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I’ve travelled with children a number of times. There’s no easy way to do it, and more importantly, no easy age. When they’re infants, you can usually time activities and road time around naps, but you still have to stop frequently to feed and diaper them; when flying, you may find yourself changing a particularly disgusting diaper while actually holding the child in your lap and the poor fellow next to you in a cheap business suit is praying he doesn’t get peed upon. As they get older, they can fend for themselves a bit more, but they still have small bladders and unreliable tempers, so you still deal with stopping every 2 hours or trying to bribe them to stop kicking the seat of the guy in front of them who may or may not have just drunk 3 tiny bottles of Absolut and taken a Xanax and is still white-knuckling the armrests, poor devil.

This is why when I looked at prices to fly 5 people to Texas this summer, and realized it was going to cost $2000 just getting to the city at which we would then have to spend another $1500 to rent a minivan to haul us around, I said “let’s just road trip this beotch.” (That is a direct quote.) One of the driving forces behind our recent automotive purchase was making sure we had a nice set of fly wheels that could get us to Texas and back (instead of taking my 1998 Dodge Caravan with broken air conditioning). Everyone said we were crazy, but I knew if we had a nice roof storage tub and a fresh change of oil, we could easily knock out a 4,000 mile round trip road cruise with no problems, because my children are well-behaved, mild-tempered, and all-around great kids who would never dream of hitting each other with pillows in the backseat when they were supposed to be napping and if you kids don’t settle down I’m going to stop the car and beat you with an empty Pringles can, now stop antagonizing each other and watch the damn video!

The Friday before we left, we got a babysitter to come over and entertain the kids while we packed, organized, repacked, cursed a lot, and eventually opened a bottle of wine. In hindsight, we should have gotten her to come back Saturday morning, because all efforts to actually get the car fully loaded were interrupted every 3 minutes by one child or another demanding food or attention.

“Mom, where’s my baseball cap?”

“In the car, packed.”

“Can I have it, please?”

“No, you can’t have it, it’s packed!”

“Why not?”

“BECAUSE WE’RE TRYING TO LEAVE PLEASE STOP BOTHERING ME.”

2 minutes later:
“Mommy, can I have a snack?”

“Did you finish your apple?”

“No.”

“Well, where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“THE APPLE.”

“I don’t know.”

“GO FIND IT.”

2 minutes later:

“Mom, Josephine has apple in her hair!”

“OMG STOP TALKING TO ME.”

As the morning wore on, it seemed less and less likely that we’d make it to our first hotel reservation (Bristol, Virginia, about 480 miles). Finally, at around 9:30, we headed out of the driveway as I muttered “Next time we’re fricking flying.” That’s right, America, I’d gotten surly and regretful not even 15 seconds into a 3-day road trip.

I wanted to get away from the I-95 corridor as quickly as I possibly could, so we skirted around Baltimore on I-695 and picked up I-70 towards Frederick, where we stopped and had a very fine picnic lunch. I’d like to go back someday; it’s a neat little small town, fairly hilly, lots of brick buildings. We didn’t spend much time on the main street but it seemed like it had a number of fun little shops and restaurants. Awfully nice place to spend a weekend at a B&B, I bet. But, we had promises to keep and miles to go before we’d sleep, so we continued west towards Harpers Ferry, where I thought we could kill a little time looking at Civil War history and stretching our legs, and add another state to the list of ones we visited on the trip. That’s when we hit Traffic, with a capital T. Not just “volume,” or “a mild slowdown,” but absolute dead stop. After waiting a few minutes and going no more than 15 feet, I took advantage of an emergency vehicle turnaround and headed back whence we’d come. Found a tiny road heading south, and did some meandering, eventually cutting back over to I-81 for the real haul of the trip. (We never did get into West Virginia. Oh, well.)

I-81 is a long-ass highway; 823 miles from Tennessee to Canada, and more than a third of that is in Virginia. Storms the previous day had knocked out power for much of it, making pee breaks complicated: gas stations were mostly closed, so we peed by the side of the road more than once. Shortly after we got onto I-81, at Natural Bridge, Virginia, we happened upon this amusing sight:

We hit another big traffic jam shortly after that, because someone had rolled an SUV into the ditch in the median. As we drove by, paramedics were working on some poor soul lying flat on the road nearby. Shortly after that we had to get gas, and lucked into a station that still had power. I filled it up and asked any of the kids if they had to pee, and they did not, so of course we had to stop not even 10 miles later for Charles to pee by the side of the road again. The late afternoon travel was difficult (it always was, we found as time wore on); William was very tired and irritable, and he’d drift off to sleep for a few minutes only to have Charles poke or pinch Josephine, who would scream a the top of her lungs and wake everybody up. After a few iterations of this, William simply took to crying and screaming as loudly as he could, and we had to stop to change him and get him calmed down.

We finally reached Bristol at about dinner time, and we got Chick-Fil-A (this was just prior to the whole Dan Cathy gay marriage uproar, although honestly I still felt guilty about it later because Chick-Fil-A is so delicious) and lounged by the pool for a while. We got to sleep around 10pm, but then William awoke around 11:30 and simply would not be calmed. I had to actually go and drive him around a little to get him back to sleep.

