Led Zeppelin – Karen's New York Love Affair

Ran out of steam and got out of jail free

Well, it finally happened. Was Led Zeppelin my downfall? The night after my last entry, I did my post-run yoga while watching more Led Zeppelin on YouTube. Then the following night, I listened to Led Zeppelin (which I have on album and CD) while doing my post-run yoga. Interestingly, my practice has lengthened as a result of doing the restorative yoga. Listening to my body, I enjoy holding the poses longer, for more breaths, to get a fuller benefit. Or maybe it’s listening to Led Zeppelin that’s doing it; I am so into the music that I don’t want to move out of the poses! I have to say, this is one of the best albums of all time. (According to Wikipedia, in 2003 the album was ranked number 29 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.)

But last night I just couldn’t summon up the energy to do the yoga after a 10-hour day at work. I came home after dark, feeling cold, tired, and hungry. I made dinner, and went to bed, and that was it for the day. So I have now used my Get Out of Jail Free card. That means the pressure is really on now to carry on for the next 13 days. I might have to keep on with the Led Zep fest! Or maybe go back to My Yoga Online for more inspiration.

Luckily the Vancouver Yoga Conference is coming up next weekend, November 4-6, for additional inspiration. I have a free pass from YogaBC, and there’s lots of free workshops and classes to attend. I saw on the Georgia Straight website today that you can get a free pass too (go to the Movie Listings area). This is a $15 value, to get into the conference any and all of the three days.

Thanks to my friends and family who have pledged 50 cents or a dollar or even two dollars a day for the 30-day Reach Out Challenge. The total pledges is now at $285 dollars! Almost at my goal of $300. If you haven’t done so and would like to sponsor me to raise money for Yoga Outreach, you can use the online donation link. Or phone me at 604.251.6337 or send an email to kyrempel [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks!

Led Zeppelin carried me through

After my last entry, I was so enlivened by listening to Led Zeppelin while I wrote the blog post that I continued on to do a 40-minute practice while listening to more Led Zeppelin! So I didn’t need to use my Get Out of Jail Free card or car yoga excuse after all. I set up my mat facing the screen, as I would for a My Yoga Online practice, but instead I listened to and watched Led Zeppelin on YouTube while I did my practice. I found this incredible very early footage of Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, and watched it several times, as well as a 10-minute No Quarter.

Obviously, just as in life as a whole (I’m thinking of the impressionability of the soul here, which is impacted by everything that touches us), many things can affect our yoga practice. My interest in watching the glories of Led Zeppelin (to be honest, I preferred it to doing the yoga wholeheartedly) led me to spend a lot more time in poses where I could actually be looking at the screen, like wide-legged forward bend. Hey, whatever it takes to get in those 30 minutes!

Last night I was even more exhausted, because by the time I finished the yoga the night before it was 2:00 am. So when it came around to 10 pm, and time to do my practice, I chose another restorative yoga class from Melina Meza, Summer Yin Restorative Practice. This class was pretty tough. It is harder than it looks to do an easy pose for four or five minutes! Since this was just a 20-minute class, I followed it up with a 10-minute easy-peasy chair yoga class: Earth: For Grounding Body and Mind. The teacher of the chair yoga class is Mara Branscombe, a Vancouver yoga teacher who trained with Trinity Yoga, the same place where I received certification. This was a nice connection.

Anyway, the point is I am still on track with my aim of 30 minutes of yoga a day for 30 days. Thanks to my friends and family who have pledged 50 cents or a dollar or even two dollars a day for the 30-day Reach Out Challenge. The total pledges is now at $285 dollars! Almost at my goal of $300. If you haven’t done so and would like to sponsor me to raise money for Yoga Outreach, you can use the online donation link. Or phone me at 604.251.6337 or send an email to kyrempel [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks!

Would you believe car yoga?

From 10:32 pm until 11:38 pm tonight I was stuck in a traffic jam waiting to cross the Port Mann Bridge. Translink, you suck. Just a minute while I see who else sucks. Kiewit, you totally suck. Gateway Program, you suck. Province of BC, you especially suck.

