The old men who owned those stairs

My wife Linda and I spent last winter in Honolulu, near our daughter. I promised Tyler we'd climb Diamond Head together every morning before school.

Every morning at six, the same group of older men was already on the trail. Mr. Okada and three friends, all past 75, all in windbreakers, all talking the whole way up.

Talking. On the 99 steps. I couldn't have said my own name on those steps.

At the top they stood around the old bunker like it was a parking lot. No red faces. No hands on knees. On Sundays Mr. Okada did it twice.

On day 6, my grandson had to come back for me

I sat down on a rock halfway up and couldn't make myself stand. Tyler came back down two steps and held out his water bottle. “Grandpa, are you okay?”

Twelve years old, and he was looking at me the way I used to look at my dad.

It wasn't only the stairs. My hands were cold every night, and Linda had stopped letting me put my feet on her side of the bed. By dinner my ankles had deep red sock lines. I fell asleep in the recliner at 3 p.m. most days. And my doctor had started watching my blood pressure a little closer at every checkup.

I had tried the usual things:

Mr. Okada was 20 years older than me. Whatever he was doing, it wasn't in my kitchen.

Day 9, at the bunker wall

On day 9 I made it to the top right behind him. He sat on the bunker wall, took a small silver tin out of his windbreaker, and shook two amber softgels into his palm.

“Vitamins?” I asked.

“Garlic.”

I laughed. I'd been choking down raw garlic for a month. He looked at my red face and said, “Not that garlic.”

Then he invited me to his house that afternoon to show me what he meant.

The cupboard on his lanai

He opened a dark wooden cupboard. Rows of glass jars, the garlic inside going from white on the left to gold to almost black on the right.

“Fresh garlic is angry. That's the smell and the burn in your stomach. Leave it in the dark long enough and it calms down. It turns sweet, and it turns into something you can take every day for sixty years.”

His mother aged garlic this way, the way her mother did back in Japan. She kept the cupboard going until she was 96.

“Your pipes get old before your face does, Gary. Young pipes stretch every time your heart beats. Old ones get stiff. Then the stairs get steep and your feet get cold.”

I went back to the condo and looked up the part I could check. It holds up better than I expected.

1. Young blood vessels stretch. Every heartbeat, they give a little and spring back.
2. With age they stiffen. Your heart works harder, and your hands and feet get less of the trip.
3. Aging changes garlic. Months in the dark turn its harsh compounds into gentler ones, including S-allyl cysteine (SAC), and aged garlic extract has been studied for healthy circulation and how flexible vessels stay with age.^1,2

Then I sent a photo of the cupboard to our daughter Megan. She's a pharmacist.

Coming from Megan, that's a rave review.

Mr. Okada's three rules

• Aged, never raw“Brown and no smell, or it isn't ready.”
• Two with breakfast, every day“The days you skip don't count.”
• Climb something dailyStairs, a hill, the steps at church.His rules, not medical advice. If you take blood pressure medicine or a blood thinner, ask your doctor before adding garlic.

He doesn't age his own anymore. His granddaughter orders the softgels: garlic aged 20 months, with two partners his mother never had.

My first eight weeks

I ordered it from the condo that night. Two softgels with breakfast, then the stairs.

Composite story based on customer experiences. Results vary.