Over the past few weeks, the PAX has been playing regular season games while its Coach is sidelined for negligence around a sign-stealing scandal.
Wait…that doesn’t sound right. Rufus, where the hell did you get this information from? Seriously? You let that baked bean loving cousin of yours tell you what to write? How many times do I have to tell you…Duke, is not a part of our Blast productions. And while we’re on the topic, you can tell that mutt and his lackey to roll their amateur footage all the way back to St. Johns.
I’m sorry. It’s not you. I’ve been under a lot of pressure. In the past month, my profession, my coffee, and my smirk have all been called into question. I’m not sure who I am anymore, and the scorn is flowing like Goldilox (where has that guy been, by the way?).
Ok, so over the past few weeks, the PAX has been posting without its tactle…I mean fearless leader in attendance. It has been a season of growth for the PAX, both in numbers and in identity. With Ponzi and Tidy Whity back in the mix, along with White Meat coming in hawt and staying hawt, the energy of beatdowns is palpable, not to mention the chatter quality has really found a new level.
But no matter how many FNG’s show up, or how creative the beatdowns get, or to what extent Pope smokes the rest of us in…well everything, nothing but nothing can replace Montana. I guess he wasn’t really ‘carrying the boats’ after all.
RUFUS! DUDE, C’mon! Please try to treat this more seriously than Popeye doing bonnie blair’s.
Alright…Nothing but nothing can replace the energy and poise brought by Goose. And yet, while his absence creates a gaping abyss for Paradox to talk about pre-order lady cut t- shirts (“Bruhh, so the sport-tek is def superior to the tri-blend, no question.”), we can easily forget about Goose’s path to recovery. His faith unrelenting, Goose reminds us that God has a plan. Of course, that doesn’t make some of the turns any less dark.
As such, YHC thought it might be a honkin’ good time to share in Goose’s recovery plan. So, YHC pulled up to a Tuesday Tuff expecting (hoping for) a deluge. A torrential downpour would have turned a regular session of pain into a morning full of dirty, sloppy suffering…a type of glory known only by the protectors of Helm’s Deep and Andy Dufresne. Alas, the bad weather would hold off, which is just as well. BAPS does not like to get his little knobs wet…it makes him feel all shorted out.
By 5:15, a PAX of 8 began – that is once we waited for Paradox to finish an anecdote about something…probably another story about the trials of playing middle school football in Homer. We ran the normal warmarama. Cadence all over the place and YHC often forgot to count because he was too busy running his mouth…probably telling another story about the trials of going to middle school in the 1940’s.
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The Thang
If you’ve posted with Goose enough, you know he has a lukewarm relationship with Dora 1-2-3. Even so, YHC can’t think of a thang that is more Goose-like than:
a) doing hard ascending exercises in increments of 100,
b) alternating with some awful form of transport (typically leg heavy), and
c) experiencing all of the suffering with the support of a partner.
For this morning, we would take on a Dora 1-2-3 pyramid. The ascension/descension (reps of 100, 200, 300, 200, 100) represented Goose’s path to healing. Like any physical recovery, going up and down, the rehab is sometimes seemingly impossible, sometimes surprisingly productive.
For each transport, we emulated Goose’s progress beginning with zombie crawls and working our way up through spiderman crawls, bear crawls, flying nuns, and finally, full-out sprints around the track. By the end, the PAX would slowly and painfully work through the pyramid to achieve Goose’s full recovery, 100 Goosie’s with full sprint as transport.
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It went a little something like this…
100 burpees – switched out for jump squats in what might be the most brilliant audible in YHC’s F3 tenure (that’s right, I said tenure)
P1 – Zombie crawl to marker, mosey back
P2 – Jump squats
Flapjack
Observations:
YHC has called on the Zombie Crawl on several occasions as a Q. For whatever reason, it ALWAYS creates havoc, leading to debate among the mutineers about what the proper form looked like. For the purposes of posterity, let’s get this settled…let those who have ears hear, those who have bad form repent.
