All Good Things Come to an End - The Final Freedom Run

Although it’s been said, many times, many ways...Merry….oh, sorry I was really getting into it.  What I meant to finish with was, “all good things come to an end”.  It’s fun but at the same time, not fun when this happens.  You enjoy the moment and excitement that surrounds that particular event but deep down you wish it would never end.  

I will get to experience this personally next week down in Detroit Lakes, MN.  

Almost eight years ago (hard to believe it’s been that long already) a friend of mine and many lost his life serving the United States of America with the Minnesota National Guard.  He was only 20 years old at the time, just missing his 21st birthday by only twenty-nine days.  On December 2nd, 2006, Corey Rystad from my hometown Red Lake Falls, MN was killed in action (KIA) over in Iraq.  One of thousands who have lost their lives not only in the Iraq war, but from years past.  

Finishing the Wicked Half Marathon in Salem, Massachusetts
back in 2011

War, cancer and several other horrible things affect our lives all the time.  Everyone has been affected by the two I mentioned, but others such as ALS which you are hearing more and more about each day with the Ice Bucket Challenge, are subject to less promotion - until now of course.  

I honestly never had the drive or the desire  to run a half or full marathon until the passing of my friend.  Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy getting outside and breathing in the fresh air with a nice leisurely run, jog or walk, especially with my wife, but before it never occurred to me that running such a long distance of just over thirteen or twenty-six miles would be such a flattering accomplishment.  More like stupidity at it’s finest the way I saw it before.  

Things do change though, and life changes in ways you never thought possible when your mind isn’t opened up to all of the possibilities that such life throws at you, both good and bad.  
Upon my friend’s passing, I decided it was time to do something more as my sister had asked me to give it a try the previous spring.  I did mention to her that I’d only give it a shot if there was a good reason to - which to me at the time, never imagined anything could change my mind.  Well, there was, and it brought me to a level that didn’t deem to exist before 2006.  I surely wasn’t pushing myself to do better; more like just coasting and following along with others who were doing the same or more than I was.  

When your life gets impacted by something, sometimes your mind gets twisted into doing a full “180” and you start to realize some things.  You begin to focus on what’s important in life.  You begin to notice that you’re not the only one going through rough times and that the best way to fight through it is to do something for others.  I was taught that way and extremely glad that was the case because when you help someone out, or just simply be there for them when they need someone the most, you really do feel good about it.  You feel accomplished.  

With that, back in 2007 I set out to accomplish something - to run a memorial race in my friend Corey’s name, with a little added incentive.  Knowing that there is more sacrifice than any of us can really fathom compared to a military family, the decision to not only run, but carry something that my friend and so many others fought for and defended made the run seem to go better.  Tougher in the aspect that yes, you limit yourself from movement in one arm when you bring a four foot pole that straps a three by five foot American flag to it while trying to get to a finish line that is thirteen or twenty-six miles away - but the reason for doing so is what makes it mean the most.  

I have done this in six different states and finished fifty-nine events while toting the red, white & blue in honor and memory of my friend and his brothers and sisters in arms.  Come Saturday, September 6th - in the place that I finished my first entire half marathon with Old Glory, in the cold and the rain, having to stop in a porta-potty at mile marker eleven because both of my arms and both of my legs started to cramp up to the point that I didn’t think the finish line would become a believable goal, yet somehow after warming them up, steam filling the tiny little potty room I was in and trying to tell myself there was only two more miles to go, I had to get there, even if it comes to crawling - I’m going to finish one more half marathon which will be numbero sixty-o (just sixty) with the flag that represents the country so many fight for, or in my friend’s case, fought for and made the ultimate sacrifice.  

I say it will be the last, but who knows.  Maybe I’ll Brett Favre it and show up again at some random race, flag in hand, ready to rock and-a roll.  

This last one is going to have more meaning to me than ever before.  My first half marathon as a married man.  

With Sara (my girlfriend at the time, now wife) following
the 2013 Dick Beardsley Half Marathon Relay

My wife Sara and I did the half marathon relay last year at this same location, the Dick Beardsley Run in Detroit Lakes, MN.  That was a few weeks before I had asked her to marry me.  

We both have running that is something we enjoy...most of the time.  Training sometimes sucks, but who really likes to train anyway?  It’s part of the deal though, I guess.  

Back in the spring, after my annual check up post-mononucleosis that knocked me down for quite a while back in the spring/summer of 2013, my doctor told me I should stay away from long runs for the remainder of the year.  In a way I used it as excuse - to let myself go from getting back on the training and running path.  Sara saw through that and brought up some good points I wasn’t really thinking at the time.  It was almost like my mind closed the door back up like it had been before it turned around with a total “180” to realize that I should do something more.  This time, it turned the other way; all I was thinking was how it could be tragic if I attempt to even step foot on a road again and  give this crazy running thing another chance.   

