Fast! Baby Laps!

What does that mean? First, shout out to Hauschka for the invite to Sea Legs. After attempting a route through Palisades for 20 minutes the day before, I decided on an oldie. Lets run in circles around the school real “fast” and then do baby laps for recovery. So we did that for 45 minutes. Great to see Tater, Royale, DaVinci and Haushka. It’s been awhile but it’s been my fault. Need to resist the fartsack more. Should be easier with the weather picking up. Take a peek at our Laps Strava Art below.

COT was great with some open an honest requests for prayers and praise. Nice to know this brotherhood exists to lift each other up.

BOM on Royale!

Thanks again Hauschka!

Zima Out!

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Lots of wallsitting at the Deep

I fluctuate between wanting to do something super original and brutal and just going with repetition. Saturday I did both. I had COP fairly close to COT, saving the moseys for later. I had us go to the hill but instead of elevens, I entertained the idea of low crawling up the hill. We did it twice, running back down both times. Has potential but lots of anthills. Decided to mosey us to the nearest corner of the school to do indian wall sit. All of us lined up on the wall and sat it, with caboose bearcrawling to the front. we did this till the end of the western wall of the school.

I underestimated the length of the far end of that middle school.

took about 30 minutes to make it to the end. Moseyed to the football field for the main event.

BLIMPS x2, the second set of blimps in reverse order of reps, to get the burpees in hardcore. 120 yards each way, 1440 yards total. Took long enough leave us with time for  5 minutes of ab lab, started with my favorite, Freddy had a fat girlfriend.

Felt really sore sunday in my shoulders, given that we didn’t go super hard on shoulder stuff, not sure why haha.

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What was Paula Abdul doing at the Poopdeck!?

There were 11 PAX including Adretti, who we lost to I.R. a couple months ago, at the Poopdeck on a nice Thursday morning.

At 5:15 sharp I gave  a quick dislamer we moseyed to the gravel-filled parking lot below where we circled up for some cadence exercises.

Warm-A-Rama

  • SSH x20
  • Moroccan Night Clubs x20
  • Windmills x10
  • Imperial Squat Walker x10
  • Evil Lance Armstrong x20 (10 each leg) Got this from our F3 Plano brothers.  It consists of extending 1 leg out 6″ off the ground and then doing a Freddy Mercury with the other leg.  And then switching legs.  It pains so good.

1st exercise: Spartans runs

After warming up a bit I discussed our first exercise of the morning which were some Spartan runs.  I had setup some cones about 100 yards apart.  We were going to sprint 100 yards “AYG” and then 20 merkins (5 each of wide, normal, diamond, ranger).  We repeated this 5x. Grand total 100 varied Merkins and a whole lot of heaving breathing and a couple of premature starters (Royale, Wolverine).  I wonder….

2nd exercise: Del Brown

I had some additional cones setup 25 yards apart.  We were to do 5 diamond burpees, crab walk 25 yards perform 5 wolverine burpees (thanks to our false starters) crab walk back 25 yards and do 5 more diamond burpees.

We did this 2 times, although I felt bad and called and Omaha on the Wolverine burpees during round 2.  I figured once was enough punishment.  Grand total 5 normal burpees, 20 diamond burpees, and 5 wolverine burpees, and 100 yards of crab walking. FUN!

3rd exercise: Paula Abdul!

Yep, she was spotted at the Poopdeck and as it turns out, I think the Poopdeck is just where she belongs.

I had 6 cones about 50-60 ft. apart.  Each of the 6 cones had an exercise written on them.  In typical Paula fashion, we were to Bear Crawl to the 2nd cone, perform the exercise, and then Crawl Bear back the 1st cone.  We were going to do this until we got to the end.  So, 2 cones forward 1 cone back, breakdown as follows:

  • Cone #2 – 15 Flutters IC
  • Cone #1 – 15 “Hand Clap” Merkins (did we skip this one or did I just black out?)
  • Cone #3 – 10 Crab Cakes IC
  • Cone #2 – 15 Flutters IC
  • Cone #4 – 10 Donkey Kicks
  • Cone #3 – 10 Crab Cakes IC
  • Cone #5 – 5 Kraken Burpees
  • Cone #4 – 10 Donkey Kicks
  • Cone #6 – 10 Jumping Spiders
  • Cone #5 – 5 Kraken Burpees

Then a nice mosey back to CoT for 4 minutes of “Ablab” where 4 of us called out some exercises which ended up consisting of LBC’s, Dying Cockroaches, Flutters, and Big Boy situps.

