Traveler, Dare to be Aware

Nudging yourself out of the latest in a series of micro naps, eyes struggling to adjust to the offering before them. Out the window stretches rolling hills of pure white, light, vaporous, and devoid of shadow. So bright are these snow capped foothills that it takes only a minute to remember the window belongs to the plane and the snowy hills belong to the sky as they are a field of clouds that you will never dance on. To look down on what everyone else must gaze upward and search the heavens with squinting watery eyes of wonder to see. Even then who can truly see how the sculptures of water and wind shift so willful to form that impossible beauty that will be gone in but a minute more? As the noise pulls at the senses with grating persistence until back in the belly of the multi engine dragon you reside once more, grasp at the memory that escape was had if but for a moment as the icy blue and white wisps danced to the song shared only with you.

I wrote this in my note pad that I keep in my back pocket most of the time when I was flying back from Florida this past September. Just thought I would share as I remembered an awesome trip with my brother and his family.

Merry Christmas (yes I know it was a few days ago) and have a Happy New Year where I hope each and everyone of us finds some new adventure.

Game Changers

I believe everyone has an event or two in their lives that is a Game Changer. I can track three for sure in my life. An event that marks a way point in your life that divides the what was, from the what now. I can easily look back and say that the person that existed before one of these points was in effect dead and a new entity walked in his place after. I am sure one would think me extreme for saying "dead" as apposed to changed or altered but in reality, those words don't come close. We experience the little twist and turns of our daily drama and we react to these as best we can. Sometimes we weep and others we laugh. There are those times that are hard and we just try to act brave hoping that bravery will indeed find us. These events are troublesome but if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit they are common events in the course of ones life. What I am speaking of are those catastrophic events that change who you are, how you react to things, and how you look at those around you.

I will try to tell of one such event, one of three, not the least, not the most, for these things do not merit rankings as they are all events of devastation and finality. The human brain does not remember the sensation of pain. We remember that we felt pain and how that pain compared to other agonies we have had, but not the actual signal sent by the nerve endings at the time of injury. The heart and mind are not so kind for if you sit and soak in the silence of a given moment and wait for the whispers, it all comes back. Whispers, I say, because not all truth is loud and obvious but in those quiet times comes to you in whispers. My oh my how the whispers do echo. Now the real trick of this exercise is that I am not going to tell you what the Game Changer was, but I will tell you about it. It was not a fast train wreck that hit and was over in an instant leaving only cries and mangled lives, though it did catch me off guard. It was a painful slow burn that hurt from the first lighting and every time I felt as if the smoke was clearing and I might find my way out of the blaze another wind of revelation would come along and fan the flames a little higher than they were before. I am not a man accustomed to tears as I learned long ago that they were not mine to own. I did water many fields of woe during this time regardless of my emotional water rights. I usually write to empty out what I am feeling, to try to make sense of what I feel. For the next year, I carried a small red journal in my pocket writing down what I had found and how I felt. It was my way of compartmentalizing this thing, to put it in its place, to put it somewhere. I gave the book a title, "Look to December" and though the title began as one of hope for future light and relief, it only took one more revelation to turn that title of optimistic retreat into another battle field scar. When you go through a Game Changer, you start to wonder if it is all you, if you caused all this, then you start telling yourself you don't deserve this. I learned in church you had best be careful telling God what you deserve because He knows for sure, and He might just show you one day. I hated being wherever I was no matter where that there was. In truth I hated whatever I was during those days no matter what name one called it. It was not hard to find a reason for dislike on any topic or in any relationship. I had all but convinced myself that my time among people had just about run its course, that I had no place left here and should set about my own plans to leave. Leave and not to return, like Bilbo perhaps. I still have the little red book that I wrote in for that year of survival tactics and I have it near me most of the time. It is sealed and I don't even look in it. I think that someday I will not even want the temptation to look back at the things I spilled out in such raw sloppy emotion in those pages but can't bring myself to burn it. Every year seems to have a December so I find myself reflecting on the title for the month leading up to it and the whole namesake of the book itself.

