TFW a map rearranges itself to look like Mickey Mouse and starts talking
Or this new phone is driving me nuts
If the ancient Greeks didn’t love burpees they’ll at least love this video
Before I get to this week’s newsletter, a quick MABA update: Year 5 is fast approaching, which I know because I’m getting emails with videos of people doing burpees in unusual places. Such as this, from F3 Pluto, doing burpees at the Acropolis, just like Socrates taught us. (Also be sure to read to the bottom of this newsletter because it contains the best video of my career.)
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Today I’m going to attempt to connect three things that maybe shouldn’t be connected. But now that I’ve thought about connecting them, I can’t unconnect them …
So bear with me.
Thing 1
The craziest sporting event I ever covered is called the Best Ranger Competition. I gleaned from it what is probably my all-time favorite sports-related anecdote ….
First some background. The BRC is held every year at Fort Benning in Georgia. Rangers are the best of the best of the Army, and the BRC attracts the best of the best of those best of the best.
Imagine a Tough Mudder plus a Spartan Race plus the gnarliest military competition you can think of then have it last three days during which time the competitors don’t sleep and you’ll get an inkling of what it’s like. Oh and also it’s officiated by the grumpiest, byzantine-rules-followingest, meanest, I-want-everyone-to-lose-iest drill sergeant who ever lived, and his maniacal devotion to pissing competitors off only adds to the stress.
Years ago I covered that event for a magazine devoted to the Army National Guard. I embedded with two soldiers, Robbie Killian (then a captain, now a two-time Spartan world champion) and Erich Friedlein (then a staff sergeant), as they became the first National Guardsmen to win the event.
Now onto the story, which I’ve told this story a billion times to friends and family and and acquaintances and strangers but never here …
It happened during the overnight orienteering portion of the event. Overnight orienteering is running around the woods in the dark trying to find points using only a map, a compass and your own ingenuity.
By the time that portion of the event started, Killian and Friedlein had already been up for almost two days and had 30-plus miles on their feet. The overnight orienteering took another 11 hours during which they covered who knows how many more miles, all while carrying 30 pounds.
At some point in the middle of the night, they stopped to look at the map. As they did so, the lines on the map rearranged themselves into Mickey Mouse’s face. Or at least that’s what Friedlein saw.
Mickey’s map line face started to talk to Friedlein, though not out loud. Instead of listening to Killian describe what they were going to do next, Friedlein was trying to read the lips of Mickey Mouse’s map line face.
“I was like, Dude, I’ve got to stand up,” he told me then. “We got up and kept moving. After that, I was good.”
After that, I was good.
I sometimes wonder what he meant by good. Like, an imaginary Mickey Mouse is no longer talking to me, so therefore, I’m good.
But seriously: Whenever I get baffled or confused, I remind myself, at least I’m not holding a map in the woods in the middle of the night and seeing its lines rearrange themselves into Mickey Mouse’s face, and at least that imaginary Mickey Mouse map line face is not talking to me, and at least I’m not trying to read Mickey Mouse map line face’s lips.
Thing 2
All of which is to say I got a new phone and using it is driving me nuts and surely you can relate, power rankings:
1. That ring tone is terrible. Why won’t it change I’ve clicked the change button a million times why why why.
2. Who would want that awful clang as their text notification?
3. Tiny keyboard plus fat thumbs equals a billion typos.
4. Seriously I’m sliding that damn thing why won’t it let me answer the phone?
5. If I can’t answer it is it even a phone?
6. How many times do I have to type in the word “burpees” before it learns that’s a word and stops changing it?
7. Why won’t it ring out loud?
8. Why won’t it stop ringing out loud?
9. I don’t hate change. I hate change I don’t like.
10. Even if the phone is better in every measurable way.
Oh wait, I figured that all out.
After that, I’m good.
After Friedlein told me about Mickey Mouse map line face talking to him, I repeated that to the command sergeant major who oversaw their training to get his reaction. He called that a “seeing the wizard” moment.
Apparently, if you work yourself so hard you pass out, the last thing you see before drifting into unconsciousness is a light in the shape of a wizard’s hat.
Can you imagine that? Enough people have trained so hard that they pass out that they have compared notes about what it’s like and come up with a saying for it.
