beeeee

GOQUIT

I quit my first GORUCK event over the weekend. 31-1 is the record. Bloody hell. Even with #goquit I had a great weekend! Maybe because of #goquit. Back in March I signed up for Heavy because it’s my favorite event and the best event ever and and it was a city I hadn’t spent any time in, Philadelphia, so hell, let’s go.

Lots of firsts this weekend:

Drank my first Zima
I did my first event without my main water bladder (MSR Dromedary) 😢
I saw us fly over another plane

I got to Philly and met up with VP-best-P who had ordered us roast pork sandwiches from Dinic’s which was an OK sandwich but I didn’t think it was amazing. It wasn’t no falafel or #shawarma from Israel. We checked into the room and napped. Rather, attempted to nap but I was wide awake so I got some water and did my prep for the event. 15:00 – we get in our Uber and ride out to John Michael’s to link up and carpool to the start point at Chadds Ford. We got to meet his lovely family. Also, Mark Witt was there 👀 Then we hopped in the car and after an hour, we roll into the parking lot.

John Michael ready to crush all the things.

Start points are the best. There’s a lot of “hey! We haven’t seen each other in a while!” and “man I know dat ass/boot combination but I forget your name!” Combine lots of chatter, lots of lube, lots of feet taping, interesting smells, some nerves and you’ll get the pre-game jitters of a GORUCK event.

Lots of cramping
Quitting my first GORUCK
Philly cheesesteaks

18:00 – the event kicks off in the parking lot of an elementary school. As people are forming into ranks, I’m scoping out the sun and where the shade is so I can get a comfortable standing spot. There’s probably better ways to spend your time but that’s what I went with. We get formed up into 8 companies, 2 regiments, 1 army. Then we move out, ready to wreck some shit. We wrecked some shit all right, and that was just walking. We advanced all of 100 meters when we pull over to get smoked in a soccer field for being unable to walk together (or cadre just fucking with us, same result). Here we picked up our first event withdrawal where homeboy got a concussion but he was OK later at endex.

Witt in his element…surveying everything GORUCK he’s about to crush.

There’s not much to my GOREV story other than we rucked, Top talked about history, we rucked, learned more history, saw some amazing fireflies along the road, and rucked some more. There were only a few interactions I had that were memorable as all we did was walk with our company of ten people while maintaining columns. I was company commander for Bravo Company during my brief guest appearance at this GOREV Heavy.

The first cool thing I saw was a large football-sized-field that was full of fireflies. There was some mist on the ground and it was like a light show. I just needed some glow sticks, some untz untz untz, and some bass you could feel in your chest to set the mood. Second was that as we walked along the road, we were told to keep a look around to appreciate the scenery. I looked right, saw the rolling hills of this nice neighborhood, and could see why people would love this area. I looked left, and imagined the same thing. All I could see was the bottom of a wall and then a fence. If I was taller I bet that shit looked dope though. The third and best moment for me was someone started talking about snipers and I mentioned “Oh yeah I saw that in The Patriot” when Top turns around, yells at me to never mention The Patriot again, then he runs back and yells “Babs, what’s the first rule of GOREV?” and she answers with “Don’t talk about the Patriot!” lmfao

The end.

Oh wait, there’s that part about me quitting #goquit

We were to do a 12 mile team ruck march after a 20 minute refit break. We all loaded up with water and I chugged a bunch of electrolytes but that didn’t work. At mile 2 I started feeling some cramping in my quads. Here we go!! Then a few miles later it moved to my hamstrings as I adjusted my gait. Then my calves. They weren’t intense like I’ve seen with others but I was behind the curve on that one and I couldn’t get ahead of it. I tried another pack of the Trioral salts and gave it a few miles but that didn’t work for me. I was contemplating quitting from the very beginning (like all events I do) but this was the first time I did it #goquit I felt shitty but I also felt great ’cause I didn’t have to worry about cramping anymore. That Trioral salt didn’t work for me. Lesson learned. I’m going back to Endurolytes.

After getting dropped off at the 12 mile end point, Top (cadre Andy) comes over and asks us why we dropped.

*Top writing down why people dropped*

“Hip”
“Fainted”
“Electrolytes out of whack”

*ignores me*
‘hey Top did you put down that I just quit?’
“…yeah I got that.”