In the end, I am still here but make no mistakes, I am not he that was. He did not make it through the smoke and ash that was left in the wake. Some of the post impact changes were pure misery, but some where what I would classify as good changes to the plan that was myself. I am stronger now, in both body and will. I have made many new friends in that time, in fact I have made more friends in the two years since than I had in the ten years preceding my burning. I have found interest in things that I had not found in ages and for all this I am thankful. But I am not sure if I would not trade all these good things in a heart beat to get back that time. I might just trade these to rid myself of the darkness that never left. It hides in there and yes, I know we all have our shadow places whether we want to find them or not. In the times since, I have felt as if my vacuous devouring missing self would cause a collapse in this new beginning. If reading this has given you any concern. let it go because I write this not to alarm or gain any petitioned sympathy. I write because that is how I empty things out, I write because it helps me, and most of all, I am writing this because it is December.

Don't be a racist.

So I was listening to The Black Keys on the computer while doing some work and my daughter asked me what I was listening to. I said, "The Black Keys" and may have rushed my words as I was preoccupied with what I was doing. She repeated back to me, "The Blackeys".

True Story.

Perfect Crime on Sesame Street.

It would be so easy. No one would see you and more to the point, no one would care. He walks around so smug and sure of himself. He thinks no can touch him, no one could see his movements in the street. He believes himself to be a shadow, a slothful ninja of ill consequence. He is the target. He is the perfect crime. What and who am I talking about? The murder of Snuffleupagus. The only witness who could report you is Big Bird and when he went to the police screaming about an imaginary demon elephant friend that someone has snuffed, they will just put him away. Now there are other things to consider. Such as, is the Snuffleupagus meat edible? Is his blood visible even though the rest of him is not? After an invisible "imaginary" corpse sits out on the Sesame street for a while, does it start to smell? What weapon would best handle the job? So many possibilities to end this unseen break in the evolutionary chain. I want you to see Big Bird. I want to bathe in your big yellow tears as you cry for your friend who no one believed in and now no one cares that he is dead. I will sleep well at night knowing that you can't sleep, always haunted by the knowledge that only you could see him, only you could save him and you failed. Do I spend to much time thinking about killing Muppets? That .......is a fair question and I will get back to you on that one.

Urination Dance Sensation

Urinal Dancing.

It is a problem I have been fighting for years. You find yourself standing at the receptive porcelain place to be with relief on your mind. As you stand and deliver you notice there is a catchy tune playing on the sound system. First you are toe tapping, then swaying to the beat, and before long you have slipped into a dancing black out. When you come to you have sprayed down most of the restroom and half of the other patrons that were present as well. You don't know what else to do so you shoot a few pistol winks, slap some high fives, and bang out some chest bumps with the shocked and disoriented bystanders. You run for the exit as you zip your fly and swear that this will be the last time and you won't ever let yourself get out of control again. You know you will most likely break that vow to yourself, and that this scene will play out again most likely sooner than later. If this sounds like something familiar then you also have a problem with urinal dancing. If by some chance no one finds this similar to their situation then it may mean the problem is mine alone or that I am indeed the problem. I find it hard to believe that no one else has been seduced by the alluring magic that is urinal dancing and the thrill of the post pee disco get away. Thanks for being part of my self imposed intervention.

Ewoks Hate Trees!

I was just having a discussion with an employee of mine and decided to jot it down. The topic somehow found its way to conserving trees and nature. I told them that it was us or them and that trees would take over if we let them. Just because we are winning the war on trees does not mean we can let our guard down. If we were to relax as the T-Huggers (distant cousins to T-Baggers) would have us do, we would all wind up living in trees and walking to work on suspension bridges. The ewoks did not like living like that but they could not beat the trees for three very good reasons;

1. Little hands and blunt stone axes do not make easy work of giant trees. They had to allocate time for hunting and gathering and by the end of the day they did not have an extra thirty hours per day to hack at the wooden Goliaths.
2. They would overheat as they were basically teddy bears with rain ponchos on their heads. They had no visible pores and no way to cool themselves effectively. They would smell like a cat caught on hot engine block in a matter of hours of cutting.
3. The little bastards can't blink. That fact alone makes fighting trees a losing battle. Have you ever had a splinter? Have you ever had several splinters in your eye? All at once?

