Things Are Looking Up
These first few posts will be an overview of how I got to where I am today. After that I’ll take a deeper dive into specific times and adventures and see what I can unearth. If I’m feeling it, I may even come back and link those to the proper spots in these overview posts.
Showing off fingertip pushups. I think late 90s, but could be 2000-ish.
With my mental health improving every day and my leg getting stronger and stronger, I hit 2006 with a new outlook on life. It would prove to be a year of firsts for me: first time drinking (yes, I was a teetotaler until I was 35); first time in Vegas; first trip to Europe.
I don’t remember much about ultimate in that year. I know I played and kept getting stronger in my leg, but otherwise it was unremarkable. I’m fairly sure I had pain in my knee after I played that would last a day or so. I assumed that would just be how I’d exist going forward.
I had been rehabbing with bike riding, and I continued that as much as I could. I was working my computer repair job and having fun making short films. My team won “Best of” for the 48 Hour Film Project in Greensboro that year.
In September I was fortunate to join Rotary in an exchange program with Scotland. Four of us were sent over there with a Rotarian chaperone for a month. We moved every two to three days to a new area and got to meet some great people and see lots of the country. It was life-altering in many ways. One of the big decisions that came from the trip was that I gave my boss a year’s notice that I was leaving so that I could start my own video production business.
I’m getting back to fitness, I swear. The upshot of quitting my job the next year was that I had more time and less money. I started riding my bike instead of driving as much as I could. I was getting strength back in my leg and feeling much more confident on the ultimate field. Of course all this time I was still barely pushing 140 pounds. I had lost a lot of weight from the surgery and didn’t gain much back at first.
And, finally, I had time to start a training regime with my brother-in-law RJ. This would be the step that ultimately would lead to me getting in real shape for the first time in my life.
