Admissions

Quick update, for those of you who care, and for those of you who don't.

After I failed to flip the big tire 10 times last week, it ate at me inside from Tuesday until Saturday. I convinced Justin to join me on Saturday morning in trying to flip that tire the elusive 10 times.

After a quick bike ride to the Tillery's backyard, and five minutes or so of warming up, it happened. I flipped that baby 10 times in 3 minutes 24 seconds. [EDIT: Time correction.]

It feels pretty good to have finally joined this club!

A Part of the Club

I've been reading about the Explorers Club lately. Seems that these guys are the most intense people out there who have gone the farthest and studied the most. The list of members includes people like Sir Edmund Hillary (Honorary Chair), John Glenn, and some others, including a guy (his name escapes me at the moment, who sailed nearly 5,000 miles on a bamboo raft--just to prove he could. I would love to become a member of a group like this. Sadly though the chances of that happening are slim. You have to do something really cool to get invited to join, and the membership dues are probably steep to say the least. Being a part of an elite group has always been a goal that I'd like to achieve and I'm not picky about which one I want to be a part of.

A couple of weeks ago Brad picked up two massive tires from an old tire depot (I'm not really sure where, but I'm sure there are these 'depots' everywhere, since you see tires all over the place if you look hard enough). One weighs in at an estimated 500 pounds. Large, but small in comparison to the other behemoth that he picked up, the 1000 pound monster. That's not its official name, but for this story it will suffice. Pictured below is a shot of me flipping the smaller of the two, a task in itself, but not entirely grueling to get it flipped over. The monster on the other hand, offers much more of a challenge.

Monday night Brad got together what we'll call, The Brain Trust (Hankins, Morchat, myself, and Tillery), to hold the first-annual-monthly-tire-flip-off (again this name isn't official, rather what I propose we call it). The goal of the FAMTFO, 10 flips of the 1000 lb. tire in 5 minutes.

Rain made the ground that evening quite slick, so doing it either on the grass, or concrete was out of the question. This was a problem since both of those surfaces offered the most grip available, but neither were in any condition to be lifting hefty objects on. So, we made due and used the gravel parking spaces in the Tillery backyard. Not ideal, since rocks tend to slip and move when pressure is applied, but still doable. The tire was rolled into position, and the contest was begun (hopefully Danny will finish uploading the video so we can get going on that stuff soon).

Brad made quick work on the ten flips he proposed to do, finishing in about 2.5 minutes. Jeff also finished 10 flips without much trouble in something like 3:40, Danny being the uber-man-freak he is, got it done in an unbelievable 2:13 or something like that. Woah.

Me on the other hand, I had a bit more, lets say, challenging time flipping the monster tire. My first flip worked a bit better than I had thought it would. The second and third came with reletive ease (there isn't much ease to be found when tire flipping, wow that sentence sounds like it should have come from the mouth of someone from West Virginia or something), and then the fourth flip too happened with only minor toughness. Flip five however never happend. Have I mentioned that tire flipping is really hard? It is. I got four flips, and then just couldn't deliever on the final push. I got the tire up a couple more times, resting the entire weight on my biceps (which are brusied pretty badly from the whole exercise), but as soon as I tried to push the tire over the top, like Stallone dominating every other trucker in the movie 'Over the Top', it just wouldn't move since my feet were slipping on the loose gravel.

Four flips. At the time I was glad that I had at least gotten the tire over a few times. But the more I thought about the event, the more I realized that I should have been able to do more, and probably been able to do the entire 10 flips, or at least half of them anyway. Especially when I started thinking of names like 'The 1000 lb. Club', or '1000 Pounders', both lame, but go with me here, to denote the fact that you had flipped that monster tire 10 times. It ate at me all day Tuesday, and into Wednesday morning. I worked out and then got 5 flips done, an improvement espescially since it was done after an hour of lifting weights, but still not the 10 I really wanted to accomplish.

Being a part of this elite group is the new goal that I'd like to achieve. And it'll happen. I still want to travel the world, but the chances that I'll ever be the first to scale a mountain, or step foot on Mars are nearly impossible. Thinking about all of this membership stuff has led me to the realization that some clubs might be out of reach, but this one, the '1000 Pounders', is a membership that one day soon, I'll be a part of.

Blogging huh? Sure.

Today was another fun day of working out. Well, fun is relative to what else you could have been doing at the time. Sleep was one of those things this morning that sounded WAY better than getting up and going to the gym, but I went anyway, and was glad I did.

Brad has a new client working out with him now, the guy won a contest and Brad is giving him a free 12WC-HD, under the condition that he gets to take pictures and track his progress online. Jason did a wonderful job this morning, but while Brad was taking pics of Jason he also got a few of me (below):
I'm only including one picture because it was the only one that didn't turn out too blurry. I guess putting pics up of myself working out is rather strange, but I'm doing it anyway. Sort of to prove to all of you doing this journey with me that I actually do work out and don't just tell stories for my own gratification (well not only for my own gratification).

Quick note, I'm not trying to scare a small child in the above picture. My face suggests otherwise, but that wasn't intentional. I actually remember thinking, "Man, I hope these pictures don't make me look like a total freak." Guess that wish didn't come true.

Jared and Britt moved out this week. Well I say moved out, Jared moved some of his stuff (like his HD TV) and left lots of other things in the house. Britt went to Nebraska for 3 weeks to walk oil pipeline. The house has been a strange place these past couple of days with just Sandefur and myself occupying the once crowded confines. It's good though. I'm trying to become more independent and self motivating (like trying to go to other houses and not just make them come to me).

That's what this week has been about. Does this small amount of stuff justify a blog post? I'm not sure, but you got one anyway.