The get up and go, got up and went

I finally made it to Rugby this past week. For my first time ever playing the game, I think I did pretty well. The most difficult part for me was learning that you always go backwards, unless you have the ball. That's a very different mindset from American football. On defense, you have to be five meters back. On offense, the ball can only be thrown backwards. Took me a while to get used to. I still don't have the offense down.

For me, speed was always my claim to fame. I've always been faster than the average, and could usually run away or run people down. I even caught my dog running away from me at full speed. That, however, was thirty pounds ago. I'm now slower than the average, which has also required an adjustment.

My final observation from my first Rugby experience is that there is nothing like sports. I'm in the gym 30-60 minutes 5 days a week. I run on the treadmill at a eight-minute mile pace (12 km). I have a rigorous tennis lesson for an hour every Saturday AM. None of that prevented me from being sore Friday morning (and still sore on Sunday) after playing Rugby for 2 hours Thursday night.

On Saturday, we finally made it to the Botanical Gardens in Bogor. The drive from Jakarta is a short one hour and it is definitely worth the trip. The gardens themselves are on the ground of a palatial estate in the mountains of Bogor. You can see one of the island's many volcanoes in the background. Bogor boasts botanical gifts from nations around the world - Mexico, Australia, South Africa - and, of course, some local favorites.

We spent a few hours walking through the park, eating a picnic lunch, and touring the zoological museum consisting mostly of stuffed local animals. We brought our daughter's trike so she could ride along the paths when she tired of walking. The biggest challenge we faced was the heat. We needed to consume plenty of water to replace the fluid lost through sweat.

Bogor is one of the most electrically active locations in the world - 360 days of lightning each year - and someone died a few months back at the botanical gardens by standing under a tree during a storm, so we left as the storm clouds rolled in.