Loot Crate Unboxing February 2017 - Build

                 TRUE LOVE

A boy who thinks he's become a man
Puts his life in God's mighty hand
He would fight for her as a bard or king
She gently caresses his last heart string

She is a princess in a dragons world
Oh how he loves this precious girl
About this girl is all he can think
And within her beauty he takes a drink

A shining knight rinding the wind
Does his love constitute a sin
To die in her arms or by her side
With her he would forever ride

She blows him a kiss on a cool summer   night
As he rides with a king to do what's right
As he lay dying on a lonely plain
He sees her dance in the cool summer rain

She holds his hand as his eyes do close
And upon his breast she places a rose
At deaths door she begins to cry
Knight and Lady rise up into the sky

Hand in hand they ride the wind
Until their time to live again

                                 ALLEN LADNER

Haunting

I can hear the echoes
In the walls
I can see the ghosts of the past
Flicker in and out of my vision
I can hear the footsteps approaching
But never arriving

They are all dead yet live on still
Telling me I failed in whispers
I cannot hear
They breathe my life with baited breath
I cannot feel

Allen Ladner

     Tonight I want to talk a little bit about motivation.  I have discovered that over the years I have become a "watcher" not a "doer".  This is something that I am working on changing.  I sit at work all day, most of you know what I do, and I think about when I get home I'm going to work out, go walking, eat, and have sex.  Well it doesn't work out that way.  After sitting at my open cubicle and talking on the phone all day I get home, check my computer for email and check in on facebook and suddenly its 10pm and I haven't moved in hours.
     From the people I have talked to that are in Weight Watchers programs this is the norm.  They have had to literally FORCE themselves to exercise and move around after getting home from work.  I'm not even strictly speaking of an office job like I have, but any job.  If you don't have the proper motivation you just won't move and do the things you need to do to be and stay healthy.  I have a pic of me I'm posting on this blog tonight.  That is me at 250 pounds.  The heaviest I have ever been and will ever be, I can promise you that.  Mark was telling me over a year ago that I looked bad when I was on my motorcycle.  My stomach was poking out over the gas tank.  I just laughed it off and said I would get rid of it but never did.
     I am now down to 235 pounds but have a very long way to go before I am healthy.  Fat Guy Running is what I am doing to get there.  I am exercising but not as much as I should.  I am eating more healthy though not as much as I should.  My big problems right now are stress levels, smoking, and finding myself in an "I don't give a fuck" situation.  These are things that I have to change.  I was curious about making my own 12 step program to lose the weight and get off my butt and do what I want to do.  Rappelling, hiking, scuba diving, another motorcycle, and some kayaking.  Tammy has really gotten me fired up about wanting to teach myself how to kayak, on calm waters of course.
     So I see that I have digressed again.  Motivation.  What motivates you?  Motivation is something that every human strives for but the vast majority can never truly find enough to keep them going.  Even the Wall Street lawyers and bankers don't have enough motivation because if they did they would relax occasionally.  Being a workaholic is as bad as being a lazy bastard like myself.  Motivation comes in all colors and flavors, you just have to want it, need it, and then do it.  So to help motivate myself I have started sending out emails at work talking about stop blaming everyone else for your problems and identify what you need to improve and change.  Always walk through the door with a positive attitude and give 110 percent.  Things like that.  If I can motivate one of my co-workers to improve their life, then I have improved mine.  Now I have to take all that positive energy that I'm spewing like a steam locomotive and put it to good use myself, by getting out of the chair and working hard to accomplish my personal goals.
     I break it down into two categories, work ethic and personal hygiene.  Work ethic is what I do to improve my mind and my motivation at work so that I can be a better worker and hopefully get promoted and have a nice career, unless my writing career takes off.  Personal Hygiene has nothing to do with taking a shower, it has to do with three things.  Get my mind right, my body will follow, my life will follow.  That is personal hygiene.  So to get my mind right I do what I said above but I do it to myself.  I leave myself post-it notes and I even email myself.  So when I get home and sit down to check my email I see the one from me and I read it and remember everything I wanted to do.
     So without going too far off the deep end and preaching this is what I am doing to accomplish my goals.  I hope if anyone reads this it will have a positive impact on how they live their life.  If we can all improve the life of just one person then our life is more fulfilled.

