While I was calculating the mileage on my bike since I bought it, I came across another number-crunching idea. Well, one thing at a time, the bike first:

I bought my All-Terrain-Bike about 2.5 years ago. Since then, it's safe to say I've been riding it every 3rd day on average the first year, but at least every other day since coming back from the US West Coast in April 2007. The little trip around Woerthsee is about 23 km, roughly 14 miles. When adding up the days and multiplying it with this length, I land at anywhere between 4,500 km/2,796 miles and 5,400 km/3,355 miles. Taking into consideration that I did longer trips a few times, those numbers are higher. I was actually surprised about that. But somehow, I must have arrived at a shape, which could be worse and which allowed me to outswim a teenager at the lake yesterday. Yes, I'm totally bragging about this and I'm a little proud of not being in worse a shape at this point (which I was prior to moving here).

So then, on to the next number-cruncher: Lifetime spent so far and lifetime hoping to spend in the future. Let's begin:

I have turned 43 in January of this year. Until now and while considering 11 leap years since 1965 and 2008 (disregarding the days between January 3rd and today), I have been living for 15,706 days, which equal 376,944 hours in total, of which ideally 125,648 were devoted to sleep, which again equal 22,616,640 minutes or 1,356,998,400 seconds. During those 15,706 days, I had roughly 34,701 meals, taking into consideration that I am expecting to have had three meals a day until I turned 15, since then it may have been only two on average.

If I am as lucky as to live another 40 years (we'd be in the year 2048 by then) and applying above considerations, I'd live another 14,640 days (considering 10 leap years until then), which equal 351,360 hours, of which I hope to sleep no less than 117,120 (which I won't, given my current sleep "patterns"). This amount of hours again equals 21,081,600 minutes or 1,264,896,000 seconds. If I continue to have no more than two meals per day and will remain able to eat in a natural way, I'll have another 29,280 meals.

Now...what are these numbers telling me or anyone? I guess, they're saying (to me, at least) that my life feels a lot shorter when looking at those numbers. Or to put it differently: There are merely three or four significant "stages" to it that I've lived through consciously or at least semi-consciously. There's childhood, there's teenage years, there are the early adult days, then later on my marriage and now ... something totally new emerging, which will hopefully turn into a path to a greater degree of personal happiness. As for the latter, I am not there yet and I am only "sensing" or "assuming"/hoping this to become a more predominant feeling in my life. If I allow myself to fast-forward on this - assuming, it was already a reality -, it's amazing to see, how much time I've spent on getting there - or let's tentatively say on establishing conditions that might foster greater happiness on day-to-day basis (where happiness cannot be measured as such, only perceived in terms of "on/off", maybe...)

Any thoughts?