Our plan had been to try and get to the hotel as quickly as possible, stopping only as necessary along the way, but that made everyone pretty much miserable for the duration of the ride, and the extra time spent at the hotel wasn’t particularly fun either. We decided that the next day’s travel would start earlier and end later, but feature lots of long breaks. To that end, we got up around 6:30, got our free continental breakfast and some cheap coffee, and got on the road around 8:30, passing into Tennessee. By 10am, everyone in the car had to pee, so we pulled off at Gatlinburg and spent some time exploring a little visitors center. Sarah had snagged some Krispy Kreme when we got gas on the way out of Bristol, so we enjoyed those on the visitor center’s front porch, and had Charles and Josephine race each other from one end of the porch to the other. I liked the look of Gatlinburg, and really thought it might be nice to drive up into the mountains a bit and look for bears, but we didn’t really have time. I promised myself we’d try and do it on the way back, but of course we were even more rushed then and had to skip it.

Our next destination was Chattanooga. I had done a little googlin’ and discovered they had a nifty railroad museum, and knowing Josephine’s love of all things trainular we planned to get there around lunchtime and wander a bit. We didn’t announce ahead of time where we were going, so once we got there Josephine flipped out (“TRAINS! TRAINS! WHERE’S THOMAS?”). She was actually a little frightened to see exactly how big the engines and rolling stock were, and didn’t want to get very close to the enormous black steam locomotive you can see in the gallery below. She did climb up into some of the passenger cars, though. They had a functioning train on a short loop line, but we didn’t think that was the most effective use of our time, so we just went into the museum to look at a few things. Josephine, of course, was most intrigued by a pamphlet advertising Thomas the Tank Engine, who would be visiting later in the year. We managed to drag her away from there to get an awfully expensive lunch and glance through the gift shop, and then we waved goodbye to the trains and got back on the road.

After a short time we entered Alabama, the first state on our trip that I’d never been through before. My original hope was that we’d get as far as Tuscaloosa, where’d we stop for the night before pushing on towards New Orleans the next day. We realized that a detour to New Orleans would pretty much add an entire 4th day to our travels, so we decided against that, but still managed to reach Tuscaloosa fairly early in the evening because of the time change entering Alabama. We stopped at a Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner, and decided we’d head on towards Meridian, Mississippi, where we once again spent the night at a La Quinta (reward points, y’all!).

The next day we arose early but found that the breakfast was very picked-over and still full of travellers, so we hit up a McD’s on the way out of town and headed west. We stopped in Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, where we played a bit at a small park and took pictures of neat things at the waterfront (including a big flood levee with marks on it indicating where recent floods had crested). We continued west, but only got to Monroe, Louisiana, before William got antsy, so we stopped in another McDonalds to get a hearty lunch. After that we continued to Shreveport, where we made a gas and potty stop, and Sarah nearly murdered everyone in the gas station because they had no changing tables in either bathroom and she had to change William next to the sink. I have a motto: if a place is so backward that they don’t have a changing table in the men’s room, I do it out in the middle of the establishment in view of as many people as possible, the message being, “Hey, if you don’t like seeing baby dicks, then maybe splurge the few hundo and get a fold-out changing table in the bathroom, idiots.” I keep hoping that a restaurant manager will say something to me about it, but in 6+ years of changing diapers everybody’s pretty much kept mum. Perhaps they know I’ll fling a diaper at them.

Eventually we got into Texas, to the great glee of the younger passengers, who of course didn’t understand why weren’t at Grandma and Grandpa’s yet. (Josephine developed the amusing habit of constantly saying “This is TEXAS?” for nearly two weeks; she couldn’t imagine how we could leave a place, drive for 2-3 hours, reach another place, and not have left the state. That’s a born and raised Delawarean, right there.) I myself experienced great glee when I realized that even the small two-lane roads (I deliberately avoided the interstates because they suck) had 70mph speed limits, aside from the occasional small town. A fully-loaded Mazda CX-9 can still pass slower traffic very effectively, it turns out. Around dinner time, we found ourselves in Crockett, Texas, where we stopped in at a “Whataburger” and had a pretty solid meal and some fine southern hospitality. The hotel options in town consisted of 3-4 really shady trucker motels, and a Holiday Inn Express, which had no vacancy. I don’t know what attracted people to Crockett, TX, on a Sunday in early July, but it apparently was a popular town that weekend. After a few calls I determined that another hotel in Centerville, about an hour west, had space. We went to a Sonic to use their playground and got two cups of truly horrible “coffee” (it was so bad that Sarah actually refused to drink hers…more for me!), and then continued on our way.

We reached Centerville at about 9pm, by which time all the kids were asleep. I pointed out that we were only 2.5-3 hours from Mason; why go to the trouble and expense of staying the night in a hotel when we could just push on while everyone slept and get to our destination around midnight? Sarah agreed, with reservations, so we continued. William, of course, spent the next 90 minutes alternately sleeping and screaming. I stopped on the side of the road near Eddy to pee, and then found myself on I-35 heading south with 75mph speed limits and enough caffeine in my system to give a horse a coronary. I felt like I was steering an X-wing down a canyon on the first Death Star. I’m pretty sure some of the cars behind me were shooting lasers, but I managed to dodge them and keep rolling. Just north of Austin, I continued west, but had to lessen my speed a bit because I kept seeing (or hallucinating) deer on the side of the road. We reached Mason at 11:57pm, at which point of course everyone woke back up and we didn’t get to sleep until after 2am.

