Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas to all of you! And I hope you have a happy New Year! I want to thank you for reading my blog, and especially for commenting. It helps to know that there are a few people out there who actually do read the things I write and seem to appreciate them. I want to make sure you know that I appreciate you, too.

Merry Christmas!

Guns

I grew up in a house filled with guns. Dad was in the Army, and so, of course, we had his old Army rifle, an Enfield .30-06 baseball bat of a gun. Grandad was in WWI, and so we had his rifle, too, his having died long ago and left it behind. It was a Krag .30-06 that seemed to me, as a little kid, to be 6 feet tall all by itself. It was a giant rifle.

Actually, I don't think it was the gun Grandad carried. I think it was older than that - Spanish/American War old. But we inherited it from him when he died. And Dad didn't carry the exact Enfield he owned, but he bought it later because he liked the gun. Either way, we took both rifles to various outdoor shooting ranges from time-to-time and shot them. Old .30-06 military rifles had hard walnut stocks with steel buttplates on the end. I don't know what the purpose of those steel buttplates were, certainly not to provide any comfort, but they would leave a mark in your shoulder after you fired a shot. It felt like being punched. And then you'd look inside your shirt and there'd be a reverse stamped imprint of that buttplate marking a bruise in your shoulder.

And loud, man, those guns were loud! BOOOOM! I mean, compared to the BB guns my brother and I grew up shooting a .30-06 was a literal canon. As we got older we advanced to .22 rifles. Crack! They really weren't much louder than our BB guns, although to us they were awesome. When Dad let us shoulder one of the .30-06s and fire it, we thought we'd officially grown up, like having your first beer or something.

Those rifles were SO heavy. I could see how the soldiers could use them for double-duty, firing holes in enemy soldiers and then bludgeoning their heads in with the rifle when the bullets ran out. I'd sure hate to get hit with one. It could take your head off. A baseball bat is light compared to those rifles. Truthfully if I had to choose between getting hit with a bat and an antique .30-06 rifle, I'd choose the bat.

Dad had handguns, too, all revolvers. Well, all except his Ruger 22 LR target pistol. That was his only semiautomatic pistol. He talked a few times about the Colt .45 semiauto that officers in the Army carried, and he himself carried one, having been an officer. But he had no love for them. He never expressed much interest in semiautomatic pistols at all, really. Now that I think of it, other than the 22s, none of his rifles were semiautomatics, either. They were all bolt-action rifles. And he preferred it that way.

Not Dad

My dad was not a hunter. He had hunted as a kid and didn't like it. He didn't say much about it, but he did say one time that he just didn't enjoy killing animals for sport, especially when he wasn't planning to eat it. He had no interest in that area of shooting at all. As a result, my brother and I grew up shooting paper targets, as well as bottles and cans, but never any animals. We were good shots, but the only moving targets we ever shot at were when we threw a bottle in a stream and tried to sink it before it floated away. Or each other.

It never occurred to me until today, following the massacre in Connecticut by a mentally disturbed man carrying an AR15 Bushmaster rifle, that my dad's interest in guns seemed to stop somewhere around the point of Vietnam-style weapons. As far as I am aware, and I haven't researched this, but apparently Vietnam was the first war in which American soldiers carried anything even remotely like the AR15, with its built-in handle on top and very non-wooden appearance. The rifles used in the military from Vietnam onward look and feel nothing like the previous military rifles. Even in the Korean War they carried the wooden-stocked M1 rifle. To this very day, enthusiasm for the old M1 rifle is very high among shooters. They love that gun. But the crowd that likes the more modern military-style rifles, the M16s and AR15s and such, seems to be a very different crowd.

Gun show

At gun shows there is every sort of person walking around looking to pick up a few things that they have a need or an interest in. There are book salesmen and knife salesmen and leather goods craftsmen and western wear salesmen and gun safe salesmen. You can find all manner of antique guns, going right back to black powder, with no shortage of enthusiasts for muskets and the like. You can find swords and suits of armor. You can even sometimes find metal-smiths who will make a suit of armor to fit you, if you really want it. There are lots of bikers, guys with long ponytails and leather vests with "Harley Davidson" written across the back. There are guys in military fatigues who clearly haven't been in the military for a very long time, if ever.