Oh 😨

I’ve been thinking about how I feel regarding quitting this event. Initially, disappointment. After a few days, I find I don’t care. I don’t know if that’s ego saying I don’t care or if I truly don’t care. I’m not self-aware enough to know if I can differentiate the two. What I do know is that I like that I get to talk about being a quitter for a long time, at least until the next Heavy I finish.

People have messaged me saying “it’ll be all right” and “you don’t have anything to prove” but hell, I’ve been all right. Failing an event is not the end of the world for me. If it were, I’ve had a very fortunate life. I’m not out there doing this because I’ve got something to prove. If I was trying to prove something, like finishing an event, that was handled back in #281best28x or #heavy10takeakneedrinkwaterandpullsecurity I’m not saying that because I think I’m a proven commodity or I think I’m cool (note: don’t get me wrong, I think I’m cool but it’s not because of this) I’m saying that just because you’ve done it before, it doesn’t mean you will do it again. My pride was saying I could do events without training for them and thankfully I was proven wrong. Nothing like Life telling you that, hey! you suck and you need to #bebetter if you want to crush it and not be crushed.

Here’s the deal- I’m out there because I enjoy it. The snarky comments, learning, yelling, becoming a team, not becoming a team, messing up, the smells (actually, I could do without this one tbh. It’s 2017 wear some deodorant you savages), the laughter, the joy of helping out your teammates, and most importantly, the suffering. All of that is what I’m there for.

I flew to Philadelphia, drove another hour, walked 15 miles in just over 9 hours, all to drop out of an event. Would I do it all over again?

Where do I sign up?

10 days

I spent a cool ten days in March doing GORUCK things, bookend-ed by shadowing a couple of Challenges (“toughs”) and capping it off with winning Silver (first loser, whatever) in Scavenger. Not sure why I did that so much. The first trip to Austin was to just get out of town. It was the weekend after burying my dad but I was planning on going there before he passed. This was just more reason to go. Get away from my family I guess. So I messaged Logan and I had a road trip buddy. We were going to shadow with weight and then 2 miles later when we got back to the van, “let’s dump this dumb weight” and so it was. Hey imagine that, me being a little bitch.

Have you ever questioned your life during a great GORUCK event? You do the same during a non-great shadowing event. Like, what is my life that I drive 3 hours to walk slowly behind other people walking even more slowly and carrying shit and then stopping every now and then? Cadre I’m black on beer and bored. You should smoke them for reasons. Shit, you should smoke the shadows for being dumb.

After my dad passed, I was asked (twice, first time I didn’t want to do it because I’m only kinda-Buddhist) by my mom to be part of a ceremony to help him move on to the afterlife and as it was told to me, I would temporarily become a novice monk. With that, I had to shave my eyebrows (veto) and shave my hair off (what’s left of it). Which is cool I guess. I won’t knock the culture but man, now I’m walking around like a dumb ass with no eyebrows. I guess the only real difference pre-and-post ceremony is that I don’t have eyebrows. Here’s a cool blog about Laotian death rituals (Nye Noona’s blog).

On the plus side, I’ve been wearing glasses to minimize the missing eyebrows but holy shit, I can see everything clearly. Who knew?

That was a Friday-Saturday. The following Wednesday, Jason McCarthy of GORUCK fame came to Arlington and they had a ruck up that I was fortunate to miss due to having to work and secure the bar ahead of time. Many beers were consumed in the securing of the bar.

Two days later, Friday, I went down to Houston to shadow some St. Patrick’s Day T/L action and it was more of the same. Cadre I’m black on beer and these guys are walking slow as hell. I took a nap at 06:30 when they were paying back exercises for infractions and it was beautiful. I never thought I’d spend many weekends taking a nap on the sidewalk in the middle of park but hell, life!

That challenge finished we all went out afterward for food and drinks and that’s where the best part of the post-event shenanigans is. Just hanging out and chatting with people, about GORUCK, about life. Maybe that’s why I shadow? I mean, aside from the beer.

That night I got to hang out with my bff Jason Gukhool of Belize/Heavy 010 Fame. Which, if you get to hang out with us, means you get to see us race in drinking beers (ciders in my case) and me inevitably losing. Followed up with a chaser of trash talking and slurring. I was able to talk to him about some things that went on with my dad and for that I’m thankful. Next round is on me! And not because you won the drinking game. Also, Case that weekend and David the week after with some sushi and about two dozen beers. Thanks guys!

My friend Case the minister…reverend? Something like that.

I had a good couple of weeks. It’s good to reset. Time to gaze off into the future with a cool photo.

