New Adventures

If you fall off the bike and don't get back on, the asphalt wins. And you know how much I hate asphalt.

My plan was to bike out of Stanford and go on a new solo adventure. Unfortunately, I caught a cold my last day of camp. (I haven't run the last few days for this reason.) Going on an adventure that involves six hours of exercise a day, which I'm not truly fit for, while sick, seemed like a bad idea. So I'm now in the 24-hour library in Stanford, wondering where I'll sleep tonight. A new camp has moved into the house I was occupying, and there aren't exactly any campgrounds around here.

Biking is out, but most of the adventure I had planned remains intact. I'm headed to North Fork, CA (near Fresno) for a 10-day retreat at the California Vipassana Center to learn to meditate. At the moment I'm mostly trying to not get any preconceived notions of what this thing will be like or what I'll get from it. I learned about this place from an EPGY counselor I met two years ago. He meditated two hours a day using the techniques he learned from a Vipassana center. We spent several long, lazy dinners talking about it, and over the course of a few weeks got me interested in trying meditation out.

The center runs by donation only, so I know they're not just out there to scam me. Further, they don't have any obvious religious ties, and they're not making any totally outlandish claims about what their training does. I have ten days to kill, so I'll see what this is like.

The program is pretty extreme. In approximate order of extreme-ness, I have to follow these elements of a code of conduct:

• "noble silence" as in, no talking. except to ask questions of the teachers or communicate some physical need to the staff. but no communication whatsoever with the other participants
• no reading or writing. not even a journal to record your thoughts. certainly not a novel or a textbook
• no exercise, except walking around the grounds
• no communication with the outside world. no cell phones, laptops, newspapers, etc
• wake up at 4am, then spend 10 hours meditating (or trying to) throughout the day on a strict schedule
• no sexual activity (masturbation is apparently a sexual activity, at least according to meditation guys)
  
• no leaving early or ducking out
• no contact with women
• give the course a full effort
• no praying, meditating by other techniques, nothing that would interfere or overlap or complement the training
  
• no wearing shorts, or anything with a logo or writing on it, or anything ostentatious
• no eating meat, or anything other than the food they provide
• no drinking, no telling lies, no stealing, no killing stuff (I don't do lots of these things normally, anyway. except telling lies. i do that whenever i have students around. it's fun.)
• no music (I don't use music much on a daily basis)
• no cameras/tape recorders

So, the basic idea is I disappear to the world and go deep into this meditation camp. It's from Aug 13 - 24 (this is actually 12 days, so I'm not sure how that works with it being a 10-day camp), and it'll probably take me a day or two after that come down out of the hills and back to civilization.

After that, Kangway and I are looking for a place in Pasadena. I'll be looking for some tutoring work, getting back into racing shape, and starting what had better be my last school year.