I had listened to my doctor and took her advice through the entire suffering of mono - which at the age of 30 is absolutely awful.  If you’ve had mononucleosis before, you know what it’s like.  If not, it’s hard to even explain.  All I know is that of the twelve symptoms people with mono can end up with, some may get half, maybe seven or so of the symptoms.  The majority only suffer from a few of them.  I was the one so fortunate to get eleven of the twelve - the one symptom I didn’t get to endure was jaundice - the least painful.   I remember part of the conversation Ms. Doc and I had when I first started going in.  She had asked me if I drink alcohol in excess.  I told her, “Well, it depends on who I’m with…”  The look on her face made it known that she was pissed and didn’t want to joke around, snapping back with “What’s THAT supposed to mean?”  
I stopped the pun quickly and told her I rarely do.  The explanation she gave me was my the enzyme levels for my liver were over six times the amount that they see in a raging alcoholic.  In simple terms, I’m lucky my liver didn’t fail.  I was threatened to be hospitalized if I decided to head back to work  which was against Ms. Doc’s rules.  I’m glad she was as stern as she was though.  If I would have gone off on my own journey which I tend to do with things sometimes (because I’m invincible, you know…), I’m not sure how my body  would have reacted.  Probably about as well, most likely worse than it was at the time.  If you want to know how it looked at that time, ask my wife.  I’m hoping I didn’t scare her too much, but if so, I had no control over it and would never do that on purpose to someone I care about so much.  I didn’t know it (obviously) but my brain was getting less oxygen due to the enzyme levels leaking out like that, which made it extremely tough to focus, at times, to the point that standing up became the toughest task I would try to accomplish all day.  

Ms. Doc was amazed at my progress in a months’ time
I like to call it “from near death to more breath”

With all that being said, I’m fine now and feel ready to give it a shot by running one more half marathon.  

Those days have passed and it’s time to get one more big run in!  The best part is, I will be running it with my best friend - my wife Sara right by my side the entire way through.  That was one thing I had hoped for in all my years of running events; to find someone who I could share this with, every step of the way.  

We’ve been training in the mornings, running around Fosston, dodging cones and pot holes and what ever else is happening with the construction zone which consumes half the town right now, but we’re getting it done.  Like Sara says, “We’ll just wing it!”  It truly is the best way to go into a race!  No worries, no goals, just get out and run.  Doesn’t matter how fast, just move forward, one step at a time.  

The more I thought about it after having a conversation with Sara about running  back in the spring, the more I analyzed my past and how this all came about.  I noticed that running was something  I do enjoy overall, but never had a real love for it.  It was something I could do on my own, to make myself better and to do something for others by running in memory of our fallen soldiers.  If I wasn’t impacted the way I had been eight years ago, I really don’t think my sister would have been able to break my mindset of never wanting to do a half or full marathon in my life.  Ok I take that back, she’s pretty good at getting little brother to do what she thinks would be good for him, but it’s still a mystery and always will be.

I’m very glad I changed that decision though, which shouldn’t have had to be the way it was with such unfortunate circumstances, but that is life.  You lose some good people as you go and you really have no control over that.    

I do have control over my decisions though and I am glad I will get this opportunity to run one final “Freedom Run” with my beautiful wife right next to me.

Sara and I with the legend himself, Mr. Dick Beardsley
prior to his running event in 2013

So come check it out if you get a chance - one final time we’ll have Old Glory flying high on a race path in the area...unless of course someone else picks up a pole, straps on a flag and gets out there to honor those who have done so much for us.  I would really like to see that.

Just remember that no matter what happens in life, you can always adjust to make things better.   Enjoy every minute of your time on this earth - it passes you by way too quickly.  And if we’re lucky, we’ll be passing you at the Dick Beardsley Half Marathon on Saturday September 6th!  

We’ll see you at the finish line.  

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

When my mom was going through a reoccurrence of ovarian cancer we talked a lot about how there just wasn’t enough money being put into finding a cure for that specific kind of cancer. It’s a crazy thing to say, but we just kept thinking that if some celebrity would get diagnosed that it would raise awareness and maybe someday, hopefully while my mom was still here, lead to a cure.

As most of you know, that didn’t happen. We lost our mom in 2006 shortly after we started our own little fundraiser, not for ovarian cancer specifically but for cancer research in general. Losing her was one of the toughest things I have ever had to endure in my life and even today I really struggle with not having her here on my bad or good days. She was my mom, and taught me everything a person needs to know about what true love really is…but she did teach me, and I’ll always have those awesome memories about who she was, and to me, she was worth finding a cure for.

The year after she passed away we decided to keep going with our little fundraiser, not just to keep a positive memory of her alive, but because we didn’t want other families to go through what we did. I’ll never forget being stopped by an older gentleman by the name of Winton, and he asking if Diane was my mother…I said that she was and he told me that he would like to donate, that she was such a fantastic lady and that he missed her.

I think that’s when I first realized that my mom was a celebrity, that she was important enough to find a cure for, and that although she was only 57 when she passed away, that she had made an impact with her time here…In essence, that it’s not the length of your life, but the depth that truly matters.

Since that time more and more people have joined our cause and the amount of money being put towards cancer research has really become astronomical and undoubtedly will one day soon lead to a cure. You can argue this fact with me all you’d like, I hear all too often that there’s too much money in cancer, that they already have a cure for it but won’t release it because big companies make too much money off of people being sick, but there are too many people who have had a mom or dad like mine. Too many of these people who are searching for a cure, too many who the cure means that other families won’t have to have the same heartbreak that we’ve endured. Try to stop a cure from being put out by these people, just try.

