Wii & We - Spartan Brotherhood (& Sisterhood)

If I was suprised and humbled by the tremendous generosity and and great love that has been shown me your gifts, I was doubly so when I recieved the second package this weekend filled with games galore. Truly you are my brothers, with songs and stories by the fire under the light of the stars, laughter ringing through the halls of time, and tears fallen like the torrent of a summer storm or the soft drop of the spring dew. Though time and distance seperates us, and the roar of the modern world is deafening, I still hear the beating of our hearts as one.

If we love one another, nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may happen.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


As I traveled to work this weekend, I saw a man holding sign at the light at end of a highwayhighway exit ramp. It simply said
IM HOMELESS
IM JOBLESS
PLEASE HELP
Dressed in a Carhart style overall suit, with long dirty blond hair stretching past the cover of his woolen cap to his shoulders, I was lost in my own excitement of the morning : the great workout, the impending Great Harvest breakfast and coffee, the planning of the days experiments , the afternoon family time with the Wii...I say that I had not thought to give this fellow anything, I hadn't even considered it yet before I had the compulsion to look behind me, at an elderly couple in an Expedition pulling up behind me. The fellow with the sign had some kind of radar, I could see the couple making the decision to get him some money and sign man came over very casually. He gave his thanks and went back to his station without so much as looking at anyone in the other cars (myself included). The light turned green and I was off to breakfast, I picked us up some Great Harvest breakfast rolls, some scones and coffee and made my way back to Sign man for meal and some conversation.
The rest of the adventure is for another day.
The reason I tell you this is because, what I take from this all is how much 'We' have made a difference in my life. Its not just the Wii but the We that put me on this adventure and many others in life. I look back at all the many gifts I've had and the greatest gift is how the Brotherhood and the gifts of 'We'/'Wii' has made me who I am.

Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature.
- Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus)

Wrestler survives small plane crash

While I think his Olympic victory over the Great Alexander Karelin to be complete howash, Gardner still commands some respect and this was Spartan.


SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Olympic wrestling champion Rulon Gardner and two Utah men were rescued by a Lake Powell fisherman Sunday after surviving a small plane crash near Good Hope Bay the day before.

Gardner was a passenger in the Cirrus SR 22 along with pilot Randy Brooks and his brother, Leslie Brooks, according to a news release from Becki Bronson, public information officer for Garfield County. The plane was flying low when it struck the water.

The plane went from 150 mph to none in about 2 seconds," Gardner told CNN early Monday morning.

All three men were able to get out of the plane before it sank.

Authorities are uncertain of the exact location of the crash, but the three men swam for more than an hour in 44-degree water before reaching shore and then spent the night without shelter, according to the release.

None suffered life-threatening injuries, authorities said.

"It takes only about 30 minutes for someone swimming in 44 degree water to start suffering the effects of hypothermia, so the fact that they swam in it for an hour, not to mention surviving the plane crash and the night without fire or shelter, is pretty amazing," said Steven Luckesen, a district ranger at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. "If these guys were a cat with nine lives, they just used up three of them."

Gardner and the Brooks called a relative to take them for medical attention in American Fork.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation, Bronson said.

Gardner pulled one of the most stunning upsets in Olympic history at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, winning the gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling by ending Alexander Karelin's 13-year international winning streak. In 2004 in Athens, Gardner won the bronze medal, and in wrestling tradition, left his shoes on the mat as a symbolic way of announcing his retirement.

This is not the first time, he has survived a life-threatening accident. In 2002, he became stranded while snowmobiling in the Wyoming wilderness and lost one of his toes to frostbite. Then in 2004, he was struck by an automobile while riding a motorcycle.

Secret (special, study, silent) Spot Quotes

I love how you guys always pull quotes out of things you've read. The best thing I've gotten out of the Spartan challlenge is my attitude toward reading. Though I'm still slow, I actaully look forward to sitting down with my book. I also like to underline stuff in pencil and I quit using a bookmark. If I can't remember where I was I just read it again. So here are some words that always make me think of the secret spot, secret time, secret thought.