The trees had the little suckers over a barrel and they knew it. So what else could they do but live up in the trees and bat shit crazy while they waited for technology that would help them cut away and burn the trees down. Thanks Empire, you saved the day again.

So I will close with the words of Jack B. Handy, "If trees could scream, would we be so quick to cut them down? We would if they screamed all the time for no good reason."

George A. Romero is Dead

I hate to write that but as far as the visionary independent film maker who made a couple of the most influential films in the zombie/post apocalyptic genre, I just don't see his hand at work in the films produced under the name Romero. I watched his latest one the other night and it was so bad that I actually got pissed off. The movie was bad in several areas and they are as follows:

• Plot
• Consistency / Continuity
• Acting
• Effects
• Writing / Dialog

PLOT:

Well, the plot doesn't seem to have a destination in mind in that the stated motivation of the characters in the beginning does not seem to bind their actions. They want to find a safe place but they do everything but try to find a safe place. You find the Sarge's rag tag band of deserters in the middle of nowhere doing nothing but surfing the internet that would not really be functioning unless they had a satellite up link. They do not make decisions through the whole movie that make any sense whatsoever. Not from a military training point of view nor from a "how would a normal logical person react" point of view.

Consistency/Continuity:

This kind of ties in with the decision making from the last statement. They (the characters) constantly do things that would not be consistent with their own personalities nor what would be a result of their stated plans. Survivors in a post apocalyptic zombie world don't just wander off by themselves in unfamiliar territory nor would the others in the group not be alarmed by this. The zombies in the movie do not follow the rules set forth for zombie behavior in Romero's other films. Some zombies in this film are slow and lumbering, while others who seem dead suddenly jump up and almost roar at the characters. Many of the zombies act docile as they are chained and performing routine tasks like delivering mail or mowing the lawn. It was like the movie Fido had somehow merged a little with the Romero zombieverse. Some points just don't make sense in that they just could not happen. The characters drive into the fishing docks and are informed that the road they just drove in on was mined with dynamite so they can't drive away. The road they just drove on to get there is impassable due to land mines made of dynamite...and if they drive on it they will blow up (and one zombie stumbles on a mine, blowing up to illustrate this point) even though they just drove on the road and nothing happened, they will surely die if they drive on the road that they just drove on. Must have been some of that one way dynamite that I hear about all the time.

Acting:

I am sure that some of the actors may have some talent but if this is the case they did a masterful job of masking it. Some may be attributed to the material. You are the Sarge and your gruff with a heart of scoundrel with a soft spot. You are the lesbian (only female in the military unit so you must be a lesbian right?). You are the swarthy Italian lover boy who chases the lesbian swearing you can change her life with five minutes of your love expertise. You are the kid, rebellious, smart, crafty, with a razor keen sense of what is cool. Your are the bad guy who speaks with an Irish accent and wears cowboy attire. You are the Irish anti-hero who apposes the bad guy but your are not clearly good so curse a lot and try to have a rye approach to any situation no matter how touching, comedic, tragic, or dangerous. Then you have the full assortment of mindless henchmen who populate movies like this. In this last paragraph you have seen the full spectrum or maybe more in regards to the range of acting this movie holds.

Effects:

Did you ever wonder what happened to the effects coordinator from the old 80s The A-Team? Well, wonder no more. The gun play and squibs were cut rate but the gore effects that should be somewhat true to the physics and anatomy of the real world fell very short. A zombie who has been in a state of decay and therefore getting weaker with every action does not have the strength to grab your hair and rip the all the skin off your head as if it were a lose fitting shower cap. Not to mention your hair tends to rip out long before this happens. The zombie effects were not as good as I have seen at local zombie walks put on here in St. Louis.

Writing and Dialog:

Simple, simple, simple is the course of the day in terms of writing the plot and the dialog for this movie. There is no development of character or complex situations. At some points it seems like the writer (Romero) could not come up with a plausible solution to a situation so he just had the characters do something illogical to drive them to the next point in the story. The character's words could have been taken from a very bad old detective comic strip. At no point do the characters try to give the feel of layers within their personalities.