The Zombie Crawl is NOT an Army Crawl. The latter requires leg movement, while the former requires your entire lower body to be dragged. As posited this morning, the Zombie Crawl can include full extension of the arms. However, doing so would basically be a mobile version of Paradox’s hip dip cobra thrust he tries to pass off as a merkin. Rather, YHC believes the Zombie Crawl should be a chilcutt (elbow) plank position, while pulling a lifeless lower body…you know…basically America’s Best’s whole experience in having YHC as a partner.
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200 J-Lo’s 1:1
P1 – spiderman crawl to marker, mosey back
P2 – J-Lo’s
Flapjack
Observations:
These are so much harder than I remembered from the Lil’ Cuz Peltch beatdown around the track. Not surprisingly, Lil’ Cuz is really good at these. At this point, any real chatter began to die off. The soundtrack at this point, the “Affirmative Goose” playlist was leaning into “Glory of Love” and “Hell’s Bells.” The morning seemed to be getting darker.
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300 merkins
P1 – bear crawl to marker, mosey back
P2 – J-Lo’s
Flapjack
Observations:
America’s Best inadvertently found himself partnered with YHC for the beatdown. Having apparently drawn the short straw, he was magnanimous in his patience with YHC’s woeful merkin count each round. I don’t know how he did it. I mean, he’s a specimen sure, but my man was turning out reps like Tana in Slidell on a Tuesday with McCallister’s in tow.
Appropriately, the Rocky IV training montage was playing at this point. Pope thought it was theme music from a Wii game (Goose you need to address that). The morning was irrelevant. By now, time was just a construct. 10 minutes left or 20 minutes, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except for the next rep.
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200 leg raises
P1 – flying nuns to marker, mosey back
P2 – merkins
Flapjack
Observations:
By this time, it was clear that the YHC/AB team had fallen behind. This was not really surprising in regards to the HoneyValve.com duo, but suspicions about questionable form were beginning to creep into YHC’s mind, only confirmed by AB whispering slanderous accusations.
Now, from time to time, YHC has been known to throw an accusation or two around concerning bad form. NOT today, however. If the form police had been on site, YHC would have been brought up on felony charges, doomed to a life of peddling cigarettes and contraband posters of Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, and Raquel Welch. We got a nice little upbeat interlude with Jurrassic 5’s “What’s Golden,” but nobody cared. There was nothing to care about. Life had lost its meaning. Salt had lost its taste. Enron had lost his sarcasm.
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100 Goosies
P1 – sprint around track
P2 – Goosies
Flapjack
Observations:
YHC had no observations. Each sprint around the track was…well not a sprint. YHC was beyond regretting most of his life choices. Jefferson Airplane serenaded us to an anthem of urban development (can’t help but think this would be a great trivia question), followed by ‘Come Sail Away’ by Styx. The Stage had faded to black.
Having repped, crawled, and ran our way through Goose’s recovery, we finished with the only thing YHC felt would be appropriate for a man that has designed multiple versions of Burpeepalooza. We did full out Burpees AMRAP for the last minute.
COT, Paradox talked about pre-order t-shirts for 23 minutes, and Safety Valve prayed us out.
It’s obvious that the PAX is not complete without you, Goose. That said, every beatdown, every individual posting, every ridiculous bout of mumblechatter, and every obnoxious accounting of proper form is a testament to your legacy and the incredible gift you offered us by bringing F3 to Thibodaux.
Opportunities to lead are precious. I don’t take them for granted.
SYITG,
Yankee Jeaux
Epilogue:
As we neared the end, I realized, to my amazement, that other teams had not only finished, BUT were starting the regimen all over again. So inspiring was this achievement that I was snapped out of the darkness. Upon finishing my last lap – being the very last one to finish – a sense of gratitude welled up inside of me. In that nanosecond, I got a glimpse of what real servant leadership looks like. Mannn…this F3 stuff…am I right?