William was up early the next morning, which awoke Charles and Sarah; I got up shortly thereafter in time to see Grandpa’s brother, Uncle Fred, come by with Aunt Joan and a whole crew of cousins and dogs and four-wheelers and pickup trucks. Charles hopped on the back of a four-wheeler with his cousin Jacob, and headed off to fish. Josephine slept in for quite some time, which was a blessing to all. Sarah and her mom went into Mason to do Zumba; they returned at the same time as the fishing crew, and I went off with all of them to admire a very large tree that somehow I managed to get no pictures of at all. We had lunch, and then Sarah and her mom went grocery shopping in town. After that we went to Fred and Joan’s to use their lovely swimming pool and eat their watermelon, and then came back to Grandpa’s house for spaghetti dinner and bed.

On Wednesday we started the day with pancakes and sausage (my plan to stick to my Intermittent Fasting diet had been pretty much discarded on day 2 of our trip), and then Charles and I went to do some fishing with a rod and reel that Uncle Fred left for us. The only bait we had on hand were small frogs jumping around by the pond; Uncle Fred caught them by hitting them with his hat, so I did the same, which left annoying mud stains on my bright red Phillies cap. Once stunned, a small frog will not resist much as you stick a hook through it. Oddly, I was not grossed out by this. Charles’s casting skills left much to be desired; within a few minutes he’d managed to catch the hook in my pinky, which didn’t do much damage but which did break the line. I, because I’m an idiot, compounded the problem by trying to pry the lead weight off the broken line with a pocket knife and slicing my left forefinger open at the top. I went back up to get a band-aid and was handed a small mason jar of live katydids by my father-in-law, who advised us to use them as bait, and here I have to admit: I was too much of a wuss. They’re just big grasshoppers, but I couldn’t tell if the big thing on the back was a stinger, or how you could manage to grab just one out of the jar without the rest getting away, so I stuck to frogs, which might pee on you but which didn’t normally bite or sting. We caught no fish.

In the late morning we took the kids back to Fred and Joan’s for a swim, and then went back home for lunch and naps. I was able to go out with the .22LR rifle that Grandpa’d given me for my birthday last winter and demonstrate my excellent sharpshooting skeelz (see evidence below). In the evening, we went to Grandpa’s cousin Joan’s house (a different Joan than his sister-in-law, obviously, but I thought I’d make sure you weren’t confused), where she and her husband Richard had put together a fantastic barbecue meal. Richard takes his BBQ seriously; he has a few of his own smokers, and when he and Joan shoot deer in the fall he makes some of the venison into fantastic smoked sausage, which I ate entirely too much of. They also had nice brisket, and some potato salad, and some of the best dill pickles I’ve ever had. After dinner we enjoyed looking at the stars, and the kids ran around and played with glow sticks.

Next time (hopefully not 3 weeks hence): we visit forts and bat caves, and head to Waco to look for bears and dinosaur tracks.

I’ve got a massive, multiple-day update planned detailing our trip to Texas and back, with pictures and all. (I’m sure you noticed I wasn’t posting on here for like 3 weeks? No? Okay cool then, it’s fine.) But before we get to that I’ve got to say a few words about the latest controversy on gun control, in response to the Aurora shootings last week, organized as a serious of barely connected thoughts:

• When people talk to me about gun rights, the Second Amendment always gets mentioned, but honestly I don’t even use old Bill O’ Rights #2 when defending gun ownership. Why? Because it can be construed a million ways. Folks insisting that only the militia (which they read as the National Guard, despite the fact that the Militia Act of 1903 is pretty clear that the “Militia” is anyone eligible to be drafted, which means any male between the ages of 17 and 45) should have guns, or insisting that “well-regulated” means that the government should have the right to decree what guns are legal and what aren’t, and the folks on the other side that say “well-regulated militia” is just the rationale behind the amendment, and the real meat of it is the “shall not be infringed” part. Each side defines the text however it best fits their agenda. So frankly I just ignore it. Even if there was no Second Amendment, I still think most everybody should be allowed and encouraged to own guns.


• When someone is in favor of gun control, I think it’s fair to ask exactly what they intend to accomplish with it. Getting rid of guns is a pointless thing to do unless it serves some greater goal. It’s like banning trans fats. The reason for banning trans fats, of course, is to make food healthier, which leads to healthy people. Healthy people is the real goal, trans fats is just the step that gets you there. So when you want to enact gun control, what you REALLY want are safer people.

  
  Assuming they want a safer populace, what gun control advocates really have to demonstrate is two-fold: first, does a full or partial ban on guns actually make us safer, and second, is it the MOST EFFICIENT way of making us safer. The second is a little difficult to explain, but let’s say that banning all guns would make Americans safer, as indicated by a drop in violent crime of, say, 2%. (That’s a made up number, just used for this example.) But say that increasing welfare benefits to the under- and un-employed would cost about the same as a gun ban, and would produce a drop in violent crime of, say, 25%, just because a well-fed, healthy population tends to shoot each other less frequently. (Again: made up number.) Wouldn’t the second option be the better idea, just from a cost perspective?

