Christopher Columbus, Rocky Balboa, Thunder John: The 3-man weave

October 11, 2010
79,375 pushups completed
920,625 pushups to go
1,609 ahead of schedule

It's Columbus Day 2010! Strange holiday if you give it a lot of thought. Christopher Columbus (CC) was an Italian sailing for Spain. CC blundered into the second largest landmass on Earth. Shortly thereafter we caucasians spread disease amongst the natives, devastating the population and their llama-based, wheelless civilization that also had no writing (well, the Mayans did, but they had all but dispersed by the time of CC). Actually, if CC HADN'T discovered America, then writing would never have been used in the Americas. The blog of Thunder John would have to be passed down by word of mouth. I'd have to pay for bards to memorize and recite (with proper inflection) each blog entry, and finance an annuity to pay for their descendants to memorize and recite this blog. In a way, we all have CC and his smallpox ridden blankets to thank for the internet and this blog in its current form.

So I try not to give it a lot of thought.

Any-who, so this was Columbus Day weekend, and I decided to take Monday off. The family unit drove up to Lake Geneva on Sunday and stayed overnight at a waterpark. One of the parks was having a special on a one bedrooom unit - we'd have the kids sleep in the bedroom on the king bed and Molly and I would use the pull out sleeper couch in the main room.

When I was a Junior in High School, my Physics AP teacher was Ed Pettus. He was an eccentric man, at least I remember him that way and it may only be because he had a thick, lustrous beard the hue of a fine raccoon pelt. My goodness, a grape could get lost in that beard and come out a raisin. That beard was a close third to the Amazon river basin and the rain forests of the Congo in terms of habitats for species yet undiscovered by man. My point is this. Mr. Pettus once demonstrated some sort of physics principle by laying down on a bed of nails. He had an actual wooden slab with several hundred nails impaled and pointing heavenward on which he lay prone to show us something about the distribution of weight. I found myself wide awake at 2:30am Sunday night, with a couch support digging into the soft space between my 8th and 9th vertebrae, pining for a mattress as comfortable as that remembered bed of nails. To say again that I was extremely tired Monday would be coals to Newcastle - I think you get the point. To compound my fatigue, of course, the children were up bright and early at 6am, so I arose and did the honorable thing: left for a sunrise 4 mile run before Molly knew I was awake.

Following the kids around a waterpark is a blast but also very tiring. Factor in a lousy night of sleep and a 90 minute car ride back from the hotel, and by 630pm I found myself only 125 pushups into my day. Way behind schedule. Lacking motivation. Tired. All but beaten. But then it's always darkest before the dawn, and providence found it fitting at that EXACT moment to draw me close to her ample bosom and give me, Thunder John, the strength to complete my pushups quota for the day.

You see, I had just gone upstairs to iron a pair of pants for tomorrow's workday, and I turned on the TV to keep me company. As it so happened, the channel just happened to be tuned to AMC, which just happened to be airing the classic movie "Rocky", and it just happened to be at that part of the movie where Rocky fights Apollo Creed for the title! What more inspiration could a mere mortal (and an Italian American on Columbus Day to boot) need? I walked into that room 125 pushups down for the day, and I did not re-emerge until 30 minutes later, having watched that final fight 2 times (thank you DV-R), and by Odin's beard, 350 total Columbus Day pushups completed. Yessir, that is 9 sets of 25 pushups and one pair of crisp, perfectly ironed trousers. It may have been the most productive 30 minutes of my life.

There's a scene in round 14 of the fight. Rocky is getting beaten all to heck, and somehow he fights his way off the ropes and cracks the Champion's ribs. The bell rings, Rocky stumbles back to his corner. Rocky's eyes are engorged and swollen like a baboon's backside. He tells his trainer, "I can't see out there, you gotta cut me, Mick!" So the corner man takes a razor to his eyes and cuts into the swollen ridges of his brow, allowing the swelling to subside so that Rocky can see for the last round of the fight. "If you stop this fight I'll kill you" Rocky tells his trainer. I only hope that if it comes down to brass tacks, I will have the same sort of fortitude and continue on past all obstacles to complete my million pushups.

Peace out,
Thunder John,

"Bringin' thunder, packing the pain, loaded with pushups, makin' it rain"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G40ji3nWHi0&feature=related

ps - Gerard Depardieu portrayed Christopher Columbus in the movie "1492". Could there be worse casting? CC was a suave Italian explorer, Gerard Depardieu is and was a grotesque non-Italian. Why not Consider Sly Stallone for the role? "Youse guys need to, like, discover some new world or something, before, you know, I start punching these sides of beef". It would have been epic.