We finished up with the tycial Announcments, Praises, & Prayers.  We prayed for our children, specifically, prayers to overcome struggle as they grow into adulthood.

This was  a tough workout, we all survived and got better.  Shout out to Andretti’s for making it through a tough workout to return to.   Thanks for the Q Peg.

Until next time…

Flux

 

 

 

 

 

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More Than a Workout at “The Creek??”

I was wondering whether or not to post a backblast, since this was an unofficial gathering. But the 5 core principles were met, there was a shovelflag, and more importantly – this is exactly what F3 is all about.

One of our dear PAX, Witch Hunt, who – I found out after a long time digging through his entire Twitter feed to find his VQ date – is one of the original core reasons we have any AOs on this side of the bridge, has been unable to post almost at all since the birth of his 2.2 (his third kid, still not sure how counting them works, wouldn’t the first be 2.1 and so on and collectively they are your 2.0s?). It had been decided at recent CoTs that we were going to try and bring the workout to him. So we got some guys together and found a time that Witch Hunt could go for a run and Royale met up with him and they ran over to the clubhouse to find several of us waiting for him. Surprise!!

Why did I need to find Witch Hunt’s VQ date though? Since this was a surprise mainly to get him back to a workout, I went and found his first BackBlast on the website so we could do the same Thang. May 14, 2016. I didn’t have much time to do recon in my neighborhood to see exactly how we could replicate this workout but I had some vague ideas of what was around.

After some hellos and virtually no disclaimer…, sorry lots going on in my head at the time and no one was listening to me anyways since it was so informal, we did a long mosey through the neighborhood trail and found a deep, steep hill to attempt some hills with Krakens at the top. This was a quick Omaha since the hill was not “flat” at all….. and you could barely find any footing. So instead we did laps around the gazebo and did 5 Krakens, then 4, 3, 2, and finally 1. This was simply labeled ‘The Deep’

Next we ran all the way back to the clubhouse for some ‘F3 Baseball’. Seems I have not spent much time, if any, on a baseball diamond so our diamond was much much larger than I’m told it’s supposed to be. One pair of PAX would run a lap around the clubhouse and pool while the rest did an exercise at the current “plate”. All pairs had to finish a lap before moving on to the next “plate”. This was a lot of merkins…

Home – Merkins
First – Squats
Second – LBCs
Third – SSHs

Something I added in to the mix, my neighborhood is redoing the mulch on the playground so I offered to move a couple of pallets of mulch from the parking lot =)

We then did a few hundred feet or bear crawl to get back to home plate.

Last thing on the original backblast ‘Walk the Plank’. This needed some modifying because I’m not sure what a front plank is, when there was also a pushup plank and a forearm plank on the list. Either way, we started in plank for :30 rotated up on one side for :30 rotated to the back for :30, other side for :30, then forearm for :30. This was definitely pushing the limit, which means it was the perfect time for 5 burpees to finish things off.

Name-o-rama
Announcements
Prayers/Praises and a super long 2nd F in the parking lot afterwards. YHC had a blast on this one everyone. This is the real reason I keep posting.

P.S. Jedi could not stop laughing the whole night. Also, be warned if you ever ask him about a Doctor in Paraguay.

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Board of Bad Decisions…a week late

Realizing this is a week late, it is readily acknowledged that the bulk of the information contained herein is probably incorrect. But, this is the first opportunity YHC has had to sit before a computer, and since realization of obligation outweighs desire to further procrastinate, the outdated and inaccurate backblast is hereby submitted.

The call went out a day early for a replacement Q for Poopdeck, and since I was leaving town for a week, I thought, “What better way to make sure I get one last workout in with the PAX than to Q before we leave?” So, I foolishly committed, and seven HIMs more foolish braver than I posted on a pleasant Thursday morning.

There was some mumblechatter leading up to the disclaimer, including discussion on the structural strength of triangles and parking on glass shards. It was special.

