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!

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