But the main point of this little soliloquy is that we’re all important, that we all serve a purpose while we’re hear and that each and every one of us is worth fighting for, that it’s not the length of our life but the depth.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has shown us the individuals who are battling the disease, but more than that, all of the people who choose to battle with them. 

We had a close group of friends who first got our little fundraiser off the ground with us but I can’t help but think just how amazed my mom would be if she could have been around to see just how big it has become, how many people she touched in her life that have now kept coming back to try to make a difference in her name. To our family, it means the world.

I had not personally been challenged to the Ice Bucket Challenge until one of my bus riders, Jaden, challenged me pretty recently. I was just going to do the challenge and write a check in honor of Chad Schmitz but I couldn’t help thinking, how do we do more, how do we go above and beyond, like Chad would do?

A quick side step here with one of my personal interactions with Chad. A couple of years ago I made my first really big purchase, a new car which I bought from Chad. He was fantastic through the whole process and made it one of the easiest things I ever did.

Shortly after, about 1,200 miles in, I hit a moose with said car and totaled it out. The problem was the insurance company and my definition of totaled was somehow completely different. After going back and forth with the insurance agency for about a month (all while the great people of Thibert’s Chevrolet were letting me use a rental car) I was contacted by Chad just to see how things were going. When I stopped in to talk to him he marched right over to my insurance agent with me and told them to total out the car and that I was sick and tired of waiting around without my car. He went above and beyond and the car was finally totaled out and I could move forward with getting a replacement, as a kicker, Thibert’s also threw in the use of the rental, which I had had for about a month!

On top of the wonderful customer service Chad provided during his time at Thibert’s, he also served as a volunteer fireman for our community eventually serving as Chief! His wife has also made her stamp in our community as one of the councilors at our High School. I didn’t realize just how much of an impact until I went to brag about how well everyone did for our charity basketball tournament on a “Town and School Days” radio broadcast and heard the Dean of Students brag about all the stuff she was doing to help out the kids in Red Lake Falls.

I’ve also gotten a unique opportunity to be the one who gets to transport Chad and Jenny’s youngest, Blaine, to school every day. Occasionally Maddi will ride as well, but Blaine is a constant and even though he doesn’t ride very far with me, I’ve gotten a chance to get to know him and I see how good of a kid he is, a testament to his upbringing and just how wonderful of parents Chad and Jenny have become.

The point of all of that is that Chad is a celebrity in our community, not because of the disease that he is battling, but because of the man that he is. The disease just gave us all a reason to rally up and show him and his family what he means to our community and that he has made an impact with all of us in one way or another.

One of the coolest things, which I recently found out, was that the team that the Schmitz’s walk with for the Grand Forks ALS walks, Chad’s Cruisers, wasn’t even formed by the family. It was formed by two sisters who had been loyal customers of Chad’s. Two people who he made such an impact on that they took it upon themselves to start a group to raise money for Chad and a cure for ALS. How good did this team do? They raised more money (over $20,300) than the next 9 teams participating, combined! There is no question as to the depth to which Chad has lived his life to this point.

Which brings us to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  Here are some quick facts for you:

·         ALS is not contagious.

·         Anyone can get ALS. Genetics account for about 5-10 percent of ALS cases. There are about 12 gene mutations found to cause ALS and it takes only one parent to pass it down. The rest of the time, there is no known cause.

·         About 30,000 people in the United States are living with ALS at any given time. According to the ALS Association, about 5,600 more are diagnosed each year.

·         Early symptoms include muscle stiffness and weakness, slurred speech, manual dexterity problems, and difficulty swallowing.

·         There’s no one medical test to diagnose ALS. It is diagnosed based on symptoms, neurological exam, and a series of tests to rule out other diseases.

·         The leading cause of death for people with ALS is respiratory failure. According to the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NINDS), death usually occurs within 3-5 years, but about 10 percent of patients survive beyond 10 years.

·         It’s rare, but ALS can stop progressing. Some people even experience a reversal of symptoms.

·         There is no cure for ALS. An FDA-approved drug called riluzole (Rilutek) may help reduce neurological damage for a time. Other treatments are designed to address individual symptoms and improve quality of life.

·         Research at the NINDS is ongoing, and the Ice Bucket Challenge is a fundraising success. As of August 22, The ALS Association reports receiving $53.3 million in donations compared to $2.2 million during the same time period last year (July 29 to August 21). In addition to their global research program, the ALS Association provides services to people living with ALS.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/this-als-ice-bucket-challenge-gets-to-heart-of-it.html#ixzz3BaoxsH5Y

For the most part people have taken to this challenge with open arms, it’s a simple enough thing to complete and can even be pretty fun! Not everyone donates that does the challenge, but even if only 10% have been donating, look at the amount that has been generated, over $50million! Now we as a company have decided not only to take part in the dumping of the ice water over our heads but we’re also going to do a little promotion where we donate a couple of dollars for every tuber we have on Sunday, August 31^st. It’s not much but we wanted to show Chad how much he means to our community and wanted to get our 7,500+ followers on the ALS fundraising bandwagon! With any disease, and the fundraising for it, awareness is the key.

There have been people bashing the fundraiser efforts for a number of reasons; not everyone that does it is donating, they’re wasting clean water when other countries and even parts of our country don’t have clean water, and my all-time favorite, “the videos are clogging up my Facebook newsfeed.”