  
  The first issue is a little more cut-and-dried: John Lott’s studies in the 1990s seem to indicate that communities that enact gun bans see pretty much no drop in crime as a result. In some communities the amount of crime went up, the speculation being that criminals are no longer afraid of encountering armed homeowners during burglaries. So at the very best, gun control SEEMS to be an ineffective way to reduce crime.



• Another issue is that gun control always seems to come up after a big shooting tragedy, and if you think gun control is ineffective in reducing overall crime, it’s absolutely hopeless in preventing tragedies like we had last week. For example, Germany has fairly strict gun control: a firearms license is required, and to get one you must prove “trustworthiness,” “personal adequacy,” “expert knowledge,” and “necessity.” (“Self-defense is not a recognized ground for necessity, outside the narrow requirements of a carry permit.”) None of this kept the Winnenden School shooting from occurring. The fact of the matter is that unless you can GUARANTEE that no guns are available to anyone anywhere for any reason whatsoever, you can’t guarantee that tragedies won’t happen. And if they aren’t guaranteed to be prevented, it’s just a matter of time before they happen. It sucks that they do, but it’s one of the sad side effects of living in a free society.

  
  An example: man joins the Marines, goes into a combat zone, sees some horrible things and develops PTSD. However, like most mental issues of that type, he’s able to control and hide it fairly well. He leaves the service, and because of his military experience is able to get a job as a police officer. One day, he snaps. He walks into the police armory, walks out with a variety of semi-automatic weapons, and goes berserk. I don’t say this to disparage the military (although they could probably be doing a better job working on the mental issues of veterans), but to demonstrate that there is no gun control legislation that will absolutely guarantee we don’t see the occasional spree shooting. Make it less frequent, maybe, but honestly they’re so infrequent now that it’s like trying to do something about people dying from lightning strikes.



• Unfortunately, none of these facts seem to make any difference to gun control advocates, who seem to want to eliminate guns just because they find them scary. Which I find a little terrifying, because that’s exactly the same kind of logic that leads to anti-sodomy laws and the drug war. I mean, if we can outlaw certain types of firearms just because they make folks FEEL safer, it’s hard to argue against initiatives to eliminate gay marriage. In both cases, logic and science are being ignored in favor of feelings and beliefs. Pretty scary thought, for a country that’s supposed to be the freest in the world. It made me think of a fun internet trope I’d seen, which I’m modifying here a bit to reflect what I think is liberal hypocrisy on this subject. (I think my liberal bona fides are fairly well established, so forgive me a little zinger.)

  
  Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t get one.
  
  Don’t like abortions? Don’t get one.
  
  Don’t like drugs? Don’t do them.
  
  Don’t like sex? Don’t have it.
  
  Don’t like guns? OMG BAN THEM THEY ARE SO SCARY



• Another frequently comment I see is along the lines of “Well, guns in general are fine I guess, but we need to get rid of military style assault weapons, nobody needs to have those.” (Nobody needs to have swimming pools either, and a few thousand people a year drown in those, but you never hear of anyone wanting to ban them.) Here’s the big issue: what consistutes a “military-style assault weapon?” The military has access to all kinds of weapons that aren’t available to the general public for purchase, usually because of the fully automatic features. Buying a legal, fully automatic weapon requires a federal license that’s almost impossible to get. It seems as if folks think that anyone can waltz into a gun store and buy exactly the same rifle that soldiers are using in Afghanistan, but that’s just not true.

  
  So what a currently legal “assault rifle” is, is a semi-automatic rifle. It might have a pistol grip that makes it a little easier to hold and aim, but that’s just about the only thing that differentiates it from a regular semi-auto hunting rifle. So-called “assault weapons” often have larger magazines, but guess what: you can buy a hunting rifle with a big magazine too. You can also buy semi-automatic handguns with large magazines, and honestly if you want to perpetrate a mass shooting, one of those is even better to have because it’s concealable. And as I mentioned above, there’s some evidence that getting rid of defensive handguns actually makes a community less safe. So what you’re doing with a ban is reducing the number of shooting sprees (which are already so rare as to be discounted, statistically) and increasing the number of “everyday” shooting deaths.

  
  My feeling on the matter is that so-called “assault weapons” just look scary, and so some folks think they should be banned. Which goes to the issue above: just because you’re scared of it, doesn’t mean getting rid of it would actually make anyone safer.



• Here’s a little thought experiment: take two groups, conservatives and liberals, and show them the movie “Boys n the Hood.” If you haven’t seen it, a quick explanation is that it’s about gangs and violence and what the African American youth experience was like in the 80s and 90s. It’s got a fair amount of shooting in it. After you’re done, ask the two groups about what was responsible for the violence. Now I haven’t done this experiment, but my best guess is that the liberals, who usually haven’t grown up around guns and tend to be leery of them, are going to say that the problem is the guns. I think the conservatives, many of whom grew up around guns and are pretty comfortable with them, are going to say “black people.” Obviously I’ve set up a room full of straw people and I’m laying a lot of racism on them, but I think it demonstrates the kind of irrational fears that I believe are driving most political debates today. And let’s face it, as Jon Stewart once said, not all Republicans are racists. But if you’re a racist, you probably vote Republican.