The future is that way and that’s my reaction to it.

Bragg Heavy

TL;DR: Carry a bunch of shit and do a little bit of PT. The end.

After some delicious Mission BBQ, War Stories and Free Beer (double-fisting ’em like they were going to run out), and a short trip to the in Airborne & Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville, I headed over to Southern Pines ’cause I heard there was a thing that night. But first, to see if I could check into the hotel early (success!). Which seems like a waste of money for a night I’m not using the hotel but it let me use the facilities and pretend to sleep but not really ’cause I’M FREAKING PUMPED.

The Joe Warner Bragg Heavy (JWBH) is some real life shit. There’s like, PT and coupons and coupons and PT. Simple.

A few days prior to the event, cadre told us to show up an hour early for the admin phase (waivers, check-in, weigh-in, water) so we show up and pee everywhere because that’s just what you do. After admin, we formed up into one giant group with 7 ranks of 20 people each. They asked for anyone who had previously finished a JWBH to step aside and I had to say goodbye to my friends Keith and Andrew. Farewell.

There were about 25 people in that group so they asked for reinforcements. 5+ Heavy finishers? I’m back in the cool kids club with Keith and Andrew! Hello!! I ran into some other GRTs I knew in this group. This was going to be really awesome or really terrible.

Never been so excited to fail a PT test!

So we get split up into two groups, a group of 33 and The Others. The uh…crew of 33 got to stay close by and do the Upper Body Round Robin (UBRR deets here) sans the rope climb. The Others got to do the standard PT test and ruck their asses off for 12 miles (or 9 miles, then 3 miles of PT on the route home). Two things about the UBRR: first, I got to meet the latest GORUCK Selection Finisher Mark when he graded my pushups and gave me lots of pointers (more like…I’m also terrible at pushups and they weren’t pointers so much as I should quit sucking at pushups) and second, you shouldn’t try Heavy by starting your running regimen two weeks prior AKA 12’30″/miles. It gets ugly. This comes into play later.

After the run, we head over to pick up logs from Logs-R-Us because it’s open 24/7 next door to the National Athletic Village. So, 3 logs get brought down and cadre tell us to sit in formation (3 ranks, 11 people each) and we get to chatting because it’s late and the sun should be coming up any minute now. We’re all certain of it. So after what seems like forever, people start breaking out whiskey and we eventually wisen up to penguin huddling. I start talking to Duck as I gaze into Keith’s thigh and I mention he should read the D-Day book if he goes to Normandy. Which leads to Band of Brothers chats and how he could watch it every day. I say “oh yeah our current situation reminds me of Bastogne.” Duck was like “uh…you mean except for the shelling, freedom of the world at stake, Nazis, fox holes, actual cold temps, improper gear, and snow?” Well, yeah. I mean, aside from that, I guess it was just like Bastogne.

Cadre chill session in between soul crushing. It’s hard work, I’m sure.

So no shit, there I was at Bragg Heavy and all we were doing was sitting. This is probably the peak of my performance at this event. We sat some more. Whiskey was passed around. More sitting and drinking whiskey ’cause it warms your soul. I swear it was like an hour. I also swore the sun was about to come up but I think it was only 22:00-23:00 if I can timeline that but who knows. From here, the classes combine again and then separate into three teams.

Guess what happens next?

We did this but under cover of darkness.

(hint)

Do you like PT?

How about PT with rucks?

Rifle PT?

There were also a few coupons and sandbags but whatever.

Not much needs to be said about the event. If you want to know, then sign up, show up, and be crushed by it (or crush it, if that’s an option for you). Don’t be fat and dumb like me. Or if you are, do it anyway, and learn you some suffering. Like any good GORUCK class, there were valuable lessons learned from this event.

The first and probably most unique lesson is not to tell the cadre that meditation taught you to care less. Right after we did low crawls with our coupons, Cadre John was talking to someone about his meditation practice and I mentioned how it helped me not to care as much (“not give a shit anymore”) and live-streaming-GORUCK-social-media-manager Bomber catches it and said “y’all hear that? Bee doesn’t give a shit anymore” and cadre says “There you go. You can hang that rucksack above your head. I don’t care if it’s taken out of context anymore…rucksack over your head.” Not sure how long it was but it felt like an hour (was really ~5 minutes).

I care now.

Honest.

Some shit is going to go down in that direction.

Second lesson: my friends are awesome.

