Sitting still feels strange. The sun warms my skin but the breeze quickly steals it away, rustling the leaves of trees as it escapes. The light flickers with the passing clouds and my mind spins, recalling the last few weeks. You know it’s spring when the neighbor is mowing his lawn in a hooded sweatshirt and shorts, the engine complaining that he waited too long for that first cut.
I feel like I’ve been running around like crazy lately. This is the time when things come alive. The earth, people, animals, the schedule, it all accelerates. It can be exciting to have a full life, but also exhausting.
I have several posts in draft but my high standards have prevented me from finishing, editing, and publishing them. I will do better to write and release more realtime thoughts. I hope you agree that it’s refreshing to hear someone’s honest thoughts. I’m not going to BS you. What you read is who I am.
Since we last talked, our goat population has nearly tripled. Life races ahead. The male goat who was supposed to be fixed, obviously overcame the attempt. Marlowe, my daughter’s goat, gave birth to three kids and a week later, Rhonda, my older son’s goat, gave birth to two more. In about a week’s time, we went from three goats to eight.
The male goat, Barley, who caused all this trouble is now separated from everyone and is being tied out in different places around the property to eat weeds. I had to weld a stand to keep him from kicking his water over but he’s trying harder these days, so I’ll be working on version 2.0 this week.
The inside of the goat barn used to be one stall for all and a separate pen for storage. Knowing that we’d have to separate the new families from each other (the mothers don’t take kindly to kids that aren’t theirs) I had to build an addition onto the goat barn.
The boys really wanted to race in the Mid-Atlantic Super Series this year, so our mountain biking aspirations started much earlier than the fall scholastic season. This is open to all ages so I’m racing as well, thanks to the help of Team Semper Fi. The preparation has been good for me. Forcing myself to eat better, sleep more, workout, stretch, and ride with a purpose.
We raced again this past weekend at Fair Hill. It was a much bigger field with tougher competition. We didn’t get on the podium this time but we came away with some great experience. Another rider was telling me I should be happy about my placement in such a tough field. I wasn’t unhappy, I just don’t quite know how to react to the results of my racing, good or bad.
A few weeks ago when I won, I was happy and sad. This past race I was satisfied to have clawed my way back to 4th after a terrible start. It’s sometimes difficult to display the correct emotion in response to social cues. I spend a lot of time thinking about things and get stuck in my head. It might make me difficult to read?
It’s been over a year since I broke my collar bone. It was the catalyst I needed to free myself from winter depression and start to make serious changes in my life. I’ve gotten back all my ROM, strength, and then some. I’ve been working on improving my health in a major way, harnessing the bike to pull me from mediocrity into the able bodied man God wants me to be. Stay tuned for more on my health journey as we race toward summer.
-Drew Out.
Drew founded Mental Grenade Jan 2020. He is a follower of Jesus Christ, a medically retired Marine, EOD Tech, writer, mountain biker, photographer, facilitator, and fly-fisherman. He seeks to bridge the civilian – military divide and bring hope through honest communication about difficult issues.
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Mimi Routh
April 28, 2023 16:04Great to hear from you, Drew! I think we’re racing with ourselves mainly, to be and do our best. Most of us are not Olympians or going for it or anything like that. So many guys feel bad that they aren’t what they were. Whatever that means. The young guys are still growing and finding out how good they can be. Girls, too! Then there’s goats. I love their names. I just finished a relisten of Barbara Kingsolver (awesome American author) reading her wonderful “Prodigal Summer” in which a forest ranger shares her cabin with a coyote bounty hunter named Eddie Bondo and gets pregnant by him while keeping to herself the pregnancy AND the location of a coyote family re=establishing on her mountain. Elsewhere in the book, a widowed farm wife raises goats in a wonderful working out while acquiring children she had given up on having — so much love! Also in the book, a sexy old lady growing organic apples next door to a crabby old man who just loves his bug spray. The book switches back and forth among these folks. . . . I miss living in Tahoe, even being snowed in, or the effort it took to clean snow off my car. I could lie in bed and hear the coyotes singing. My wildlife friends have gotten a very young baby coyote. They are asking other organizations if they have a pup near the same age. Coyotes being all about family. Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care has been raising a lot of bear cubs. Two have gone from — say 22 pounds to 68 or 88 pounds — and been handed over to the government wildlife people who will place them, sedated, in dens very close to where they were found. Cubs are adorable, but by law are fed, given clean enclosures,. not spoken to and returned to the best location to do their bear business in peace in the wild. And I also am working on my book, writing about life and public transit in San Francisco, like the man who tried to push me off a cable car!
Drew
April 28, 2023 16:12I once got kicked off a trolly in Frisco for jumping on while it was moving. I stood surprised in the street that my party did Not get off with me, telling me to catch the next one. I waited for a few minutes but decided to run and catch up. I passed everyone and the driver gave me a crazy look as I beat them all down to the piers.