• Just as a final note, I’d like to comment that in Switzerland, every male citizen between the ages of 20 and 30 has a fully automatic assault rifle in his home, although admittedly he is no longer required to keep ammunition for it, which seems kinda silly. Still, estimates of the number of military or privately-owned guns in Swiss homes ranges from 1.2 to 3 million, according to Wikipedia, in a country with a population of 8 million. The number of murders in Switzerland in 2010? 53. Also, here’s an interesting tidbit: “Although Brazil has 100 million fewer citizens than the United States, and more restrictive gun laws, there are 25 percent more gun deaths; other sources indicate that homicide rates due to guns are approximately four times higher than the rate in the United States.” Also: “All firearms in Brazil are required to be registered with the state…The total number of firearms in Brazil is thought to be around 17 million with 9 million of those being unregistered.” But restricting gun availability for everyone keeps them out of the hands of criminals! Not so much, it seems.


• This is probably a little bit “Chicken Little,” but if things continue along their current path, the likelihood of armed confrontation between groups of Americans goes up. Tea Party folks are already showing up at political rallies carrying their guns, to show how “free” they are, and also to make sure we’re all nice and intimidated. I admit a civil war isn’t terribly likely, but it’s hard to rule out. Do we really want the Tea Party “Patriots” to be the only folks who have guns, and know how to use them? Seems like an anti-gun liberal is a guy that’s not paying enough attention to the crazy SOBs running the Republican Party at the moment.
• 
  
• In the end, this country is facing a lot of issues at the moment, and I think that gun control is just about the last thing we need to be worried about. The fact is, Americans like guns, and no politician facing a difficult battle this November is going to touch the issue with a ten foot pole. The Supreme Court legalized unlimited, anonymous contributions to political campaigns, and I’d say we’re pretty much screwed unless we can put a stop to that. Right now the political process is bought and paid for, and I’d kinda like to get it back in the hands of Americans instead of corporations. That ain’t happening if we elect a GOP President who’ll pack the Court with conservative appointees, and if President Obama utters even one peep about maybe banning a few assault weapons, we’re almost guaranteed a terrifying Romney administration. As progressives, let’s just drop this gun control nonsense and focus on the important issues, okay?

Next time, I’ll get to chit-chattin’ about our Texas trip, which will be much more fun, less argumentative, and probably picture-heavy. Have a solid week, y’all.

I must report a bit of sad news: despite my jury-rigging brilliance, the Hearn family’s venerable Playstation 2 appears to have met its sad but inevitable end.

It had been slowly dying for some time. A year or so ago I had to take most of it apart to clean the disc-reading laser and blow out 9 years of accumulated cat dander and other detritus. Earlier this year, the cooling fan built into it had gotten so noisy that I decided it was time to replace it, so I ordered a new one, popped the case open and put it in. Finally, last week, I noticed that it would occasionally turn itself off. I usually left it running all the time (I subscribe to a relatively-common theory among nerds that electrical devices prefer to actually have electricity flowing through them at all times, and that frequent power-off and -on shortens the life of the device) and I’d come into the room and notice that instead of the blue and green lights indicating the P2, as it was affectionately known, were off, and the red light was on, indicating that the power switch on the back was on, but the OS wasn’t running.

Then I noticed that when playing a game, the cooling fan wasn’t turning on. The poor thing was overheating and powering itself down to keep from melting. So, I took it to the kitchen table, popped it open, and started testing things. A long story short, I determined that the fan itself was fine, but that the system board wasn’t signalling it to turn on for some reason. I should probably have put the poor console out of its misery at that point, but instead I went online and ordered a cheap USB fan to stick to the front.

Then, I read a nerdy article about a fellow who took a similar fan, connected it to a USB cable, and used it to cool his enormous, sweaty forehead during extend sessions of Diablo 3. I realized that the P2 has USB ports on the front, and I have plenty of old USB cables lying about. So, I took the fan out, spliced it and a spare cable together, and plugged it in. Whirrrrrrr! Yay! I reinstalled the fan into the P2, with the fan wires going out and around to the USB connection on the front. Brilliant! Sure, the “boot OS” button didn’t work anymore. But you could simply turn the box off on the back and then press the CD load button to get things to come to life. Sadly, all I had done was delay the inevitable.

Just as I was planning another self-congratulatory post about my ability to hack anything and get it functioning again, I sat down for a few minutes of MLB: The Show last night. Powered the P2 up, inserted the disc, waited for David Wright to appear on my screen so that I could remind him that the Mets suck, and…nothing. Back to the red light. Hm. I ejected and reinserted the disc tray, which booted the OS, but again: down she went. O noes!

P2 came into our lives in January 2003, a highly-appreciated birthday present from Sarah to myself. Our first game together was Tiger Woods 2002. Over many years, we have spent many hours together playing many games of football, baseball, basketball; hundreds of rounds of golf; and slaughtered countless numbers of terrorists, Germans, rival gang members, and prostitutes. P2, we mourn you, and along with you all of the valuable saved games and customized athletes to which you gave life. Requiescat in pace.