I wish I could tell you their were some redeeming aspects or moments to this film but in truth the best thing about the DVD version was the advertisement for the live action adaption to Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead that will be appearing on AMC in October. I will spare you wondering about that by including the trailer for that below. In the end I was left a little pissed and disappointed over this movie. I had even been warned months ago at our monthly Zombie Squad meeting about how bad it was. My problem is I did not believe the movie could be as bad as they were telling me. I was wrong, so wrong.

Click Here to see the trailer for The Walking Dead.

Today and then again..

I got a lot accomplished today but in the end, I did not get some of the things I most wanted to do done. Did that even make sense? I had wanted to write more on the D.S.D. story and I have a running draft working for the next installment. I did however get my Zombie Squad tattoo done today as you can see to the left there. It was to commemorate my first year with the ZS. One of many I would hope. It is a great group of people who do crazy stuff but also do some great things for our community. The artist who dropped ink on me is Jamie Toon http://www.jamietoon.com/ and by all means click the link and check his stuff out.

I will work to get another installment up for D.S.D. by the end of the weekend but seeing as how I have an evaluation that I need to write up for my assistant by tomorrow (real pay the bill work stuff), I suppose I should shove off for now and take care of that.

On a final note though, I got the new MC Chris album today (I heard it at Cheap TRX while getting my tattoo http://www.cheaptrx.com/tattoo.html ) and it is awesome. I think it is hilarious and my wife rolls her eyes. It's OK, she does that all the time to me and stuff I think humorous for one reason or another.

http://www.mcchris.com/

Stay true or become the lie. It is always your choice whether to follow the designs set before you or not.

Starting something new

Just a quick note on this page to let you know I have started a new ongoing story of post zombie America and a group of survivors tasked with going back into the wild zones from their safe haven, the island. They go out and seek needed supplies to keep the colony afloat and things don't always go as expected with the rotting walkers moving across the landscape as well as rogues, anarchist, and thugs of the breathing sort to contend with. Check it out and let me know what you think.

http://dsdinthenewworld.blogspot.com/

Some sounds to think and shoot to....

Amon Tobin, Sordid

I heard this artist at some time and made a note to myself on Evernote to check it out. I pulled up a few videos and it is pretty cool. I have not been hitting on a techno vibe in a long time but this was a nice change. See if you like it and check out some more of his stuff if you like it.

A New Channel Most Likely Never to Be Seen.

Just a short little note to say that I have developed a new channel on www.ustream.com to post some of the weird things that I find in the world. If you have ideas please let me know and I may try to include them. The channel will be...... http://www.ustream.tv/channel/one-inch-punch so check it out in the near future. I will post on my facebook and twitter when I will be doing live broadcast so stay tun

http://twitter.com/huboboo

http://www.facebook.com/brian.d.davis

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Venting (no not a fart joke)

So I find myself increasingly aggravated with my staff. They are generally a great group of people but on days like today when I can't go into my office for thirty minutes to do some paperwork without chaos over nothing but the ordinary happenings of a restaurant, then I get more than a little angry. Some of the people that work for me are considerably younger than I as they are in their early twenties but more of them are within ten years so I have a very low tolerance for childish crap. Now don't get me wrong, being "goofy" is fine as long as you can shift gears and take care of business and that means doing it the right way, my way. For those who have worked for me in the past let me add that I am one thousand times calmer than I ever have been in my life. I rarely anger and hardly ever raise my voice. The business of service is simple in the restaurant industry, you just have to remember who is important and that should be the basis for all of your decisions and professional behavior patterns. The client, the guest, the customer are the ones that come in to enjoy the service/food and then they are the same ones that will pay you for providing it. Why oh why do some of my servers not get this? They want to tell me how they feel about a certain situation and then I have to remind them that when it comes to anything other than what provides a quality experience for the people paying, I am simply not wearing my "give a shit" tee shirt. Alright, I have that out of my system for a little bit. Now for something completely different........

to be continued....

Yeah, I really need to post something.....

Alright it has been a little past forever since I actually sat down and made a post. Here it is and I am shooting this one from the hip so forgive me if I ramble. I have been tied up in work to much lately with getting a new assistant manager and some transitions involved with that. I have also just shifted my schedule to reflect the fact that my wife is done with school. For the last year we have not had a day off together and now we are able to once again as well as my days off not being fixed to her school schedule. So this being the first day off that we have had all day off together, I feel like we are chilling. I am fine with this, but I feel she wants more from the day and is aggravated. We also have to hook up the first family camping trip as my daughters have been bugging me for the last year to take them on a camping trip but not one of "Daddy's" camping trips, they want a fun one. This means they don't want to backpack into a site but rather park a car get out and camp where there are bathrooms nearby. This is funny but understandable as my girls are very much girls.

