As part of my get in shape for The Transplant Games, I have been walking to the temple. I walked all the way there on Sunday without taking a rest.

When I was first walking to the temple 6 months after the transplant, I could make it but had to stop three times to rest on the way. Then I got knocked in the ditch with the interferon treatment and then the recovery period so I had stopped altogether, but now I am doing it again.

The recovery from the transplant was supposed to have taken a year, but with the interferon I never got to experience that. As I was walking past my three rest stops, I realized I am in much better health than I was a year ago.

Monday I walked there again, but because I knew Vidya wasn’t going to be at the temple as she was Sunday, I accepted rides for part of each leg of the round trip, but still did at least 3 miles.

If I can walk three miles now, hopefully by the time of the 5 K race in July, I will be able to trot through it and not be too embarrassed at my time.

Once the roads are clearer, I will start bicycling and perhaps enter a biking event also.

My legs were a little stiff the second day walking the distance but that is the “no pain no gain” part of it.

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The pain is offset by the pleasant aspects of walking in the country. As I walked down the hill into Bahulaban on the return part of the walk, this hawk saw me coming and slipped off the tree he was in and started to ascend.

Once he got started in his flight, I didn’t see him flap his wings hardly at all. Even on a grey day, he must have caught a thermal because he never seemed to move as he circled but continued to get higher and higher.

By the time I got my camera out and turned on, he was already fairly high, high enough so he seemed only a silhouette against the sky. When he first took off, I could clearly see he was a light phase Red Tail hawk and he looked right back into my eyes.

Maybe I will do a “things you don’t see from a car” pictorial tour of New Vrindaban in a series of posts for the edification of the “side of the road devotees”, who think New Vrindaban is a ribbon of grey, the Palace, and the Temple area.