Disclaimer made, followed by a mosey around the parking lot a couple times. I think we stretched a bit, maybe did some windmills, some squats, and I know we did some merkins. Then we went up to the parking lot by the abandoned grocery store. I don’t know what it was. We were in cat lady territory.

In the parking lot, cones were laid out. Three cones marked “center,” with four cones lined up in 5-yard increments going one direction and four cones lined up in 10-yard increments going the other direction. PAX divided into two teams of two pairs each and the Board of Bad Decisions made its debut. The general guideline: teams compete in assigned exercise to determine who will choose from the board. Winning team would then pick a number (1-6; pushing exercises), a letter (A-F; static exercises) and a shape (I think we had circle, square, rectangle, oval, trapezoid, and triangle; movements). The numbered and lettered exercises would be performed in pairs, with partner A doing one set of the assigned number of reps of numbered exercise while partner B holds assigned letter exercise. Then both partners would perform the shape movement to the cone 5 yards away, run back past center to the 10-yard cone on the other side, back to center, movement to second cone on first side, run to second cone on other side, etc. It’s like a double-sided suicide cupcake. It really makes more sense when you’re DOING it, though double-sided cupcakes sound delicious.

You’ll have to trust me on that.

Round 1:

Teams competed in static crow hold. It lasted maybe 5 seconds. Do more yoga.

Exercises:

4 X 25 squat jumps per person

Hollow body rocks

Burpee broad jumps (these were only done to 5-yard cone each time)

Round 2:

Teams competed in 15 burpees. Same team won this round.

Exercises:

5 X 20 lunges per leg per person (this took FOREVER)

Planche plank (like plank, but with hands under hips)

Sneaky gorilla

Round 3:

No competition. The team that kept losing got to choose.

Exercises:

4 X 25 Makhtar N’Diayes

Al Gores

Walking humpers (walking in monkey humper position; we only did the 10-yard and 20-yard cones on one side and the 20 and 40-yard cones on the other)

We ran out of time to go any further. Quick mosey back to COT, where there were some announcements and some prayer requests. All I remember is, there are a lot of us with friends and family members with serious health issues. Please be in prayer for them, the people caring for them, and our brothers who are affected.

Thanks to Peg for the opportunity to do this, and to the PAX who showed up and dealt with my insanity. They learned mid-way through that this was originally supposed to be for one of my BEYOND Q’s, but I didn’t have a good place at the AO to do it, so it got shelved…and modified. There’s a harder version that will make an appearance sometime soon.

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Tires, sledgehammers, dumbbells and ropes

I saw that Royale was on Q once again so I decided to step up and steal the Q from him, great opportunity to lead a group of 19 PAX that decided to get better. Jedi, Olaf and Cha-Ching went for a pre run unaware of the beat down that was planned staring at 5:15.

Quick disclaimer  and welcomed one FNG (Hawkeye)

We started the warm up with a 2 minute run around the parking lot and then circled up for the following:

20 Windmills

20 LBC’s

20 side straddle hops

10 worst merkin ever, non stop from werkin to merkin to derkin

We moseyed to the boat-trailer parking lot  for the real thing, quick explanation of the workout, we had 4 station/corner setup,  we split into groups 1 to 4 and one group went to each corner, from station  1 to 2 and 3 to 4 we run, from station 2 to 3 and 4 to 1 we bear crawled, exercises were listed as follow:

STATION 1

-> 15 big boy sit ups

-> 20 rosalitas

-> 30 Sledgehammer swings (15 each side)

-> 30 Heel Touches SC

-> 30 Dying Cockroach SC

STATION 2

-> 10 two hand triceps ext

-> 15 two hand biceps curls

-> 25 dumbbell swing

-> 30 Makhtar N’Diayes

-> 50 Carolina drydocks

STATION 3

-> 10  Tire flips

-> 15  Low slow squats IC

-> 20 lateral lunges  (10 each side)

-> 30 jump squats

-> 50 calf raises

STATION 4

-> 10 diamond merkins

-> 15 wide arm merkins

-> 20 regular merkins

-> 30 battle rope wave SC

-> 40 plank jacks

-> 50 Shoulder taps

Each group was able to complete 7 stations (one full round of all 4 station plus 3 stations depending on the order each group started), timing was of the essence, first full round was completed in about 17 minutes (26 minutes into the workout) but exhaustion sat in and second round took longer, everyone pushed themselves hard and that “extra 40%” effort was burned during the second round.