First of all, as stated earlier, if only 10% of the people are donating, it has raised the funds over $50million in a very short time frame. It also has spread the awareness through user made videos. If the person who posted the video didn’t donate, maybe some of the people they nominated did.

Secondly, don’t use clean water if you don’t want. Come to the river, add some ice and dump it back on the ground or river. Eventually it will end up back in the river, somewhere will purify it, and it will once again become clean water. We have the technology, we can rebuild it, we can make it stronger…Aquafina!

Finally, I do apologize that you haven’t been able to find your favorite Banana Daiquiris & Life Lessons posts because there are far too many videos of people pouring ice water over their heads. The news feed is to show you what your friends are up to, the good news is that they are currently raising money and awareness for a cause bigger than you or them. The news is that people are suffering from a disease that robs them of their life so maybe the message you should be taking is that it’s time to stop scrolling that news feed and time to go out, make a difference, and live your life.

Sorry about the rant. I probably use social media more than anyone, but it too is a tool that can be used for social change, to create awareness, and when used properly (such as with an event like the Ice Bucket Challenge) can raise money, awareness, and even hopefully save some lives.

Come out Sunday, August 31^st and support ALS research just by enjoying a day of tubing down the Red Lake River. Pour a bucket of ice water over your head and donate, or just donate. Tell your family you love them and try to do the kind of things in your life that will one day band together a family, town, state, nation to save your life.

Make your life as deep as possible, like they say in football, leave it all on the field.

Stories (Drama and Mundanity)

Prologue: Sunday Morning

Update on me. It's been a rough couple weeks. Not every day of those two weeks, but enough of them. While I'm not a wandering male out sipping whiskey and chasing women like our well know and dearly adored comrade recently seen here, I have experienced some rejection - along with some fear, sadness, worry - that made it a tough go. But not unlike our resident lady's man, I did drink some whiskey. I listened to music. I played guitar. I wrote. And I got through it. I feel like I've been putting off some decisions and some actions, going to be working today to change that. Current events and world happenings also bring me down, perhaps more than they should. Robin Williams, Ferguson, and I saw this horrible video of monkeys and how they're "prepared" for flight to labs that traumatized the shit out of me; no joke. For me, it's not as much the rightness or wrongness of these things, but the pain inflicted and the anger kindled regardless of who is right. Life can be pretty ugly and sometimes it gets really hard to see the light for the darkness. But I guess moments like these give stir for me to write. Which no matter how good or bad I may be at it, I think it's not only a good thing, but an important thing to do with one's time.

-1-

Brutal honesty is perhaps the most entertaining of all human endeavors. Jason's recent post is a prime example of the drama factor within a solid, honest recalling of life's more - and less - desirable moments. Good, and also very bad, things happens to us here and there along this road. Yet for most of us average, God-fearing, Jane's and Joe's, life is rather mundane; most of the time. Neither good or bad. Just life. The normal tides of the voyage. But the unordinary moments really stitch together our life pattern. The stories we grow old recalling; or at least the ones that just don't seem to leave you, if you're fortunate enough to keep your memory into old age, or to any age for that matter.

Please allow me a short digression.

Stories are a human endeavor and though we've been telling them for awhile now, it's really only been for a rather short time in our overall existence on Earth. Yet these stories have had the power to build a simple creature into a civilized one; a key piece in the development of culture. Kurt Vonnegut, (an excellent author and if you're unaware, go to the Library later, you won't regret it) was an expert, of sort, on the "shapes" of stories. A humorous 5 minute video of Vonnegut lecturing on subject explains how he graphs the shapes of stories on axes. There is also a pretty rad blog post on the matter by Robbie Gonzalez.

Traveling further down the blog rabbit hole on this one, I found this post by Derek Sivers, who condenses Vonnegut's lecture down to a lesson for all of us. We follow along with great stories, such as the example of Cinderella, with all it's up and downs and big dramatic moments as plotted on this time vs misery/ecstasy xy graph:

In the video above, Vonnegut refers to this story as "the most popular story in our civilization - Western civilization - as we love to hear this story. Every time it's retold, somebody makes another million dollars, you're welcome to do it." (Vonnegut's sense of humor is scathingly beautiful). According to Sivers, Vonnegut makes the point that people love this story, along with the other popular story shapes, "and because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this. But the problem is, life is really like this...."

Again, according to Sivers, Vonnegut's final point is "because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.” 

This would explain our current fascination with much 'reality' television broadcast now-a-days.

Real life rarely plays itself out the way Vonnegut's story shapes progress. For some people, the major historical figures in our history, it has, but for most of us the big dramatic curves aren't that poignant. That doesn't mean we treat them as undramatic, it is our story after all and the only one we get to tell. But there are rises and falls along the misery/ecstasy or good/ill fortune axis that make up dramatic moments, our stories, our escape from mundanity. And that is really my focus here. Digression over.

-2-

Someone I probably don't know, and was not me, once said that sneezing is one of those pristine moments that lifts you above the mundane bullshit of ordinary life. Or something like that. I'm not great at remembering quotes verbatim, just the ideas behind them. Sneezing is pretty awesome. 

