“Hey you should come out and do this custom GORUCK Light in Charleston.” – Keith Borg

Hey you don’t have to ask me twice. You have to ask me every time there’s an event in your town and eventually I’ll cave in and go. I think this was actually the first time I wasn’t drunk and agreed to fly to another city to do an event. I didn’t know that was possible. Both Culebra trips I booked I was drunk so this was kinda new territory for me. Just over 2 years ago I met Keith when we did attempted GORUCK Trek 007 (met a dude named James Bond as well) so we could learn some secret squirrel shit you could actually learn by looking around online and reading spy novels but whatever. We met in the airport hanger they rented out for us and that was some fun times but probably not something I’d ever do again.

I felt so welcome.

I’ve never been to South Carolina and pretty sure it was never on my radar of places to visit but man is it a nice place. Except for the mosquitoes. Everything was so damned green out there. Trees everywhere and not just open and flat like it is here in the DFW area. He takes me on a tour through Charleston and I recognize some of it from Facestalking a custom Heavy they did where they dropped the flag at the beginning and then got smoked for like 4 hours. It’s always fun when it’s not you I suppose.

So the event was a fundraiser for Task Force Dagger and at the start of the Light, some of those guys from their HQ came out and talked about their mission and how they assist veterans and veteran families with flights, gas money or groceries or damned near anything they need. Then the welcome party started. We had to do push ups, flutter kicks and then run 100 yards out and back several times and I was ready to quit because I’d rather just drink beer and shadow if I’m being honest. All in all it was a fun welcome party where again, no one ever feels welcomed. Actually brings up a point I’ve wanted to make, has anyone actually been in a welcome party and after they finished it they were like “hell yeah, I belong here!”? One cool thing is that Phil taught us how to control yourself when doing Halo jumping so we paid $120 for a Light and got Halo qualified. The best value in GORUCK bar none.

After the welcome party, we formed up in ranks and got to carry two sweet poles that cadre brought because he just happened to have two poles laying around and thought “fuck it, why not?” So we walk toward Folly Beach which is awesome because I don’t know how far it is and ignorance is bliss so everyone should do an event in a town where they don’t know where anything is. After walking what felt like forever we get to Folly Creek and we get to swim across it. I am the worst swimmer and would drown but thankfully they give us life jackets.

So we ford the river and didn’t drown when our Conestoga Wagon sank to the axles or anything like in Oregon Trail and walk to the beach. Here’s where shit got bad. We did the typical PT in the sand and water activities but cadre had us do log drags through the sand. That was the possibly worst exercise I have ever done in an event. It just sucked the soul out of you. So much defeat in that. We got to do it twice (out and back). I questioned my existence on this one. Props to those of you who do the workout where you drag shit behind you. After this we got to do log PT in the surf and that’s pretty fun. We did get awesomeness in that the class raised enough money to get cadre Phil to give us 100 4 count flutter kicks. Shit’s hardcore. You won’t see me doing that anytime soon or uh…ever.

After this we got to play freeze tag. There were no boundaries and what we had to do was put one ruck down on each end of the newly created field and get it across the halfway point.  This was one of the most fun games I’ve ever had the chance to play at an event. Now, since most of us were strangers we didn’t know how to distinguish teammates (who can you freeze, who can you unfreeze by crawling through their legs) so I was adamant about being shirtless. I imagine anyone reading this blog has seen my physique so they’d be puzzled as to why I’d want to go shirtless but fuck it. Embrace it. So I went shirtless. Jimmie went shirtless. A couple of other guys went shirtless and I still had no idea who was on my team. It took like 20 minutes but our team finally emerged victorious. Our prize was more PT in the surf. Yeah! WINNING!

As the event was going on, Phil was trying to recruit people on the Facebooks to donate money to TFD and if they did, they would stop me from doing bonus PT. That didn’t work out so he said that if people donated money then he’d make me do more PT. Fuck you people for donating for that. I owe Karen some bonus PT.