My new phone sucks but I ain’t seen no wizard’s hat over it.
Thing 3
Tomorrow is the six-year anniversary of the end of one of the best assignments I’ve ever had: I talked a golf magazine into paying me to spend the summer trying to get my first hole in one.
The whole (and hole) story is here. But this is the part you need to read, and as I mentioned, the video at the bottom is maybe the best 40 seconds of my career.
If I can use “seeing the wizard” to cover life’s worst moments, I can use “should we call mommy” to cover life’s best.
AUGUST 2
ROUND 36: SHOTS 1,553–1,589 With: 8-year-old daughter
Early on a lazy summer Thursday morning, I peek into my 11-year-old’s room. She’s asleep. My 8-year-old is awake and reading. I ask if she wants to go with me to the golf course. She says no. As I walk out of the house, I think about the text another friend sent me about his hole-in-one. He got it alone. “The most anticlimactic ace ever,” he wrote. “Not a soul within yelling distance. Make sure someone is there when you sink it.”
I like his confidence of “when you sink it,” even if I don’t share it.
That text, along with the hole-in-one photo, continue to shape the Quest. They are why I invited Joel and Matt and Mike and Chris and Kevan and Josh and Dave and Tom and dragged my kids along too. I don’t want to play alone again, so I step back inside and return to my daughter’s room. “Honey,” I tell her, “I’ll buy you a donut if—”
She jumps out of bed, gets dressed and is in the car before I finish the sentence.
She waits until we get to Pheasant Run to eat her Boston Kreme from Dunkin’ Donuts and exults in its deliciousness. When she’s done eating, she sits in the driver’s seat of the cart and steers while I work the gas and brake, which her feet can’t reach.
I stand on the tee of the 117-yard 12th hole. She cheers, “Daddy, Daddy, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, no one can!” She has been singing that for weeks. She is not tired of it, and I never will be.
Motivated to give her the memory of a lifetime, I flub the next two shots.
Using my 9-iron like a rake, I drag another ball from the pile on the ground in front of me into my stance. I look toward the green, as if to make sure it’s still there. The red flag—signifying the hole is in the front today—hangs limply.
My daughter dutifully starts recording video on my phone.
I swing for the 1,589th time of the Quest.
The ball rises slowly, like a child roused from bed too early. It’s high and soft and straight on target. “That has a chance,” I say quietly. The ball drops lightly to the ground, like that sleepy child finally putting her feet on the floor.
It lands just short of the green, bounces once and rolls toward the hole.
“That’s close,” my daughter says … and, for reasons we will never know, she chooses that second to stop recording.
It’ll stop soon.
Closer.
It has to stop soon.
Closer.
The hole appears like the opening of a tunnel and the ball is a train.
Closer.
And suddenly, the ball clangs against the pin and disappears.
For a fraction of a second—for as long as it takes to think, “Did that just happen?”—I am stunned, flabbergasted, speechless. Then I realize the green is empty and the hole is full.
I throw my 9-iron in the air and yell, “YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!”
I look at my daughter. I think my bellowing scared her. “Are you recording?” I ask. She says yes, which is not technically true. But she chooses that second to restart the video. In her defense, I told her many times not to record in between shots because that kills my phone’s battery and overloads its memory. When she stopped recording a fraction of a second before the ball went in the hole, technically she was being obedient.
Parenting sucks sometimes.
We’re still on the tee box. I have been the owner of a hole-in-one for approximately 30 seconds. She asks, “Should we call Mommy?”
Not yet. Before we call, I want to verify that it’s in, even though I have no doubt. I want to make that delirious dash to the hole. More than that, I want to record that dash to the hole, our dash to the hole. Goodness gracious, I can’t believe this is happening, but my daughter and I will make a goofy dash to the hole to verify I got a hole-in-one and we will record it and I get to watch it every day for the rest of my life.
We pile into the cart. I speed to the green and skid to a stop when we get there.
“Boy, am I glad I went with you!” she exclaims as we climb out.
Isn’t that rich? She’s glad she went with me. I hope one day she understands how true the reverse is.
We run to the green. She’s still carrying the phone, and running as fast as she can in the jangling video.
We get to the hole.
We look down.
A red 6 looks up at us.
“It’s in!” she says.
I hug her. She hugs me back.