With 2 minutes to spare we sprint back to COT for announcements, prayers and praises.

Welcome back Brickhouse and FNG Hawkeye!!

Tinsel out…

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Our 2 Year Celebration for F3 in Lake Wylie @ the Deep!

I was privileged to get the opportunity to lead (with Dark Helmet) the 1st workout at the Deep, and on this Celebration Day to get the opportunity to lead once again! We’ve seen a lot of new and consistent faces over that 2 years and I truly feel there is something special about the guys that come from the west side of Lake Wylie.  It was really great to show up 10 minutes before the 7am launch and see so many of the tenured Fort Mill PAX already there to support us at this celebration!

I used that opportunity to open with a little message.  3 of the PAX were FNGs, so I gave the long disclaimer, but then I asked for a show of hands for how many years each PAX had been posting at F3.  It was awesome to see guys like Cornhole, Sen Tressel, Maximus and Spitz who have been posting 4-5 YEARS now.  All of those guys have had a direct impact on my life so I was really honored that they came out to support our Lake Wylie PAX.

The Thang

Quick mosey around the parking lot for a dynamic warmup

Made it over to the soccer field for our COP

SSHs – Imperial Squat Walkers – Windmills – MNCs – Merkins – Mountain Climbers – Yoga – Plank Jacks

Before we got into the next evolution, I shared several messages about the foundation of F3.  Started with the Mission, T-Claps to NASA for knowing it by heart! Then I shared one of my favorite Q Source Posts, the Daily Red Pill.  (Link Below)

The Daily Red Pill Feb 2017

1st Exercise Evolution

4 corners – PAX counted off by 4s

There were 4 cones set up at the corners of the field.  1 in the center. What would a Lake Wylie celebration be without the original exercise FOUNDED AT THE 1ST WORKOUT? That’s right, 5 Kraken Burpees (check the lexicon if you do not know this favorite).  That was our center cone.  The groups would split up and run to their assigned number, complete the exercise, run back and do 5 Kraken Burpees

1st corner = 20  Worst Merkin Ever (Wide Arm Merkin, Regular Merkin then Diamond Merkin = 1 rep)

2nd corner = 40 Flutter Kicks double count

3rd corner = 30 Jump Squats

4th Corner = 30 Imperial Squat Walkers

Took a break and shared some more about Sad Clowns, and how F3 is the antidote to Sad Clown Syndrome from the DRP post.

2nd Evolution = Mosey over to the big hill

Partner Up

1 partner down and up the hill, 2nd partner says and does the exercise I call until I’m tired of it.

They were: CCDs – Burpees – SSHs : This lasted a lot longer than 2 sentences gives credit.

More discussion around DRP

3rd Evolution = Mosey to the back of the school

Lt Dangers to the 1st basketball goal That’s a lunge – lunge – squat – merkin (crowd pleaser)

Bear Crawl to the 2nd BB goal

Lt Dangers back to the end of the school

That’s like 200 yards, little Link (Bones 9 year old 2.0) crushed us all – including his Dad!

4th Evolution = Mosey to the front of the school

Time was running short, I had two boards with 5 exercises set up, audibled to just 1 board.  We did the five exercises in cadence.

5th Evolution = Saved 6 minutes for my last favorite – Captain Thors!

1 big boy sit up to 4 America Hammers, go to 10…we ran out of time at the 9 rotation.  It hurt anyways!

COT was great with 3 new FNGS, two were 2.0 of regular PAX and they held their own!

Cross Check (Peg’s 2.0 Logan) for his lacrosse skills

FIFA (Flux’s 2.0 Evan) for his soccer skills

Wesley our 29 year old previous college pole vaulter so his F3 name forever shall be Bubka!

It was really a great time with great friends and great mubblechatter.  I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did.

