape the monotonous daily commute to the work – I often run or bike into the city. This week I hatched up a way to kayak to work yes it’s not often you hear the words kayak to work and in the sense of travel time it’s not practical or time saving as I still had to drive to South Boston to launch from the beach.
The commute –
General harbor traffic make this an exciting trip, negotiating Boston Harbor waters in a small sea kayak, however, requires close attention to the two shipping channels which run northeast/southwest through its outermost northern corner – I certainly did not want to become a red speedbump for the bigger vessels. The timing was perfect in the AM I rode the incoming tides into Boston and in the PM the sun was shinning as I paddled the outgoing tide back to Castle Island/Pleasure Bay. Best commute this summer.
Ben's Extreme Adventure
Ben Stiller was once persuaded to join some friends on an extreme adventure. "I have a friend who's a triathlete," he explained, "and he said, 'Come on. Go on a night mountain biking trip with us.' We have a bike so I brought it out that night... Three of his friends were there who are sort of fucking jockey type of guys and immediately I knew I was in trouble because they started chuckling. Apparently I have a girl's mountain bike. I didn't realize... "They started putting on shin pads and elbow pads and spine guards... and I'm in the spandex... and then they started putting on these helmets, like these helmets that have miner's lights on them...
"We started going along this dirt path by the ocean and actually it was great. Like the moon was out... We're going one mile, two miles, three miles. I'm kind of getting exhausted but I'm excited that I'm part of this thing. We get to five miles and I'm like, 'All right!' We get to the top of this hill and everybody gets off their bikes. I'm like, 'Yes! This is good, we did it.' Then they start checking their gears and pulling out Powerbars and preparing. And I said, 'What's going on?' and they said, 'Well, we're at the trail head. We're ready to start.'
"And the one guy, who's fucking-serious, just looks at me and says, 'Whatever happens, don't fight the mountain.' I have no idea what it means but it scared me..."
As they started down the hill - "a 75 degree downhill" - Stiller found himself falling behind. "But this adrenaline kicked in... and I start going and I'm going good and I can hear them up ahead and I'm starting to feel it and one of them, I just hear him yell out, 'No brunch! No brunch!' And I'm like, 'All right, yeah. This is some biking term. Like, we're going so well, there's momentum happening, we're not gonna stop to eat the Powerbars.' So I'm like, 'Yeah! No brunch! No brunch!'
"So I look up and there's this three foot thick tree-trunk flying at me. And you know they say when an accident happens everything slows down and you go in slow-motion and somehow your instincts kick in and you do whatever it takes to save yourself in that moment? That didn't happen. So I slammed right into it and as I came to, they were all sort of staring at me like, 'Man, didn't you hear? Low branch! Low branch!'"
[Sources: "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" - Dec. 2004]