At one point in the morning, we were tasked with ruck running to downtown Southern Pines and I just knew it’d be bad. I knew it would be give-up-my-ruck-bad. Yes, I’m a little bitch. I’ve fully embraced it. But a sincere thank you to Alex, Keith, and Andrew #MANdley #hately. I’d make up some B.A.R. patches for them (Bee’s Ass Rescue) for them but I’m busy working on my cardio. Not having any cardio means you can’t breathe, you can get shin splints, and most importantly, you learn to appreciate your teammates. I thank you guys. Without you, I wouldn’t have made it. I was talking to Keith after this evolution and he told me to just put one foot in front of the other. I imagine they’re somewhere in that picture below.

Hey inchworm pushups, it’s been a while. Like, a few minutes.

After this, you’ll be shocked to learn that we did some more PT. This was followed up with more PT and when you think you’re done PTing, you find more PT. Why? There is no why. Perhaps it’s for the PT you cheated yourself out of earlier. If you crushed all of your share of PT, then you’re making up for the PT I skipped (trust me, lots of it).

Alex with a sweet heat map of where everyone was from.

So, yeah.

Bragg Prep

That’s the $200 question: how do you get ready for Bragg?

Get ready for Bragg?

You won’t be ready for Bragg

Bragg knows you are dumb.

Well, for starters, I recommend you don’t spend a couple of minutes coming up with a terrible haiku. Not that I know what it takes to finish a Bragg Heavy as I’ve never been. But maybe instead of writing a haiku, those precious minutes could’ve been spent worrying about all of the training you didn’t do because you were resting or tapering. Definitely don’t want to get injured the days before, right? Better start tapering last week just to be safe.

How do you get ready for Bragg? Not by rucking and breaking in your footwear, that’s not for me. No, I’m trying a new footwear/sock combination during the event because what’s the worst that could happen right? Get blisters, lose my big toenails? Please…that’s been going on since 2013 Heavy best eavy class 010.

How do you get ready for Bragg? With great Heavies come great opportunities. That is, great opportunities to buy stuff! And then not use it because apparently all the gear doesn’t matter, just as long as you have a little bit of gear and willpower. Or ability to be tough when you aren’t smart. Also, it helps when you count on other people to over pack and bring 10 pounds of food to offset your two Clif Bars.

How do you get ready for Bragg? You throw all your gear in a giant pile on your floor as you find stuff you need throughout the week. Then a couple of nights before you go through and pack it all up in your luggage. One ruck for the event. Rolling suitcase for the rest of your gear you’ll bring and not touch at all. Then forget one thing you really thought you needed so you get to buy another one after you land. Anyone else do that?

How do you get ready for Bragg? You don’t listen to me.

This would be an incredible entrance. After you figure out how to wrap the cast and then figure out how to vibrate so hard you can break it.

How should you get ready for Bragg? Train hard. Train often. Test your gear. Test your nutrition. Drink less beer (this one is dubious at best). Test your feets. I’ll do this for my next Heavy, should one come my way.

p.s.

Drink a bunch of beer at night while packing, get Lyft at 05:15, go to gate without precheck, walk five minutes the other way to gate with precheck, get in bin precheck line, go to correct agent, get bonus screening from agent, and get bag swabbed because you brought hand warmer packets to a 40 degree event smh. I’m never traveling again for events.

The Bomber Bash continued-er

That was my ~~30th~~ 29th event in 47 months (not including Trek/FAD/Scav /FyA but that number is 40)~. Also my second Light in SBC. Sounds like a lot but it’s really not. It’s like 1 event every seven weeks, on average. Especially when you start comparing it to other people (which you should never do) but looking over my event history, I’ve done about 8 GORUCK events a year after that first one with a smattering of other events interspersed here and there. I’m behind on my events this year now that I think about it.

But back to the Bash. There were a bunch of fantastic cars where you could see that the owner(s) put in a lot of work into it. Like Darrick’s. I think it was an old Army truck that he chopped up. At any rate, loud as hell and slammed ridiculously close to the grass. When he started it up, it ripped some of the grass up off the ground. Bad ass! Now let me hop into my four door family sedan with hail damage afterward…not as bad ass.

So that’s the Bomber Bash. Lots of fun cars, fun people and fun beer. For me it’s not about the cars so much as it is the latter two. I suspect that many of the GRTs came out for the same reasons as well. Not that there’s anything wrong with cars. I’d be happy to own some of them but that’d be a fleeting moment of happiness. I imagine things have less value than experiences do for most people. If not, and I’m going to be judge Bee here, you should fix that.