My new health routines and eating habits are still going well. As I write this I am extremely sore from a late night workout and then sleeping in just enough to make me a bit stiff. I have been stretching as the day goes but need more. I have my weight back down and am focusing on muscle mass and over all strength and endurance. I am working on reconditioning the way I run so that I minimize impact on my knees, ankle, and back with the heel first style that had been my go to since youth. I have found a great website that has tons of good information on stuff of this nature http://www.scoobysworkshop.com/ . I stumbled across his stuff on Youtube and actually started watching one video after another. What he lacked in production value, he seemed to find in an honest approach to what he was telling you. He wasn't trying to sell you anything, in fact the resources on his page are free. He just wants to help people get healthy. I really think a lot of the guys work.

Just had my first anniversary with the Zombie Squad 001 of St. Louis and it has been a great year of events and making friends. I have an appointment on August 19th to get my ZS logo inked on my Skin. Jamie Toon is doing a custom design and I can't wait to see the art that will be my left arm and shoulder. I will post pictures later.

I posted a while back that I would explain how to play the Phil Collins Game. As I started to write it down, it started to seem that it may not seem as fun to others as they weren't there for the first episodes that led up the game's existence. Alright let me try to put this together for you. The Phil Collins game actually has roots in the death of Heath Ledger. Now bare with me as I am not trying to make any joke of his death. One of my employees came into work one day swearing up and down that she had heard the night before that Phil Collins was the first person that one of the Olsen twins called when they discovered the Heath was dead in their apartment. This was not the case and we figured out that Teri (my employee) had dozed off while watching TMZ and merged many of the stories they were playing together. As I thought about it, it made sense in a way. Phil Collins is evil in the purest form and only puts forth this jolly rube front to fool the masses. From that point I would take something in the news and tweak it and bring the story to focus on a mystery person of responsibility and when the person hearing my story would say, "Who was it?", the answer would be Phil Collins and they knew I had gotten them. It was kind of a bullshitters battle royale if you will. In the stories we have shared since the games invention we have discovered that Mr. Collins is responsible for things such as but not limited to; The Kool-Aid recipe used in Jonestown, Introducing Jessie James to the white power tattoo model (Phil lead the white supremacy group she belonged to), Played a benefit concert for epilepsy and used a strobe light on every number, is the father of at least two of John and Kate's eight, constantly tells Mel Gibson he should stop holding back and tell people what he really feels, and has created a genetic life form that scares even himself in the form of Justin Bieber. Feel free to try it on your friends.

I have toyed with the idea of doing a web comic and start posting some of the offerings here on this blog and have a range of topics from the shower gnomes to crazy crap that has actually happened in the restaurants I have run. As I know very few people will see it, it will just be a measure of doing it for the sake of doing it and practice. If you have worked for me or with me over the years you will recognize some of the characters.

I am going to go for now as I need to oversee the cleaning of my children's playroom as they seem to think I have sent them to the salt mines for torturous labor and seem to need a high level of motivation to complete this task.

Until next time, Keep it real or keep it quiet.

Catch Up Time

It has been some time so let me see what ramblings are running around in my head…..

Not much but I will try to write some stuff down all the same. I had a moment of horror the other day when I weighed myself and realized that I had allowed myself to put back on a good amount of the weight I took off last year. I am in better shape than when I started last year but the added weight is still a no play situation so back on the intense diet and exercise I go. I have already trimmed a few pounds and am excited to see results in energy level and overall activity that I know comes with the added exercise. 

I have been studying and am going to take my FCC license test next week for one to two levels on my HAM radio license. The ZS has been working on developing an emergency radio network for times of trouble and with all the earthquakes we have seen lately coupled with the fact that we live in a city that sits on a fault line, then it is good to be ready. Now that I think about it, it does not take an earthquake to cause streets in St. Louis to collapse as it is. I have obtained a few radios and some other equipment, now I have to learn to operate all of them effectively.