If you are this big or bigger you need to make a change just like me.  I look very bad in this pic, and this blog will be a reminder to me always as I strive to improve.

     Yesterday, which would be Friday June 15th, Fat Guy Running was actually Fat Guy Paddling and Fat Guy Stumbling Over Huge and Small Slippery Rocks Pulling a Boat.  But it didn't start out that way.  It started out with mild weather and two best friends going fishing on the Reservoir.  To be quite honest we did some good fishing too, it wasn't about the fishing though, it was just about hanging out with a guy who totally understands me and can pretty much know what I'm going to say before I say it.  He understands my humor when everyone else just gives me blank looks.  You all know it is no longer funny when you have to explain the joke.  So it was me and Mark, my best friend, on the Rez hanging and doing some fishing.  So here is the full day, enjoy.

     I was awakened at 2am to go grocery shopping and when we got back it was about 3 or 4am.  I laid down on the couch for a couple of hours and Tammy woke me up around 7am.  I sent Mark a text and he called shorty thereafter saying he was stuck in traffic but would be here soon.  Tammy had been wonderful enough to make us both coffee and some cereal mix and fruit to take with us in case we got hungry.  So Mark gets here and Tammy and I go down, she hands him his coffee and I load up in the truck,  she was also great enough to go back for the sunscreen which I had forgotten.  I'm a red head and I burn pretty bad in the sun.  So Mark had his cute puppy Logan, i.e. Wolverine, in the truck because he had to drop him off at Toyz are Pets,  I mean PetSmart.  Anyway we finally got underway and halfway to PetSmart Mark remembers that he had forgotten the Dr Pepper and Water in the icechest back at his house.  Us being the fine strapping lads that we are decided we were men and didn't need them.  We had coffee.

     So we drop Logan off at PetSmart and carry on to the Rez.  I was already complaining about a bathroom and Mark pointed out that there was one there.

"Ok, cool."  I thought.

     We get there and he backs down the peer, points out the latrine and off I go.  Well this bathroom was straight out of House of 1000 Corpses.  I mean really.  So I go to the toilet and I'm whizzing and I hear the door open and some guy grunting and immediately I thought of the movie Deliverance.  I certainly didn't feel like squealing this early in the morning so I hurried up and got the heck out of there.  Turns out it was a jogger wearing nothing but his shoes, socks, and shorts.  Wiping my forehead in relief I went back down to the dock and assisted in getting the boat in the water.

     I'm not going to bore you with the details of us fishing, I mean fishing is fishing.  I DID however enjoy the boat.  I'm an old Navy man and I love water and boats of all kinds.  So we were zipping along the Rez going pretty fast and having a blast just hanging out.  It got to the point some hours later that Mark let me know he was cooking and was about ready to head in.  Me not being one to complain, especially when he was an awesome friend to allow me on his boat in the first place, I agreed.  It WAS hot.  So as we are discussing it I happen to look at some clouds and noticed it was very bluish gray in that direction.  I informed Mark that it looked like rain.  He looked and of course agreed with my assessment, especially when the lightning cracked.  So off we go, time to head in and secure the boat and get out of dodge.  Mark fires up that lovely, sturdy boat and opens up the throttle.

     I am guestimating because I am totally not sure of the real distances but it appeared we were about a mile from the pier when out of the blue, literally, the boats starts coughing and spluttering...and dies...........

"Uh oh!"  from Mark.
"Dude, don't tell me.  We outta gas?"  from me.
"Umm yup."  from Mark.  It went downhill from there.

     I have a couple of pics on this post, neither of them or mine, I didn't take them I am using them for reference because they are owned by their owners of course, not me.  Now for the interesting stuff.