And those are usually the guys who want the M16s and AR15s and the like. Its the guys in military clothing who may or may not have once been in the military. I guess that's fair, considering my dad was in the military prior to the introduction of those type rifles and maintained his interest in the very guns he was trained with, but not much that came after. I suppose it's fair that a man trained by the Army to shoot an M16 would want to buy an M16 for himself when he was older.

A different breed

But somehow, to me, they seem a different crowd. First of all, those types of guns cost twice as much as all the other rifles. You can't walk away with any M16 or AR15 or anything of the sort for under $1000. That's quite a commitment to one gun. Guys like my dad wouldn't pay that for a rifle unless it came with a really nice scope, a carrying case, and some nice extras, like maybe a hooker. But a bare-bones gun costing over $1000? No way, not for my dad, not for Dad's type of shooting enthusiast, and not for me.

The Hello Kitty AR15 is the real thing

I don't know if it's fair to try to paint the type of shooter who pays over $1000 for a purely military-style gun with a broad brush. It probably isn't. But from what I've seen, the same guys who buy those rifles are the guys who'll pay $50,000 for a customized Harley, another $50,000 for a supercharged new Camaro, spend a fortune on leather goods that they wear to ride their bikes so they can look bad-ass, and then live in a dump at home. Those guys, and survivalists, seem to be the main people that I see at gun shows and gun stores buying the modern military rifles. Money is no object, just as long as it looks cool and bad-ass.

To politicians and the media, guns that look bad-ass are scary. And anything that looks scary can be portrayed as being evil and in need of some sort of government action by otherwise worthless politicians. It's easy to call for a ban on "assault weapons", for which there is no actual legal definition, show photos of the AR15, and then go and ban the Ruger 10/22 and other totally unrelated guns instead. That's what they always do. Even more worthless was the ban on high capacity magazines. No one ever died because of a high capacity magazine. Changing magazines in a rifle takes 1 second or less. And you can strap 10 of them to your belt if you feel the need. But the high capacity magazines LOOK scary - especially the drum magazines that remind us of the gangsters with their Thompson submachine guns of the 1930s. Scary makes for good press. Scary gets on the air. Scary gets a US Senator to hold it up over his balding head and shout that he will not rest until it is illegal for anyone (except his own bodyguards) to own one.

But getting back to my non-political point, I have never wanted to own an AR15 or an M16 or anything that costs as much or looks much the same. And my dad never wanted one. And I don't recall my brother ever mentioning the slightest desire to own one. I have never actually known anyone who owned one. Not one single person. And I'm in the NRA. I do remember my brother talking about what a huge piece of crap he thought they were, with their .223 caliber bullets and combination plastic and metal parts. Its not that my brother was any expert, but he knew how to lock onto an opinion that my dad would approve of, which means that he knew my dad had no respect for the modern military rifles either.

Typical rifle collection

Looking around the web, I see a lot of shooting enthusiasts who talk with fondness and respect for the old army rifles, starting with the M1 and going backwards through history. Some mention the M14, which was a variation of the M1, but nothing like the M16. Several people on the net talk with derision of the M16s and AR15s. It seems that these ugly, underpowered, and politically expedient punching bags are not much loved by anyone who isn't a member of a SWAT team or survivalist group. And I'm not even sure about the SWAT teams. They carry them, but they don't buy them with their own money.  The point is, these rifles were made exclusively for governments intent upon waging a war as cheaply as possible. The M16 and AR15 is intended to compete with the communists AK-47, which is far more powerful, but no less cheaply made and quite a bit less expensive to produce. They were never intended to be very marketable or serve any sort of dual purpose between soldiers and hunters and target shooters. They are ugly and cheaply made, but accurate and lightweight - perfect for a weak politically correct modern soldier or a punk wannabe who hopes the Mayans were right and tomorrow really is the last day for civilization.

But for me, and for most shooting enthusiasts, those guns are just ugly, overpriced, glorified .22s that the government mandated to an army that had no say in the matter. And from what I hear, the soldiers that carry them into combat have been begging for something better ever since.

