Tag: Tater

Moderate is a state of mind

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WARMUP: 50% 60 yard runs from one end of the AO host parking lot to the other. After each run we performed SSH, Squats, Seal Jacks, Merkins, Peter Parkers, Parker Peters
THE THANG: We strolled over to another, smoother parking lot to endure the pain. Partnered up and gave the PAX 3 pain stations in the shape of a triangle with each pain station being about 30-40 yards apart. Merkin station, Squat Station, and Step-Up Station. Group that starts at the Merkin station performs 10 merkins and then travels to the next pain station to relieve the PAX. So forth and so on we went for 3 rounds.
Next we performed an Indian Bear Crawl for about 40 yards.
Followed that fun with a short ab lab: 20 – Gas Pumpers, 20 LBCs ( legs straight up in the air with arms reaching for feet when crunching ), & 20 Box Cutters.
Time to hit the legs again with some TUT – TimeUnderTension. Partner up again, partners have to complete a combined total of 100 lunges – 10 lunges for 5 sets. While one partner does a set of 10 lunges the other partner holds the Al Gore position, keep alternating until you reach the 100 rep count.
Followed that up with another ablab: 10 BigBoys, then go immediately into 10 Straight Leg Lifts, and then go immediately into 10 V-Ups.
Next up, more bear crawls with a Paula Abdul routine. Found a row of parking spaces about 15-20 spaces long. Pax start out bear crawling 2 lines, when reaching the 2nd line you perform 2 merkins, you then crawl bear back 1 line and perform 1 merkin. Keep going until you reach the end.
Last, but not least, you guys brag on your ‘running with pushups’. Well this group did Sprints with Pushups. 3 – 50 yard sprints – all out. As soon as PAX reached the other side we had to drop immediately and perform: 1st Sprint – 13 Merkins, 2nd Sprint 11 Merkins, 3rd Sprint 9 merkins. The plan was to do 4 sprints total but time ran out, which I’m glad because SmallWorld would have had to carry me back to COT.
MARY:
ANNOUNCEMENTS: Bethel Men’s Shelter on 6/9.
COT: Prayers for marriages, families going through transitions, ChangeOrders dad, and others. Question to the PAX in prayer – What are you pursuing? Thanks to SmallWorld for the opportunity to lead. Take care and God bless fellas.

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PGA Championship at Slowburn

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WARMUP:
Moseyed over to the driving range where we performed a few exercises like SSH and the walker brothers. Then moved to the putter green where we did a few yoga moves to make sure we were limber so we could hit the long ball

THE THANG:
For those who are not golf fans, the PGA Championship is being played this weekend at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa OK. With that I decided to design a workout around golf. Using the scorecard for the tournament I used Par as the means of travel between tee to green and yds as reps. For instance, Par 4, 465 would mean we ran to the green, roughly 50 yds, then did 4 flying squirrels for the 100s and 65 American Hammers. The 100s was always Flying Squirrels. The other exercise changed each hole.

Par 3 and 5 you NUR between tee to green.

“Lightning”was seen so we had to stop after 17, but pax didn’t seem to mind to skip the last hole and head for COT
MARY: no time

ANNOUNCEMENTS: read newsletter

COT:prayers for Change Orders dad and family, prayers for Spark Plugs sister for successful surgery, prayers for Cable Guy’s family as they continue to mourn the loss of his son and grief they are working through.

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Stroll Around Town

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The weather was warm in the metropolis of Fort Mill this morning.  Five men showed up for the workout.  Disclaimer complete, we headed out of the parking lot to the Town Hall for warm-ups:

SSH, Imperial Walkers, Moroccan Night Clubs, Windmills, Plank Stretches.

Next, we headed to the center of town.  We stopped for 1 minute of good form merkins and toe taps on the curb.  We continued our tour to the bottom of the street.  In cadence squats to catch our breath before climbing the stairs to Millstone Park.  In the parking lot, we completed 1 minute of good form Carolina Dry Docks along with some abs exercises.

We headed back up the hill to Withers Street where the Minnow Pond pax were running around town.  We stopped at a set of stairs and did a series of leg exercises while one pax ran up and down the stairs.

