Ok, the cigar I am chewing and the 1000 pushups. Here we go.
The cigar. I am going to smoke it once I am done with my pushups. This cigar was given to me Saturday night, by my buddy, Mike Bondi. Mike’s wife, Denise, is Linnea’s best friend, and the girls went to their 10 year reunion where Linnea enjoyed watching people’s reactions when she said that we are basically homeless and jobless. While Linnea was entertaining herself at this reunion, I had a reunion with my brother, Jason, and with Mike at Rock Bottom in Braintree.
I won’t mention the Improper Hopper IPA, or the Milk Stout or the Pumpkin Ale….
The cigar, a gift for me, from Mike, to celebrate the birth of his boy, Michael Anthony Bondi.
The pushups.
It was October 19 and I was walking around our hotel room, in east whoknowswhere,itsasecret China, and Linnea took a picture of me. Then she showed me the pic, hmmm…I was left with few options after I saw myself. Suicide was quickly ruled out, as was apathy, and I set some goals. I just decided to start doing as many pushups and crunches as I could every day. I stuck with this, and by the end of October, I had done over 1000 pushups and felt really good about myself.
Then I set a goal for 200 pushups a day for November, and at the debrief in Hong Kong I was telling someone, not really bragging, maybe just feeling really proud of myself, that I had hit 4200 for the month that day. Talia Barnes, Seth’s daughter let me know that was how many pushups her dad would do in a day. I laughed, remember Herschel Walker telling people his only workout was pushups and situps? He did a few thousand of each every day…which I thought was bull crap, and still think it is bull crap that he did not lift weights, but when Talia said that her dad did that many every day, I had to ask him.
Seth said he did not do over 4000 pushups a day, only one or two thousand…hmmm…resetting the standards. It is weird to me that when someone does what I have always thought impossible, that I then change the way I think and realize I need to be able to do that too. A new set of standards…isn’t that what life is about, obliterating the impossibilities?
Eight hundred pushups left…that cigar is going to be nice.
