There hasn’t been any free community yoga in downtown Boulder for six weeks now, and though I’m a grown-up and can certainly suck up for my own yoga classes, there’s something nice about the vibe in the yoga-clothes-shop basement where the classes are held, and there’s also no pressure: go, get stretchy, calm the hell down for an hour and a half, and then go do your weekend stuff. So, instead of taking the sensible route of keeping up my half-baked practice while the studio was on hiatus, I just stopped doing yoga for a month and a half. Dumb idea, but oh well. (Though I did go to a vinyasa class in Portland mid-February when I was there for the tango festival, and it was simply amazing. Yoga in other people’s towns is a wonderful thing.)

I meet a friend for Saturday coffee and scones every week at 8:30, so there was that, in all its delicious glory. And then a leisurely bus ride down to the yoga store. And then 90 minutes of vinyasa, with all the people I haven’t seen since the end of January. And then Second Breakfast of Champions at Boulder’s best (and snootiest, but them’s the prices you pay) coffee house, Boxcar. It shares space with a fancypants charcuterie shop on the hip side of Pearl, and has strong ties to the pro cycling community, and is home to baristas with glorious monochromatic tattoos, high-effort mustaches, vintage shoes and the patience to weigh your beans out in a little canister on a little scale, one. by. one.

After spending the morning paying very careful attention to the otherwise neglected movements of my various limbs, watching the same care paid to preparing a few shots of espresso felt entirely apropos, and perfect, in a sort of conscious-awareness-of-everything way.

Coffee tastes better after yoga.