Once again I'm starting a blog out with "Where do I
begin" (OK well technically I guess I started this blog out with
"once again I'm starting a blog out with "where do I begin" but
you all get my point).
This weekend as you all may know was the 10 year anniversary
of the attacks on our nation that took place on Sept 11. I, along with MANY others, chose to
commemorate the day in the way we know best...self induced physical pain and
mental anguish....YAY!!!!
The events of this weekend started out Friday where I,
against her will, forced Mini Me to leave school at noon and sit trapped in my
Jetta for 5 hours while we listened to the SAME songs on satellite radio (we
can talk about THAT later) and paid lots
of tolls enroute to New York, New York.
Now I was excited to drag her along as she had never been to the big
apple that never sleeps of lights and dreams...or whatever it's called, and I was also excited to YET again force this
poor minor to stay up all night in the cold and watch/document me doing
stuff. We ALMOST got her in to
participate but alas she is too young and I'm not her parent (yet) so I couldn't
say it was OK for her to sign a death waiver...Deb, MMKN we need to make me a
legal guardian so I can start putting her in some REAL danger?
We arrived, made it up to the apartment, got settled in and
were on our way. The PLAN was to hop on
a subway and hear to the GORUCK Head Quarters for he fundraiser and to kick or
the event. What ACTUALLY happened was we
walked a few blocks over to the subway paid like 10 bucks for some cards to ride the train then couldn't
figure out which one to get on so abandoned that plan and just got into a
cab. I made the fatal mistake of trying to tell the
cabbie where to go and how to get there...not so much from my own knowledge I just
read him the text that my NYC native friend, Maurya, sent me. OBVI this didn't make him happy and he took
me his way, explaining to me the whole time how he knew where I needed to go
and the best route to take and had he gone the way I wanted him to go it would have
cost me much more money. SO I thanked
the defensive man tipped him well, got out of his cab and waved as he drove off
PROBABLY laughing at the fact that he had just dropped me at the wrong spot and
was internally amused thinking about what is was going to be like for me to try
to figure out where the hell I was. SO
I dragged Mini around in some circles for a little while until MScan, via
phone, talked me through the steps I needed to take to get to where I ACTUALLY
wanted to be. It was amazing..."put
the sign for the Holland tunnel to your back and walk forward" She told me that after she realized that
asking me to walk south on Canal street was like asking me to invent
carbon. "Do you see a post office
on your right? Cross the street. Now
cross to your left to the next corner.
PAUSE and make a 90degree turn to your right." I did all of that and as if in the matrix
there she stood...amazaballs.
We got to the GRHQ and I met with the illustrious team of
dudes I would be challenging with the following evening. Had some beers donated some cash and we all left to get food
and then sleep. At that time of the
night in NYC there is really only one genre of facility you can go to in order
to get fed and that is a bar. We handed
off a fake ID to mini, made her memorize the dates and addresses on it and
crossed our fingers. Took a death cab
over to the destination (Travie pointed out that you are paying the man to drive
you around so getting your monies worth by near death crashes was all part of
the ride) WE GOT IN!!! We all ate, drank
and planned the next day's activities.
Slept...awoke...left.
In order to not make this a novel I will skip menial details about
strangers in NY that talked to us and serenades from crazies on the
subway. I will just say Mini got the
full NYC experience. FF to 7pm we made
it back to GRHQ and got ready for our class to kick off. We got
pushed to the right a little and didn't end up leaving until midnight but I was
OK with that. We became the last class
to run the challenge, class 063.
Now...here is where things start to get a little hairy. One of the fall backs of participating in
events such as the Death Race and the
Beast and the GORUCK Challenge is...you can't really effectively describe it to
"civvies". I can write that as
a group we conducted a few hours of Indian
runs and inch worm pushups, bear crawls.
I can tell you with words that we arrived in Washington Park on the NYU
campus at 1am where we did walking lunges for 2 hours all while being verbally
and physically accosted by the locals and carrying packs with bricks and random
other "coupons " donated by our cadre. I can write that we were presented with a
log that weighed no less than 1000# and told that we had to take it back to
where it came from...which was in Brooklyn.
- Go ahead and Google the distance
from 385 Broadway to Brooklyn...I'll wait.
I can WRITE that
after carrying that mother for 4 hours and 20 minutes to the banks of the East
River, we were told to get on line and walk into the water, sit down and do
flutter kicks. OBVI we didn't do this synced
so we had to do it again. Then we were
lead out of the water where we were lined back up and sent off on our way back
across the BK bridge buddy carry style.
- I
would like to stop here for a moment and mention that I puked on the BK
bridge. Actually
I puked off of the SIDE of the BK bridge onto a cab. Thats what happens when you get carried for a while after you just
ate some shock blocks and granola.
I can also write that once we got to the skyline where the ghosts
of the Twin Towers stood we all stopped
surrounded by what had turned into a police escort, and took a moment to
realize that at that moment is was 9am on Sept 11th exactly 10 years after that
history changing day. I can write about
the tears and the feelings and the sobriety of that moment. I can write what it was like to run the rest
of the way back to Manhattan, to a statue where we were lined up after 11 hours
and were told that our final task was to hug one another and realize what we
had all just been through together. I
could write eloquent, descriptive poems about all of it...but unless you were
there you won't fully understand what it was like. You won't understand because I CAN'T write what amazing feels like. I CAN't write
what the faces i saw looked like. I CAN'T
write what "worth it 10 fold" feels like as I try to negotiate
stairs and chairs today. I can't write
it, sorry...I guess you had to be there.
To the 343...don't worry we will never forget.