So this is the day after and everyone is hanging out having some good times. I thought the beers were good but others had differing opinions. Also, it was hot. Like, incredibly dumb hot. Most people would only hang outside for a few minutes and then head for cover and then acquire some beers. I thought about busting out my shemagh (one of three) but why use that when there’s a roof over your head? Oh because I bought it and almost never use it, got it.

All the cool kids in this pic. That’s why I wasn’t invited to sit down.

It’s fun to see friends you haven’t seen in a while. I kinda felt bad (one of two feelings I have) because I’ve seen some of these GRTs more in the past three months than I have my real friends (pre-cult) but then I got over it. Although it does make me reach out (send annoying text) to my peeps to see how they’re doing though. I had a brief thought that my friends who didn’t get a message would be mad but I’m sure none of them read this based on my read statistics so whatevs. I’ll just get drunk and text all of you. You’re welcome.

Some good people in this picture. Also there’s David. They must have sat around for 30 minutes just trading stories, fun to be there!

One thing I noticed (not for the first time) this weekend was that when I talk or think about someone, I think of an interaction I’ve had with them as a way to recall their face. I wonder if my mind tags that as our greatest moment together. I think I stole that from Saving Private Ryan but I guess that’s just the way the mind works. Here’s a few:

Dan – awkward dad jokes (all of them)

Bomber – shirtless hug

Eric – stupid bee yang shirts

Cristina – stupid bee yang shirt

Jenks – “Ralph” at Trek

Christina – sho u right

Patrick – young punk

Qsik – young punk

Christian – Nice to meet you.

Jason – dying in an ambulance LOL

G – calling me ‘idiot’ in his French accent. Makes me sound like a sophisticated idiot though.

Those probably mean nothing to most of you but that’s what I think about when I talk to my peeps. If you want to know yours, message me or comment I guess.

Stolen from the internets. Good message though.

Later in the day:

I see another buddy. Ask him where his significant other was. You guessed it.

0-3.

This is me after going 0-3 this weekend.

I think I’m done ~~asking you people in relationships where your better half is~~ talking to anyone. I’ll just assume everyone is happily together and never inquire again. I say that now but after drinking I’ll probably forget and make it awkward for everyone around.

Yeah, I’ll do that.

PEAK GORUCK

After last week’s awesomeness that was the GORUCK GRT Reunion in NOLA, Lee dragged me over to be interviewed by Nick (videographer) and I didn’t really want to be interviewed but I guess I didn’t not want to that badly because…I went and did it? Dumb. I watched the video once and cringed during the whole thing and now I can’t bring myself to watch it again because it’s awkward. I don’t even remember my answer that’s how bad it was. Anyway, I made it into an official GORUCK video and they published one of my blog posts so basically I’ve reached PEAK GORUCK and now I can retire™. I’m so over you, carrying-heavy-shit-for-long-distances-for-seemingly-no-reason-other-than-to-suffer-and-maybe-get-a-cool-FB-profile-pic-if-your-shadow-isn’t-drunk.

So aside from that, why were we there in New Orleans? I vaguely remember wondering what keeps me coming back to these events and you can’t put your finger on just one thing. Why would you people fly across the country to do dumb things with some people you know and a lot of others that you don’t know? Usually the reason is because “you’re dumb and you make bad decisions” but occasionally the answer is that you’ll connect with some people. Typically it’s a surface-level connection like “oh she’s a friend of a friend on FB” so you end up being FB friends. Sometimes you’re stuck under a log together if you’re of similar height but if you’re uh…my height then you’re just carrying extra stuff like team weights or the wonderful flag by yourself. Other times you connect because “he’s a casualty, pick his ass up and go.” Litrly connected.

Take Jimmie Speck…seriously, take him as your friend. I’ll throw in some patches to sweeten the deal. You might remember him last week’s post about buddy carrying my fat ass (“Bee wtf why are you so heavy?”) because I was…overly tired. We became FB friends after he joined my 1,001 Manmaker Challenge in February 2014 and I soon realized that any person dumb enough to do 1,001 Manmakers in his spare time, voluntarily, is totally dumb enough to be my friend. Fast forward 18 months and a couple of Bee-inspired Challenges we finally got to meet at Task Force Dagger Custom Chlight (challenge-level light) in Charleston, South Carolina through another friend of ours (Keith “TREK 007” Borg) and next thing you know, we’re in a group chat with Andrew “Redneck Riviera” Handley and they’re being extremely nice to me in the chat currently titled “#beeisaclassybitch”. Seriously, they’re good people.