But select moments in any given individual's existence do the same thing: lift them out of mundanity. Sometimes it's a rather good thing. Some of my own examples: my 19th birthday spent in Canada, the night in Crookston when 9 Paces West won the battle of the bands, one random night spent in a basement apartment drinking Blue Moons and watching Bloodsport and Apocalypse Now with some of my closest friends (which coined the term flabulolinguistics), meeting my future wife for the first time and the wedding 5 years later. This isn't an exhaustive list, but these moments have stuck with me and are some of the high point blips on my otherwise pretty normal overall story shape. Then there is also the dips into the realm of misery: the death of my great-grandmother and later, the death of my uncle and my grandfather. Terrible moments of loss and with my great-grandmother, probably my first real sense of it. Because of the reality of life, I'll face more of these days, as we all do. I don't know that they get any easier. The more you love someone, and the longer you do so, the harder it is to say goodbye.

Another story shape that people love is mundane crushing event that's good in a bad a way (bad in a good way?) where it is usually bad for the main protagonist of the story, but extremely entertaining for the costars, bystanders, and future audiences. The slightly embarrassing, one's 'finer' moments, Jason when he drinks whiskey - who gets bonus points for his revealing, dare I say compromising, honesty.

Most of us have those. I do. No space to share them here.

The proverbial, "point of all this," is not to 'enjoy the moment they don't last forever,' or 'time heals all wounds' or some other cliché. The point could be to enjoy a simple lesson in humility or to stop taking your life so seriously it paralyzes you - don't overdramatize your good or bad moments. But really, I think it is gratitude. Life offers up these opportune and not so opportune moments. Simply, some are great, some are shit, most just are. Together it weaves your story here, in the now, chronicling regardless of the level of dramatic curves, story shapes. And when the dramatic moments in life do happen, they provide you with choices. Sometimes the choices are also dramatic and change forever the weave of the pattern, the path of your life. Some just make for good stories for social gatherings. The real ones, you know where people talk with each other. Best done with moderate levels of alcohol. But that's totally optional. Sort of. See also: Barbecue.

The cold truth of the matter is that we don't have a lot of time. Our lives are actually quite short - or at least shorter than we really like to think about. Coupled with the fact that most of it will be spent on the mundane necessities, that overall mundanity which is quite alright for watching football on Sundays. 

Philosophically, we could argue that it's all that time spent in the mundane, that makes the story moments of our lives stand out so much. The darkness makes the light brighter when the sun rises. The bad shit makes the good moments so incredible. We could argue that, but like most great philosophy, it's a thought experiment that poses more questions than delivers answers we can move on with.

Simply, the lesson is to be grateful there are dramatic curves in our stories; good or bad. Life would be pretty dull, without pain or joy like some lamesauce movie you went to where the popcorn was cold and the overpriced 'coke' was RC cola. Actually, that is traumatizing. I'm going to yell a lot about it and probably get my own reality tv show.

Do stuff, take chances, make choices, enjoy life as best you can and write your story. You'll be mostly to blame if it's not dramatic enough.

Prologue: Sunday Afternoon and #BDandLLHappyDays

I leave you with a bit of randomness and current developments. 

~ Lucas and I were able to get another of our Denver tracks mastered. Whiskey and the Wolves, "Black Letter." You can listen here - we're still pushing for EP release soon, just need to get some of the business aspects of it taken care of. Another thing on the Sunday to do list.

~As I've mentioned before, I keep a notebook at my side and write pretty much anything in it, some of it turns to blog posts, some of it is just reading notes and thoughts. Sometimes the random thoughts, make good little blurbs. Here's a moment of zen from a recent bit of random:

The traffic sound in Southern California is the constant buzz of the consumption hive. A giant, protruding hive sticking out into space with the atom like hover of bees in and out of the LA basin. A buzz populated by the BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus, the drone Prius, and the over compensating Riverside monster truck; the worker bee caste system. The rare Tesla bee has begun to appear. Bee collectors are envious.

~My last couple weeks, as told by my libations:

On the bad days, sometimes a pale ale and shot
of whiskey is exactly what is needed. But mostly
I just needed to write.

I found myself in random bar in Long Beach one
Saturday morning. It was a bloody mary morning.
The drink and food wasn't especially awesome, but
everyone seemed to know each other. I felt like an
extra on an episode of Cheers.

Try this. Take your favorite Hefeweizen. If you
don't have one, just buy one. Pour 3/4 of it into
a well sized beer glass. Swirl the bottle to get the
goodness on the bottom. Pour in the rest. Top off
with orange juice and orange slice, which I did
not have, sadly.

It's taken me much too long to write this post, and like a Kevin Costner film, it's grown too earnest and tiresome. Until next time, BD&LL faithful, salud!

Oh Captain, My Captain

I, like many was shocked and very saddened by the passing of Robin Williams last week, and felt like as he and his characters have certainly inspired me over the years, the least I could do was write a little piece about him.

I know a lot of people believe that he’s getting too much credit for just being the medium that other people’s words were delivered, but I feel like there is some ignorance to those statements. Don’t get me wrong, the words were beautifully written but most people never would have read them and even if they had, they wouldn’t have read them like Robin Williams was able to.