(and we got 16 out to Coffeeteria, our best part of Saturdays)

An Honor to Lead

-Royale

 

 

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Diamond at the Deep

I’m a little late posting this so I may be a little fuzzy on some of the descriptions, but here it goes…

We had 10 on a wet and somewhat rainy morning at The Deep.  It was good to see Cakeboss and Funhouse supporting Lake Wylie during their Ass Kickin’ April and we also had a couple of out-of-the-area guys Squirt and Ma Bell.  Ma Bell was 68 and was an inspiration to us all.

Speaking of inspiration, I took the family on vacation the week prior to this workout and needed a little last minute help to come up with some ideas.  Lucky for us all I stumbled across a Cha Ching backblast from the Abyss that looked pretty nasty so I’d like to give credit where it’s due.  I also don’t want to take full responsibility for all the suck we endured during this workout, there was a lot of it.

Warm-A-Rama

Even though its a PITA to load up a bunch of cinderblocks into your vehicle before the workout, it always makes it worth it when everyone sighs as soon as you open your trunk/tailgate.  So we all grabbed a cindy and carried it to our warm-up location.

No blocks required for the warm-up, but I went with random numbers of the below exercises (usually favoring more).  It keeps everyone guessing and is kinda like a guilty pleasure of mine because I usually do extra when people “think” I’m going to be done.

  • SSH
  • MNC
  • Windmill
  • Cotton/Cherry Picker
  • Low Slow Squat
  • Peter Parker
  • Parker Peter
  • Plank Jack

The Thang

We started with some Tabada’s.  Cha Ching recommended this great app called “Seconds” so I grabbed it and set it up the night prior.  I disappointingly couldn’t get the music to work, but I’ll fix that next time…

We had 1 minute to do the following x 5 sets with a small 12 second break between sets.  When all 5 sets were finished, there was a 20 second break and the next 5 sets started (12 seconds between sets)

1st Set

  • 50 Seal Jacks
  • 10 Merkins

2nd Set

  • 15 Merkins
  • 5 Burpees

I actually started thinking we would do 40 Seal Jacks and 10 Merkins, but the gang finished up with like 15 seconds to spare after the first set (and that was before the 12 second break between sets).  I couldn’t have that, so 50/10 for the next 4 sets…

So we ended up doing 240 Seal Jacks 25 Burpees, and 125 Merkins.  Ouch.

Now lets grabbed those blocks! We carried them a little further up the parking lot to the football field.  Sadly, the gate wasn’t opened.  I wasn’t about to have us all walk across the street to the other football field so I decided that we all needed to jump the fence.

1st exercise was “Bear and Block” which is exactly what it sounds like.  We all got in bear crawl position and kept the block between our feet.  We then pulled the block up to/past our head and bear crawled until the block was between our feet again.  Rinse and repeat until we covered the width of the football field.  I heard a lot of grumbles from the crowd so I was going to Omaha and have us throw the blocks back to the start point, but we were then worried about the damage to the field (rightfully so) so I Omaha’d the Omaha back to the original idea.  We were going to crawl back the way we came.  If there is a lesson learned here it’s that we shouldn’t complain.  I made everyone do 25 CDD’s when we got back to the start line.

2nd exercise, find a parter.  Partner A carries both cinderblocks the width (and back) of the football field while Partner B does squats, then vice-versa.

For the 3rd and what turned out to be final set of exercises, we played Catch Me If You Can with our partner.  We lined up so we were now traversing the length of the field instead of the width.

This is where my memory really starts to get fuzzy.  I started making this stuff up from here on out picking and doing whatever felt like it would be the worst at the time.  The numbers are lacking and I don’t remember all of the exercises, but hopefully I’ll pass enough along that you get the general idea.

I remember the 1st one.  Partner A did 20 LBC’s while Partner B NUR’d.  When Partner A finished he would chase down and tag his partner and then they would both do 50 more LBC’s together and then Broad Jump back to the finish line.  We then repeated this formula 5 more times (6 chase downs in all) mixing in ridiculous numbers of exercises and making our way back to the starting line in painful ways.

