Strongest Dad in the World

"Strongest Dad in the World" by Rick Reilly

This article was taken from Sports Illustrated. You better have a box of kleenex by your side.

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars -- all in the same day. Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right? And what has Rick done for his father? Not much -- except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. "He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution." But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain." "Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!" And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that." Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks." That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!" And that sentence changed Dick's life.

He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. "No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year. Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?" How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii.

It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think? Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together. This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 -- only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time. "No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century." And Dick got something else out of all this too.

Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago." So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life. Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. "The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."

Coca Cola anyone?

+---------------- Bizarre Facts About Coke -----------------+

[You would think that after reading these facts I would think twice about drinking Coke, but I am opening a can as we speak!]

* In many U.S. states the highway patrol carries two gallons of Coke in the trunk to remove blood from the highway after a car accident.

* You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of coke and it will be gone in two days.

* You can rub a car bumper with a crumpled-up piece of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola to remove rust spots.

* Pouring a can of Coca-Cola over a car battery terminal will bubble away corrosion.

* Applying a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola to the rusted bolt or several minutes will loosen it.

* You can empty a can of coke into a load of greasy clothes, add detergent, and run through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola will help loosen grease stains. It will also clean road haze from your windshield.

* The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. Its Ph is 2.8. It will dissolve a nail in about 4 days.

* To carry Coca-Cola syrup (the concentrate) the commercial truck must use the Hazardous material place cards reserved for Highly corrosive materials.

* The distributors of coke have been using it to clean the engines of their trucks for about 20 years.

Drink up!!!

June 20, 2005
Someone Else's Child
By BOB HERBERT
It has become clearer than ever that Americans do not want to fight George W. Bush's tragically misguided war in Iraq.
You can still find plenty of folks arguing that we have to stay the course, or even raise the stakes by sending more troops to the war zone. But from the very start of this war the loudest of the flag-waving hawks were those who were safely beyond military age themselves and were unwilling to send their own children off to fight.
It's easy to be macho when you have nothing at risk. The hawks want the war to be fought with other people's children, while their own children go safely off to college, or to the mall. The number of influential American officials who have children in uniform in Iraq is minuscule.
Most Americans want no part of Mr. Bush's war, which is why Army recruiters are failing so miserably at meeting their monthly enlistment quotas. Desperate, the Army is lowering its standards, shortening tours, increasing bonuses and violating its own recruitment regulations and ethical guidelines.
Americans do not want to fight this war.http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/opinion/20herbert.html?pagewanted=print

Bizarre Holidays in June

June is Adopt-A-Shelter-Cat Month, American Rivers Month, Cancer In The Sun Month, Dairy Month, Turkey Lover's Month, National Accordian Awareness Month, National Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Month, National Ice Tea Month, National Papaya Month, National Pest Control Month, National Rose Month, Fight The Filthy Fly Month, and Zoo and Aquarium Month


June 1 is . . . . . Dare Day
June 2 is . . . . . National Rocky Road Day
June 3 is . . . . . Repeat Day
June 4 is . . . . . Old Maid's Day
June 5 is . . . . . Festival Of Popular Delusions Day
June 6 is . . . . . Teacher's Day and National Applesauce Cake Day
June 7 is . . . . . National Chocolate Ice Cream Day
June 8 is . . . . . Name Your Poison Day
June 9 is . . . . . Donald Duck Day
June 10 is . . . . National Yo-Yo Day
June 11 is . . . . National Hug Holiday and King Kamehameha Day
June 12 is . . . . Machine Day
June 13 is . . . . National Juggling Day and Kitchen Klutzes Of America Day
June 14 is . . . . Pop Goes The Weasel Day
June 15 is . . . . Smile Power Day
June 16 is . . . . National Hollerin' Contest Day
June 17 is . . . . Watergate Day and Eat Your Vegetables Day
June 18 is . . . . International Panic Day
June 19 is . . . . World Sauntering Day
June 20 is . . . . Ice Cream Soda Day
June 21 is . . . .Cuckoo Warning Day
June 22 is . . . . National Chocolate Eclair Day
June 23 is . . . . National Pink Day
June 24 is . . . . Museum Comes To Life Day
June 25 is . . . . Log Cabin Day
June 26 is . . . . National Chocolate Pudding Day
June 27 is . . . . National Columnists Day
June 28 is . . . . Paul Bunyan Day
June 29 is . . . . Camera Day
June 30 is . . . . Meteor Day

http://www.bizarrenews.com/

+------------- Bizarre National Superstitions -------------+

In Iceland, an unmarried person who sits at the corner of a table won't marry for seven years. A pregnant woman who drinks from a cracked cup risks having a baby with a hare-lip.