Please bring me a better rifle!

* UPDATE which wrecks my entire conclusion:

I talked to my brother-in-law about this and he said he was considering buying an AR15 to replace his old Ruger Mini-14 rifle, which he uses to shoot coyotes around his property. He heard the AR15 was incredibly accurate and it uses the same ammunition as the Mini-14 he already owns.

Then I talked to my cousin in Texas who has a problem with wild hogs and coyotes invading his property, harassing his animals and crops and endangering his kids. He said he tried shooting at the predators with an AR15 and could hit them with extreme accuracy from 200 yards away with multiple shots before they could turn and run off. He likes the gun so much for shooting wild predators and problem animals that he had a customized version made for his son to use. He used to think like I do, that these guns are useless, but after trying one out he was so impressed that he is now a believer and an owner of 2.

So my conclusion was wrong. Apparently they are great rifles for shooting 'varmints' and super accurate. For someone with a predator problem this kind of accuracy is worth the $1000+ price tag.

Flu

I had the flu pretty badly about 2 or 3 weeks ago. And now I have it again. I was at work on Tuesday when I began to feel as if someone had shot me in the stomach and perhaps I needed to take the bullet out because it was still in there. So I knew this wasn't a normal feeling to have. On top of that, my stomach felt like it was blown up as big as the Hindenberg and might explode at any moment. So of course this was the time my boss picked for having lots of meetings. I had to sit in his office on top of his desk, as all the chairs were taken, while feeling like a gunshot victim. Before long my back began to ache, too. I was just in heaven. So there I was on my boss' desk with an inflated stomach rocking back and forth in agony. I could hardly wait for the meeting to end so I could go home and die.

So naturally the meeting went long. We left the office well after 5. I threw on my coat and stepped outside into the parking lot. As soon as the cold hit me I began to violently shiver and my teeth were chattering. OK, it was cold out, but it wasn't quite that cold. Clearly I was very, very sick.

I ran to the car and jumped in, started it up, and cranked up the heat. I drove home for nearly 1 hour with the heat going full blast. It did not warm me AT ALL. Another person riding with me said they could hardly breathe because it was so freakin' hot inside my car. But I couldn't feel any of it. I was still shivering.

Once I reached my own house I ran inside, kicked off my shoes, and dove into bed. Even with all the covers over my head and me curled into a ball I was shivering and chattering my teeth. At some point I got up, aimed the heater in the master bathroom towards the bed and turned it on full blast. Then I jumped back into bed. I stayed in bed from the time I got home until the next morning when I had to contact work to let them know I was not going to be able to make it in.


Must be the flu

So Wednesday and Thursday I was home feeling like death. But for some reason I felt sure I'd be back at work by Friday for sure. Friday came and I developed a new sympton - rocket propulsion diarrhea. NASA could've used my diarrhea to send another Space Shuttle into orbit without requiring any fuel tanks at all, I kid you not.

So I was not able to return to work on Friday either.

One of the weird effects of this flu is that I can't taste anything at all. Everything tastes like wax. I never had a good sense of smell, but I suppose at the moment I have none at all. My ears are ringing. They always did to some extent, but they're really loud right now. I'm not sure how much of this is from the flu and how much I just didn't notice before sitting home alone for 3 quiet, boring days.

My dreams are weird. I remembered a few of them at first, but now that I'm writing about this I can't remember any of them at all. Everything is hazy
.

I feel as if my muscles are being sucked dry on my bones. I haven't been to the gym in a very long time, so it's unavoidable that I've experienced some hypertrophy, but now I feel like they're just turning into dust. There's an ache that goes with shrinking muscles and boy do I have that ache, in spades. Just tonight I grabbed a 30 lb dumbbell from behind the couch and slowly and feebly pumped out 10 reps of overhead Arnold presses. I just needed the feeling of having something pumping into the muscles to bring them back to life again. It actually felt good. If I weren't still sick I'd drop to the floor and start doing pushups or something. If I could manage that I'm sure the renewed blood flow into my chest, shoulders and triceps would be a welcomed relief from this zombie-like decay I've been feeling.

Do I look smaller to you?

