It all started in 1988. A few friends and I decided to go on a cycling trip in British Columbia’s Gulf Islands.

How hard could it be? Islands meant sea level roads, summer frocks and wine spritzers.

Turned out that the topographical map of those little island roads more closely resembled a spiking graph that someone might display while having multiple heart attacks (or maybe someone hurling a lung while their thighs burst into flames).

Those party dresses stayed buried in the bottom of the panniers. Instead, we lived and died in our spandex shorts and salt-stained Lycra shirts.  We never did have any spritzers. But we did manage a steady diet of ibuprofen, potato chips, shots and beer.

I was 28-years old when this annual madness started. Every year we assembled our group of women (that finally capped at ten members) and set off for an annual nine-day cycling trip. We cobbled together various routes in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and Montana. We camped, or stayed in B&B’s, motels, hostels or inns. We pitched our tents in barns to escape monsoons, dug trenches with plastic mugs and serving spoons to divert water from our tents, bushwhacked through scrubby forest, had wonderful strangers drive our broken-down bikes for repair and raised glasses of champagne in hot tubs.

Last year we decided to do something unusual for our 25th anniversary. We rented a big house in Sedona, Arizona. We hiked, shopped, kayaked, explored, lolled by our rental home’s pool and made fabulous dinners. It was rather fun.

This year we decided we’d try that format again. This time we’ve rented a house in Nelson, British Columbia. Yesterday we walked 7 kms from our front door to the start of a 4 km sweaty hike up, and down Pulpit Rock, and then came home to do yoga on our deck.

Today we racked our bikes, drove to Winlaw and cycled up the dirt and gravel Slocan Trail for 12 km to Lemon Lodge. We cycled the return trip on the frying asphalt in the 31 degree heat.  Viola and Judy wanted more cycling time, so they kept going for another 20 km. (Some of the more clever amongst us had iced coffees instead). We picked them up and returned to our home overlooking the Kootenay River.

But today we had a breakthrough epiphany about our post-exercise yoga routine.

You’ve heard of Bikram, Hatha and Iyengar.

Forget them all.

We’ve come up with the perfect marriage of happy hour and yoga.

Cocktail Yoga is bound to catch on. How could it not?

We’ve rented canoes and kayaks for tomorrow.

The day after? Perhaps a longer bike ride. Or maybe another hike, stand-up paddle boarding, or the nearby hot springs.

We’re not sure what we’ll take on.

But we know one thing for sure….we’ll definitely finish up with Cocktail Yoga.