I woke up to rain falling on top of snow, turning back to snow, turning into hail and then to rain. An icy hazy crust stuck to everything but the freezing watery slushy disaster of the streets didn’t seem to hamper traffic or pedestrians. And so it continued all day.

The perfect day to be inside with a coffee and a good book.

But instead I wandered all over the city running errands, seeing people and fighting the elements. But late afternoon after I’d gone the wrong direction twice on Houston looking for the train station (how is this possible? You’d have to be me to find out…) and had my umbrella turned inside out three times, dousing me with hail each time, I gave up on NYC and started thinking about leaving.

Tomorrow marks the official first day of my road trip and also the first day of my Bikram yoga challenge. I plan to do Bikram yoga every day for 30 days while I’m driving across the country (with one excepted weekend that I’ll talk more about later). It will likely take me longer than 30 days to make this trip and I may decide to do Bikram every day that I’m on the road, but I’m going to see how I feel after 30 days.

Bikram yoga – for those of you who don’t know – is a codified form of yoga consisting of 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises done in 90 minutes in rooms heated between 100 and 105 degrees.

You can see a 3 minute time lapse video of a Bikram yoga class here.

That’s the what, and here’s the why.

I find Bikram incredibly difficult. I don’t like being hot. I started classes in Toronto and I find that it’s hard for me to be in the moment. I want to think about all the things that I’d rather be doing instead of Bikram. And how cool it must be outside. And wonder how much longer I have to lay here and sweat before I can get up and go. And how the girl standing in front of me got so flexible. And why no one seems to sweat as much as I do.

Something about the heat forces me to my wit’s end. It breaks me down. I find my emotions coming to the surface and I have to remind myself to let things go. To be in the moment. To be mindful. That the benefit of any exercise comes from being present while I do it. I want to do Bikram because when I do something this strictly codified that’s supposed to be exactly the same in every studio, if something is different from one class to the next, the difference is in me. Will that actually be true? We’ll see.

And besides, why wouldn’t I take an epic road trip and make it even more impossible? It’s what I do!

First stop: Falls Church, Virginia and along the way, possibly a castle.

Stay warm. See you tomorrow.