"I'm probably not a very good trader. I don't like to weigh the value of one thing against another. I don't think it's proper, for one thing, and I doubt it really can be done, anyway. But I know I made a good trade for that mast. I got the memory of a song, which is as good as the memory of another earth, and I learned why the island was there. The little rock was a compass-stone, a clock in the world where time was right, and I was happy there. The song is still here, you know. It's always here, resting in the wind. It can take a little time to find it, but you can do it when you're listening well. Just pull a bit of it down out of the wind and hear the part that is singing at the time. You'll probably never hear all of it, and you'll always hope it's not important that you do. It is important that you listen" - Gordon Bok (from Another Land Made of Water, 1979)

The [ ] takes trobles from you.
Takes worry and fear and illusion and anger and joy and joking and plans
and ambition and love form you.
Takes them, scatters them, gathers them, gives them back to you,
not so big or important as before.
You're not anyone really, you never were.
Who you thought you were when your head was too small for your illusions
But illusions aren't important now.
You don't have to be anything, even yourself
because yourself was just something you had to make up
and then you thought you had to carry it around with you.
What a relief to lay it down and walk away and forget it
Just to be part of what's around you is enough.

-Gordon Bok (part of an interlaced poem withing "Another Land Made of Water"

Spartan Run

Whew! 111-day ultra-marathon run through the Sahara is over
New, Noon Former Hermosa Beach resident Charlie Engle, 2 others can breathe a sigh of relief in Egypt after torturous 4,000-mile journey ends.
By Anna Johnson
The Associated Press

IN THE WESTERN DESERT, Egypt — Three ultra-endurance athletes have just done something most would consider insane: They ran the equivalent of two marathons a day for 111 days to become the first modern runners to cross the Sahara desert’s grueling 4,000 miles.

“This is 100 percent, without a doubt the hardest thing any of us have done,” said former Hermosa Beach resident Charlie Engle, 44, while eating tuna and plain pasta during a lunch break about 112 miles northwest of Cairo on Saturday, day 108.

Engle, 38-year-old Ray Zahab of Canada and Kevin Lin, 30, of Taiwan, finished their ultra-marathon this afternoon at the mouth of the Suez Canal in Egypt after running through the night.

In less than four months, they have run across the world’s largest desert, through six countries — Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya and finally Egypt.

A film crew followed them, chronicling the desert journey for actor Matt Damon’s production company, LivePlanet. Damon plans to narrate the “Running the Sahara” documentary.

The trek is one of extremes. The relentless sun can push temperatures above 100 degrees during the day, but at night it sometimes dips below freezing. Strong winds can abruptly send sand swooping in every direction, making it difficult to see and breathe.

Running through turbulent conditions is nothing new for these athletes who have traveled the world competing in adventure races. But they say nothing has tested their physical and mental limitations like the Sahara.

Throughout the run, the runners have been stricken with tendinitis, severe diarrhea, cramping and knee injuries all while running through the intense heat and wind — often without a paved road in sight.

“This has been a life changing event,” Engle said.

The runners say they undertook the challenge to see if they could accomplish something that many have called impossible. They used GPS devices to track their route and teamed up with local experts and a host of sports professionals who also followed them, along with the documentary crew, in four-wheel drive vehicles.

Typically, the three began each day with a 4 a.m. wake-up call. About an hour later, they started running. Around noon, they took a lunch break at a makeshift camp, devouring pasta, tuna and vegetables. A short nap on thin mattresses in a yellow-domed tent usually followed before they headed out on the second leg of their day’s run.

Finally, around 9:30 p.m., they called it quits each day, returning to camp for a protein and carbohydrate-packed dinner before passing out for the night.


Despite the preparation and drive to finish, the runners said they often questioned — mostly to themselves — what they were doing. Zahab described stopping one recent day for a bathroom break only to discover the wind was blowing so harshly that he couldn’t keep the sand out of his clothes. “And I thought to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing?’” he said.

But Zahab kept going, as did the other two, never skipping a day. Most days the three ran a total of 44 to 50 miles — sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

They were interviewed by The Associated Press on Saturday — day 108 — on the side of a road about 112 miles from Cairo in Egypt’s harsh Western Desert, part of the greater Sahara.

At several points in their trek, the athletes stopped near sparsely populated wells to talk with villagers and nomads about the difficulties they face finding water. That marked another goal of the run — raising awareness for the clean water nonprofit group H2O Africa.

“We have seen firsthand the need for clean water, which we take for granted in North America. It’s such a foundation for any community,” Zahab said during day 108’s lunch break. The three plan to fund-raise for the group after they return home and finish recuperating.

“It started off as a huge motivator, especially as we passed through countries where the water wasn’t clean,” Engle said.

But as the trio’s bodies became more depleted, the focus was “the day-to-day battle to stay alive and keep moving,” he said.