Playstation 2, 2003-2012

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I am a genius. I am like Stephen Hawking and Yogi Berra rolled into one very strange tall gentleman with full use of his various limbs but very bad at sports. So maybe that was a poor simile. Or maybe it was just so smart it broke your brain. Who’s to know? Other than me, of course.

My brilliance was confirmed over the weekend when I attempted to mow my lawn. I have a fairly sizeable patch of property, so a few years ago a got a used riding mower that has taken every ounce of my considerable mechanical skills to keep running. I’ve replaced blades, batteries, and bearings; adjusted pulleys, decks, and brakes; and even managed to keep a tire inflated with that weird green tire patching goo they sell that’s pretty much useless in any automotive application.

I topped off the gas tank, fired the mower up, and pulled it out into the yard, at which point I remembered that a small bungee cord that holds on part of the mulcher had broken and a cover had been lost, such that the mower would throw “mow muffins” all over the place instead of turning them into a fine grass dust. I decided to simply replace the bungee with a piece of clothesline, and since I was going to be fiddling around only inches from the blades, I thought it best to turn the mower off rather than trust the little clutch that disengages the blades. I got the cover tied back on, sat down atop my trusty steed, and turned the key.

Nothing. Not a click. Not a whirr. Not the telltale grinding that indicates a bad starter, not the constant cycling of an engine that’s spinning but just won’t fire up, nothing. Usually when this happens it’s because I’m doing something stupid, like trying to start it in gear with the clutch up, or trying to start it with the blades engaged; Sears is smart AND lawsuit-conscious, so there are a million safety switches to keep you from starting the dang thing in top gear and flying off out of control at a breakneck 5.5mph. But I was satisfying all of them. Brake on, neutral gear, butt firmly weighting down the seat switch, and nothing. There’s a small ammeter on the dashboard that indicated that juice was being delivered somewhere, but where?

I suspected the battery might’ve been shot; I don’t start the thing between October and April, so the batteries tend to lose voltage as they wear out over the winter, but this one was only about 2 months old. After a few minutes of fruitless searching I was unable to locate my electronic multimeter (my genius does not extend to organization; my garage looks like a Katamari exploded in it) so I said to hell with it and decided to just bypass the battery and jump start the mower with my van.

I connected all the cables, turned the key: nothing. I heard a faint “click” when switching to the “running” position, which indicated to me that the mower could draw power if I could just get it going, but turning the key to “start” did nothing. I disconnected the jumper cables from the van and gently touched them together, getting sparks galore, so the battery seemed to be okay. I then had to spend a solid half an hour digging through my horrendously filthy garage to find the multimeter, which I finally located under various bicycle parts and something that smelled suspiciously like a raccoon turd. I stuck it on the battery, which reported 12.35 volts, about what one would expect. The plot, as they say, thickened.

I decided it was time to go inside and do a little research. I have the owner’s manual on my lappy, which includes a helpful schematic that looks like this (click to enlarge):

That looks crazy complicated, but it’s not too bad, particularly if you’re aware that only part of it pertains to actually starting the engine:

Basically what it says is that current flows from the battery, through a fuse and an ammeter, and then reaches the ignition switch, which when turned to “start” forwards that current through the clutch/brake sensor (to make sure the clutch is disengaged, and the brake on), then through the “attachment” clutch sensor (to make sure the blades are disengaged), and then to the solenoid, which is a special kind of switch then when fed a small amount of current, allows a much larger amount of current to flow through another circuit and activate the starter. In short, either one of the switches or sensors is broken, or the solenoid is broken. All of which are fairly cheap to replace, except that

1. They would take 5-6 days to arrive, and


2. We were having a barbecue on Sunday for which I’d prefer the grass be ankle-high instead of mid-shin.

Faced with the prospect of mowing 2/3 of an acre with a 30″ push mower (which would take 3-4 hours), I had the lightning bolt of genius that characterizes so much of my life: all the solenoid does is let those various switches and sensors tell it what to do, which is supply current to the starter. Theoretically I could just supply the current to the starter by pressing one end of a wire to the positive terminal on the battery, and the other end to the input connection on the starter. So I got some gloves and goggles, and did exactly that. VROOOOOM! It fired right up, and I finished mowing, being careful not to turn the sucker off no matter what.

The dilemma I’m faced with now is, do I order a whole bunch of new switches and sensors and a solenoid ($45), or do I simply get a nice heavy gauge wire and a cool-looking starter button to bypass all that stuff and just get this awesome switch and a thick wire. I think we know the answer.

I’ve been talking a while about my fitness and diet regimen (not that I used the word “regimen;” if you have been using the word “regiment” to describe anything but a military unit, you are a stupid-ass), and figured it was time to share a little results in the form of imagery:

The new hotness, right? And I’m still about 20 pounds away from my goal.

