Bedtime--Sydney--Steps--Exercise

     Joan has fallen asleep, but I am still wide awake--which is normal for us at bedtime--and I have come into the living room, needing to kill about an hour before going to bed and--keeping my fingers crossed--trying to go to sleep.

    I have my problems with sleep, and sometimes, after a long struggle with insomnia, I end up taking half an Ambien pill, which seems to work without any sort of hangover effect.

    My pedometer shows I have walked 7.7 miles today, but distance is only one factor in walks in Sydney--a major factor in all the walks we do around the harbour and above the sea are STEPS---20 here, 30 there: then, say, 75--then a long steep upward path with sets of 5 steps every 20 yards. Sometimes the "Track Notes" in a guidebook we often use actually warns us about upcoming steps..."get your muscles ready for the ten flights up beside the sandstone cliff." This was a warning we had on today's walk.

    But the views are amazing--the harbour, the Bridge, the Opera House, the sailboats, the skyscrapers of the Central Business District, the ferries, and the occasional huge cruise ship, slowly heading out to the harbour entrance and the Pacific Ocean beyond.

    "Getting your exercise" is clearly one of the most important bits of fitness advice for eighty-year-olds like me. But when I struggle up some of these flights of stairs on our Sydney walks, I sometimes wonder if I do too much, and that maybe 'too much' may be detrimental to my health. Sometimes, for example, on these damned steps, I have a few pains in my left knee. So am I doing too much? 

Maybe, I should sometimes spend a mainly exercise-free day. Not sitting all day, of course--getting up and moving around from time to time, perhaps an hour or so dozing, or at least meditating...watching tennis on the TV---the Australian Open is in its second week, and the games are getting very interesting.

Well now--if I go and do my teeth in my usual ritual of proxa brushes, electric toothbrush, pointy toothbrush, flossing, and mouthwash--it will be time for bed.