Exercises:  Squats, Calf Raises, Lunges, and Jump Squats

We returned to our launch site and finished with lap around the parking lot. We completed 1.5 miles and lots of exercises.

Great job by all.

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Grounded at The Ballroom

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School was in session and we were grounded.

10 PAX rolled in, we disclaimed and formed up in 2 lines for an Indian Run with little direction, only a destination. Get there. And so we got there.

Warm ups consisting of Imperial Walkers, Lunges and Merkins

Mosey down to the lighted road by the new “structure” no one can explain:
10 Carolina Dry Docks
Bear Crawl to the “end”
Lunge walk back

20 Dips
Crab Walk to the “end”
Crawl Bear back

Go back to the top of the road
10 Mountain Climbers
Run 1/2 way
10 Mountain Climbers
Run the rest
20 Flutters
NUR 1/2 way
20 Flutters
NUR the rest

The longest 5 minute plank with a 3 burpee penalty if you break the plank. The challenge here is that when you call this with this crowd, they’ll end up doing whatever they want anyways so it truly is, just a suggestion.

Run the “9” which is down the road, encircling the parking lot, making a 9.
Upon completion, 5 Burpees, 25 LBCs, 50 SSH

Run 15 yards, 5 Merkins, run 15 yards, 10 Squats
Run 15 yards, 5 Merkins, run 15 yards, 10 Squats

5 MOM with different PAX calling counts.

Thank You TL
Maximus

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Just keep movin and quit with the bad eating habits already…

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Little did I know that when Drop Thrill asked me to Q at the Ballroom I’d be coming off of one of the more stressful weeks I’ve had in a while.

We drove down to Orlando (the middle of the scrotum of America…) about 10 days ago so the M could be with her dad through his hospital stay. This put me in charge of the 2.0’s. One of whom is doing virtual school, the other, who is 4, just needs someone to interact with. With the M gone most of the day, the all to familiar but also unfamiliar surroundings, and crappy bed, my energy sapped by the end of the day to the point where I couldn’t get out of bed early enough for even a light jog.

We returned on Saturday (after driving through some heavy storms and slowdowns) and it took a couple days to recover from the experience.

I was feeling absolutely dead this morning, but I got up and got my ass to the ballroom.

The gloom

Drop Thrill and a few other PAX were already waiting when I arrived with a couple other PAX on the winding road behind me.

YHC looked around and saw familiar faces (some of which I hadn’t met, but I knew them from name-o-rama’s posted to slack). I had to very loudly issue the disclaimer as the mumblechatter was quite strong with some of the PAX, *cough* Destiny *AHEM*.

The warmup

A quick mosey around the N side of the parking lot and up to the crosswalk in front of the school.

15x SSH
10x Low Slow Squat
Some deep leg stretches for 10 counts
10x Tappy taps
10x Imperial walker
10x Hillbilly walker

the thang

Two sets of 11’s starting with the 3 benches and running about halfway down the parking lot road (55m or so).

First set:
Dips x10 and BBSU

Second set:
Step ups x10 each leg and Squats

When the second set was complete everyone gathered at the crosswalk. We had about 10 minutes remaining. PAX would run a lap around the parking lot (not in the parking lot). At some point they would need to do one pushup per lightpost they passed, whether all at once or stopping at each was up to them. Most PAX chose to save them for the end.

With 6 minutes remaining we lined up in south side of the parking lot for the Doji. Start by standing straight up. Using your L hand reach behind the R shoulder and ‘scoop’ with your fingertips, as you come around the front of your body, step into a deep forward stance with your R knee at 90º, and your L leg straight out, both feet parallel and about 45º off the direction of travel. Shift your stance to L forward stance while scooping behind you with your R hand, when you come back around, step forward staying very low, into L forward stance and push ahead with your L hand open, fingertips just at the shoulder level. Scoop behind w/L going into R forward, then step forward with R and push with R.

PAX then made their way back to CoT but there was still a minute left so everyone got into the Al Gore position while YHC expounded upon how my father in law was a pretty active guy, but eating kielbasa for breakfast every day can still clog your arteries.

cot

A lot of announcements this morning.

