Tough Mudder - Tri-State 2012- Englishtown, NJ

Last week I had just finished watching the Eagles lose to the Cowboys and the stench of disappointment and losing is choking me like a midnight green chicken bone.  The Nick Foles Era may have started but it soured like the milk in my refrigerator during the Hurricane Sandy induced power outage. I looked into myself and questioned why I spent my afternoon watching them, eating pizza, and drinking beer.  This isn’t where I want myself to be and I am not happy about how I spent this beautiful November afternoon. I should have been outside preparing for my next challenge.  A month ago, I was worried about completing the grueling 12 mile challenge known as the Tough Mudder Tri-State.  I had gone down that muddy road before.  I looked back at completing my second Tough Mudder in Englishtown and I realized that preparing and completing a challenge like the Tough Mudder provides me with a indescribable feeling of pride.   Go push yourself to your physical limits and come back and you’ll understand.

Look at that BAMF.

I may or may not have screamed freedom and charged down a hill in a kilt shortly after that picture was take.

Here is how the day started.  I was an ad hoc member of Don’t Be a Dick in the Mud.

I’m the handsome devil in the gray shirt in the middle.

Here is how the day ended.

Still handsome, just with more of a mud colored shirt.

In between I ran, climbed up hills, over obstacles, and overall pushed myself to my physical limits.

We ran clean.

We ran dirty.

We made new friends with other Mudders.

We climbed over muddy obstacles.

We helped others climb over obstacles.

 

         And we ran some more.

And through it all we persevered. The first time I wrote about the Tough Mudder, I waxed poetic about human spirit, shared purpose, and community. A year later, I realize these are events put onto raise money.  Mud Runs rant and rave about bravery and mental toughness and altruism but these events are put on for all of us to get muddy and pretend we were in Seal Team Six.  We pay a good amount of money for the experience not to mention the mud, bumps, scratches, and bruises.  This time I also have more pictures to show how we looked doing it.  Despite the cynical talk about the Tough Mudder being just a profit seeking venture, it makes money by making you look deep inside yourself to find that you are tough enough to complete it.  We all paid a fairly large sum of money to determine if we possessed the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far is as needed.  Sadly, I lost my completion t-shirt as well as the online badge to show I finished.  You’ll have to take my word and my digital photographs as evidence that I was tough enough.

And I’ll have to start getting ready for next year!

2009 in Review

It has been fun 2009, I hate to see you go.
In fact, I am not really sure where you went.
Maybe it was the booze.
Maybe I was busy.
Maybe it was a combination of both. Now that it is almost the end of 2009 and many best of the decade specials are appearing it's time to review the best, the worst, and the unrecorded of 2009. I would like to note that the first decade of the 21st century started in 2001 and lasts until 2010. I am not sure what decade is ending with 2009 since 2000 was actually part of both the 20th Century and the 1990s. Aside from that, couldn't we celebrate the best of the decade every year since there were 9 previous years? I guess it could be said for every arbitrary 365 days and thereby my 2009 year in review would quickly become pointless. So forget most of what I just said and read what accompanies the pictures below.

I am sitting in the parlor of Pics of Me in Front of Stuff Manor watching the Temple Owls play in their first bowl game in 30 years, listening to the wind howl outside, and marveling at how Al Golden, Temple's football coach is dressed in a shirt and tie with no coat. My 2010 New Year's resolutions should include being as Bad-Ass as Al Golden. Being more bad-ass, in a good way, should be in everyone's New Year's Resolutions.

Just like the end and like most of the years I have existed, my 2009 started off with a lot of football.

I watched it in Baltimore with This Guy and Mets Fan.

Remember when 2008 was the Summer of the Bearfight?

I watched the Eagles lose another NFC Championship game first hand with the Official Father of Pics of Me In Front of Stuff in Arizona.

CP and I watched the Super Bowl in 3D two weeks later.

It was an exciting year to watch me some football. Every time Hank Williams ask me if I am ready for some football my answer is usually yes.

Football more or less exited the discussion on Pics of Me In Front of Stuff after that game. This is probably due to the season being over. Most of the rest of the first quarter of the year was locked in PA/NY/NJ including a trip to where the 3 borders of those states intersected. Without football, the highlight of the winter of 2009 was probably a trip to the top of the Empire State Building for a wedding on Valentine's Day. Throw in a wedding with a Bear Fight, a Polar Bear Plunge, and a random Belly Dancer and the winter gave way to spring.