Hero Story - Born On a Blue Day

Daniel Paul Tammet (born January 31, 1979, London, England) is a British autistic savant gifted with a facility for mathematics problems, sequence memory, and natural language learning. He was born with congenital childhood epilepsy.
Experiencing numbers as colors or sensations is a well-documented form of synesthesia, but Tammet is unique in how specific and detailed his mental imagery of numbers is. He claims that in his mind each number, up to 10,000, has its own unique shape and feel, and he can "sense" whether a number is prime or composite and "see" results of calculations as landscapes in his mind. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi as beautiful.[1]
Tammet holds the European record for memorising and recounting pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours.[2] This sponsored charity challenge was held in aid of the National Society for Epilepsy (NSE) on “Pi Day,” 14 March 2004 at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, UK.[3] The NSE was chosen to benefit from this event because of Daniel's experience with epilepsy as a young child. Professor Allan Snyder at the Australian National University said of Tammet: “Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do. It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the ‘Rosetta Stone.’”[4]
He can speak at least English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Estonian, Icelandic, and Esperanto. He likes Estonian very much because it is rich in vowels. He has even changed his surname to the Estonian-based word Tammet, which comes from the Estonian word tamm meaning “oak.” Tammet is creating a new language called Mänti. Mänti has many features related to Finnish and Estonian, both of which are Finno-ugric languages. Some sources credit Tammet as creating the Uusisuom and Lapsi languages as well.[5]
He was the subject of a documentary in the UK titled The Boy With The Incredible Brain that was broadcast on Five on May 24, 2005 (also broadcast under the title "Brainman"). It showed highlights of his feat of recalling pi as well as his meeting with Kim Peek, another individual who is famous for having savant skills. In one emotional moment of the show, Peek hugged Tammet and told him, "Some day you will be as great as I am."
Tammet claims he can learn a new language within a week. For the documentary film about him, Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic. Seven days later he appeared on Icelandic television to be interviewed. One of the interviewers said on camera that Tammet responded to questions. Segments of the interview, showing Tammet responding to questions in Icelandic, were televised on the American News show 60 Minutes.[1] The video is available on CBS' website . It was clear Tammet's speech in Icelandic were actual responses to questions. He is a keen and improving golfer.
In 2006, Tammet traveled to the United States to promote his memoir, Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant. While there, he appeared on several television talk shows, and specials including 60 Minutes.
Tammet created and operates the online e-learning company, Optimnem. He lives in Kent with his partner Neil Mitchell, a software engineer.

The passage of the mythological hero may be overground, incidentally; fundamentally it is inward -- into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world. This deed accomplished, life no longer suffers hopelessly under the terrible mutilations of ubiquitous disaster, battered by time, hideous throughout space; but with its horror visible still, its cries of anguish still tumultuous, it becomes penerated by an all-suffusing, all-sustaining love, and a knowledge of its own unconquered power. Something of the light that blazes invisible within the abysses of its normally opaque materiality breaks forth, with an increasing uproar. The dreadful mutilations are then seen as shadows, only, of an immanent, imperishable eternity; time yields to glory; and the world sings with the prodigious, angelic, but perhaps finally monotonous, siren music of the spheres. Like happy families, the myth and the worlds redeemed are all alike.
Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Final Battle

15 Feb 06. 7:30am The ice storm is over. My 300+ ft driveway is covered with 2 inches of solid snowy ice. Usually I use a big snowblower and can battle over a foot of snow with no problem. Today we are rendered helpless. Jenny can't get out with the baby if she needed to. If there was a fire I don't know that the trucks could get down the driveway. The blower just gets stuck on the ice and can't power through it. I should have blown more last night. Even the strip I did do last night is covered in ice. The only thing that gets anything up is my flat steel shovel. His name is Ames. I'm getting to know him well. His sticker says "always a better idea". Well I can't think of one. I have been out there for 2 and 1/2 hours. All I have cleared is the area I did last night. That was hard. The other areas are 5 times as hard. Every strip I clear takes lots of energy scraping. This sucks. I'd rather run 4 marathons straight with Jay than do this. At least it would be worth something. This is insane. No one else would attempt this. I think it could really take me 12 or more hours. Well a quick tea and some new socks while the Soleilites try to hold the hill..unfortunetly they have little leverage at this time of year.

A few more hours in and I've added a couple feet in width to about 3/4 of the driveway.

It is now almost 6pm. I'm gone mad. I've cleared about 3/4 of the width of the 300ft straight away. I am now up near my garage where it is a big wide area. I have no idea how I am going to finish this. The wind is howling and I smell like a wet dog. A quick bite and some water and I'm back out. I think I'll start a fire out there as well in my little metal fire pit thingy.

9:20 pm. I saw a shrew I think. I heard the neighbors cat. It always takes the same path into my yard. I think I got enough done so we could get out if we had to. Ice scraping sucks. What a bunch of wasted energy sent in a useless direction. I'm movin out of here I think.