Easter was good for the kids and I love to see Oliver at the age where he loves to rip into things that he knows are for him. At the first Easter egg hunt he went to, he had some confusion as to the rules. In his hunt, you would find an egg and then throw it at the nearest child you see. This was all well and good until he saw one egg break open on impact and exposed the candy treats inside. At this he realized all the sweet things he had thrown away and was upset for about a whole second or two. At the second hunt that was at his grandparents, he seemed to get into it until the thrill of running free outweighed any egg excitement.

I am sure there is much that I am leaving out so I will have to make another update tonight or the near future as the details seep back into my mind.

HuboBOOMFIST!

And Today I Write This…..

I am the type of person that likes things put back the same place every time, where as my wife is like lightening in that she never strikes the same place twice. I know this is just her nature and it aggravates her when she can’t find her keys but that is who she is so you just accept it and help her look for things from time to time. I told her this morning that her “condition” had moved from mere annoying to hindering because it was slowing me in the making of coffee. The coffee and all things coffee related are put on one shelf but for some reason she had relocated the coffee to a shelf inside the pantry. When you are up early and not nearly alert enough for such mental drills this can be bothersome. In the end it mattered not at all but it made me think, just how much you love a person is in direct proportion to the amount of aggravation you are willing to accept from that person and their habits. As one does not know/like a random stranger their habits are easily irritating and therefore you would distance yourself quickly from that person and their habits.

Last night for Valentine’s Day, my wife and I decided to make it a day for our little girls. I see on my day to day life enough women who settle for guys who don’t respect, honor, or take care of them. By this I don’t mean women who have every need met by a man, but rather a man who 1. works 2. contributes to the raising of their child and 3. lets that woman know that they are loved. I have read that a lot of this starts with the woman’s self image and how they view their own value as a woman/person. Many of the problems with this self image is related to how their parents set the example. More importantly how the father set the example in the home. I hope I don’t wait for a day marked on the calendar to show my wife how I feel for her, so I wanted to use the day to show our daughters how special, loved, and amazing they were to their daddy and mommy. The girls got to pick the dinner menu to which they chose tacos. While it would not be my first choice as a Valentine's day dinner, it was delicious so they did well in that regard. When I got home from work I greeted each of the ladies in the house with roses. A dozen for mommy and a bouquet of three for each of the girls. Yellow for Charlotte and pink for Sophia. The girls were cute and Charlotte exclaimed that this was the first time anyone had given her flowers. That made me happy to see that she saw this as a special thing. All of the children got a valentine from mommy or daddy with sweets and presents. All in all it was a special day as a family. I want to make sure I am doing everything I can to make sure my daughters know that they do not settle for less from any boy/man who comes into their lives. They are amazing and anyone who wants to be a part of their lives needs to be aware, recognize this, and respond to this in a manner that shows respect and reverence to my daughters. Anything less is unacceptable and will garner a discussion between this young man and this daddy. Of that you can be sure. My Charlotte is turning seven next month and I know it is early to worry about boys coming into the picture but I want to make sure she is proud and self assured now.

This blog entry will end now as I hear my littlest child calling for his daddy. Keep it real or keep it real quiet.

B.

Working on weirdness....

I have been working on the "Shower Gnome" project a bit here and there. I laugh at myself and I think it will explain a lot to those who made it through the college and college age years wondering what happened to them that night before when they drank a bit to much and could not remember what happened to them. Now that I think about it, I am kind of romanticizing the very real problem of black out drinking. Well, let's see if that is as amusing as I seem to think it will be.

I have also installed my new computer as well as working on a total reboot of the old one to use for certain projects like dedicated video rendering and editing. It is fun to work on computers like I used to but it is so much more aggravating to try it with my kids talking to me or dancing around me.

That is all for now and if there are any illustrators out there who would like to save me from my own sketches like the one above, please let me know. My wife could do it but since she hates the project she is boycotting any notion of helping me on it. I love her even when she oppresses my inner fun.

