Danny's Extreme Weekend

I had originally planned to be racing the Mesa Falls Marathon on the border of Idaho and Wyoming this past weekend in order to lower my Boston qualifying time a bit to ensure that would get in. However while I was dilly-dallying trying to get a cheaper flight, my brother Matt informed me that his wife, Cindy, was pregnant. This was really exciting for many reasons. One reason was that I was going to be an uncle to, what I expect to be, a very cute little niece. Another reason, almost equally exciting, was his wife's inability to go sky-diving with Matty. My sis, Marilyn, had bought them sky-diving adventure which expired this year. What was Cindy's loss was my gain. So instead of flying out to Wyoming, we decided to do an adventure weekend.

I already had scheduled time off Friday through Monday so I spent my Friday riding to and from my parents house and stacking some wood in between. I don't think I've ever bonked like I did on those rides. While neither ride was terribly long, they added up for someone not used to riding much more than an hour. It amazes me how Amber can do rides longer than that on a nearly daily basis. Not coming as much of a surprise, I slept well that night. 

A muffin stop was needed on my ride home

I awoke early the next morning to get down to Pepperall Mass for some sky-diving. Despite the ground being the hardest ground of sky-diving, the paperwork takes a close second. After signing our lives away(and watching a video of a lawyer explaining just that) we spent about thirty seconds reviewing what we were supposed to do before getting in a plane. Plane is a generous term. This plane was only slightly larger than those gliders without engines. We ascended at a steep pitch for about ten minutes and suddenly the plane leveled off, the rear door opened and it appeared that they were just being thrown out the door. Matty and I were the last two jumpers and I can tell you that when you're over 10 thousand feet off the ground in a plane, your body does a good jump trying to convince you it would prefer to stay in the nice comfortable remote control sized airplane. And yet suddenly you are out the door. For about 2-3 seconds, it felt similarly to a roller coaster but suddenly your body acclimates and it feels more like flying. Moments later we deploy the parachute and the scenic ride begins. Despite being quite a bit a ways from the ocean we could clearly make it out as well as Boston's sky-line and the mountains of New Hampshire. The whole thing lasted about 10 minutes and was definitely worth it. 

"Literally Thousands of risks"

After landing, Matty and I got back in our cars and made our way north for the second part of our adventure. My parents had gotten me gift certificates for a ropes course and ziplining tour which we were going to do on Sunday. That left the rest of Saturday to golf, dinner and staring at the beautiful stars that can only be seen in Northern NH. 

Matty golfing

After Matt beating me handily(I had two boogies and everything else was worse!), we spent the rest of the day leisurely hanging out with my parents and uncle Billy. 

We awoke early to drive to Lincoln, NH for the ziplining. After being weighed-in and ensuring that neither of us was taller than 6'5" we took a very bumpy ride to the top of the zipline course. This course has zip and "zap" lines which we didn't quite understand until we were out there. The zaplines are ziplines that don't lose any elevation so you have to give yourself a really good start or you can get stuck halfway across. They were fun but the real fun of course was the ziplines that carried you through the tree line sometimes over 200 feet off the ground. We would often take off and land on little platforms 100 feet off the ground. We spent the majority of the morning going from one to the next which did work up quite an appetite. 

After the zipline, we decided we'd stop at the Woodstock Inn. I had assumed the adventures were over by now but I was in for a surprise. For lo and behold on the menu was the "Double Death by Burger Challenge". The death by burger was an 18 ounce burger on a BLT set-up. As the name implies the double death by burger was double that. 36 ounces of burger? No problem! 

Matty: Come on you can do it. Look you get a t-shirt if you do it.

Danny: Errr. I'm really not all that hungry.

Matty: Danny, you're wearing your VT100 t-shirt despite DNFing it, it's time to make up for that.

Danny: Errr. I actually DNF'd in twice. 

Matty: See. You definitely need to do this.

Danny: Well, I will get my name on the hall of fame if I can do it.

Matty[to the waitress]: I'll have the veggie burger and he'll have the Double Death By Burger.

If you never have participated in an eating contest, the closest thing I can liken it to is a marathon. The first few bites(and miles) seem easy and you get confident. You quickly pay for this over-confidence in the mid-section of the contest where you realize that you're only half-way through the burger(or marathon) and all that effort you put in for the first half has to be replicated. And with me, the last stage in apathy where I no longer care about the outcome of the contest... This thing was so big that I ate it as two separate burgers and after going strong came up one bun short of completion. So in addition to two VT100 DNF's I now also have a DDBB DNF under my belt. 

An over-confident Danny

The size of Danny's head. Which if you have seen it in person, is REALLY big. 

Just a huge bun left of the challenge=fail

And that left Monday which started with a nice trail run with Amber. I had no intentions of anything remotely extreme so I headed to the Y for a little pick-up basketball. Well, apparently the college kids haven't gone back yet so I ended up playing probably the most competitive games I have in several years and ended up with a rolled ankle. Of course. 

I think my body will be looking for to me going back to work tomorrow. 

Up Next: My cousin's wedding this weekend and then IRONMAN 70.3 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS  for Amber on September 8th.