For one, check out the “Rumor Mill” section of the newsletter. If you see something in there that piques your interest, reach out to the leadership and ask if you can get involved. There’s probably something you can do!

There’s a blood drive every 8 weeks (next one on 5/6) for… eternity.

Sign up for the FM Care Center!

And more!

Lots of prayers about jobs and health (physical and mental) this morning.

nmm

After last week I’ve naturally been reflecting on the Queen quite a bit lately. I didn’t say much about this during this morning’s Q, but everyone’s body is a bit different. Some people can eat Hostess snack cakes and never gain a pound, and other people can eat nothing and still look like YHC (I’m not in the latter group, trust me, I eat things).

We’ve all seen the stories of people who live into their 100’s. Some of them say drink a gallon of water every day. Others say have a bump or two of whiskey every day.

Really all we can do is be vigilant. As Destiny pointed out in CoT today, get your damned checkups. Go do the blood work. If the doctor tells you to lay off the bacon, lay off the bacon (you can still BE it, metaphorically). I think everyone’s body tends to handle the available food sources pretty well (God made us incredibly resilient creatures, “anti-fragile”), but even so, the wrong kind of stress for long enough is going to wear down the system and it’s going to break.

There’s going to be a higher vegetation to anything else ratio on a daily basis for everyone. I’ve said this in my household many a time before!  However, buy in from the M was difficult to achieve.  After a 4x bypass in the family history, the M is on board.

It’s always a pleasure to Q. Thanks, Drop Thrill, for inviting me back out.

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Shaolin Moderate Workout and Cult Chat

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This is the first full week of 2021 and YHC was glad to step in when a Q was needed at the Ballroom. IIRC, the last time I Qed there was back during Short Sale’s tenure, when Google Maps had no aerial photos.

8 PAX appeared in the gloom on a cool Tuesday morning. The weather said that there was some light rain in the area, but it wasn’t at the Ballroom.

The disclaimer was a disclaimed in a new way today, because YHC would be describing some very odd, new exercises and prescribing modifications as we went along. It may have sounded a bit professional, but I assured the PAX that I was not getting paid.

The warmup

A quick mosey around the parking lot followed by:
15x SSH
10x Low Slow Squat
10x Imperial Walker
10x Hillbilly Walker

Mosey around the back of the school for a stop by the bridge. Here we would do some stretching and exercises that were passed down from the Shaolin lineage, as well as from a cult known as Chung Moo Quan (more on that, later). This was part of the standard warmup from YHC’s studio in MN.

Legs about shoulder width for these, always both sides. Static stretches held 10s

1. Arms overhead, grab the R hand and stretch (pull) to the left without a twist. (lats)
2. Arms straight out, L hand toward L ankle, no twist (obliques and some lats)
3. L arm out, palm up. Grip L fingers with R hand using overhand grip (thumb to thumb) and pull down and back to armpit (inner forearms)
4. Elbows tucked into sides, L hand by chest, grab top of L palm with R overhand. Pull L arm up, push R hand down. Basically fold your hand back toward the elbow (wrist tendons)
5. Widen stance a bit. R in L hand fingertips up. From standing position, dip down to behind the ankles and come back up. (like cherry picker, but just once and up) 3 times.  Then both hands on lower back, chest and stomach out for the “old man getting out of bed” stretch three times. 5 rounds
6. Both hands make a diamond near the ground, legs straight as possible. Slowly orbit from ground, to the right, behind, to the left and back to the ground. Reaching as far as possible for entire movement. 3 orbits each direction
7. Legs out as far as they go, heels down and toes up. Fingertips on the ground (was pretty easy for the PAX to get the fingertips down). Fingertip pushups. Rock back on the way down, over the hands on the way back up. 10x

Mosey up the hill to the back of the school. Everyone on their six. Both sides if only one is listed, static stretches for 10s if not listed