The man was an actor, not just someone who read words, but brought them to life. He gave the characters that were written their personality and put so much of himself into each one that they became a piece of him and for so many of us we remember the characters he gave us, only his loved ones and the ones that were truly close to him know who the real Robin Williams was, but he definitely left his mark on the rest of us.

One of my all-time favorite characters is John Keating, the teacher Williams portrayed in Dead Poets Society. Not to short change the teachers I’ve had throughout my student life but my mom always supported my reading and movie addiction and it was because of characters like this that I’d like to think it paid off. 

I think a lot of my teachers would probably claim that I was not their greatest student, maybe even that I was lazy, but the truth of the matter was that I was always bored in school. There seemed to be so many other things that I would rather be learning, and consequently I did a lot of reading on my own and I watched a ton of movies. In fact, when I first went to college I planned on majoring in Film, but when it got right down to it, it didn’t seem like the filming of movies was what interested me, but the writing of the stories, so I turned to English, then Mass Communications…and finally got a degree in Business. We all get sidetracked somewhere in life, but hopefully with BDandLL I now get a chance to continue my writing venture and do teachers like Mr. Keating proud.

I don’t want to negate all of the things I learned from my teachers over the years, though, some of them may not have had as big of an impact on me as they hoped, but they may have opened doors to other modes of learning that brought me down my current path. One teacher that someday deserves his very own “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” though, is Steve Philion (the Father of one of our contributors!) He would definitely tell you that I was one of the laziest students that he ever had, but he was such a good teacher that I learned so much from him and got so much better at Math than I ever would have guessed, just by listening to his lectures. I really didn’t do any work throughout the year, but I managed to understand the material and did very well on all my tests and continued to do well in Math throughout college…so Thank You Mr. Philion.

But back to Robin Williams…Isn’t it amazing how I could think of someone that I had an actual relationship with in the same sense as someone who just portrayed a character in a film? Both individuals, Mr. Philion and Mr. Williams are and were masters of their craft, they just chose different professions. But, regardless, I feel lucky to have had them both as teachers.

Williams Dead Poets Society character persuaded me to look at life a little differently. At one point in the film he has students climb up on his desk and take a look at the room to get a different perspective of something they’ve seen a million times.

 

He later has them walk around a court yard to show them not to conform, even though it is sometimes the easiest thing in the world to do. The message behind these lessons is that we must not lose our individuality and we must always keep our eyes open to the world around us.

 

Spoiler Alert!!! At the end of the film, Mr. Keating gets fired from the school after a student, persuaded by Keating to pursue his dreams of being an actor, kills himself after his father pulls him from the production. The very last scene may be one of the most powerful of any film I’ve ever seen (once again, a matter of perspective):

 

The message all along is to be extraordinary, to live a life full of meaning and to stand up for something…anything. The kids in Mr. Keating’s class got that message, a message Keating delivered to them and Williams delivered to us.

When we’re young, if we’re lucky, our parents tell us we can be whatever we want and encourage us to pursue our dreams. Williams lived an extraordinary life because he did what he loved and in doing so lived a hundred different lives and brought so much joy to so many. He also left behind a legacy through his films that will live on long after all of us, and a legacy with his family that they will cherish forever.

As humans living our allotted time on this earth I believe we all hope to leave a little of ourselves behind for future generations. Be it the works we complete, our children, or even just the smallest phrase or combination of words. As writers, and regardless of how many people actually read our stuff, we are officially writers (Our shiz (not that shiz) is on the I-net), we hope that our words resonate with someone, that somehow someone learns something and passes the message on to someone else. We don’t care how this message travels, just that it does and that the meaning is remembered. The individuals who wrote the very beautiful words that Robin Williams delivered may not get the recognition that Williams himself got, but the meaning has been delivered, and the medium (Williams) has made those words more powerful than ever. “The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Words which have been around for 100 years, delivered to a new generation whom will hopefully carry the message along and contribute their own verse as well. Words, the medium, the man…Robin Williams, you will be missed, but never forgotten.

A couple of days after Williams passing one of my friends tagged me in a post about 14 Life Lessons learned from Robin Williams, here’s the link, but the message from my friend was that it reminded her of our #BDandLLHappyDays that we (at least Mike and I) have been attempting to do here…what a compliment. Something that we have been doing got put in the same category with something this great man did…maybe our message is finally catching on!

One final link you might want to check out is this event that was put forth in memory of Robin Williams and also to help those battling depression. I’m no stranger to depression myself but an event such as this really shows how by doing for others, we can really feel better about ourselves and the world as a whole.

I’m sure I’ll get back to my drunken debauchery that you all enjoy reading about before long, but this is our medium to deliver our message…our verse, and today I decided to use it to remember a fine actor who definitely played a part in shaping me into the person I’m slowly developing. Now go watch Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Good Morning Vietnam, Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire, Hook, and all of the great films this man made in his lifetime! Take the message from Hook, and don’t forget the kid in you and to live a life worth living!

Until next time!

Whiskey and Women

The epitome of Women and Whiskey.

This is what the good people who read my occasional posts have probably been waiting for. I made mention in my last post about some recent indiscretions that led me to miss a few #BDandLLHappyDays posts and have since been asked about it several times…so here it goes…

A few weeks back now I finished up working for the day and then headed over to our local watering hole to try and get in on the last few games of our volleyball league night and maybe have a cocktail or two.