Quick update on what I’ve been up to vis-a-vis diet: I tried a “Protein Sparing Modified Fast,” which is basically eating nothing but pure protein and green vegetables, leading to a rather dramatic caloric deficit. I was taking in 1400-1500 calories a day, which is well over 1000 calories under what my body needs to just stay alive for 24 hours, and I lost something like 8 pounds in 10 days. Then my body said “Hey, enough of this crap,” and I spent most of this past weekend fighting what amounted to a 2 day migraine. Horrible headache, stomach issues, occasional diarrhea, and an odd sensitivity to heat on a weekend when the daily high was near 90F. Bad times. The only thing that made me feel better was, unsurprisingly, eating, so by Sunday I was having a sandwich or bowl of cereal every few hours just to keep me feeling hale. I gained every ounce of that weight back as my body soaked up water like a sponge. Now I’m back to the infinitely more reasonable LeanGains cut, and plan to stay on it solidly into the fall, at which point I hope to have rockin’ abs and a minor role in a CBS soap opera.

I’ve decided it’s time for me to create a “meme.” If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it’s basically an idea that floats around with a given culture, although in practice it often means “hilarious internet thing that gets modified and copied ad nauseum.” For example, check out the “Y U NO guy“:

I’ve decided, given the plague of horrible, horrible drivers throughout the world, to create “Bad Driver Deb,” to demonstrate the hypocrisy inherent in most drivers’ behavior. For example:

Another one:

Whaddaya think? I’m not sure if the idea really has legs, since bad drivers only seem to be worried about how fast others are driving or whether they’re being tailgated, so I’d end up reusing those over and over every time I wanted to moan about them holding up traffic, rolling through stop signs, talking on their phones, cutting me off, etc. There’s a strong chance I’ve created the most pointless meme in existence. Oh, well.

Speaking of automotive concerns: I finally got around to fixing the brakes on Sarah’s car last weekend. You may recall from my review last month that the car would shimmy and shake like Elvis’s hips during hard braking, and my amateur diagnosis was that the rotors needed to be replaced. So I swung by my local NAPA and picked up rotors, pads, grease, and a new jack, because my old one is too small to jack up taller cars.

I quickly discovered that the new jack wasn’t going to work either. At full height, it lifted the car about an inch, but the suspension just kept the tire on the ground. I ended up having to jack up the car with the horrible scissor jack from the trunk, and then using the new bottle jack to lift the suspension a bit and get the wheel off the ground. The lug nuts came off fairly easily, thank Jebus, and the wheel as well. I had to hammer at the ratchet handle a bit to get the caliper loose, but got that off as well.

The rotors were another matter. They were held in place by two small screws, which are entirely unnecessary since the wheel itself is more than capable of holding the rotor in place once the nuts are tightened down. The little screws were too tight (probably glued in place) to get with a regular screwdriver, so I dug out my impact screwdriver and got to work. After snapping the heads off of three impact bits and completely stripping the head of the screw, I cursed eloquently and drilled the feckers out (snapping off a good drill bit and blunting half a dozen others).

I was pleased to discover that the caliper actually has two pistons in it, but it did mean double the compressing. It also took some doing to get everything back in please, requiring even more fluent cursing, but I ended up getting everything replaced in about 2 hours.

Once that was done, I crawled under to change the oil, and discovered that finally engine designers have wised up. The oil sump screw came out easily (although I put my bucket in the wrong place and spilled a quart of oil on the driveway), and even better, the oil filter is right at the bottom of the engine and I was able to unscrew it with just my hand. I wish the oil hadn’t inexplicably been pressurized, though, because as the filter came off oil exploded out of it and got all over me, the car, the ground, just about everywhere but the oil bucket.

5.5 quarts of new oil went in easily, followed by gently firing up the engine and taking the car for a spin. The brakes worked fantastically, and I discovered that even the minor shimmy that had been happening at 80+ mph had gone away as well. For scientific purposes, I took that big beast up to, um, a rather high rate of speed on 495 and it just purred.

In short, it turns out that if you spend the bucks on the premium parts, the car works better, even if you do the actual labor yourself. Who knew?

I hope everybody had an enjoyable long weekend. Mine could not possibly have been less restful, and for once my children aren’t entirely to blame. Only, you know, mostly.

The elder 66% of my children have birthdays this month, so Sunday we had a large birthday party for them. I’ll get to more on that later, but wanted to establish that fact to explain why I took Friday off from work: preparation.

The day actually started with an early morning workout, during which I established why perhaps it’s time to pick a new workout routine: I wrenched my upper-middle back doing squats, and it’s still a little jacked up. It’s a spot that I routinely injured in college, but hadn’t bothered me in a while. I think the issue was the dieting; even on my kickass Lean Gains protocol, was keeping me from recovering properly, and squatting heavy twice a week (with deadlifts on the other training day) isn’t going to work until I start eating surplus again. Last Monday’s workout felt pretty bad, and Friday’s was just a crapsaster. I’m taking this week off, and I’ll get back to it next week, with a new routine that only has me squatting once a week.

