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| View from Kerry Park. |
Being there helped cleanse the frustration and crowdedness of people and traffic and dirtiness of Seattle from me. It was quiet and serene. It was a nice break to get out of the Jeep and move around a bit before the long tiring trek home.
My future will involve a place like that. Being far from civilization. Being where it feels right. I want to see so much of the world. And that world involves natural wonders like this, like a massive snow covered mountain. And the more remote the better. I want my life to be full of one adventure after the other. This is why I do perceived crazy things like my hikes, OCRs, GORUCK, rock climbing, etc. I love the way I feel while I am doing them. But the feeling I have when I complete some task or challenge or another, I cannot explain. That sense of accomplishment. That I did it. My body was pushed and it prevailed. Sometimes, with much pain and soreness or injuries involved. But I still did it.This past weekend I did the 9/11 commemorative GORUCK Light event in Seattle. It was my first GORUCK event for 2016. Disappointing, I know. I had to drop the other events due to injuries earlier this year. I was quite nervous. I had only prepared a week before the event. After I got back from MN. I missed the Boise GORUCK event while I was in MN and missed it terribly. I was intensely jealous of all the photos and updates of the Boise event. I could feel myself getting fatter and out of shape by the day. Now that I am back in Idaho, I hit the ground running. I have been training hard. Being active daily and back to eating less than when I was in MN.
My self esteem plummeted when I got back from MN. My inactivity took its toll on me. For the first few days back here, I was in a foul mood. But once I got back to working out, my spirits improved immediately. And they have not flagged since. My happiness is in being physically active and being in nature. |
| Heavy doing PT in the fountain. |
I arrived in time to watch the beginning (Welcome Party) of the GORUCK Heavy 9/11 event. I watched their Endex as well as the Welcome Party of the Challenge event the next day. It was so nice to be with my GRT family again. I did not realise how much I missed them. It feels so nature to be with them. Friends with them. Even though we rarely see each other and have only done events together (granted, hard ass multi-hour suffering greatly events), I still feel a connection to them.
I did the Light event. I was supposed to do the Challenge, but I transferred it since I was not sure I could physically do it and not injure myself due to my limited training. I was less nervous than I thought I would be. Forty-nine people appeared at the start. Whoa. That was by far the largest group I have ever done an event with. A friend and I gathered them together into ranks. Reminded them of all the things they needed to have for the event. And if people did not have those things:
- Required weight
- Photo/govt I.D.
- $20 cash
- water (3L preferred)
- headlamp
- special instructions for 9/11: photo of someone that died in the attacks that day (and be able to explain that person to others, if asked)
we found others that had extras and tried to make sure everyone was set. But of course, once the event started and the Cadre were doing their inspections, there are always those few people that did not read the packing list and fucked the rest of us over. And by fuck, I mean for every "infraction" someone did not bring/follow, that is PT that all of us have to do.
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| Pretty Man Cadre Geoff speaking to the Challenge Endex. |
This was the first event I have done where the Cadre were less strict. They never advised us that our rucks could not touch the ground. We did not have any coupons. Our Welcome and Endex were not terribly hard. They were more helpful than harsh. Although, sprinting up Queen Anne Hill Rd was probably the worst part of the whole thing. Event worse than doing the Tunnel of Love. But maybe that was because we did that on grass versus on a rocky beach or on a hill in pouring rain. We did do exercises I have never done before, so that was nice. We did buddy sit ups where you have to keep your hands behind your head and stand all the way up while your partner helps you up by pulling your momentum from holding your legs.
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| Me birthing myself from the Tunnel of Love. |
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| Buddy sit ups: completion of rep by standing up. |
We did have two sets of team weights. Both specially made for the 9/11 event. One was a custom weight made into a Captain America shield with information engraved on the back of it about those we lost on 9/11. The other weight were two wooden blocks painted to be the Twin Towers with the names of everyone that perished in them written on the sides.
This was by far the easiest GORUCK event I have ever done. But it also pointed out to me where I am lacking in my current training. I definitely need to work on my upper arm strength by holding my ruck above my head. For part of the Welcome Party we did 4-count to 25 reps of flutter kicks, jumping jacks, mountain climbers and breast stroke arm pulls on our stomachs. And we did it four times. I had a hard time on the mountain climbers with my arms holding me up. Same goes for the tunnel of love. And good grief. My push ups are deplorable. Definitely need to work on arms.