  1. Legs straight out, separated as far as possible, toes up. Arms crossed in front fingertips up, sweep arms over toes 3 times, then grab and pull down for 5s hold.  4 times
  2. L hand to L foot, bending to L, R hand overhead reach to foot
  3. Feet together, pushing down knees (butterfly)
  4. Lay back, L hand grabs R foot and pulls to chest, L foot hovering
  5. Sit up, legs straight. Leaning back with straight back until feet start to hover, hands in fists, pound stomach 30times with fists, double count
  6. 10x 4count Flutter
  7. 10x 4count Hello Dolly
  8. Sit up, hands on ground behind. Both knees bent, kick both legs straight out, to right, and to left 10x. No break between R and L

Mosey around to the front of the building again and instructed PAX to find a pillar for support. Each exercise is right and left leg

  1. L knee at waist level, bounce knee up above waist and don’t let drop below waist. No touching the ground either  x40
  2. L knee again at waist level, snap kick out, no touching the ground  x40
  3. L foot to the side, toe forward. Raise as high as possible, no touching the ground x40

The Thang

Now that the warmup is complete, walk over to the high side of the parking lot and line up for the Doji. This is a balance and strength exercise that can be done by anyone.

Start by standing straight up. Using your L hand reach behind the R shoulder and ‘scoop’ with your fingertips, as you come around the front of your body, step into a deep forward stance with your R knee at 90º, and your L leg straight out, both feet parallel and about 45º off the direction of travel. Shift your stance to L forward stance while scooping behind you with your R hand, when you come back around, step forward staying very low, into L forward stance and push ahead with your L hand open, fingertips just at the shoulder level. Scoop behind w/L going into  R forward, then step forward with R and push with R.

It sounds like a complicated movement, but it wasn’t too difficult for the PAX. YHC called out each movement and we travelled about 15m with it (about 10 steps each foot), then turned around for another go.

After this movement we had about 12 minutes left. I had planned on getting more running into the workout, and skimmed over in my head the various workouts and exercises that would be good for a moderate workout without toasting the legs any more than I already had.

The best way to get some extra steps in? Dora

100 pushups, 200 squats, 300 LBCs!!!

We finished with about 90 seconds left, which was enough time for 20 flutters and a very quick saunter over to CoT

Cot

8 PAX counted off and name-o-ramad

Not a lot to announce right now, so Drop Thrill hyped the 2021 Christmas party.

Praises were voiced, prayers were requested.

nmm

Yeah, so the cult thing. My Shaolin teacher got caught up in a cult known as Chung Moo Quan in the early 90’s. I joked with the PAX about this commenting that they should hand over their wallets and sign some forms, to some good natured chuckling.  Obviously none of us are involved in anything like that, so we can laugh about it.

But have you ever tried to point out someone’s poisonous indoctrination? It’s usually not pretty. The cult indoctrinated don’t usually even know it’s happened because of how “normal” it seemed on the way in. They’ve received a lot of training and are well equipped to remain indoctrinated. Pride, ignorance, shame… all of these methods are veiled as normal and create an indoctrinated member.

I realize it’s super weird to expound on cult membership at a workout or in a backblast, but I assure you, dear reader, that it is relevant to every day lives.

Because while we may not be members of Chung Moo Quan, vandalize a building in the name of Tyler Durden, chant “the greater good” in a hooded robe,  or follow Jim Jones into death, we’re all subject to attempted indoctrination during almost all of our waking hours.

TV advertisements try to indoctrinate you into the cult of yourself.  Talk shows and news commentary try to indoctrinate you into the cult of bitterness, greed, or supremacy.  Our free country is, for the most part, monetizing our minds through indoctrination.  It’s incredibly difficult to tune it out.

This is why my word this year is “Discipline”.  I’m using two definitions. The first is the study of a subject, the second is to train.

Discipline as a study helps me to understand my beliefs and how they work in a world that wants me to change them all the time.  It applies to all 3 Fs as I intend to refocus on nearly 20 years of Shaolin training, be more intentional about being social (the pandemic has made life very cozy for a hardcore introvert like YHC), and actually focus on spiritual beliefs.

Discipline as a training regiment helps me to be strong enough to understand whether indoctrination is attempting to change my beliefs, or I’m just wrong.  As a physical training regiment, discipline can help me get the sleep I need and eat correctly. And as social training, I can tune out awful social static.