Anyway, that's all that's going on right now. This flu seems to be going around so I'm curious if anyone else has it that reads this blog. Of course, that's an audience of maybe 5 people, minus an old friend who just dropped me out of the blue without any explanation, so that's like 4 now. If you guys can avoid this flu, I highly recommend you do so. It's awful. And two times in a row is even worse.

Office Drama

I have some office drama that is bugging me. It's nothing as exciting as Minxy's Princess problems, but it is driving me up the wall nonetheless.

This is my cup. There are others like it, but this one is mine.

This is my coffee cup. It's an ordinary generic-looking blue cup that I have had forever. I take it with me from job to job, along with the cup warmer, so that I can be conscious in the mornings while I'm trying to work. Coffee is an essential ingredient to my work. I don't like coffee, especially, but I need the caffeine to make my brain go. And sometimes I need the warmth to help me dethaw on winter mornings.

Sometime in late August someone at my job decided that it was their job to take this cup from off my desk and go throw it in the break room. This happened several times, each time with the cup disappearing from my desk and reappearing in the breakroom. Sometimes it was on the counter. Sometimes it was in the sink. A few times it was inside the dishwasher.

I assumed it was the cleaning crew thinking this is a generic company cup that they have to clean, so I asked my boss to put me in touch with whomever is responsible for the cleaning crew. Then I asked that person to please ask his crew to stop taking my personal coffee cup. This is not a company cup.

The response I got back was that I should lock the cup inside my desk every single day any time I leave my desk and further, how do I know it is the cleaning crew since I don't have video cameras set up around my desk to prove that it was them and I can't just go around accusing them like that and it is my fault if I didn't lock it in my desk.

So I had to request a key to my desk and begin locking the cup inside my desk every day at the end of the workday before I went home. End of problem, right?

Wrong. The cup STILL disappears periodically from out of my locked desk and reappears in the break room. It disappeared again in September, several times, and then October, and again this morning. I guess they took November off or something? Anyway, sometime between Friday night and Monday morning someone broke into my desk and took my cup. I found it in the breakroom inside the dishwasher along with several other people's cups.

This sure sounds like the cleaning staff to me. Does it to you?

Anyway, another person somehow involved in this suggested that it is merely a prank by coworkers who sit near me. I said I didn't think so because A) it isn't at all creative B) it isn't at all funny and most of all C) I never said anything to them about it or even indicated that it was going on, so they didn't even know it was happening.

Ah, but this person took it upon themselves to go and question my coworkers anyway, months ago, in fact. And after that my coworkers said to me "we didn't take your stupid cup" and mostly stopped talking to me altogether. Thanks so much for accusing my coworkers on my behalf after I said I don't think they had anything to do with it. Now they think I am some sort of paranoid schizophrenic who randomly accuses people of the very odd crime of stealing my cup out of my locked desk and washing it. So awesome.

In the meantime, I have encountered the cleaning crew on a few occasions. They are contracted from another company. Many of them are mentally handicapped. We used to call this 'retarded' but then one day a wave of political correctness swept the nation (Clinton was elected) and suddenly we weren't supposed to use the word retarded anymore. I personally think that the mentally challenged retarded people who clean our offices believe that my generic blue coffee cup is their responsibility to clean. I think that they believe it to be company property and that they should take it wherever they find it, clean it, and leave it in the break room for any random person to use for their coffee as they please. This is why I specifically asked that the cleaning crew be informed that this is my cup and not to be taken. But they refuse to do this. They refuse to talk to the cleaning crew about it because they say that is an accusation and I don't have proof. But they questioned my coworkers about it even after I said I don't believe it is them. And now my coworkers most definitely feel accused and won't talk to me. So awesome.

Coffee cup ... must take it

So here's the thing ...

So here's the thing, I've been to the doctors, had lots and lots and did I mention lots of blood drawn and sent away to be tested. I had the unique experience of a doctor stopping me in the hallway of a major medical center to say "you're bleeding in the floor." I had just had blood drawn and was sent on my way with a cotton ball when I noticed that my arm inside my coat sleeve felt wet. Then a random passing doctor commented on blood dripping from my sleeve. I looked down at my arm.