I protested this project from the beginning, and distributed a petition for signatures. So did thousands of other people. I’m sure David Suzuki protested too, since he’s gung-ho about saving the planet. But all of the above people who suck had the power and the say, and went ahead with their four-year-plus, multi-billion dollar propaganda project.

So late in the evening on a Sunday night, returning home from Monkey Valley, I was stuck in a one-hour traffic jam. What can a person do?

It had actually been an incredible groove up til this point. After Hope I got into an ecstatic flow where the white lines and reflector bumps were sailing sedately by, and highway was black, the night was black, and I was totally loving the drive. (This was before I got to Mission and city lights and two solid lanes of traffic for 100 KM to the aforementioned bridge). So I was in the zone, and I put on some Led Zeppelin to enhance the trance even more. I opened the car window, so icy air kept me awake, and got into the incredible opening notes of Since I’ve Been Loving You. From this point on I was flying through the valley, high on life and Led Zep, and the rumbly way Robert Plant says “I’m in love with you girl, little girl.”

So when I got to the traffic jam, I was feeling great, and loving listening deeply to the music and putting myself inside Jimmy Page when he was really getting excited. By now the CD had rolled around to Whole Lotta Love (I was listening to the compilation CD Led Zeppelin Early Days). Well, I just didn’t want to stop rocking, even if I was stuck doing 0 KMH and far from home. Before I knew what was happening, I started rocking on the brake pedal, and my car started rocking too. We inched forward a bit, and then it happened again. There was a slight downhill slope, and as I braked in time with the Bonham body-invading drum beat, my car hood bounced a little, and I could see the headlights bounce on the red car in front of me.

So I did it again. And again. And for the next hour, I rocked my car in time to the classic wonder of Led Zep. I found that Rock and Roll and When the Levee Breaks were especially conducive to foot-tapping brake pedal action. After a while I started to feel disappointed if we were actually moving forward, so I started incorporating some side-to-side steering wheel movement into the dance. I’m sure all the people in the right lane, which incidentally kept passing those of us in the left lane, must have thought I was crazy. Though I did see one guy smile. And it must have been driving the person behind me nuts, the way my brake lights kept flashing, especially at that part where John Paul Jones really rocks out on the piano in Rock and Roll. I couldn’t quite get the car rocking that fast, but it’s quite incredible the range it has, especially when there’s that slight downward slope to help it along. So me and my car were dancing fools, and it made that hour the most fun of my weekend, probably! I had to laugh out loud at myself at numerous points.

So I want to hear from my supporters on the Reach Out Challenge: does car yoga count, or do I have to use my Get Out of Jail Free card? Type car yoga or card in the comment box, please! And if you agree that Kiewit sucks, put that too!

Red wheel rolling

I was driving over the Second Narrows bridge tonight, feeling high from a run by and skinny dip in the Seymour River. It was dusk, but the street lights hadn’t come on yet on the north side of the bridge. I was groovin’ on Led Zeppelin, as I am wont to do after running in the mountains. Feeling fine. I was listening to Led Zep IV, which I just picked up on CD recently. The song was what some say is the best rock’n’roll song ever, Stairway to Heaven—though my personal fave of all time has got to be Gimme Shelter by the Stones—and I was feelin’ the magic. I crested the bridge and the key to the universe was revealed once again:

And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock, and not to roll, and not to roll, don’t make me roll…

Oh wait, that’s the live version off The Song Remains the Same. I often insert the live bits when I belt out the lyrics in the privacy of my own car. And I was really getting into it tonight!

Anyway, just as I was reflecting that the answer to the mystery of the universe was to be a rock and not to roll, I saw the most amazing thing. A red wheel was rolling along in my lane. It must have been doing about 70. I was doing about 80 and passed it. It was about 6″ high, and rolling right down the lane! And it was red! And it was rolling!