Here are the ways we made it back to the starting line:

  1. Wheelbarrow Walk
  2. Crawl Bear
  3. Crab Walk
  4. Lt. Dan
  5. Sprint
  6. Broad Jump

Some of the exercises that we did, either wile your Partner was NUR’ing or together included:

  • Squat Jumps
  • Lunges
  • Merkins
  • Diamond Merkins
  • CDD
  • American Hammers
  • Flutters
  • LBC’s
  • Burpees
  • Plank Jacks
  • and more…

Luckily time was running low and we couldn’t get to the next exercise.  Now we’ll never know how amazing Block Webbs would have felt after most of us could already not lift our arms past our shoulders.  We still had to get overcome the fence and make it back to CoT.  This time we decided to (poorly) build some steps with the cinderblocks to make it easier to get across.  It was pretty comical but we did it.

CoT

Consisted of the usually announcement, praises, and prayers.  I wish I could remember more, but as always, we continue to pray for others and put ourselves 3rd. F3 is an amazing thing, I am humbled to be a part of it and continue to pray that others will be led to it.

I apologize for less than stellar recollection of the workout and CoT.  I’ll do a better job of jotting it down somewhere post workout.  Some said it was the toughest workout they had in years, some couldn’t post on Monday because of how badly they still hurt, but there is no arguing we all got stronger and better on this day.

Until next time…

Flux

 

 

 

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Too much work at Golden Corral

Here’s what the bootcampers did after the ruckers took off with Wild Thing.

Dynamic Warmup around parking lot

Then COP

20 SSHs – 20 MNCs – 10 Slow Cotton Pickers –

10 WA Merkins – 20 Moun Climbers – Yoga – 15 Plank Jacks

 Partner Up

 Dora 1-2-3

100 Burpees

200 Sumo Squats

300 SSHs

While other partner ran around the parking lot triangle

 To Fort Mill BBQ Lot

11s with Bear crawls

11 WA Merkins

1 Bomb jack

Run backwards to start

I had 2 other evolutions on the Weinke, but I miscalculated on how much 11s would suck with the distance and number of bear crawls.  Most of the PAX got to 11, but it hurt!

During our 10 counts I shared some quotes and insight that I’ve been gathering from my most recent reading, Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life.”  The rule I reviewed was Rule #8 : Tell the Truth – or at least Don’t Lie!

Attached are the quotes:

Tell the Truth or at least Don’t Lie

An honor to lead…

-Royale

 

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Cinder Block Surprise at Crow’s Nest

A beautiful morning for my first Q at the new Crow’s Nest deep in Lake Wylie.  It’s also the closest AO to my house so I was able to set up the night before.  I warned the attending PAX to bring gloves, but my P200 brother Peg still couldn’t find his…lucky for his white collar hands (like mine) I brought several extra pairs.

We had six men ready to roll at 5:15am, gave the disclaimer (including a modify if it’s too dangerous for you) and we started out.

Light jog to the north parking lot with a dynamic warmup including,

High Knees – Butt Kickers – side shuffles – toy soldiers

COP

20 SSHs – 20 MNCs – 15 IWs – 8 Abe Vagota  Windmills – 10 Merkins – 20 Mountain Climbers – 15 Plank Jacks

Small mosey to the hidden big old white board with some cider block coupons.

Partner Up

1 PAX will use the cider block for an exercise while the other partner does exercise #2, then rotate

Exercises were:

20 Curls –> Flutters

20 Overhead Presses –> Calf Raises

30 Bent Rows –> Squats

30 Durkins –> LBCs

10 Man Makers –> American Hammers

20 Tricep Ext –> Lunges

30 Irkins –> Rosalitas

30 Squats –> Imperial Walkers

The men did such a good job we got to do the whole rotation twice. Lots of good mumble chatter and sharing from Peg about Childrens Attention Home, YHC about G-Fit and Flux about the BrewRuck 002 from this weekend.

We moved over to the wall of the school to do:

Wall sits while each PAX did 5 Merkins

BTTW 30 count

Wall sits while each PAX did 2 burpees

We went back to the cinder blocks, grabbed one for the walk back to COT and the PAX changed holding positions when I called for a switch.

Back to COT for Announcements

Read your newsletter, Word of the month is Worthy

Spring is here, start EHing the guys back out!

Happy to start my day the right way,  and a big shout out to Flux for leading this new AO in Lake Wylie!

An Honor to Lead…

-Royale

 

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