"There is a reason I have a paddle on the boat."  Mark says.

"Just one?"  I asked.

"Yup."

     Now I didn't say this to Mark but my first coherent thought after that was "Oh shit."  So Mark picks up the paddle and starts doing something with it,  he would dip it in the water and swish it around and move to the other side and do the same thing.  Funny thing was...........  the boat wasn't moving.  I look at Mark and couldn't even imagine what the hell he was doing.  So I asked.

"You ever used a paddle?"
"Nope."  and he starts laughing.
"Gimme the damn thing."  So he hands me the paddle and instead of learning the proper way to paddle he goes to tinkering with the gas tank.  All the while the clouds are getting closer, the lightning is getting louder and I can smell the rain.  Literally.

"Hey, I got a plan, come here and squeeze that hand pump.  We gotta get some distance from the Spillway before we die."  at which point I look at the Spillway and notice we ARE kinda drifting that way.  So I hauled my butt to the back and started squeezing that hand pump like there was no tomorrow.  He gets the boat cranked and away we go.  For about 2 minutes.  Then it dies again.  He goes back to tinkering and I go
back to paddling.  There is a huge rock embankment and the pier, the rocks were closer and I figured we could get there faster so there is where I was aiming.  He calls me back again and I go back to pumping while he hold the gas tank in this weird contortionist position.  It worked though.  The boat started and off we went again.

     This time it lasted about a minute and this time the tank was also bone dry.  So I go back to paddling, he's cracking jokes and I'm threatening his life.  So he decided to pick this pole up off the deck of the boat and help "paddle".  Not complaining though because it did help us to finally reach the rocks, miss the spillway, and live to do this again another day.  Now I did forget to mention that the rain did come and soaked us completely.  It didn't last long though.  So back to the rocks.  I jump out of the boat onto these very slippery rocks and I look towards the pier.  It had to be half a mile or more, I look at the rocks.  All different sizes, shapes, and configurations and all just piled up on one another.  One wrong step, one rock sliding down and there goes an ankle or knee.  I was wearing my hiking boots however so I figured I could do it.

     So he had hooked up the bowline and I had that, hopping, slipping and tripping along this rock "wall" while he had the long pole keeping the boat off the rocks.  Let me say this here.  Those rocks are EVIL.  I have skinned knees, elbows, and some kind of skint pattern on my forearm.  Not sure what the hell I hit to get that.  So I imagine it was about 50 yards we went before I had to stop the first time.  I went down the rocks to the boat and asked him for a bottle of very hot water he had on the boat from a previous trip.  I sat there on those rocks and drank half of it down.  I was hot as hell and dehydrating fast.  He was doing so good either.  He was trying to keep our morale up by making fun of the entire thing.

"Fat Guy Running, at least you are getting to hike where most people wouldn't be able to.  You are getting some serious rock hiking done today."  

      I'm threatening his very life again and I guess he took me serious cause he told me he was only making jokes because he was so pissed at himself.  I didn't understand that really because this could happen to anyone.  So I get up and start across my rocky road again, this time getting maybe 30 more yards before having to sit down again.  I was about to puke I was feeling so bad and had stopped sweating, which is a bad sign.  So I got the brilliant idea, (literally, I saw a light bulb go off in my head) to head down and just prop up on the boat and walk on the rocks that were under the water.  If I slipped I could just put my weight on the boat and it would stop me from getting hurt.  Mark looks at me.

"The hell are you doing man, I got a bad feeling about this."  says he.

"I got this."  says I.  

     So I go maybe 10 feet,  going good, moving along nicely when suddenly............ the rocks disappear and there ain't nothing under my feet.  And OFF I went.  I found myself holding on to the boat railing and my feet flailing around under the boat with no ground or rock to get my feet up on.  Mark actually panicked a little.  So with nothing else to do, knowing I could not hold on to the rail for long without slipping under the surface of the water for good I swam.