What does this mean? Could Led Zeppelin have been wrong after all? Is this a sign that the key to the universe is to roll, not to be a rock?!! And if so, how do I do that? Turn cart wheels? Roll in the hay? Play roulette? Rolling actually sounds a lot more fun than being a rock, which doesn’t get to do much but sit there and wait for a glacier to come along!

Wild women run in the dark!

The West is the place of darkness, black, the night. I wonder if night owls enjoy hanging out in the West part of the wheel, and early birds prefer the East.

For just about as long as I’ve been running (since I quit smoking for the first successful time—lasting three years—in 1996), I’ve run at night. Not always, but when life’s demands take up all the daylight hours. People have various reactions to this, but it’s usually a mixture of shock and concern. Fear of the unknown, I think. With one boyfriend, it was a surefire way to know he cared for me (and engage in some negative merging). All I had to do was mention a night run and he’d freak out!

Running at night has an entirely different feel to it, whether in the city or in the country. In the city, I find it is way more peaceful to run after dark, when people are at home and asleep. The humming vibration of the city settles at night. Even those I might encounter out walking their dogs are shrouded in darkness. It is easier to ignore them, to stay in my own inner space. There is an unspoken agreement among the night walkers, to respect the privacy of the darkness.

The meditative space of night running is something I love about it. There’s not much to look at, so the feel of the running becomes the rhythmic back section for reverie. It’s easy to sink into an altered state of awareness, imagination, inspiration.

Last night I ran in the misty mountain darkness of the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve. Listening to Led Zeppelin (what is and what should never be, the battle of evermore, when the levee breaks) on the drive out there helped set the mood for entering a magical land of darkness. I parked on Lynn Valley Road, due to the ridiculous parking restriction of 6 PM in the LSCR parking lot. Crossing the wooden footbridge that arcs high above Lynn Creek, I entered the darkness of the woods.

It took about eight minutes of gravel trail running through the woods to get to the LSCR parking lot. As I first entered the woods thoughts of mountain lions crossed my mind. For some reason they always do on this stretch of road! Dressed all in black, maybe I could pass for a bear. But my roar just wouldn’t have the power to convince! Anyway, with this lame strategy in place, I continued on to the LSCR parking lot and from there onto my favourite loop trail, down the Twin Bridges Trail to the Seymour River, following the river North along Fisherman’s Trail, and then up the bun-burning Homestead Trail back up to the parking lot.

I’ve done this loop at least 100 times over the past five years or so—probably more. I’ve done it walking in the dark with a friend, so I know which parts are the blackest. I wasn’t worried about losing my way or falling into a pit or off a cliff! I could just let my feet and belly find the way as I sensed into the deep mystery of the night. It is hypnotic, the way a luminous white sheen fills the air on the trail in front of me. This effect is heightened when there is a mist like last night.

I was just enjoying this luminosity, and the rhythm of the running, as I ran down the long easy stretch of Twin Bridges Trail. Then suddenly I heard a sound like a chicken crowing, about chest height, in the trees ahead and to the left. It was so loud and close, I stopped for a moment. My mind translated the sound into a human imitating a chicken, trying to attract some kind of night bird! It didn’t feel totally threatening, but I was definitely startled. The call was such a definite pronouncement, I said “Oh, really. Are you sure about that?”

Only silence answered, so I continued on. I realized as I replayed the sound in my mind it must be an owl call. It was a new sound for me, accustomed to the call of the great grey owls at Monkey Valley. Although it had a hooting quality, the range and pattern of notes was more complex. I’ll have to look it up in the bird books when I get home, and see if I can find out who was greeting me in the darkness of the misty autumn woods.

Like the music before the run, this encounter supported the magical feeling of running in the night. It was a blissful run right until the end, an hour later, back up the paved access to Lynn Valley Road. Wild women run in the dark!

Taking a night walk (or run) is always a good way to explore the territory of the West. Try it!

P.S. For those who might be feeling confused right now, I keep an apartment in Vancouver as well as my home at Monkey Valley. This was a Vancouver night run, in the North Shore mountains.