Mr.Scorpio’s BodyBlog

Well it’s been a year, and the day is fast approaching when I’m supposed to take my wife to the beach (a real beach, not this great lakes bullshit). I was training simply to feel better and I wanted to have a nice beach bod and then right on the last phase of training i get injured.

So the battalion has this organizational day, and everything is going fine. My company is dominating most of the sports events and it looks like we’re gonna win the Commanders Cup. I actually survived the flag football game (which is way more physical than you think) just to get taken out during the tug of war.

First of all, I had no business being in the tug of war in the first place. Tug of war is a big boys sport, I always get compliments on my physique, and sure I got the strength of a lion, but this is game for the Bull elephants. Anyways we do three pulls against other companies and we drag them all no problem, the fourth pull…I start feeling a little cramping here and there but we won so it’s all cool. Now we get some sore losers. they want to have another pull, they say we had too many people, so we count off the strongest and everyone gets on the rope. A few of my fellow soldiers see that I’m not on the rope and switch me out with a guy that’s all weight and no power, truth be told I was flattered. So here we go again, i find a spot on the rope and wait for the countdown, one..two..THREE!!!

 This was going to be the deciding pull for the Commanders Cup, adrenaline was flowing,and we commenced to pull rope like a ho getting dragged down the street by her pimp after coming up short on the cash flow. And that rope SNAPPED like that ho just realized a woman’s worth. This is where I hit the injured list, where the laws of physics decide to let you know who’s in charge. When you focus all your strength on a load, an that load is suddenly removed, it is best that you do not end up on the bottom of the pile, had I known this I would have made sure there was somebody behind me to break my fall. Instead i was on the bottom of the stack, five of the largest behamoths in the company lay peacefully on my ankle (which is now numb) and with no one to fall on I was able to jerk completely back (this is where my middle deltoid said "**** it!").

This entire sequence of events went down on the 23rd of August, I can finally run 2 miles with minimal pain but i still haveto watch the load i put on that joint, that means I can’t use a challenging weight when doing calf raises, leg presses, squats, and deadlifts, most shoulder exercises are out of the question, to include heavy benches, especially incline anything that has to do with arms. It’s getting better but the fact remains, I’m on the bench and there’s no telling how long i’ll be here.

If you read all of this thanks, and just so you know, we still won the Commander’s Cup. See you at the beach!

After years of resistance, I finally gave in to my wife’s request and took the family camping, I learned alot and had a lot of fun. THe whole trip was kind of like family team building, which is always a good thing. Here’s Lesson No.1: Whoever wrote the directions for putting up a tent, has never actually put up a tent. The directions should come with a note at the bottom that reads "**ASSEMBLY DIRECTIONS ARE LIKE COMMUNISM, IT ONLY WORKS IN THEORY**" or maybe "**SEND IN PROOF OF PURCHASE AND PICTURE OF FULLY ASSEMBLED TENT AND YOU WILL BE SENT A BACHELORS DEGREE IN GENERAL CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING**". Thank God for foreigners! After f&cking with the tent for a half hour some guy named Robert from the countries formerly known as Czeckoslovakia walked past my camp site and offered his assistance. Of course I accepted. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was trying to follow the directions, his reply was "Since when do Americans follow rules?" I wasn’t sure how to take that remark but while he was laughing and wiping his eyes we managed to get the tent up.

Lesson No.2 My wife can fish better than me. I can explain, she grew up going camping and running around bare footed, she’s been fishing many times, I’ve been fishing twice to include this trip. She had no problem handling worms and casting them into the water. I however being fully capable of gutting a full grown man, felt a little cruel thrusting a hook through the worm, I think it wa the way it tensed up whenever I did it. Either way when it comes down to it she was the only one who was really fishing, I was just feeding the fish, cause everytime I tried to cast my bait I just ended up ripping the worm in half and reeling in a hook and some floating vegitation.

Lesson No.3  The term "Roughing it" actually involves setting up your house outside, I thought it was going down to the bare essentials, NOPE, besides having an ipod, and cd player available, we did leave most of the comforts of home at home. Others however had these giant campers with electrical hook-ups, air conditioning, propane stoves, Dish Network Satellite Recievers. WHat he heck is that? it Damn sure ain’t "roughing it", I am by no means an expert after going comping just once but I know that if you’re going camping and you ain’t got a need for a tent, or a sleeping bag, you ain’t camping, you’re just parking you’re mobile home in the woods for a couple days.

Over all it was an awesome experience, if you want to try something really cool, grab an ass load of wood, even more beer, roll out to the woods, wait for dusk, start a fire and just hang the f*ck out; it’s the American way. Happy Fourth everybody.