The Six Hundred Penny Man

I realized something important this weekend. That I am not indestructible. For some reason I always thought I was. Well, I thought I was tough at lest. I entered a flag football tournament with my friends and drove to Austin to compete in it this past weekend. Sounds simple and fun right: throwing the football around, some friendly competition, a good workout and some fresh air. With the weather we have been having all January and February, I thought we would have great 75 degree weather with the sun out. Well, I will have you know it was 21 degrees with the wind chill and the sun was hidden behind thick clouds that produced a steady mist for us, and kicked up a vicious wind. So, trying to warm up my body for the game was next to impossible. Especially after being cramped in the back seat of a car for a hour and a half drive to the fields. Another problem we ran into was the small fact that we had not practiced once for this tournament. So our warm up consisted mainly just jumping up and down and asking each other, "What in the heck are wee doing here?" Well, our first game started and on the first play we got penalized for breaking the rules. Our second play we broke a different one. Third play we threw it to the other team. This is pretty much how the first game went. Actually, about four scrapes, two pulled muscles, a few jammed fingers and a bloody nose happened as well. Not a great first showing. We had a break between this first disaster and the next one so we decided to go back to the camped car and sit with the heater on instead of finding a rule book and learn how to play the game right. Our second game went about as well as the first one. This one had dislocated hips, sprained ankles, muscle tears, and black eyes as well. I had come into this tournament thinking I was the 6 Million Dollar Man but after this second game, the second crushing defeat in freezing temperatures, I was starting to feel more like a 6 Thousand Dollar Man. After the second lost, we mad another decision to sprint to the car and sit, this time we even got fuel for our bodies, Sonic burgers. Great fuel for athletes. We made it back in time for our third game (full and warm) and came up one vote short to just quit and drive home. But this is where our fortune changed. The team we were scheduled to play came up one vote short to even come to the tournament, so we won the game by default. Yes! This was a big moral boost. I was starting to feel more like a 600 Thousand Dollar Man. We stayed warm, had full stomachs and got our first victory under our belts. Time to celebrate. No better way then to celebrate a victory but to drink right!!! Not alcohol, RED BULLS! We raided a Red Bull marketing truck and made out with over 50 dollars worth of Red Bulls. We then proceeded to drink about 30 dollars worth of Red Bull. Now we are hyper and ready to play another game. Winning the one game by forfeit caused us to make the playoffs so we were scheduled to play another team that had not physically won a game, and the winner would be the last seed in the playoffs. We are pumped up now... We get to the field and low and behold, the other team decided that frostbite was not worth beating us and they decided to drive home, giving us our second straight victory. We are on a roll now and have pulled our record to 2-2. I am now high on caffeine and feeling more like a 1 Million Dollar Man. We now get to play the top seeded team in the whole tournament. We gave them our best shot. In the previous 14 possessions our opponents had, we had allowed 14 touchdowns. If your not great at math that is 100% of the time. This game we kept them from scoring on 6 of their 8 possessions. If your good at math you'll have to figure out the percentage on your own. I was diving after players sliding on the freezing ground, running over the opponents, bouncing off defenders, knocking passes down, tearing flags off one after another, scored a touchdown and had a sack! Yes, I am finally the 6 Million Dollar Man. The other team did however did keep us from scoring on 7 or 8 possessions. If you are a math major then you know before most that they scored one more time then we did, leaving us eliminated from the tournament. It was a close game and it proved to us we had what it takes, once juiced up on Sonic burgers and Red Bull, to compete. We still did sprint back to the car right after the loss to defrost and reflect on the whole exsperience. I think the comments that summed up our reflection the best was, "Man, we suck." and "Do your legs hurt as bad as mine?" In total we braved the freezing elements three times, throwing our bodies all around, and slamming them into the ground over and over. Not exactly what I thought we were getting into. The drive home is where I started to feel old and back down to about a 60 Thousand Dollar Man, I kept getting sharp pains in my body and we had to pull over three times to get out of the car and straighten out our legs. We saw the same 90 year old man at each of our three stops doing the same thing. Embarrassing. Our first stop once we got home was a hot tub, in which we soaked in for about three hours. This was a great idea I think. Though I knew mentally my legs hurt, I could not physically feel them because I had them soaked in nearly boiling water for three hours. But knowing I needed a hot tub to soak my bones, made me realize I would never have needed to do this when I was younger, and I now felt like a 6 Thousand Dollar Man again. I made it to sleep that night, had a good night sleep, and when I woke this morning, I turned to get out of bed and my legs did not work, my shoulder did not want to work either, as well as my ribs, neck and elbows. My fingers all were swollen, and my eyes well, my eyes were ok but had a lot of morning eye gook in them. Anyways... It took me 15 minutes to teach myself how to walk again as I tried to make my way to the bathroom. My entire body felt as if I had been strung up by a rope and been used as a pinata. This led me to do what anyone should do that body hurts as much as I do. I went back to sleep and tried my hardest to stay their for the entire day, only moving when I absolutely had to. Typing this blog in fact has been quite painful. In fact I believe that right now I only feel like a 6 Dollar Man. Until next time.