We struck off before dawn, finally. I was annoyed and tired of waiting. We dragged our kayaks down the ramp through the water and scraped into the sea. The air was damp and chill. I had just spent seven hours drinking beer and shivering on a plastic sheet spread on the concrete dock as I tried to get some sleep while waiting for the rest of the group. With about five others, I was leaving Ito, near the top of the Izu Peninsula, heading to Oshima Island, about 35 km out.

I wasn't sure how long it was supposed to take, but such details didn't concern me. I had power to spare. Cycling, running and lifting weights for hours each day had me in mean shape. I wasn't letting a desk job get in the way of my life.

My idea of heaven was a kind of hell where I'd push myself to a physical limit or a threshold of pain, working my muscles to exhaustion every day in the gym, making grueling solo bicycle trips on weekends, or hiking for hours to the tops of boulder-covered mountains. I'd come back into Tokyo barely able to walk, calculating which station to transfer at so I could go down the stairs instead of up. I'd go half-prepared, but that was all the fun -- leaving Tokyo on the spur of the moment in the middle of the night, bound for the mountains or the coast. I felt freed of the boredom, of the mundane, the expected. Sure, it was dangerous. But when I came back, I knew I'd been gone. When the pain receded, I'd do it again.