There’s Keith not regretting this event at all.

So in our chat we got around to talking about why we do these events:

“I show up every event looking to learn something about myself. Maybe I just find out I am bigger asshole than I thought [Bee’s note: he is]. If you think everybody is going to pull their weight…wrong event. You fuck up…you hurt…that builds bonds, that forges teams [and] you come out stronger on the other side.” – Jimmie Speck

He’s not wrong. It’s almost as if every event is your first event. Here are a few other quotes and observations by people regarding their first event (all by my memory and I’m drinking so…):

“I’m going to do every exercise with perfect form.” – Jenks Currie

“It can’t get any worse than this.” – random GRTs at night

*brings 5 pounds of food…eats none of it* – rookie GRTs

*brings 3 shirts and extra pants…carries it around for no reason* – rookie GRTs

“Bee I knew we were going to be friends because we were the only Asians there.” – Eric Wang

Here’s my first battle buddy Chase Sepulvado. We carried shit for what seems like forever but it was only like 2 miles. He also offered me some food at a break and I was so tired I couldn’t eat.

So Jimmie doesn’t know I quoted him and he’ll probably beat me up next time I see him when he drives to Shreveport to do the Bomber Bash Custom Light in Louisiana and not Task Force Dagger super awesome event in Charleston, SC on 9/11 weekend.

So if GORUCK just disbanded tomorrow, we’d still have our friendships because apparently, people matter. We wouldn’t have GORUCK as the avenue to continue to meet up and do stupid shit but we’d figure out something. So yeah, The People.

Beer is a close second, though.

patches

Everyone has been uploading their patch collection to the Tough page but I’m not about that life. My favorite patches I have are the allegedly™, original 1,001 manmaker patch and my first Heavy patch. Apologies to those whose patches I didn’t favorite.

The allegedly™ I just wanted one but you can’t really buy one so I figured I’d buy 50 and see if I can’t get close to breaking even and sure enough my friends were dumb enough to pull through and help me get near break-even.
1,001 manmaker patch was probably my first foray into doing dumb things for a patch. It immediately became my favorite dumb thing to do because if you take 15 hours like I did that first time, you realize how valuable time is. You start daydreaming about all the cool shit you could be doing. Immediately coming to mind is not doing manmakers. Watch TV. Not do manmakers. The possibilities are endless!!
My first Heavy patch. I don’t know which one is the actual original but that’s not important. What is important is that I remember earning the shit out of this one because in my mind I was going to die in Austin and after Jason patched me, I hated him and loved him at the same time. I was raging but wanted to be happy. But most importantly, I wanted to sit down. Hell, we all did. My favorite event of all time still.

SuperScavenger was one of the most mentally draining of all my events but that’s because everything was foggy and hazy. I traded my FAD patch away for a charity donation. I can’t think of a patch I want to get. Maybe the Bragg one but I might be injured which, either way it goes I’ll be OK with because I’m a bum. It’s been a good three years I’d say. I remember earning my first patch and thinking that was the dumbest thing I’d ever done and that nope, no freaking way was I ever going to do it again-39 months later…stupid patches. 25 h/c/l, 4 Scavs, 1 Trek, 1 FAD

I’ve been organizing my patches in order to make a patch board so I guess the posts help. I am going to make a patch board and, really, I think it’s dumb but clearly just because I think it’s dumb doesn’t mean I won’t do it. In looking at them, I realize I’ve lost a Light patch somewhere. It’s probably in my ruck but I’d have to go digging around so I’ll do that this weekend I guess. Or I’ll just Trek one from one of my peeps.

After I got my first patch and swore to never do an event again, I signed up for one that next day because you have to know if you really don’t like it and what better way to find out than to do it again? So the second event I signed up for (Wichita 553) ended up being my third event because there was a Light in between and somehow it became all about getting patches and shit. You keep buying patches because they’re cool or someone will say “run this far and donate money to charity and get a patch” and suddenly you’re like $200 into patches that you never look at (hence the patch board…oh). So you cut back on buying patches but keep going back and start giving less of a shit about getting a patch and more about earning it and helping others get theirs.

Then you figure it’s actually been about the people all along and hang the patch. Damn you GORUCK, I just wanted a sweet backpack and now I’ve got new friends and fucking like 50 new Facebook groups and shit.