"EVINRUUUUUDE,  EVINRUUUUUDE!!"  I kicked my feets like a duck headed back towards the rocks.  Mark, again, stuck the paddle in the water and did that disturbing swishing thing but it must have helped because we made it back to the rocks.  I plopped down on a rock, half in the water and half on the rocks.  That was it, I could walk the rocks no further.  So we discussed it and decided for me to hold the boat and Mark to go after gas.  Which he did.  So I sat there in the boat with the anchor shoved down between some rocks and the long blue pole shoved into some other rocks so I  could hold the boat steady.  He got back, we gassed up, and since I was unfamiliar with the terrain of where to turn around I drove the boat back to the pier.  I haven't driven a boat in over 20 years but I made it with no mishap and even enjoyed it, tired though I was.

So that was the Fat Guy Runnings adventure with his best friend.  All is well that ends with beer and a shower.

*Note:  as stated these pics aren't mine. They are here for reference ONLY.  The one with the truck getting pulled out of the Rez is there for the rocks only.  Those rocks are what I was hopping, falling, and stumbling across pulling the boat.  The pic of the Rez itself is just a little pic to show how far the boat was from the pier and how big this part of the Rez really is.  Again.  I hope you enjoyed the story,  its ALL true.

My name is Allen Ladner, more popularly known as Fat Guy Running.  I started this entire persona because when I turned 41 I looked at my life and I was oh so NOT happy.  I was and still am overweight, I don't have a successful career, my writing hasn't "taken off" yet, and I was a couch potato.  I have always loved Extreme Sports, BASE Jumping, skydiving, scuba diving, rock climbing, cliff diving, repelling, hiking, biking, motorcycles.  You name it and I love it.  I don't do "normal sports" nor do I really like anything sub-normal, which is to say a dirivitive of "normal" i.e. soccer vs football, bowling, tennis, fishing or hunting.

The whole idea here is that I want to touch the lives of people just like me.  I am an avid gamer, we are notorious for being overweight, eating at the computer, never getting off the game until we just have to.  Being sleep deprived and bags under the eyes.  Our language is the language of games and not a language that everyone else speaks.  So I want to combine my love for video games, extreme sports, the need to lose weight and "shape up", and an avid love of the outdoors into one AWESOME blog/fb page/google+ montage/website.

First I want to cover who I really am.  I write books, not for a living yet, but only because it is what I have always wanted to do but could never really do.  I work for a national cable company as a tech support agent for broadband internet.  I love video games, as I have already pointed out, I love to hike, swim, and repel.  I haven't done any of those things until recently, in the last 20 years.  I weighed 250 lbs in January, today I am down to 225 lbs with a goal of 200 lbs by the end of August.  I want to repel off a local red clay cliff in August is why I have that goal set.  If I don't make it I will continue to push myself towards my goals.

I am surrounded by friends, have my best friend, my brother from a different mother, whom I don't get to spend enough time with.  I have family and people who love me but for the most part I always feel alone or alienated.  It is my own doing most of the time and they would never think I was.  I am not happy with my body, health, or current status in the world and it affects how I look at things and how I feel about my success in this life.  To me I am not successful, I struggle from paycheck to paycheck, I am not a well known writer yet, I don't feel like I give myself the time or even have the will power most of the time to do what I need to do.  Like I said, my fault usually.  It is up to me and ONLY me to change all of these things.  I just have to do it.

I have a very long way to go but I am proud of what I have done so far.  I still smoke, I'm still overweight, I still need to finish up my dental appointments so that I can get my "pretty" smile back, lol.  I need to finish my three current writing projects and I need more money in the bank.  This isn't even touching my ExtremeMS website, ezine, and lifestyle.  I want to hike more, bike more, and live on a boat, lol.  I miss the water more than anything else I think.

So now you know my basics.  I will continue to add to this blog as I can, I have a plan.  I just want to touch the world and ride the wind.  I want to taste the moment.