Blood.

I spun around and entered the nearest bathroom. (Let me correct that statement - I entered the nearest men's bathroom. The nearest bathroom was the women's.)  I yanked off my coat and sure enough, blood was streaming down my arm from the spot where they stuck the needle in. My first thought, of course, was to turn my coat sleeve inside out and start frantically wiping off the still-wet blood. Once the coat was as clean as I could get it, I started working on my arm. The active bleeding seemed to slow enough that I was able to wash blood off my arm and hands. I didn't put my coat back on, though, because I wasn't quite that confident that there wasn't more bleeding to come.

Anyway, so far the rest results show nothing. I don't have diabetes. I don't have Lyme disease. I don't have rheumatoid arthritis. I don't have anything that they can point to and say "there, there is why you are having these strange problems, injuries, pains, etc."

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, NOT having the things I so far know that I don't have is good. It's possible that I'm just getting old and creeky and my body is rebelling against years and years of physical abuse in the form of various sports I got involved with as injuries drove me out of one and into another, or boredom did. Either way, I'm hoping for this all to just heal. If it doesn't, I have to go back for more tests. Next time I'll wear a less expensive jacket.

Strange Days Indeed

Something funky is going on. I don't know what to make of it. I wrote a little about it in my previous post. I had a thumb and wrist that wouldn't heal. I originally began having problems with it in March. No explanation. But it was hurt like hell and wouldn't heal. Around the time I went to the doctor I was having odd pain in my left knee. Then my ankle. And I didn't do anything to either one of them. They just hurt. No explanation.

Since then, I went to the doctor. Doctor gave me some sort of steroids for inflammation. The steroids seem to have solved the problem with my right hand. It doesn't bother me anymore. But my left hand is another story. While I was at the doctor my left pinky was swollen in the center joint and stiff. I couldn't figure out why. Maybe I did something to it? I didn't mention it. I figured the medication for my other hand would take care of it.

By the time I had taken all the doses of steroids I was prescribed, my right hand was mostly OK. My left pinky was only so-so. And as it healed, or seemed to, my left middle finger began to get stiff in the same joint, the middle joint. There is no reason for it. I did nothing to it. So for a time both my left pinky and left middle finger were pretty useless. I couldn't make a fist or open my hand all the way. Either extreme was just not possible.

Meanwhile, every afternoon, when I'd get up from my desk, my left knee was stiff. It wasn't stiff like it was swollen or injured or anything. It was just stiff like it didn't want to work. And if I tried to turn my foot to the left or right, it wasn't going to allow it. I'd walk around the office and it would mostly work the stiffness out. But still, there is no reason for it in the first place. Something is wrong.

My ankle, which was mysteriously aching without any cause, had mostly stopped bothering me. Every now and then it comes back, but not much.

My back, which I had hurt, would stop hurting when I did some ab exercises. Now it just aches, as if it has nothing to do with any injury.

Today I went back to the doctor. They took a lot of blood. They're going to send it away for a lot of tests, some of them for some seriously unpleasant stuff. I'm hoping all the results are negative. I'm hoping this is all just a freak thing and it is going to go away just as mysteriously as it appeared. But we'll see. If the tests don't show anything, they may have to take more blood and do more tests.

In the meantime, I finally got my bike back from the bike shop. It's all fixed up nice. Both the front and rear deraillure have been replaced. It rides nice again. Of course, with Autumn fully here now, it gets dark before I get home from work, so I wont have very many opportunities to ride it for about 6 months.

Warrior Dash 2012

I did it again. I ran the Warrior Dash one more time. I was in lousy shape, with a sudden onslaught of mysterious and frustrating injuries and pains that have come from out of nowhere and seeminly have no cause and no cure. Even Aleve didn't help.

Earlier this week I went to the doctor for a injured thumb that hasn't healed in over 6 months. "Doc, what's up with this hand not healing? All I did was plant some trees and since then my hand has felt like I hit it with a hammer. My thumb has felt broken. I didn't do anything to it."

X-rays showed a calcium deposit that could indicate a healing break. There is no way to know for sure what happened. So later that same day, it's 5 pm and I'm getting up from my desk to go home and exercise before the race. My left knee hurts like I've destroyed it. This is out of nowhere. I didn't hurt my knee. I was at my desk sitting on my butt all day. What is going on??

