‘Twas a damp, but not raining, morning and a group of elder statesman of The Fort came together to discuss rising prices and the good old days.

A trip past a few light poles with merkins and squats got the blood flowing. I missed the spot I had designated as the end, but no one said anything, so we just did them all… We pulled up on the field house and did a few dips on the seats there at the lunch tables, and that’s when the nostalgia dam broke.

Fogerty noted that this may be one of the only, if not the only, AOs in The Fort that has a soda machine. It’s $2 for a can of soda now, and this machine only takes good old American cash money… $2… then the “back in my days” started flying… it was a $1, it was .50¢, it was a quarter… blah, blah, blah… we probably all walked uphill both ways to the soda machines, too… I got it…

We crossed Bear Crawl Bridge (without doing any Bear Crawls) and did a little stair climb/dip/step up deal before we rounded the corner and kept on. The trip back was shorter than I thought, so I started to take us on round two before Fogerty had a much better suggestion. We headed back around the car pick-up line and did a little more work before an epic session of Mary where we learned things about each other we didn’t know before. For example:

– Fogerty’s first gallon of gas cost him 99¢
– Barry’s first date meal with his wife was a Subway sandwich that he’s fairly sure he expensed
– Fishstix’s first penny stock he purchased was for a company called Toypop that was billed as “the next Amazon”. We weren’t sure if it was an adult “toy” situation or not, but clearly it didn’t take off like he’d hoped since he was working out with us in the rain and not sipping Mai Tai’s on a beach in Cancun…
– Old Bay’s first car he purchased with his own money was a 1982 Toyota Supra. He no longer has it, but his cool factor is still almost as high…
– Cherry Pie blew us all away with his paper route prowess as he told us the cost of his first toy he bought for himself (a remote control car). $100 was a lot of money back then… :shocked_face_with_exploding_head:
– Cohiba’s first cigar was, non-ironically, was a cohiba that apparently was traded to him for 2 goats and a chicken’s leg

Then we wound it up and closed out.