I hadn’t really eaten that day much so after two drinks while playing volleyball I was already feeling a little bit buzzed. Once we finished our games I figured it would be in my best interest to get a little food into me before I continued to drink, so I sat down with my good friends Dustin, Lacey and Shari and had myself a delightful chicken sandwich.

During our dining experience one of the kids that work for us came to the table to chat and he also brought with him a group of young ladies who were camping at our establishment. All four girls were pretty attractive but I was pretty engaged in conversation with my friend Lacey and apparently they assumed that the two of us were married, after being assured that we were not the night took a drastic change.

Shortly after Dustin tried to claim that Lacey and I were in fact married and I told them that the two of them were actually married I believe that Lacey decided it was time to leave because she was afraid of ruining what the kids today call “my game.”

A few drinks later, including a shot or two, I was out on the dance floor with these girls dancing to what some people refer to as music but I simply call Country. If I was dancing to this so called, “music,” you know that I was starting to feel pretty intoxicated…but I wasn’t quite ready to dive in so I yelled to the bar tender (Fikin’ Swayze) that I needed whiskey, stat.

I look over and see that a shot is sitting next to a glass of beer. I personally really do enjoy whiskey but I had never attempted what is affectionately called a “Boiler Maker” before. But the country was blaring, the ladies were beckoning and I needed something more to drag me back to that dance floor…so I dropped my shot of whiskey into the beer, slammed the drink and retook my place back on the dance floor.

The thing that made the night fuzzy...but real.

I apparently switched to straight Jamie Jump-Up’s after that, which if you’re not familiar with them check out our What We’re Drinking page. The night really gets fuzzy after that but I remember that at one point two of the girls told my friend and I that they weren’t single and just left. It was kind of a strange exit and kind of out of the blue, but I guess that meant we were to continue our night with the other two girls and that we were supposed to be putting in some sort of “game.” Until that point I was pretty unaware that whatever “game” we had been using had been leading in this direction but whatever, the whiskey was flowing and it started to appear that my night was going to have a completely different ending than the one I had imagined, which was me getting a little buzzed up and then walking home to pass out with my dog.

So the night continued with the four of us, I found out all about the one girl, which I have since forgotten (whiskey side effects) but I do remember that at one point, as we were both getting a little more intoxicated, we were talking about how she had just graduated (college you sickos!) and was going to become a teacher.

I told her that I had a really good friend from Canada who was a teacher and that she actually taught all over the world. Somehow this led to me talking about all of the Spanish I know (que?) and her telling me that she speaks Spanish and a little French. So for some reason I said to myself, well let’s FaceTime my friend from Canada and we’ll speak Spanish to her…it seemed like the only logical thing to do (whiskey side effects).

Well I think that I had a very nice drunken conversation with my friend Brenda but the young lady I was with seemed to believe we were just calling one of my ex-girlfriends and really wanted nothing to do with it…let there be no mistake, I have absolutely no “game.”

The next thing I knew I was laying on my patio getting rid of the delightful chicken sandwich I had purchased earlier in the day. I must have felt pretty comfortable, though, because I was totally planning on spending my night right there until my friend decided to yell at me about something to the point where I just went and…you guessed it, passed out with my dog.

The next morning I awoke (just barely) for work to find I had a message on Facebook from a friend who happened to be out at the bar saying, “I want to write a blog about a guy making out with some random girl at the bar,” which brought back some memories of how I had in fact had an experience like that that could be blogged about. I responded, “as long as it ends with the guy waking up in a pile of his own throw-up alone.”

For some reason I kept hearing The Lumineers in my head singing, “Classy girls don’t kiss in bars like this.” Turns out classy guys don’t either…so that either means the young lady and I were not what you’d call classy, or we weren’t in a bar like the one in the song…I think you know what I choose to believe.

I later turned to Fikin’ Swayze to fill in a few more of the blanks for me, such as, if the girl thought I was using her to get back at an ex-girlfriend, how did we end up pawing at each other like wild animals at the bar? And what did I do with all of those hours that I can’t remember?

Well it turns out that I spent a portion of that time lying on my back outside of the bar “watching the stars,” as I like to remember it. But more than likely I was just passed out. Somehow it was after that little cat nap that I came back in, re-found that “game” thing and ended up stealing some kisses from my lovely new friend.

I can't really remember, but I'm pretty sure these are photos from my bar makeout sesstion.

Swayze ended up giving us a ride home at the end of the night and it sounds like the girl would have been alright with spending the night, but I was sleeping in the car and apparently she was a little worried about all of the whiskey I had consumed.

All in all, it was a night to forget. But she did have a beautiful smile and I am a sucker for a smile. She was a pretty girl and from what I remember we seemed to have fun together that night, I just don’t usually do things like that. I’ve been spending most of the last year building myself into a pretty decent human being but every now and again those wild nights come calling.

My last summer was spent for the most part in exercise and self pity. Once the summer ended I started moving in a more positive direction, I consumed as much literature as I could and tried to leave a positive impact on as many individuals as would listen to me as well…but this summer I’ve been letting lose a little more. This was one of the only nights I got a little crazier than normal, but I’ve been having fun again and I am getting ever so closer back to happy. I don’t like to get this drunk and make a fool out of myself, but it happened and as many of us say, “I’m never drinking again,” …mine’s now in print and shall become much harder to forget.