Rewrite and the Dare

In the stories that run through our heads, we are always the main character, be they heroes or villains. We are never the supporting cast, the friend, the comedy relief, the ones who never get a chance at love nor the opportunity to win the day at the last minute. We snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. We carry the flag in our stories. So when it comes to the way we live our lives in the "world" why do we allow for the rewrite? We let others reduce the impact of our characters on the main story. Hold the pen and make the call. Guide the story as you would have it be and don't be afraid to write angrily some times. Scribble down the emotion that is so needed to flesh out the characters and situations that make the best stories. It not only effects you but can make the story better for all the characters involved.

Why Dare to be More?

Because we see the fear in our own eyes. We smell the ripe decay and sweet rotting wasteland of all the dreams we left to die because we dared not. Dare and chance a failure but if we do nothing then the outcome is assured. I have tried to dare more in the last year and I will strive to do more so in the years to come. I will seek the adventure and even in fear I hope I step forward at the time of chance.

Now .....for something different.

I kid you not when I tell you the Shower Gnomes are coming. I am writing now and hope to have it finished soon to the dismay of my wife who hate the idea of the project almost as much as she hates the discussing of Shower Gnomes in the house.

I have to leave this here for now as I have pressing real world things to handle.

Keep it real in the unreality of it all.

Brian

All That Has Been Since Last Blogged I, or As Much As I Remember....

During the weekend of January 8th through 10th, we here in the St. Louis are experienced record low temperatures that had not been seen for some eleven years or more. This of course made it the perfect weekend for WINTERGEDDON, the Zombie Squad's annual winter camping trip and exercise. I believe that you can have no higher hopes than for your life to have adventure and this trip proved to give that to all involved. We gathered at the McDonald's located on Hampton to form a convoy to make our way North West. Our destination was Cuivre River State Park in Troy, MO. We checked in at the visitor station and park ranger HQ, finding that the main road to our trail head was closed due to snow so we mapped an alternate route. Once we had formed up at the trail head we geared up and set off to hike into the back country where we were to set camp. As we made our way in we all walked past a dead frozen solid possum by the trail. Was this a bad omen trying to warn us of danger to come? If it was, we sure as hell did not listen very well and marched on. A short while later as we were passing over a creek bed, we had our first casualty of the day as one of the three ladies of our group (we will call her J.F.) took a fall. She had tripped on a root, then hit the ice of the creek bed, so of course the ice had to break for her on impact. We all watched in that slow motion that happens in times like this as she did not get back up and as she called out we could tell, she was hurt. B3 (another of the ladies in the group) was there first and while trying to help J.F. she herself went into the water. With the temps we were dealing with, water is bad and can be very dangerous in short time. B3's pants and hat flash froze in mere minutes. We got J.F. up the bank and tried to get here comfortable. This was not going to happen as she had fractured her tibia as well as bones in her heal. As options were weighed, Cripto and I started to cut wood to make a quick travois or a litter to carry her out on. J.F. was in hard core mode and said no one was carrying her out and getting hurt in the process. She stated that she was going to crawl out on her own and then began to do just as she had said. Cripto had already called in to the ranger station and reported the situation. They were on their way in on ATV but did not know how successful they would be in getting to her. When this had hit, half the group who had been to this site before double timed it up a steep side of the terrain to get to camp, drop their packs and get back pronto. When they arrived, the rest of us made it quickly up to the camp site to start set up as time and temperature were not on our side. The rangers arrived shortly and loaded J.F. and took her out on a four wheeler. Her hard times were not over as they flipped the ATV with her on it as they were making their way out of the trail. She was taken to a local hospital for treatment. As far as last I heard she wound up with some pins, screws and a cast to say the least. I look forward to seeing her at the next ZS meeting to see how she is doing. Now back to camp...and we were behind schedule on getting camp set up and starting a fire. Remember that B3 had frozen clothing to contend with as well. She managed to get a change of clothes on and start thawing her gear by the fire once the fire was up and going.

The fire in itself was a topic here because when you have single digit to negative digit temperatures a fire does not want to burn so well. The ground wanted to suck any energy the fire could muster right out of it. It was like having to live a section of the Jack London story, To Build A Fire and no one really wanted to have the whole dog thing on their conscience. It took a full twenty four hours of fire burning to actually melt the snow inside the fire pit as well as the ice and snow just on the outside of the metal frame. The fire was our friend and we wanted to feed it. Wood cutting and gathering had to be the main task when you were not eating or sleeping.