I am glad she was not hairy like a bear because there seemed to be a theme developing... Also I was eating and she was dancing close to my food.

The end of winter brought the beginning of baseball season. It does this every year. Unfortunately, the Phillies title defense started with the loss of their longtime play-by-play announcer Harry Kalas. The Phils now play High Hopes after every game in his honor. I hope that is the beginning of a tradition. The world is a little sadder with his loss. The baseball season went on without HK and I was present for Brad Lidge ending his save streak, the Phillies first trip to New Yankee Stadium, idiot Phillies fans shining laser pointers at Albert Pujols, and rode the 7 Train with Jeff Franceour's wife. I also learned that you can visit the home plate that was found in Veteran's Stadium before the dump was torn down and replaced by the current stadiums in Philadelphia.

It is in the middle of a parking lot. This should not be a surprise since the turf was considered as hard as concrete when the Vet still stood.

The Phillies won just as many World Series there as they have in Citizens Bank Ballpark. Thank God they moved. Aside from visiting the Phillies this summer, Pics of Me in Front of Stuff also took a trip to Hawaii. Maybe you saw the 9 posts regarding Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park, Kilaueua Lava Flow, Mauna Kea, Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, the southernmost bar in the US, liquid aloha, South Point, and the Kona Half-Marathon. Fortunately for all of my readers, I seem to have lost the shirtless pictures of me from our day at the beach in Hawaii. I will be sure to save some of those for next year in Pics of Me in Front of Stuff Gone Wild.

Finally, there is the overriding goal of Pics of Me in Front of Stuff - visiting all 50 states. The journey started off a bit slow this year, not reaching Maine until after Memorial Day. Hawaii was already cleared off the list when I visited over the summer. Fortunately, CP and I took a road trip through the Southeast US at the beginning of December. The event is still undocumented on Pics of Me in Front of Stuff, but if you think Hawaii was thoroughly described wait until you start hearing about exciting places like Birmingham, Alabama and Hamburg, Arkansas!

Here's a preview of the whirlwind roadtrip I drug CP on to start off December. This trip helped me reach states 28 through 32. That leaves 18 to go with just under 2 years to accomplish it. You can imagine what next year's road trip looks like.

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With that said, the year is coming to an end and we at Pics of Me in Front of Stuff would like to wish all of you a Happy New Year. Look for bigger and better things in 2010!

NFC Championship Game - Phoenix, AZ

Saturday, January 17th found me on an airplane early in the morning for a cross-country flight from Newark, NJ to Phoenix, AZ. Having witnessed a pair of wins, first by the underdog Arizona Cardinals and then by the Philadelphia Eagles, I was guaranteed a ticket with my father to the NFC Championship game hosted in University of Phoenix Stadium.


By now everyone knows the outcome of this game. I would be lying if I said I was not disappointed by how the contest ended. However, there was a shining time before the game when I was filled with excitement for the upcoming contest.


At least I was excited standing in front of that field. My dad, in contrast to Brian Dawkins and me, looks like I woke him up early from his nap. With a chance to go to the Super Bowl, I hoped B-Dawk and the defense would continue their stellar play that had started 2 months previous. However, the Cardinals quickly dashed those hopes as they scored three touchdowns in the first half and took a 24-6 lead into halftime. I was in a state of shock following the offensive barrage by what ESPN had refered to as one the worst playoff teams ever. It was clear that the Cardinals had used that ranking as motivation and were taking out their frustration on the visiting Eagles' defense in the first half. The most entertaining portion of the first half was the fact that my dad was able to forecast the Cardinals' plays before they ran them. The most impressive feat of fatherly prognostication was the trick play that led to Larry Fitzgerald's 3rd touchdown of the afternoon being preceded by my dad stating 'They're going to run a flea-flicker, I can smell it'. Amazingly, he also used his mysterious olfactory perception to determine how the Cardinals would score their first two touchdowns.

Collective Soul played at halftime. Here is a crappy video of it.

