Slow Progress with Tiny Habits

A combination of BJ Fogg's TED talk on the subject of "Tiny Habits"  and one of Tim Ferriss's podcast interviews with Christopher Sommer led me to a change in my morning routine sometime early to mid 2016. In particular, after my morning meditation I give my body a stretch in janu sirsasana. Aiming to lengthen my hamstrings and improve my general flexibility. Following that, on a good day, I'll complete a set of push ups.

With both activities I started with a low hurdle for success. And over time I've seen the number of push ups I can complete grow from around 20 to start with up to 50 at the end of 2016.   I kept it at 50 for all of 2017 then gave 60 a whirl at the start of 2017 and found that hurdle was a relatively easy one and have kept my sets at 60 since then. With the janu sirsana stretches there has been very slow progress with respect to increasing the limits of my reach and how close my head can approach my knee. However I'm now at a point where I am more than mildly pleased with the slow millimeter by millimeter progress that has happened over the course of the last 21 months or so.

While I have been unable to lose and keep weight off over the past two years, I've improved a couple of aspects of my heath. The improvement with which I am more than mildly pleased with

FIN!

Every so often #1 son sends me an update on his life via email. The latest one is well good enough to share.

Hey there, 

Thought I would share the story of my surf on Sunday with Calvin at Anawhata. The walk down to the beach is about 15min, and is one of the less populous beaches between Piha and Bethells. When we got down, there was a couple walking on the far end of the beach, and a guy surfing close to shore while his girlfriend walked their dog. 

We paddled out a bit further than where the other guy was surfing, and spotted a good wave over at Paikea bay south around a rocky pillar. After several sets came through south of us, with nothing where we sat, we decided to make the ~200m paddle to try get some better waves. We were about 100m out to sea at this point. 

I was leading the way by about 30m and turned around to give Calvin a hurry up when I heard a hiss of water from the direction we were paddling. I swung back around to see a dark 1.5ft fin submerging in the water about 20m away coming straight towards me. 

It was not a dolphin fin.
'FIN' was helpfully yelled out by one of us.
'I'm fucking dead' went through my head. 

I waited facing the spot where the fin had disappeared. Board pointed slightly down where it came from to throw. No ripples appeared in the water. Where was it? Another hiss of water came from my right side. All I remember is seeing the white patch that Orcas have by their eyes submerging into the water, and that it would have been between 8-10ft long. The adrenaline completely wiped all other memory of that moment. It must have been 4m away from me. 

I turned back to paddle over to Calvin and then into shore so we had 'safety in numbers'. The surf was dead flat, and the other surfers girlfriend must have seen the fin and our odd behaviour and signaled her boyfriend in. The paddle back my heart rate was probably higher than at any other point. We saw the Orca breach again swimming away from us but still felt completely naked until our feet were well onto the sand. 

From the beach we saw that there were two Orcas, and the one that went past me was the juvenile. It must have mistaken me for a Seal, and then investigated when I didn't turn and run and it got a better view of me. The pair hung out in the middle of the beach about 300m from where we sat on shore and just floated for about 40min before heading off somewhere else. 

Felt glad to be alive after that event. Not sure I ever want to be that close to Orcas again, although I would trade that in a million times to never see a shark in the line-up. Calvin was glad to have a trial run of what you should actually do if there is a shark because he absolutely shit himself when he saw the fin. He was lucky that I reacted so well and that I didn't catch the last wave that came through or it would have been him in the firing line. Both of us now know that Auckland west coast can indeed have Orcas. 

Note:
-This is a different version of the story that I told Mum. She only knows that I saw them.
-There are no recorded fatalities of Orca on Human attacks from wild Orcas.
-Fun fact: there are estimated around 150-200 Orcas in NZ.