 

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F3 Sea Legs – October 8, 2019

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We had six on a great fall morning at Sea Legs. Since it was my first Q at Sea Legs, I did a pretty basic route that would be easy for runners who ran different paces.

Sea Legs Route_ October 8 2019

Announcements:
F3 Lake Wylie 3F  Opportunity: On October 19th, F3 Lake Wylie will have their next homeless outreach in Uptown.  PAX will distribute food and supplies, and spend time talking with those we meet.  From 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. water, sport drinks, non perishable snacks, and toiletries will be handed out to those less fortunate.  If you are unable to attend, but would like to donate please contact Ryan Wiik or Homebrew.

F3 Lake Wylie CSAUP is Saturday, October 26. More details at https://f3thefort.com/2019/09/16/the-nessie/

Praises:
Homebrew shared that his grandparents recently celebrated 60 years of marriage.

Prayers:
Duck Dynasty recently spoke to a recruiter for a new job opportunity.

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Hour long Q’s are hard on everyone

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Had a little challenge on my hands for this one – a group of the Deep regulars including the site Q were taking on the Savage Race course, so for those who were not peer pressured into participating in that, I had to make the Saturday boot camp just as awful (minus the ice bath obstacle).

Rolled up w/ my fellow Lake Ridge guys Lutefisk, Olaf and Pothole and we waited for what I thought would be just a few guys rolling in.  This is not the case anymore – these pax roll out in numbers and we had 22 including some very brave 2.0’s in attendance all ready to work, including 1 2.0 who’s 11th birthday it was this week.  Royale gave me a heads up a couple days ago, so the workout was made with that in mind, nothing but 11’s for Pierce, aka Lancelot.

1.  For those that know me, I’m not a big fan of warm-ups,  although I may need to rethink that during hour long workouts. Our “warm-up” – mosey over to the nice 400m track across the street and do 4 laps, stopping every 100 meters to do an exercise 11 or 22 times for birthday boy.

  • lap 1 – merkins (stop 1 – 11 merkins, stop 2 – 22 merkins, stop 3 – 11 merkins, stop 4 – 11 merkins)
  • lap 2  – squat jumps (stop 1 – 11 reps, stop 2 – 22 reps, stop 3 – 11 reps, stop 4 – 11 reps)
  • lap 3  – big boy sit-ups (stop 1 – 11 reps, stop 2 – 22 reps, stop 3 – 11 reps, stop 4 – 11 reps)
  • lap 4  – yep, burpees (11 reps per stop)

2.  With the warm of 1.2 miles, 66 merkins, 66 jump squats, 66 big boys and 44 burpees complete, we moseyed back across the street and hit the baseball field…all dirt, some rocks, no grass.  Asked all 22 to count off by 2’s so we had two teams then I explained the rules.  I set the 15 minute timer, blast some old school papa roach, and you try to score as many runs as you can in the 15 min.  How to score a run?  Like this:

  • lunge walk to 1st base, then do 11 diamond merkins
  • bear crawl to 2nd base, then do 11 jump squats
  • broad jump to 3rd base, then do 11 donkey kicks
  • crab walk home, do 11 burpees, then step on home plate.  That’s 1 run.

Believe Lutefisk scored 5 runs, otherwise everyone else was hovering around 3 to 4 runs.  The intent which I totally overlooked in the heat of exhaustion was to add up both teams scores and issue a penalty to the losing team:

Loser:  burpeee bounce from home to 1st base (ie. burpee where you go down, do a push up, but explode up and forward 3 times so that you cover some ground on the uptick, then up, jump and that’s 1 burpee.  Do as many as you need to, to get to 1st base.

Winner: mack tar jais along the first base line while the the poor saps do burpee bounces.

3.  From there we hit the hills behind the baseball field for some true 11’s.  Start at the bottom of the hill with 1 “worst merkin” (wide grip merkin, reg merkin, diamond merkin = 1 worst merkin), run up and 10 knee tucks, then back down for 2 worst merkins (ie. really 6 merkins lol).  This just about killed the group.  I was very encouraged to see at about the 5 or 6 count of worst merkins that every single pax was modifying lol.  I think I even saw some Pax’s faces face down in the weedy grass we were in.

