The title of this BB is a quote from Mike Tyson and it sums up my Q experience this morning quite well. In Carpex we have contingency options for just about every fartsack excuse.
Weight concerns? We have limited and no-run AOs.
Injured? There are a ton of PAX willing to show up early for EC so they can walk with you during the ME for some 2nd F.
M upset about something dumb you said this week? We loan out wigs in the style of Half’s hair and arm sleeves that look like my massive, manly arms (or you can own your own for $3000 a sleeve). Both guaranteed to get you back in your M’s good graces.
But the ‘Vid caught everyone off guard. Social distancing? Masks? Granted masks are not a foreign concept in Carpex. For years, many have been lobbying for Parker to be forced to wear one, but that was only to limit the amount of merlots we have when he posts. But masks for the rest of us who didn’t hit every branch on the ugly tree on the way down? Social distancing? A group whose tenents are built on 2nd F INTENTIONALLY keeping their distance and muffling their mumble chatter? (This type of thing never happened under Ma Bell’s tenure. Just sayin’)
Still it’s been 6 months since lockdown started and while we have adapted as a region there are still brothers missing from the Gloom. What’s our motto? No man left behind? Those missing brothers felt like thorn in my side. We all have different levels of comfort and it was time to create a space where those last few felt safe enough to come out.
So when Shipyard called to inquire about a pair of Frisco Arm Sleeves we got to talking about those missing brothers. Actually he wanted to talk about why it was $6000 for a pair of arm sleeves that just say “Frisco’s arms” on them and something about a ‘money back guarantee’ (Everybody knows that all money is guaranteed by whichever guy has his face on the bill. Just find the guy with the spectacles to get $100 in gold pieces-of-8. Duh!). Actually this may not have happened come to think of it since Shipyard’s arms still looked pretty spindly this morning. But somehow we came up with the idea for a 100% SD-ed, masked workout to coax those brothers safely back out.
Step 1 was to make up a plan for our first workout. That fell to me since Shipyard came up with the name, the first AO test location, the Slack channel, researched weather patterns for the last five years at each AO to find the least windy spots, designed a weather pattern forecast model, designed the t-shirts, talked to the Nan’tan and 1st F Q, reached out to the missing PAX, did the research and published a peer-reviewed journal article on exact social distancing guidelines based on mask material, age, height, and weight of the PAX, and some other minor stuff like that. He took up all the easy tasks so I was stuck making up the workout. Yes, he was shirking his duties but some people just don’t want to carry their share of the load.
At 5:20am I arrived and planted the Claymore flag. Pickles has been hounding me about bringing it out to the Claymore site “at least once in 2020”. A-team is practically right next door to Claymore (barely 10 miles) so it was good to be able to satisfy that request finally. Shipyard was digging a hole in the ground along the sidewalk. I didn’t ask because I had designed the workout and that was enough. Yoga Mat was watching the digging with curiosity but having been out of the Gloom for a few months he apparently assumed this was something new we had started. Shipyard finished and we mumble chattered for a bit. Man, it felt good. Personally I have never liked Yoga Mat. His pre-blasts are too wordy and as everyone knows I am a man of few words. But still it was good to see him.
Flenderson was also there. Apparently he had agreed to meet How-How at Bond Park for some IR work. We were about to tell him that he was in the wrong place when Meatloaf walked up.
“Hey, guys, long time no–” Splash. The hole Shipyard had dug made sense now. Meatloaf had stepped right into it and was covered in mud up to the calf.
“How did that happen? Where did that come from?” Shipyard said innocently. I had designed the workout and since contradicting people takes effort I wasn’t about to say anything. If Shipyard wanted to contradict himself he could bloody well do it himself. Yoga Mat stared at Meat Loaf’s mud covered foot but apparently assumed this was also par for the course now at Carpex. He gave me a thougtful look and I resolved right then and there to walk on my hands whenever he was around so that I could look out for any traps he might lay.
I started the workout (that I had designed) with the Pledge. I gave the disclaimer (more or less) and welcomed everyone to A-Team…which was when Flenderson realized that A-Team was not normally at Bond Park.
“Guys, I think I am supposed to be at Bond Park to meet How How,” he said.
Yoga Mat, Shipyard, Meat Loaf and I didn’t think much of this so we began tossing mudballs at Flenderson. We got him and his car pretty good before he managed to get away.
“That’s the last we’ll see of that, guy,” Yoga Mat said with a grin. “Rucker!” he barked after the car. (Like literally barked. Do you know how hard it is to bark-talk? Especially through a mask. We had gotten Yoga back into the Gloom just in time.)
The pre-ME entertainment over we headed off to the large parking lot off to the left. Here is what we did.
Warm Up:
I immediately knew I was going to have problems. True to Mike Tyson’s words of wisdom I had had a plan and this mask was already punching me in the mouth. Now I was wondering what I had signed up for. As we four would come to find out the mask is a great equalizer of men. You can be the biggest, strongest, most Iron-Paxiest Pax around but dampen that air supply and it’s all for naught. The parasympathetic nervous system starts raising warning flags, flooding out reason and logic. Everything in your body screams at you to take that mask off and get some air into your dang lungs.