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| Mountain climbers! |
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| Cadre made me lead one session of flutter kicks. Counting out the 4-count. |
Cadre sat us down at Kerry Park and we discussed the events in the world leading up to 9/11. I am surprisingly not well-versed on this part of world history. It was good to be reminded of tribal life. Something that Americans, and much of the "developed" world do not understand.
We had a veteran Cadre who was helping train two new cadres. I imagine they were all pretty tired by the time the Light came around, having done all of the Heavy and Challenge the two days before. The newer two cadre mainly ran the Light. The veteran Cadre disappeared for a bit. They all seemed fine. This was the first event that I did not really interact with the Cadre. Did not joke or get to know them at all. Which was a bit disappointing. The same can be said for the other participants. I did not bond with them as much either. There were so many of them. And we never truly suffered much either to solidify those bonds. While we were doing the Endex (which basically means more PT and lots of running to and fro the duck poop water pond fountain thing), one of the newer Cadre asked me if I was ok. I tell them at the beginning of every event that I am a T1D and where my food is located. This Cadre thought I looked pale and wanted to make sure I was ok. I advised him I am always pale, so it is quite normal. I did test during the event. I like to keep my sugars high in order to avoid crashing. At one point, I reached 300s, so I took 1 unit to bring it back down a bit into the 200s range. But at least this time I avoided the 400-500 range like I have done in the past.
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| 2016 GORUCK 9/11 Seattle Light Finishers and Cadre. |
My chosen person to commemorate was Capt Kathy Mazza of the PAPD. Here are info links about her, her life and involvement in 9/11:
Last year I did a write up on my thoughts and opinions as it relates to 9/11. So I do not think being redundant on here will serve any purpose. I must say that now as an adult, I feel more viscerally when I see images of that day. I think it is because now I am an adult. I have had a plethora of more experiences than when I was 17 years old watching it happen live on TV back in 2001. And every time I see images or read about it, I am bothered by it. By the atrocities that humans can commit against each other. Do not get me wrong, things like Pol Pot's genocide and the Holocaust are monstrous in comparison. But I did not live through those. I did not see them live on TV and live with the results of those actions in my life afterward. It is harder for me to understand the heinous nature of those events for those very reasons.
But you know what images bother me more than any other from 9/11? The images of people falling/jumping from the towers. My throat tightens and my stomach clenches at those images. I saw this article on FB this weekend regarding history "airbrushing/deleting" them out of that event. And that some people find the action of jumping to be unacceptable. The article upset me more than I thought it would. Here it is: 9/11 Jumpers: American Wants to Forget. My comment on the FB friend's update with the link was as follows (and still holds true for me):
"Wtf is wrong with society to shame families and themselves thinking that "falling" from the towers is an un-godly and unacceptable action? It is these people and the action of their death that moves me the most when I think of 9/11. Shame on anyone who wants to write/airbrush these people out of history. The amount of fear and pain and suffering and options left to them are unimaginable to me. Much less any of us who were not there. I do not judge them for what they did."
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| The patch I earned. |
While in Seattle, I also went to the Museum of Flight where I got to go inside and active Army Reserve Chinook and sit in the Captain's seat in the cockpit. They also have the Space Shuttle Training module where astronauts trained for the real thing. It is basically a space shuttle without wings. They also had the very first 747 Jumbo Jet (go figure, since Boeing sponsored the museum) and the 787 Dreamliner. I got to walk through both, as well as the Concorde Jet. It was a very cool museum.
I brought the twin tower weights back to Idaho with me. I took the Capt America shield back to the house I was staying at with my friends so they could give it back to its owner. PNW Trvlsqd is a wonderful group of people. I am so glad to have met many of them and participated in events with them. Some mentioned their support for me if I ever needed it for my father's process. Some of these are people I have never met before and they offer these things. It is people like this that give me hope for humanity. People like this that I call family. For some of us, family is much more than blood. I would do so much for people like this. I wish the Boise area had a Trvlsqd the way Seattle does. But I have my RWB family here and they are very similar (RWB is not big in Seattle like it is in Boise). These groups of people are my "tribe". They are equally, if not more, crazy as I. They aspire in life to challenge themselves. And I can always count on finding someone to do some physically crazy thing with me from one of these groups. They make me happy.
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| American as Fuck. |
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| My happy place: scenery in nature with Jeep and fun outdoor toys. |
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