Kedging

I am re-reading a book, called Younger Next Year for Women by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, M.D.,   to kick start me mentally back into a healthy lifestyle as I recover from cancer.  There is an important term in it,  that really struck a chord for me.   Kedging.  It is a nautical term that means to move (a ship) by means of a line attached to a small anchor dropped at the distance and in the direction desired. (Merriam-Webster)   So what does that mean for sailing?  On a windless day, if you really need to go a particular direction on a sail boat, you take a little kedge anchor and put it on a dinghy and you row out the direction you want the boat to go.  You go as far as you can and then you drop and secure the kedge anchor.  Then the people in the boat PULL the boat to the kedge anchor.   It is done by brute force. 

These authors first wrote a book called Younger Next Year that was all about men growing older (or how not to).**  I felt like I was missing something after Ken chuckled his way through it, so I read it too.  Then a few years ago, they wrote one for women and I read that one.  The book tells us pretty much what we should know being healthy as we age but in a way that boils it down to some basic rules and easy takeaways.  And it has some great stories. It gave Ken and I a vocabulary to use with each other to talk about healthy aging. It has been at the heart of our trying to get healthier over the last few years. 

Younger Next Year encourages you to kedge.  I have made up variations of the word.  I am a "kedger".  I live my life to Kedge.  So, what does it mean to kedge in life?  It is setting a goal and then pulling yourself to it, come what may.  Ken and I have been kedging trips since we first read the book. Last winter ('08-'09), Ken and I made plans for an early '09 summer bike trip in N. Carolina.  The highlight was riding a couple of hundred miles in 5 days.  In case you didn't know, N. Carolina has lots of hills!  It forced us to put in a lot of miles in Chicago and the hills of Wisconsin last spring.  I remember one particularly morning in May on the Chicago lakefront,  I swear there were only 6 people that morning running and biking in the freezing drizzle.  We were kedging.  We were biking 22 miles as the sun rose, able to see our breath, before work, so we would be ready for our trip.  

I am a kedger, (perhaps to the chagrin of the people who work with me).  I set goals and then I figure out how to get there.  My personal short term kedge is to ride the Apple Cider Century in late September in Michigan.  100 miles in one day.  The brochure is stuck with a magnet to my white board.  Hold me to it.  You can join us, they offer long and short rides and lots of families come.

This morning, it was sunny and a very brisk 45 degrees in Chicago, staying in bed seemed like a luscious option.  Instead, we went and rode 12 miles alongside the glistening lakefront.  Yoga this afternoon.  I am working on my kedge.  The kedge gets me out of bed.  My long term kedge is to ride bikes with Ken across the country.  The Apple Cider gets me one step closer to that.

Kedge with me.  I am looking forward.


**Thanks to Nick for suggesting Younger Next Year all those years ago,  I  I have given it to people and they have given it to people and so on.  It is a life changing book and you started the positive wave.