So, injured knee means I'm not going home to run. My road bike is still broken. So I pull out my mountain bike and ride that. Oh Lord, it has so many more gears than my old Bottecchia road bike and they are so much easier to use! I'm flying down the road.

After the workout I felt fine. I showered, ate, and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Friday, I get up to go to pack my truck for the race and then drive to work. My left ankle is killing me. "WTF?? I didn't hurt my ankle! I went biking! I didn't hurt my stupid ankle!!!"  I find some ibuprofen and take it. It has no effect.

At work my ankle still hurts. So does my back. OK, Wednesday I did legitimately hurt my back. It is an old injury, but I reinjured it while lifting weights. I take more Aleve. No effect.

Friday after work I drive to where I'm staying. The race is about 4 hours from my house. I'm staying nearby so I can just get up, head to the race, and go for it. Me, my ankle, my back and my seemingly broken thumb go to bed.

Saturday morning, the day of the race, I wake up. My middle finger on my left hand feels broken. But it isn't. I can't pick up anything with this hand without that finger screaming in pain. But I can grab the finger and press on it and it is fine. Just don't put any pressure on it or bend it. WTF???!!!! More Aleve, which does nothing. My ankle, meanwhile, is hurting again as if I have horribly injured it. I never did. I ignore it.

When I arrive at the race parking, which costs $20 just to park, I am quickly reassured that I did the right thing in driving my 4x4 truck to this event. It rained last night and the parking area is just a big field. After thousands of cars and trucks have driven down the specified paths, they are motorcross-worthy mud pits. Cars in front of me are struggling despite their front-wheel-drive. I drop down into 4-high and slide around a little, but keep moving forward. My back window quickly spackles over with mud splotches. I'm already having fun.

At the race, all around me are college-aged runners dressed as The Avengers (Thor ran the entire race with hammer in hand), Jesus and the Disciples plus 2 nuns, several Wonder Womans, a Tarzan, three guys in Spandex tuxedos with 2 girls in sequined uniforms, pirates, the most attractive 80s workout girl I've seen since the '80s itself, and lots and lots of tattooes everywhere I look. I'm boring. I'm just wearing a running shirt and some cotton workout shorts. And I have no tattooes. I'm dressed for a regular 5K race, which is just so wrong for so many reasons.

Last year we ran a full mile before we hit a single obstacle. This year the first half mile was filled with obstacles - out-of-shape people walking. There must have been over a hundred people who just stopped and walked the moment they crossed the STARTING LINE. They were grumbling about being out of shape. I heard one person say they hadn't run since the Warrior Dash last year. That's September of 2011. And they are surprised that they were out of shape 12 months later? People walking right in the center of the course are everywhere. Entire teams are walking and stretched all the way across the path so there is no room to pass. People are pushing through. No one fights about it or gets nasty, but it is truly annoying and selfish of them to block everyone else and not get off to the side.

I am stumbling along at my fabulously slow pace, shocked at all the ruts and holes in the path. I'm forced to look down almost all the time to see what I'm stepping into. Several times I step into a hole or rut and roll my ankle a little. Ironically, it doesn't hurt at all despite bitching at me for the past 2 days as if it were in ruins. In fact, nothing is hurting. Except my lungs. My lungs are really unhappy. It's a big pollen season right now and I have bad allergies. Ragweed and sagebrush are in full blast bloom and I'm sucking in all their toxic whatever with every breath. I feel like my lungs are going to swell shut and send me into an asthmatic fit. But other than that everything is going well.

