Go and tell the Spartans, passerby...

Brotherhood. That's what this challenge has meant to me. The past several months have been quite a challenge for me, with being diagnosed with Diabetes and all the attendant health issues I have had along with it. I am still struggling with some, but my issues are small compared to some. It has been my honor to be counted among a great fellowship during this challenge. It has been inspiring to hear your tales and to struggle along side you in my own way. I set no records, though I improved my personal health . I achieved none of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of this challenge, but what I did achieve has improved my life, perhaps saved it. Brotherhood is what made the Spartans strong. Their shields overlapping, protecting their brother on their left and through that shared strength protecting their way of life. I can;t tell you how much it has meant to me to feel my brother's shield covering me, to feel the strength of that brotherhood on my right and on my left, stepping slowly but with purpose, knowing that nothing can stand before us.

It is easier to let yourself down than to let down your brothers. So when times were tough, and I didn't feel like getting up and going on, I could let myself be defeated, but I got up and stepped on that elliptical machine because I could not let you down. What small steps they seemed to be, especially in light of the things you have been doing, which have inpired me, but what important steps they were. My thanks to you, brothers and sisters of Spartan spirit, for you have lifted me up in times of woe, you have been in my heart in times of celebration. I pray to the gods that this brotherhood shall never be ended. I salute you all, and know that my shield shall ever be raised high beside you, that I will stride forward with you and hold the line unbroken, that no fear or woe will keep me from standing with my brothers.

Thank you, Q, for all your time and energy devoted to leading the Spartan Challenge.
Do I now have 6-pack abs?
Did I climb to the top of any mountain and look down and enhance my 3-D sense of the world?
Are my senses now acutely heightened?
I would have to say, not really.
But, my mind has been cracked open a bit and I realize there is more I can do to feel alive.
This may have been another sleepy winter if it wasn’t for the Spartan Challenge.
I may not have gotten up and belly danced in front of a crowd at the Hygenic Cabaret, with my good friend, Gus, as drummer. And without that, I would never had the chance to dance with Vic Thrill and find out what a cool guy he is. I guess I have a little crush.
Jumping into the freezing ocean at the Penguin Plunge for the Special Olympics, with firestarters/jesters Mike Fritz, Q, Susan, Sherrie Boldt, Randy and Blaze was a rush, as was jumping into the water at Eastern Point Beach, just for the heck of it.
I was heartened by Susan’s brave defense of her beloved cat, Brutus, by a vicious dog.
Just maybe, I wouldn’t have gone to yoga as often and tried to find mula banda and uddiyana banda. I am not sure still that I have found them, but I will keep looking.
Q’s story of the homeless man struck me, as I recently read “Nickled and Dimed in America” which talked about how close to the edge of homelessness so many people live in our country. Balancing helping others in need and enjoying life is a challenge to all of us.
The Spartan Challenge, along with winter, will be over soon.
The spirit will remain.

The Art of War

300- March to glory
There is a nice article in Time magazine about the 300

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1595241,00.html

Thanks Brutus!

Gates of Fire - Entering the Final Week & the Race of Death

As we enter the final week of the challenge, one last surprise awaits.
Randy Spellman contacted author Steven Pressfield and asked him to sign a copy of the book for the winner. The signed copy has arrived and will be given with the sword, to the winner next Friday.


Two last doses of inspiration for the final stretch,
1) Here is a great Mind,Body, & Spirit challenge known as Tough Guy-

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=toughguy2007&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos1

http://www.toughguy.co.uk/home.shtml


and
2) a new book by James Prosek.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7624886


The last challenge to close out the competition is very simple - take some time this week to write about the experience of this years challange. Write about what its meant to you, the successes, the frustrations and obstacles, what worked and what didn't. Have you found, even is some small way, that each moment really does count and how much you really do mean to all the people around you.

Over 2400 years ago, 300 Spartans were offered to have their lives spared if they would only lay down their weapons. To this Leonidas replied 'Molon Labe!'


Let honor be to those in whose life
it was set to guard Thermopylae.
Never moving away from duty;
Just and equals in all of their acts
But with sadness and compassion
Brave once they are rich and when
They are poor, again brave
Coming to aid as much as they can;
Always speaking the truth
But without hate for those who lie.

Each day, perhaps seemingly in small ways, we face this same choice.
What will you choose? The be just and equals in all your acts, to come to aid as much has you can, and will you speak truth without hate for those who lie?

What say you?

Molon Labe!

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"