“Did you do the power pose, Mr Salzman?”, asked Miriam. The power pose, of course!

There is teaching and learning going on in my classroom everyday.  Somedays I’m the teacher and the students are learning, and just as often I’m doing the learning. Some learning is incremental, like learning the Adobe Magic Wand tool, somedays more significant like mastering that flexible and therefore complicated Adobe Pen tool. And occasional there are life-changing lessons, or at least life-long tips and tricks, like the power pose.

I was just leaving school to go to my Rickshaw interview/lesson, and I was a little anxious. My anxiety was immediately lessened because Miriam was schooling the teacher. She may forget the pen tool, but I’m thinking she’ll remember the power pose. Of course may anxiety disappeared after completing a 2 minute power pose.

If you don’t know what I’m referring to, and you have 21 minutes, watch this Amy Cuddy Video; and if you don’t have the time now, watch it later, or at least make your kids watch it.

Amy Cuddy, The Power Pose

Last year my wife Anne and I were celebrating 20 years of happy marriage on our 25th wedding anniversary, while vacationing in Riviera Maya. This is the incredibly beautiful Caribbean coastline, on the eastern portion of the Yucatán Peninsula. It runs from Cancun south to Tulum. The areas most everyone people will recognize are Cancun and the island of Cozumel. Playa del Carmen is about 45 miles south of Cancun, and 20 years ago was the place to go to get away from the “spring break” partying of Cancun. It’s still beautiful with less tourist than Cancun, but hardly off the beaten track. As you head further south, you will arrive at the Bay of Akumal, and then Tulum.

Is everybody familiar with cenotes? Its my understanding they are unique to the Yucatán. They are sink holes that have filled with groundwater. They are all over the place. You can swim in them and mostly they are fresh water. Some are at ground level where you can jump in to swim or scuba. Others are underground, so you walk down stairs to a cave. It’s a great activity, the water is clean, the caves are safe, and its so unique.

Tulum is the site of a Maya walled city, one of the few (or only?) coastal Maya site. It served as a port for another Maya city, Cobá. By the way, I’m getting close to explaining how this rickshaw thing began. One morning Annie and I checked out Tulum, and then the next day drove to Cobá. Cobá is a large site and we walked part of it with a guide. After saying goodbye to our guide, we continued to walk the site. It was then, when we discovered the only other form of transportation, you guessed it…a rickshaw.

In Chicago every year I ride a road bike for my exercise. Between having summers off being a teacher, and Chicago weather, most of the riding is done in the summer. I will typically ride 1300-1800 miles a season, which to the non-avid cyclist may seem to be a lot, but to most of my riding buddies hardly gets me to the avid cyclist designation.

So back to the story, while riding in the rickshaw and after our driver does not allow me to pedal,  I tell Annie, “They have these things in Chicago, I’m gonna drive a rickshaw for the summer. I’m really gonna do it”. My lovely, beautiful, supporting wife learned years ago, something I have only recently realized, is when I say I’m gonna do something, I really mean, I’d like to do something. So her response was, Oh that’s nice dear.

But every now and then, I really do…do it. Yay me!