We had established ground rules at the beginning: if you had to get a maskless-breath, step a good distance away before you removed your mask and do it in the opposite direction of everyone else. I wasn’t about to tap out during my own workout (which I designed)–especially not during the Warm Up. It probably wasn’t pretty but I got through it and eventually managed to quiet down that voice of panic in my head. Since Yoga Mat and Meat Loaf had been out since March so I decided to take it easy on them…unforunately Sargent Squatter had come to this party and he is just a straight up jerkface.
Thang 1: First, we had to meet the Sarge and learn his moves. We did each of the below as a rep 5 times then added the next part of the exercise to the end, did 5 of what we had built, added the next exercise and did 5 reps and so on.
Squat Down
Bear Crawl to Plank
Merkin
Shoulder Tap
Merkin
Mountain Climbers
Crawl Bear to squatting
Stand up
Now that the PAX knew and hated the Sarge it was time for the fun stuff.
Thang 2: Sarge’s 7’s.
We partnered up (SD-style) and each partner selected a parking space on either side of the parking lot with the bumpers in the middle between them. Even at our closest we would all be 15′-20′ apart from each other. Initially, Sarge got 5 reps in the middle of the parking lot and we did ascending LBCs on the far end of our lanes. The Sarge had mentally suggested the LBCs to me and I had gleefully thought he was slipping…until we got a few rounds into Sarge’s 7s. I quickly realized getting down up and down for LBCs gets hard after a while. Toss 5 Sarges in at the middle (“top”) and those LBCs start to feel like modified Turkish get-ups.
On the 3rd trip up the middle I called an audible and we did proper 7s and started counting down the Sarges while we counted up the remaining LBCs.
By this point, we were all getting a little spent and the masks were taking a toll. (Except for Meat Loaf who can apparently breathe out of his eyes. Yeah, I let him pick up a bit more of the cadence counting for me at this point.) Shipyard stepped way away at some point and appeared to loosen his mask. When I yelled over to see if he was okay and nodded and said “Why did I design this workout so hard?” I assumed he was joking or that his mask was muffling what he was really saying.
After much effort we finished Sarge’s 7s but had time left so we went into Thang 2b.
Same drill as above but we made it double 11s and replaced LBCs with Squats and Sarges with Merkins. That seemed like a great idea until our arms began to turn to jelly. I saw Yoga eyeing a muddy patch with malice so I picked up the pace. With luck the lack of oxygen from his mask would keep him off-balance.
Mary:
PAX choice. We all got two in. We could have gotten an early Have A Nice Day but Shipyard mumbled something about finishing HIS workout strong and called 100s or something. (His mask was definitely muffling his words.)
COT:
Count-a-rama: Respect (1), Mehs (3)
Announcements:
Maskers will be meeting on Friday at the Back in Black location. Yoga Mat to Q.
Prayers and Praises:
My M, Chewie’s back. The world at-large as we all wade through this crazy year. Prayers for Red Lobster’s, Yoga’s, and Meat Loaf’s 2.Xs and all the other students dealing with the craziness with college.
NMS:
Unlike Yoga Mat, I am a man of few words but I will make an exception in this case. See, I have this fear that society is coming up with a new way to divide ourselves into “us” and “them”. I have good friends inside and outside of F3 that I haven’t seen or if I have it was an uncomfortable masked visit where I felt like I was Typhoid Mary. I can’t say I would behave differently if I was in their particular situation or had their particular concerns. But there is a tendency to start to write people off eventually especially when you realize that some people may never make it out again.
This mask thing is hard. It opens up a lot of (internal and external) debate about our individual freedom and rights vs. our collective responsiblities. How much of “me” am I willing to lose to potentially save someone else? It is an uncomfortable internal discussion for someone in F3. Most of us found our way to F3 because of Sad Clownism. As we got older we put on more and more “hats” and in the process we lost pieces of ourselves. Eventually we lost that “me” and let someone else (Hollywood, society, etc.) write our perception of who we were and what we could or couldn’t do. That is a place none of us want to go again.
I would probably be scornful of people who refuse to wear masks in public…except when the lockdown started I was shocked to see how quickly I slipped when I didn’t have people to be accountable to, when no one would know if I didn’t get up at 0Dark30 every day to keep myself strong mentally, physically, emotionally, etc. Loss of “me” can destroy a man.
Yet, F3 is about making ourselves stronger so that we can take care of others. To be leaders. To make the hard and unpopular choices. How as a man in F3 do you reconcile those two concepts? Better men than me follow CDC recommendations and the NC rules to the letter. Better men than me stay just barely within the spirt of it or outright refuse. It is rare that you have two sets of giant’s shoulders to stand on.
Wearing a mask during a workout is tough. It gets sweaty and begins to cling to your face. Today, I sucked it up (sometimes literally) because I absolutely did NOT want to make any guy at Maskers not feel safe. I won’t pretend that I do wear or ever will wear a mask all the time. I wear it in stores if they or the government says I have to. I’ll wear it at Maskers of the Universe workouts because if that is what it takes to bring guys out then a little cloying panic now and then is a small price to pay.
I’ll continue to struggle with the hard math of “me” vs. my impacts on the world. But as always I won’t do it alone. MIAGD my brothers.