I started writing a big long reflection on the day, but really there was only one really awesome part, so here is the overview version:
- 5pm : Come home from the office (aka the coffee shop) and start mowing the yard with my hip crazy cool hippy mower.
- 6pm : Come inside famished, cook tombstone pizza
- 6:20pm : Eat entire pizza in about 4 bites
- 6:30pm : Start biking and watching the remainder of Village of the Damned
- 7:40pm : Quit biking, feeling awesome! Drink a beer.
- 8pm : Start chopping down the two 4 footish stumps in the yard with my machete and my splitting maul
- 9pm : throw up my pizza and beer all over
So basically, here is the deal. Like a gluttonous bastard, I ate a whole pizza and drank a beer and then did a bunch of physical activity. No surprisingly, I biked for a long time after eating the pizza and was fine. But the damn lumberjack competition did me in. I used to be captain lumberjack and figured I would be fine. Now, in spite of not being in nearly good of shape as I used to be, I still figured I could chop those stumps down with no problem. However, in the process, I discovered quit possibly, the most awesome workout ever… cutting trees down with splitting mauls.
If you are not so into the lumberjack too lingo, a splitting maul is a sledge hammer with one end tapered like a wedge. It is used for splitting sawed lengths of a log into pie shaped pieces. By the virtue of the grain (tree rings) of the log running perpendicular to the ground, you can pretty easily split a log if you put a good amount of umph behind it – the wedge aspect does most of the work. However, if you try to split the log across the grain, you do very little damage. This is very unlike an ax, which is more of a weighted sharp knife that slices at the wood and is usually significantly lighter than a sledge hammer or splitting maul.
So, here I am, essentially trying to cut down a tree with a pointy rock. Best, fucking workout ever…. I got done and felt like I did a bunch of full body cardio and weight training. I had the feeling that on a regular basis, I would turn into a brick shit house. F yeah. However, I did have a gut full of pizza and barfed it up after quitting. Oh well…