I’ll keep falling for the beautiful smiles and I guess they say that if you’re looking for a girl you shouldn’t be looking in bars, but the libraries, coffee shops and wherever else a guy should look don’t serve the whiskey I like, and classy girls don’t kiss in bars like those.

Until next time, “el gato es blanco.”

Lions and Tigers and Bears… Say what?!?

The day started out early. 5:00 a.m. early. Manny, the boys, and I were taking as #2 calls a “woah chip” (aka road trip) for his eye doctor appointment. We were as prepared as we could be to be stuck in the car for the entire day.

Now, if you haven’t traveled with two young children – especially for an entire day of being cooped up in a vehicle of any sort – I will tell you that any distractions are welcomed to keep the kiddos from turning into caged beasts in the back seat. (More on caged beasts – real ones, not kids – to come…) Hence, when we saw a large billboard touting a large “zoo” (I’m going to go ahead and use that term loosely) Manny and I were jazzed that we had something to give our kids to look forward to. Apparently the appeal of watching Yo Gabba Gabba 100 times in a row had worn off…

A quick Google search not only gave us driving directions, but also the website of said “zoo”. Turns out this was not just a run-of-the-mill petting zoo on the side of a highway. Oh, no. This place boasted lions, tigers, AND bears. Not sure what we’d find, we pulled up to a packed parking lot. So far, so good.

We go in, pay the entry fee, and head on into the reptile zone. The kids loved seeing the too-big-for-my-taste spiders and snakes, and Manny and I were secretly high-fiving the fact that we found this little gem on the side of the road. We head out the door for the outside portion of our visit and stumble upon a lovely trout pond. Cute!

Next to the trout pond was a fenced in area containing a kangaroo. Cool! But wait, is that kangaroo taking the world’s longest piss? Yup. Is he making eye contact with me while taking said piss? You betcha. In an attempt to prevent a “kids say the darndest things” moment, I quickly focus on the next cage.

“Look boys, it’s a Siberian tiger!” (I didn’t think I’d be mentioning those words when I woke up that morning…) We sauntered over and saw a tiger hanging out in a fence. A ceiling-free fence.

Now, when I say fence I mean like a chain-link fence that you’d find at Home Depot. Nothing special, or even electric for that matter. 

I saw the tiger and instantly felt my guard going up some (I have no clue how high a Siberian tiger can jump/climb, nor did I want to find out!) but I kept the fake “this is cool” voice going so as not to scare the children. (Or Manny.)

The next few cages contained a porcupine, raccoons, and a bunny. I could feel my guard sense coming down a bit. But then I saw a cage with a bear in it. It wasn’t Winnie the Pooh and it definitely wasn’t making me feel warm and fuzzy. That sucker weighed 700lbs and the only thing between us and him was a couple more “On Sale This Weekend at Mendard’s” chain link fences. Gah! I found myself thinking: “let’s keep moving along, we’ve got to be past the predators. I mean, we’ve seen a tiger and a freaking huge bear already. What more is left?”

The next cage had two huge African lions. Like, straight outta Lion King lions. And they were fighting like my kids do when they both want the Buzz Lightyear toy. We heard the growl from the really big kitty and faster than we could say “neat!” in a calm (but freaking out on the inside voice) big kitty charged the space between us and slammed right into the fence. We grabbed our kids and ran the other direction faster than lightening.

Can I just say that never in my wildest dreams would I think running towards a 700lb black bear would be my better option?!?

It’s MY turn to play with Buzz Lightyear!

After a brief crying episode (perhaps for both the kids and Manny), we ventured out into the fenced in petting zoo full of deer. We regained our calm, perhaps figuring that the large pen full of deer would make us a difficult target for the ginormous animals just a few yards away, and fed them ice cream cones full of seeds and other crap deer like to eat.

#2 seems a bit edgy over the encounter.

Perhaps he’s curious as to where Buzz Lightyear has disappeared to…

The deer were fed and our shoes full of deer poop, so we decided to head back to the car. But not before going back through the African wilderness. (Again, would have never guessed my day would take this kind of turn!) A brief stop at the lion pen (Drew’s request) and they still seemed pretty ticked at each other. The big black bear was roaming around his pen staring intently at my two-year old. And the tiger was jumping from the ground up to his perch. (Again, making me wonder how high can they jump?)

The last dude we had to say goodbye to before the Gagner family left the premises (forever), was that goofy kangaroo we saw on our way in. The boys started hopping up to the cage doing their best kangaroo impressions (clearly the events over the last 30 minutes hadn’t impacted them in a negative way).

It was then that the kangaroo looked them right in the eye, flopped on his back, and totally passed out for what looked like a really nice spot to take a nap. The only thing stopping me from taking a nap on one of the many “zoo” benches? The FREAKING lions, tigers, and bears.

“Can I interest you in a beer? They say it’s the hair of the dog.”

Until next time BD&LLers!

(Note: to cover my bases I will not comment on what the name of this place is, nor will I pretend to be a PETA/anti-PETA advocate. I’m just a mom that needs a nap.)