Pardon me, I am dying of an incurable degenerative condition...

Seems that I went jogging on the last day of July and the funny feeling in my left hip snapped into an extreme cramp - a horizontal cramp. I had no idea I had any horizontal muscles in that area, and I will only acknowledge the pain, not a muscle going the wrong way. But twelve minutes into trying to be a little more fit, my struggles were over. I limped home, thinking Fred Sanford has nothing on me. Since I had time I started thinking about falling apart a bit at a time...

 I was upset since I wasn't going to get my 5k jog done, and I am keeping records for motivation. Still, I did take me and my better half to the YMCA, and for unknown reasons - sitting on my behind doesn't bother the cramping area. So I knocked out 10 kilometers on the rowing machine in about fifty minutes. Then went to the bicycle machine and did 13.5 miles in another fifty minutes then I showered and found twenty-four ounces of hot black coffee to sip upon until my wife finished her time in the water. Maybe I should find my swimming goggles and start swimming instead of jogging? Then if I get a cramp I can just silently sink to the bottom of the pool?

When I was the skinny kid in this fine picture, sitting on the well cap with my keds, blue jeans and Dale Long t-shirt, I was always dreaming of when my arms would be muscled and strong like my father's and the other working men I saw around me. I wanted hands with veins and tendons and strength, a working man's hands

 I guess one should watch what they wish for, since there are ways that make things happen. Like being thin, I have never seen a picture of my father from his time in the Pacific in WWII, but I would bet he looked a lot like I did in Vietnam after filling sandbags and computing firing data and hauling rounds to the guns. I did have a really good tan, but I couldn't have double-timed two miles during that tour, swimming in the river was all my recreation. I was just a tad bit bigger than a VC.

I would get shin splints in both legs during Jump School after. I had to put some really strong liniment designed for horses to smear over my legs in the morning to make it through the PT.  Limping was a sure way out of the Division and parachute training.

As I sipped my coffee yesterday I looked at my hand and went through the martial arts positions with it that would help me destroy those that have no idea how truly bad I am. Laughing at my pretensions, so bad. I could tell you I really am awesome in death dealing, but I happen to know the price one pays for being dangerous to society - and I love knowing that I am still in the controllable category of  "maybe we shouldn't have designed him that way" - plus I am suffering from that disease I mentioned in the title.  LIFE, and living it with love seems to be the best cure for all that ails me. I do keep asking my wife how we got so old, but she knows we were blest.