I'm about halfway across Commencement Bay. It's raining hard and there's a wind of 10-15 knots steady out of the southwest. It's cold, although it gets warmer as I paddle. Trouble is, it hurts to paddle. My neck is sore, and I think I strained something in my left shoulder because I can feel a sharp pain with every rotation. It's 5:00am and I don't want to be here.
I consider myself to be a morning person but getting up before 4:00am is as much a late night as it is an early morning. It takes me a good 20 minutes to talk myself out from under the covers sometimes, lying silently in the bed as my task-oriented brain berates my warm and lazy body.
"Don't be that guy," it says loudly. "That guy who says he's going to do something and then doesn't do it. Don't be that guy."
Body makes no response.
"You are that guy!" the brain fires back. "I can't believe it. You are the guy who talks all big and then disappears. Tough guy. Jeez, I'm so ashamed to be attached to you. Don't be that guy."
Body shifts, obviously in some discomfort. Brain continues, until it finally gets its way.
That's how I got here, and it's how I figure many of my days may seem in the next few months. My body is still not convinced this is where it wants to be on this blustery morning, but it is trying.
"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." Indeed.
