Here’s a practical application of fitness: Standing at the bus stop on time and the bus is late when I realize I left the furo on. There’s no choice; you can’t leave a thing like that going or the building will burn down. Besides being a small, contained fire in the living room, it’s foreign-made for foreign use and the switch sparks each time you flip it. So I look up the route and see the bus several blocks away and start to run. Run the block to my house, up the stairs, into the apartment, and carefully flick the switch and unplug the thing. Then run back down the stairs to the concrete, from where I can see the stoplight yonder turn red and the bus pull up to the line, waiting. And then I’m running, running like Lola in wide strides and landing squarely on the soles of the Cece Highs. A man up ahead turns around and says, "I don’t hear no footsteps runnin’ behind you, so why you runnin’ like that?" Beyond him, two people dragging carts scatter into the grass when they hear me coming for the green light. It was yellow when I leapt into the intersection; the bus pulled up beside me just as I reached the stop.

Being fit is like driving the car down the highway in the third gear.

It’s Wednesday and that’s lunch day downtown with Andrew. I like this ritual; it gets me out of the house and all the way downtown on foot and bus, which I could ride and ride as long as the batteries last. We go to the market, and I have an obsession with veggie taxi dogs with grilled onions and mozzarella cheese, and sweet relish, ketchup, and mustard topping it off. So we do that, with sea salt and vineagar chips and Coke. Then, a Macrina mocha and maybe some other kind of shopping. Today my shoes came in, so I bought those and it felt goood. Afterward, I like to walk all the way back along First, getting to know the shops and the trendy restaurants, few of which I’ll ever enter. And I stop at City Kitchens to peruse all the cool gadgets. I love the stainless steel ones—18/10 all the way. And maybe one or two other shops I can think of where items might be that I would want to see. And then I make my way to Third and stand in front of Benaroya Hall to catch the #2, which drops me, as you know, just a block from home.