I end up running at a steady pace behind a pretty woman in tight black shorts. We're doing the same pace and because I'm looking down so much I find myself hypnotized by her buttocks. I'm just staring non-stop at her butt. It's a nice butt. I can't look away from her butt. This is embarassing. Finally we hit an obstacle, a mud pit. Or rather, 4 mud pits in a row. They are 4 deep trenches filled with deep mud at the bottoms and you have to run down to the mud, leap over and climb up to the top of the next one. Then do it again through 4 of these pits. But there are a lot of us and we are all jammed in together. The hypnotic butt girl is ahead of me and I'm trying to make it through without running into her, or stopping and getting run into from behind. I'm going great. Then on the last mud pit, she stops short and stands there. Someone is blocking her butt. I mean, someone is blocking her and she can't get up the dirt embankment. I am already leaping across. She is in my way. I'm going to crash into her butt. I mean, I'm going to crash into her. I stop short, landing with one foot on dirt and one foot sinking up to mid-calf in pure mud.

The magnificent butt finally climbs up the embankment, making room for me. I try to pull my leg out of the mud. It pulls my shoe off and keeps it. I had that shoe double-knotted and tied tight. It didn't matter. It just came right off and is now somewhere down there deep under the mud. I can't go on without it. This is only the first obstacle and I'm not even going to consider trying to do some of the rougher ones without my shoe. So I have to step my other foot into the mud, bend down, and reach my arm as far into the mud as I can to look for my shoe. Once I find it, I have a hell of a challenge pulling it out. It really doesn't want to come out. Finally I got my shoe out, but now my sock-covered foot is in the mud and so is my other foot. It is extremely difficult to get both feet out without losing either my left sock or my right shoe in the process. I honestly don't know how I did it.

I can't tell you how difficult it is to stop running and bend down to struggle with your shoes while heaving and gasping for air. Your lungs want all your ribcage capacity available to them so they can fully expand. But when you have to bend down to struggle with a now solid-mud-covered shoe, it compresses your lungs to about half-capacity, if that. So there I am struggling with my shoe, unable to breath, about to pass out, and a race official asks me to get off the mud berm and move to the side while putting my shoe on. I'm barely conscious at this point from lack of air. I stumble to the side. Once I get my shoe back on, I am just totally out of air and energy. So I start walking on towards the next obstacle.

OK, so 1 obstacle down and I'm already muddy. And my feet are sliding around. So of course the next obstacle isnt far and involves climbing up a wooden stand, something particularly hard to do with mud-covered slippery shoes. So I'm walking, climbing very slowly, like an old lady who might cry "help! I've fallen and can't get up!" But I made it over and walked on towards the next one. At this point I was joining the legion of Warrior Walkers. There was no dash in me now. I even had to blow my nose in order to get more oxygen.

I am the only runner in any race I have ever seen who has such bad allergies that I have to carry a handkerchief in my pocket. Hence, the long cotton workout shorts with pockets. I look like a dork, but the alternative is to pass out in the middle of the race from snot-suffocation.

After awhile I got sick of walking and started trotting along again. Under normal circumstances I feel like hell for 1 mile and after that my body admits defeat and stops complaining. From that point on I get into a groove and can run for a long time. But the mud pit/shoe loss really threw me off my game. I never recovered. I spent the rest of the race trotting, climbing, walking, trotting, crawling through mud and barbed wire, walking, trotting - on like that again and again. I walked almost as much as I ran. This is unusual for me, but it is what it is. I just couldn't get my lungs to open up and let me breath and my body never got into a groove.

The obstacles weren't the same this year as last year. Some were, but there were some new ones. And there were more of them. Seeing as this race is mostly about the obstacles, that's a good thing. It makes it harder, but its the reason we're there so its fun.

At the end of the race there was a huge tower covered in a grid of rope that we had to climb up and over and down again. The up is fine. The down is fine. But the its the over and try not to fall on your head that's the real challenge. You are so tired at this point that your coordination isn't the best and you are about 3 stories high trying to get your whole body over a 2x4 while maintaining your balance and turning around backwards to get your feet down into a rope, all without falling or passing out from lack of air. A few people did have partial falls, where they slid until they became entangled and caught themselves. They hit their butts on 2x4s while falling and it clearly hurt. But they didn't die or break their necks or anything.

After the rope covered wall, you are back near the start area. People are all gathered at the fence taking pictures and cheering. Some runners stop to dance. There is a live band playing and you can hear them easily at the finish. I am a lousy dancer so I didn't stop and dance. I ran to the next obstacle, the two rows of fire. The wind was blowing towards us so before I ever reached the fire I got a face full of black smoke. I was already not breathing well so this was awesome. I'm sure I looked like an idiot, but I covered my face somewhat with my arm and ran through the smoke to the fire, jumped over it feebly, then on to the 2nd one and again over it. After that is the mud pit. The BIG mud pit.

