The crying Tough Mudder and the wicked art of Someday
It was just after 10am. I was midway up a California mountain and standing in a group of 200 people so pumped up on testosterone and adrenaline that the simple act of guttural primal...
Category: Recreation
Finish line
“I am as nervous as I’ve ever been.” That was my son this morning, up before the sun for his first youth triathlon. At eight years old, he would be among the youngest of...
How to make a Moscow Mule
The fiber swam-viscous, milky, sexual-on the other side of the amber glass. I pressed my eye as closely as I dared. My heart felt precious little shame as I thought, “That must be what...
Using John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck died in 1968, four years before the landmark Furman v. Georgia capital punishment decision by the United States Supreme Court. It was the first moratorium on the death penalty in the U.S....
Mastodon Weekend returning to Greenville?
Details are still to come (you’ll see them right here sometime in the next week or two), but for now, if you ever thought, “Wow, it sure seems like those cats in Greenville are...
Greenville Mud Run 2012 video
I’ve had a lot of people shake their heads at me. A shoe salesman actually said after looking at my battered body, “Maybe if you get some new shoes, you won’t fall down as...
GoPro Hero 2: Experiments in fatherhood and beyond
My dad died the weekend before my 38th birthday. I didn’t learn until a few days later that one of the last things he did was buy me a birthday gift. It was a...
13.1 miles for Dad
I wanted to tell somebody, but there was nobody to tell. Though I was elbow-to-elbow with some 40,000 people, I was alone. There was no one to tell my story, no one who a...
On getting naked
I could not have been more naked. Six months ago, I stood behind an open car door. It was the only thing blocking my man-parts from an entire grass-field-turned-parking-lot full of people on a...
Saturday Night Lights
The backfield tackle was the kind in which the quarterback is hit, hit again, and finally collapses under the weight of blockers, tacklers, and the inevitability of yet another sack. Less than two minutes...
The Last Poker Game
This story originally appeared at Up For Poker in January 2007. I’ve been thinking about that night a lot recently. What I learned more than four years ago seems more relevant with every passing...
Those aren’t ants in my pants
It’s a little more than 17 miles of county roads–open fields, farm land, red barns, private air strips, luxury homes, views of the Blue Ridge mountains, moo cows, and lose-yourself hairpin turns–between Campbell’s covered...
2.5 years in 5.5 minutes
So, anyone waiting for the next generation of the iPhone to come out, feel free to get excited. I finally upgraded to the iPhone 4, so whatever is coming next will probably be moved...