Don't Ever %#@#$% Quit!

Today was a fairly boring day of meetings. You know, the ad-hoc ones in a hallway infront of the woman's bathroom. Just because one travels 50,000 miles sitting next to Jabba the Hut's wife, doesn't necessarily reflect in the schedules of others. It's like herding kittens in my job.

Upon my escape, I promptly ate at one of the bazillian seafood restaurants. Each one seems to have their specialty. Today's restaurant had crabs for $1 and homemade crab bisque. I love soups. From a can, a pot, a slow cooker or even superheated via Vitamix. I ate their soup and it was good. I also ordered some coconut shrimp. My eyes were bigger than my stomach and I was barely able to compact it all down. I felt like hurling on my drive to the hotel.

Once at my accomodations I grabbed my Vulkan shorts and my Pan Ams 2009 t-shirt and went for a nice long walk. Partly because I needed to buy a toothbrush. The one the front desk gave me was apparently a refurbished unit from Ebay. As I brushed, the bristles would pop out and it felt like I had a semi-digested birds nest in my mouth.

The walk was part of my warmup and to help my coconut shrimp find their way past my pyloric sphincter and into my intestines. I still felt like hurling.

I survived my walk and grabbed my towel from my room and dropped off my shiny, new unused toothbrush. I wandered down to the outdoor pool.

I absolutely love water. I swear I was a sea anemonie in a former life or perhaps a sea cucumber. There exists some weird aquatic gene in my family as everyone in my family are all natural swimmers. My great great grandfather was a stevodore on the docks in New York and in Italy. Old family stories tell of him swimming so far out into the ocean, the lifeguards would send boats out to retreive him. Upon reaching my aquatic ancestor, he would ask politely if THEY needed help!

As you can imagine, today's workout involved water. The pool was a nice big affair about 100 feet long and 30 feet wide. I jumped in the lukewarm water and started to immediately go into full survival water treading mode. It's also in my genes to not want to drown. Of course after 20 seconds of flailing around randomly, I simply put my feet down. Stupid deep end was only 5ft...

A quick story...I am crew on various military aircraft. I fly in the back, I'm not a pilot. They always refuse to give me a chance at the flight controls, or play with sharp objects in flight. It's cool shit, I get to play military for a day..all the time. One particular military aircraft required me to endure full up water survival school. Which consisted of parachute landings in water, parachute dragging in water, dunker tanks, spin chairs, and escape hatches all in or under water; often blindfolded.  Swimming underwater, blindfolded through various obstacles is tough stuff! All of this in full flightsuit, combat boots, helmet, an out of order life preserver unit, gloves and a survival vest. It was actually quite fun. Except for one part: water treading. This, my friends, is where I nearly drowned along with a whole class full of civilians and young, tough military recruits. At first I though things were going ok, I'm 3/4's fish by genetic makeup, I should be able to handle this. We had to swim our asses across an Olympic sized pool and then begin water treading. Tired from the long swim, we began flopping madly around. Keep in mind, I exercise. A lot! Infact I even borrowed the pool card from my strength and conditioning coach. I would go swim in my flight suit for practice while onlookers thought I was a retard. But at this pool, desperation ensued as I quickly realized that I was no longer a shark in the water but rather a brick. I hate dying, it pisses me off. After several failed attempts at breathing, while splashing wildy, I was just barely able to inflate my life preserver and survive. This was probably the closest to actually dying I've been. Unfortunately, the guys I was with were technically dead as they were pulled from the pool unable to continue the exercise. They didn't quit, they were pulled. Which, is quite honorable.

Back at the hotel pool I started doing laps. One lap of breast stroke, one lap of free style, and one lap of back stroke(just kicking). I think I did about a dozen laps at a moderate pace. I wasn't too winded but my coconut shrimp were now firmly lodged into the the first major curve in my intestinal tract.  The feeling of having to projectile spew my dinner had mostly subsided.

In the pool, along with me were three old ladies babbling about apple fritters and knitting. Also in the pool was this fat kid. About 10 years old, I don't want to sound mean; he was morbidly obese. Too many video games and heavy carb McDonalds. Bascially, your average American kid. The little twerp kept eyeing me as if I was a threat to his studliness. I would launch forward with my poor freestyle technique and he would try to do the same. He was probably bored and had no one to play with. Males have an instinctual threat anlaysis and dominance behavior. It started when we were sperm, knocking the other fellas out of the way, racing toward the goal. The first one wins, the others shall die.

Like a pair of teenagers in our rides at a stop light, we revved our engines. Two sports cars geared up for a lighting fast take off to see who's best. In actuality it was more of a Doughnut Van vs a Honda Civic. Both poorly setup for what was about to happen. My little rotund challenger eyeballed the end of the pool as I readied myself for what was going to be his first major asskicking at a real sport. I launched forward, he launched forward. The little chump actually had the lead for a microsecond. I slammed past him grinning, blowing out pool water, which was probably 6% urine as there were tons of kiddies in the pool before my warmup walk. I made it to the end of the pool (in record time I'm sure) and looked back to survey the devastation I had left behind. Where the hell was the fat kid? I looked around, he was gone! Thinking he had gassed and drowned, I quickly stuck my head under water, subjecting my eyes to the pee soaked, over chlorinated water. I didn't see his fat rolls stuck in an intake vent, he must be above the water. I popped my head up and saw that he had quit. He realized he was outclassed and jumped out of the pool and ran over to his mom while she smoked a cigarette.
     
One thing I cannot stand is a quitter, even in the face of certain defeat. This disgusted me as the feeling of hurling quickly came back. I grabbed my towel and dried myself off. Atleast the lifeguard chickie was cute.

Mark