Last year people ran and jumped into the mud pitt like a swimming pool. Some people did cannonballs. Some people did belly flops head first into the mud. There is a big sign that says "don't dive into the mud" but people ignored it. So this year they put up barbed wire BEFORE the mud, so that you have to stop, get down and crawl into the mud face first. Once I got into the mud I found that I had a problem. My cotton shorts seemed to fill with air and float my ass like a raft. So my knees weren't getting good traction. I was moving slow. People were passing me. It's the finish and people are passing me! I found that if I just stretched my legs out behind me and walked purely on my hands, almost swimming through the mud, I could move faster. So that's what I did, only my shoulders and head were out of the mud, but I was making up lost ground at least.

Something I noticed while in the mud was that for the guys, being mostly taller, we could keep our shoulders and heads out of the mud. But for the girls, being mostly shorter, they had to really get down into it. They were just heads bobbing along in a river of mud, almost fully covered.

After climbing out of the mud, I tried to run for the finish line. I passed 2 people who were walking/staggering. The ground was pure mud, too, and I was sliding all over the place. I don't know why I bothered to run. I didn't even see a clock showing my time and it wouldn't have meant anything to me even if I had seen what my time was. I can't remember my time from last year. And I don't know my time from this year. I never saw what it was. But I consider myself a runner, despite my jogging and walking and patheticness, so I ran across the finish.

After finishing, you have to walk all the way to the other side of the ... what do you call it? ... the arena? The big area filled with partying people in muddy costumes who already ran and the costumed people who are about to. You have to walk to the other side of the grounds to where firetrucks are located and firemen are standing on top of them spraying down muddy runners with firehoses to get the mud off. These firemen love their jobs and I'll tell you why. Everyone is so covered with mud that all sense of modesty goes out the window when it comes to getting hosed down and getting the mud out of crevices and cracks of the body that would otherwise hold onto it. Shirts are flying off. Women are pulling their sports bras out to get the water down into their tops and under their boobs where mud hides. More than once I heard women say "oh to hell with it" and just pull their boobs up so get water under them, showing the whole package to the firemen and anyone else who was looking. The firemen were VERY happy men. And most of the women are gorgeous.

Here is where I discovered the hazards of wearing standard cotton workout shorts in the Warrior Dash. No matter how much water was sprayed on me, there was always more mud pouring out of my shorts. The cotton had just soaked it up like a sponge and would not come clean. My upper half was as clean as a firehose could get it, but my shorts were continuously pouring mud down my legs and into my shoes. I almost took my shorts off and stood in my tighty-whiteys just so I could hold my shorts in front of the hose and wring them out. But I thought better of it and didn't. Eventually people shoved me aside and took my spot in front of the hose. Apparently they felt that I was clean enough. I didn't agree, but I was ready to give up on cleaning my shorts.

So here's the lesson I took from the Warrior Dash, which I should have learned the first time: wear some nice nylon or otherwise plasticky running shorts to this event. Don't wear cotton. It sucks up the mud and turns you into a walking turd despite the firehoses trying to clean you off. I took the shorts home in a bag and threw them into the washer, along with my underwear, socks and shirt. I ran it as a full load even though it was only those few items. When it was all done the shorts came out with dirt still plastered to the leg and a hankerchief in the pocket that was brown and full of dirt. I'm going to try running the shorts and handkerchief threw one more time and after that I may burn them.

If you see a chance to enter a Warrior Dash near you, I say go for it! It's a wild experience that you'll never forget. Next year I'm going to splurge and order the plastic viking helmet. Several people ran in their fuzzy viking helmet, but I kept mine as a momento. I'm dorky like that, I guess.

* I don't own any of these photos. It's hard to take photos and run at the same time. Some people have lots of friends who take photos of them while they run, but I don't have that luxury. If I have borrowed your photo and you don't like it, please let me know. I have no problem with taking a photo down.