4.  We had about 5 minutes left and we were at 2.3 miles, so I really wanted that 3 mile mark.  We moseyed to the gate near COT and I told the pax about the X crunch suicide we’d do.  For those of you doing the app based ab challenge that Nasa organized, there is a “X Crunch” that absolutely sucks.  Basically start in the v-sit position, go down all the way and make an X with your arms and legs and then back up to v-sit position.

  • 5 x-crunches at the start line (basically the gate) then run to the 1st corner at the back of the school
  • Do 5 more x-crunches on corner of school and run back to start line
  • Do 5 more at the start line, as you pass 1st corner in the back of the school, do 5 more, and then when you get to the next corner do 5 more.  Then run back to the start line.

That took us to exactly an hour which was good because I think I may have gotten beat up had we kept going.  Had a great time w/ this group again (second time in a week!).  Cannot believe how much they’ve grown this place in the last year.  Props to the EH’ing machines over there and the consistency with how often they post.

Hope to get back out to the Deep a little more consistently now that my third son is no longer a little baby.  Thanks Shakespeare for the chance to lead this great group.

ChaChing

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Burpees at the Ballroom?

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This was my 4th Q in 6 days so I am running short on ideas, and never knowing what a moderate workout is supposed to be I struggled to build the winke, but no worries I came up with something fun and it was good to see all the Pax show up and ready to work.

Warm up mosey around the parking lot and then back to circle up for some COP.  SSH, Hillbilly Walkers, Low Slow Squat, Windmill, Potato Pickers, Mountain Climbers, Peter Parker, CDD, mixed in some Downward Dog and Honeymooner.

Mosey a little to the bottom of a little hill for a round of 11s – 10 Burpees at the bottom of the hill with 1 set Jumping Lunge with a Bear Crawl up the hill.  Apparently this was a lot of Burpees for Ballroom.  Oh well live & learn.

Activity 2 was another round of 11s, no hill this time just on curb to another.  10 LBCs  Bear crawl, lunge walk, Crab walk, or what ever, 1 Mike Tyson  and so on and so on…. Let it be know that those Mike Tysons start to hurt around 6 or 7.  Finished up with a few minutes of Mary. Great work by all.

Announcements – Convergence on the 24th,  Badger work-out, next Tuesday, read your newsletter.  Prayers  for students and teachers, families.

 

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Did Not Learn from Quagmire’s Terrible Idea

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A complete disclaimer was verbalized this time

Moseyed to somewhere in the massive school parking lot – High knees, butt-kickers, Toy Soldiers and Hip stretch thing a ma bobs.

Circled up for IW, HW, Morrocan NC, Plank/Down dog/Honeymooner, low slow squats, various stretches and slow/old-man/windmills.

Moseyed to the back toward the school where the bad ideas were repeated from yesterday – probably as a result of being a slug for sometime. We did several rounds of 7’s between the curbs,  interrupted by planks  Rd 1 – Mode: Bearcrawl, Peter Parkers and Parker Peters. Rd 2 – Mode: Lungewalk, Calf-raises and Squats. Rd 3 – Mode: Hop, Monkey-humpers and Bomb Jacks.
Moseyed to the back of the school for People’s chair and Donkey Webbs. After the previous bad ideas Donkey Webbs were still a bad idea. We stopped early.

Moseyed to benches on the side of the school – with several rounds of step – ups, dips, werkins and derkins. Slow-moseyed 10 ft. for a good round of Mary. We closed with somemore stretching before slow-moseyed the final 10 ft. to the COT.

COT: Prayers for families, and health issues. Praises for safe travels and M’s.  Praises for work and wedding anniversaries.
The word for May is mentorship. We saw examples this morning – young men, mentored by fathers and friends holding friends accountable. Pastor Tony Evans has a quote – “We are born male, but we choose to be men”. Maxim #3 in “Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men”: is “Manly Men, build Manly men.”
Thank you Short Sale  for getting me out of bed with the opportunity to Q. It is always an honor. Tater.

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