Their performance either caused the Cards to enter a slumber or woke the Eagles from theirs because the Philadelphia offense and defense returned to the field with a vengeance. Donovan McNabb replied to the Kurt Warner-Larry Fitzgerald offensive explosion with a big boom of his own. On the day, Donovan had 375 yards passing along with 3 touchdowns, all of which came in the second half. The Eagles went on to take a 25-24 lead in the fourth quarter. The Eagles fans in front of me somehow had tumbled into the row in front of them following the last score, a 62 yard strike bobbled, but eventually caught by Desean Jackson. Fortunately, no one was crushed by their tumbling bodies. It was a high time for Eagles' fans in the desert. Unfortunately, it would not last. However, the defense could not stifle the Arizona offense for the entire second half. The Cards scored with 2-3 minutes to take a 32-25 lead which would not change for the rest of the game.

Amidst all of the Arizona Cardinals excitement, my fellow Eagles fans skulked out of the University of Phoenix Stadium. The 700 Level compared the devastating effect caused by the end of the game on Eagles' fans to this and, having been there, I cannot help but agree. Fortunately, life goes on...

...and pitchers and catchers report in approximately 3 weeks!

Football Playoffs and maybe a Bearfight in Baltimore

Can You Hear Me Now?!

In case you are unable to hear, I will type this blog post rather than just yell at the computer and hope someone on the other end hears it. Yelling would not work anyway because I am still hoarse from yelling at the television this Sunday. The television was really big and it was in Baltimore so if you were in Towson or Hagerstown or Atlanta, GA you may have been able to make out what I was saying. However, if you happen to be one of the deaf readers of picsofmeinfrontofstuff.blogspot.com you likely missed it. Here is the transcript:

E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!!

For those of you deaf and without any connection to the outside world, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the New York Giants in the Meadowlands to advance to the conference championship game next weekend. To the right is a picture of Donovan McNabb booking a hotel room in Atlanta for his teammates and himself. Mac-5 likes to be prepared and wants the best for his teammates. Donovan probably got Brian Dawkins a nice suite in which he can relax and maybe get a massage or some fruit salad.

The night before the Eagles faced their nemesis, the NY Giants, Ben, Justin and I ventured into the city of Baltimore to join in on the festivites linked to the early playoff games. To the left you can see Ben guiding Justin through the exciting journey that was our evening. The most important to game to the locals featured the Ravens defeating the Tennessee Titans to advance and face their nemesis, the Pittsburgh Steelers. The most important game to me was the Arizona Cardinals, 9 point underdogs, challenging the Carolina Panthers in Carolina. Who can say what exactly happened to Jake Delhomme on his birthday as he threw 5 interceptions to the Cardinals? No idea.
Who can say why I was so excited for a Cardinals victory? That is a question I can answer. If the Cardinals and Eagles both won, my father who lives in AZ would provide me with a ticket to the conference championship game in University of Phoenix Stadium. That's more than fair reason for me to be extra excited for the Eagles playoff victory over the Giants.



Since it does not take much reason for Ben, Justin, and I to celebrate, the playoff victories led to a celebratory toast...of Bearfights!

E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!!

Lincoln Financial Field

If you have been following along with the past few posts and not worried about the big issues like the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg, you might remember that I recently spent a weekend in Philadelphia. You may have also heard that the Eagles lost the Sunday while I was there. You may also have heard that it was my birthday. You would not have heard that I got to tour Lincoln Financial Field, home of the last place Philadelphia Eagles. Or maybe you did hear and forgot. Or maybe I told you but you wanted photographic evidence as proof and looked at my blog. Regardless of whether you knew or not, I am telling you right now that I was there on my 27th birthday!


Here's the view from the visiting team's tunnel when noone is in the Linc to boo or throw batteries at them.





Here are Melissa and I on the grass we were not allowed to walk on.


Apparently, us walking on the grass can damage the turf the way 300 lb behemoths running on it cannot.


Finally, here's me delivering a press conference in the Eagle's media room.


So maybe the only members of the 'media' there was Melissa taking my picture, since I define member of the 'media' as someone who writes or takes pictures that someone else may read and/or look at. (She actually has most, if not all of the photocredits for the past few posts.) During my press conference, I tried to explain why I continue watching the Philadelphia Eagles even though all they ever do is disappoint me. My explanation sounded as incoherent as Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric. Sadly, I am a Democrat and Pro-Choice, so social conservatives will not be touting me as a possible presidential candidate...Maverick!

But in case you had not heard, I visited the Linc and saw its insides.

If you don't know, now you know...