Later in the first day, one of our ZS came up the trail and they had a guy with them that we had seen at a meeting or two but no one seemed to be very familiar with, we will call him MF. MF strolled up wearing a cowboy hat, light clothing for what we were dealing with and a day pack. We asked if he was some kind of extreme ultra light back camper ( I have heard tales of some of the ZS vets who were crazy like this. The name Ollie comes up a lot and I hope to meet this guy someday soon.). He stated that no, he was not that extreme but had another trip to make back to the trail head for the rest of his gear, and after a short rest he was off. Flash forward about two and a half hours, it is dark now, and we are all gathered around the camp fire with temperatures already dipping into the sub zero zones. Someone mentions that we haven't seen MF in a long while and that we should have seen him by now. There was discussion as to whether we should worry or maybe he had just got back to the trail head and decided it was way to damn cold and would come back tomorrow. It was decided that a search party would go out so Ladydeath and Drewder decided they would go out with head lamps to search. A short while later the called into camp to report that they had found him. He had been lost for hours in those temps with no water, communication device, light source, or means to make fire. When they returned to camp with MF and his gear which Drewder carried for him, we found that he had planned to camp out in a Hennessey Hammock, which is not a cold friendly device from what history has shown on these trips. He did indeed try to sleep in that thing the first night and as we found out the next day when another ZS group showed up with MF's sleeping bag he had left on the trail his first trip in, he had slept in that thing with just a heavy wool blanket. I awoke at about six thirty the next morning and even though my bag was warm, my mortal enemy other wise known as my bladder bid me to rise and attack the day. MF was up already trying to get a fire going so he could thaw out his boots and gloves that had frozen solid in the night and would not flex enough even for him to put his hands and feet in. I won't go on and on about MF except to say, we probably should have taken him out on the second day but hind site is always 20/20 and we did not know him well enough to read him or his behavior. He showed up unprepared and with equipment he had never tested or even set up to make sure he was familiar with the gear. As we were breaking camp on Sunday, and he told me that he did not know how to break down his tent because Kyle had set it up for him and he had never done it. I looked at him with all seriousness and asked him if he was trying to die on this trip. This did not seem to phase him to much as he was distracted by his hammock/tent not fitting easily into his stuff sack it came with. I will say that LadyDeath and Drewder were both heroes on this accord and if they had not found him that first night, he would be a corpse-0-pop in the snow for the rangers to find.

Now drama aside, we had some great times around the fire and cutting wood. It is an amazing thing to wake up and the entire inside of your tent is covered in a layer of ice/frost. The first night it got down to -8 and the next evening dropped to -10 or more. With wind chill factored into the mix it was down in the -20s somewhere. This was not pleasant by any means but with the right gear and a different attitude, we all survived and thrived. The exercise was winter camping and survival so with that in mind, we won but not without cost.

Epilogue...

I would like to apologize to the bathroom belonging to the Walgreen's in Troy, MO. Once back to a more civilized area and being the first stop we made, your bathroom with it's spacious stalls and wall heater just next to the toilet made for an excelent target for that which must not be named but had been referred to as the meat and cheese plug we all tried to form in camp.

In other happenings.....

My mother is doing better in her battle with small cell lung cancer. They seem to think they made some good progress with the Chemo and the Radiation Treatments. They are waiting on some results from a MRI to see if they are going to do some more radiation treatments to the brain area. I try to stay optimistic but knowing that my mother smokes just as much while going through treatment in combination with being on an oxygen line, as she ever has, does not give me long term hope. I know that the math of it all means that no matter what it is all just a matter of when not if.

Charlotte seems to have a severe addiction to Nintendo DS or to be more specific, the new Super Mario Brother's game for it. Aunt Lex wins the prize for giving the Christmas gift that most replicates the effect of the one true ring from LOTR.

Now I am done with drying and repacking my gear, have even reorganized my bug out bag while I was at it. I am enjoying some final time off with all my children today before I set off for the work world again tomorrow. I had a great time at Wintergeddon and can't recommend the experience enough. It is a bonding experience and don't let the stories of woe scare you away from it next year.