In Japan, picking up a comb with its teeth facing your body brings bad luck.

In Malta, churches with two towers are fitted with a clock face in each but the two clocks always tell different times to confuse the Devil about the time of the service.

In Nigeria, a man hit with a broom becomes impotent unless he retaliates seven times with the same broom. ** Sweeping a house at night brings misfortune to the occupants.
(now I have another excuse to get out of work! Yeah!)

In Poland, bringing lilac into the house is a sure sign of impending death.
(Oh dear! My favorite spring flower too!)

In Scotland, red and green should never be worn together. It is unlucky to throw vegetables on to the fire and to carry a spade through the house. This means that a grave will soon be dug. And three swans flying together means a national disaster is imminent. (Christmas is always a distaster at my house!)

In Holland, people with red hair bring bad luck.
(and I am going to Holland this weekend to meet up with a friend who has RED HAIR)

In China, sweeping out a house removes all the good luck, especially on Chinese New Year.
(maybe this was why their toilets were so nasty, tourists rated them the worst in the world?)

http://www.bizarrenews.com

Say the right thing

Jack wakes up at home with a huge hangover he can't believe. He forces himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, a single red rose!

Jack sits down and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed.Jack looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house. He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror, and notices a note on the table:
"Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to go shopping--Love you!"

He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating. Jack asks, "Son... what happened last night?""Well, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and out of your mind. You broke some furniture, puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door."
"So, why is everything in such perfect order, so clean, I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me?"His son replies, "Oh, THAT!... Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed, "Leave me alone, lady, I'm married!"

Broken furniture -- $85.26
Hot Breakfast -- $4.20
Red Rose bud -- $3.00
Two Aspirins -- $0.38
Saying the right thing, at the right time -- Priceless.

In the News: Don't get mad, get even.

MELBOURNE, Australia - I guess you have to be careful who you piss off. A dog club member who was mad after a fight with two women office-bearers took out newspaper ads with their phone numbers touting them as sex workers. One of the victims, a 72-year-old wheelchair-bound woman, had an ad announcing her as "Pauline, erotic fantasies are what I like. Home all day." The come-on line for the other woman, 56, said "Sandy, bashful, bring your toys, a devil after midnight." The two women were woken up by incessant phone calls which didn't stop until the next week's edition. Shirley Irene Wright, 52, was caught when it was discovered the ads were paid for using her bank card.

~"Dreams are not dreams at all. They are simply reality that has yet to happen."

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
7. Appointing an intervention team to re-animate the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Re-classifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
10. Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do a time management study to see if the lighter riders would improve productivity.
16. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.
18. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.
20. Say things like, "This is the way we have always ridden this horse."
21. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
22. Comparing the state of dead horses in todays environment.
23. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
24. Do a Cost Analysis study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
25. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
26. Apply for a government subsidy to retrain dead horses.

This can be applied to many government projects as well.

Facts about Humans

People who live in the city have longer, thicker nose hairs than people who live in the country.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every 2 weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.

Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands.

The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet.

We shed an average of 40 pounds of dead skin in a lifetime.

When we blush, our stomach lining also turns red.

You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

Your tongue print is as unique as your fingerprint.

We get goose bumps where our ancestors used to have hair.

On a square inch of our skin, there are 20 million micro- scopic animals.

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

Vatertag/HerrentagFather's Day in Germany has a different origin and is a very different observance than the American version. (Austria's Vatertag is more like the U.S. holiday. See below.) Germany's Vatertag began in the the Middle Ages as a religious procession honoring "Gott, den Vater" on Ancension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt, usually in May). Although as late as the 1700s Vatertag was a family day for honoring dad, somehow things went sour and in the 19th century the custom reappeared in Berlin as a less refined and very alcoholic celebration on that same date (20 May 2004, 5 May 2005, 25 May 2006). Today Germany's Vatertag is supposed to be closer to a "boys' day out" and a pub tour with the guys (Männerrunde) than the more family-oriented Father's Day in the U.S. In eastern Germany the day is known as Herrentag, but in all parts of Germany, the Herrentag/Vatertag tradition has a bad reputation as a "Sauftag" ("drinking day"). It may make German bar and brewery owners happy, but hardly anyone else. In some regions groups of men (few of them fathers) still go off into the country to have a "Joe Six-Pack" party on Vatertag, but in reality, the German Father's Day beer bust is largely a thing of the past. While in the past a bunch of drunken men may have been amusing, it is no longer viewed as something funny. Besides, German men today hardly need a holiday excuse to have a few drinks with their buddies.