After that, I got to go to Charles’s school for “Donuts for Dads,” which was awfully cute. Everybody’s dad got a donut and some juice, and then Charles read me a story and showed me some of his schoolwork, and then the class sang a song about the importance of composting. (Side note: I don’t know how recently you may have graduated kindergarten, but when I was there we spent a fair amount of time working on letters and phonics with an eye towards learning to read in 1st grade. All the kids in Charles’s class can just flat-out read. I would have assumed it’s because it’s a “gifted” class, but parents of kids in other classes say their kids read pretty well too. I guess we’re playing catch-up with Japan, where all the kids can speak 3 languages by age 2.)

Once “Donuts” was done, I got to go home and spend pretty much the rest of the day in the yard: mowing, raking, cleaning, weed-whacking, doing everything I could to make the property somewhat safe and pleasant for small children. Of course, this meant that I awoke Saturday morning with my injured back tighter than Rick Santorum’s anus. I could barely walk. This did not, of course, keep us from loading everybody into the car and heading out to Lancaster for my cousin Carolyn’s wedding, at which my children utterly destroyed the dance floor.

Weddings, I have to say, are surprisingly fun with children around. Sure, you have to keep them from sticking their hands into the wedding cake, but once the dancing starts they can be pretty much left to their own devices.

Sunday was the big party day. The theme was “Knights and Princesses,” so we rented a big castle moon bounce, decorated with medieval-y tapestries and a replica suit of armor provided by Sarah’s mom, and the kids made posterboard princess hats and knightly shields. We managed to get through the whole day without anyone being injured, even after I made the beer-induced decision to get into the bounce and do backflips. (You may not believe it, but my back did not approve, and reminded me of my folly the next morning.)

On Memorial Day, we celebrated by “sleeping in;” everyone in the house was up by 7am, except for Josephine, who slept solidly until almost 10:30. After doing some clean-up, we piled back into the car to go to my sister’s housewarming, where we ate faaaaaaaaar too much, as one is wont to do on Memorial Day.

Additional bullet points:

• Our friend Mary devised some kind of butterscotch-flavored Rice Krispy Treats, which made an appearance at the party on Sunday, and which are now required fare for all future parties. I think she had to email the recipe to like 75 people.


• If you like moon bounces, get one that inexplicably has a 7-foot high soft basketball hoop on the outside. You’d think it would result in a really stellar slam dunk contest, but what ended up being FAR more fun was 3 adult men taking turns trying to fling a soccer ball through it from 50-60 feet away while drinking a lot. Only one of us managed to do it (get the ball through the hoop, that is, not the drinking; we were all very successful at that), although I did at least hit the rim once.

Stay thistly, my friends.

Let’s blast through a number of interesting topics on this Freaky Friday:

• I’m always amazed at people who think that stuff happens to them in some kind of vacuum. Folks who associate with douchebags, and then are surprised when those douchebags treat them like crap. Folks who have 4 kids with 3 different partners and wonder why their children act crazy. Folks who do everything in their power to hold up traffic and complain about tailgaters.

  
  I know sometimes cause and effect can be difficult to see, but c’mon, y’all. Please, just stop being dumb. I know it’s a lot to ask, but please try.



• This is a detailed article about Junior Seau, and why the middle linebacker position is the most dangerous in football, and probably in all sports that don’t involve being gored by a bull:
  

  A middle linebacker is taught from his first organized game to use his head and helmet as the first contact point when tackling and when shedding drive blocks of linemen and fullbacks who have the advantage of a running head start.

  
  Terrifying. Then I read this’n:
  

  The N.F.L. is making some of its former players aware of a study that found that they are likely to live longer than men in the general population…The government study found a lower death rate among former N.F.L. players than among men in the general population — the institute had expected to find that 625 members of the group it studied would be dead based on estimates from the general population, but instead found that 334 of the retired players had died. Former players also had a lower rate of cancer-related deaths — 85 players died from the disease, compared with the 146 cancer-related deaths researchers at the institute expected. And the rate of deaths from heart disease was lower, too — 126 players died from heart disease; Niosh had expected 186 deaths.

  
  I guess it shouldn’t be terribly surprising, given the extreme fitness of the skill positions; having a bunch of ex-wide receivers and defensive backs in there is going to make the overall results look pretty good. On the other hand,
  

  The study did not address the cognitive and mental health issues that have recently been linked to repeated blows to the head and that currently dominate the conversation about player safety.

  
  They may live longer, but if their brains are leaking slowly out of their ears, I suspect it’s not a particularly pleasant life.

  
  Note to self: my boys will play tackle football over my cold, stiff corpse.



• While we’re on the subject of sports:
  
  • Sshhh…the Phils have won 5 straight, are a game over .500, and while they’re still in last place in the division they’re only 4 games back. Chase Utley has been taking BP and fielding practice in Clearwater. We got high hopes, y’all.
  
  
  • The Flyers got knocked out, so I haven’t been paying even a lick of attention to hockey. Are the Whalers still in it? How about the North Stars?
  
  
  • I think the Sixers, sadly, have met their match. The Celtics are pretty elderly, but they know exactly how to win. As long as they keep it close, experience will take care of the rest; the best the Sixers can hope for is a 12 point lead with 3 minutes to go. Which can happen if they get hot, but…can they get hot for 3 out of 4 remaining games? At least the Heat seem to be getting manhandled by the Pacers; if LeWade and the Dominos get knocked out in the second round my heart will grow three sizes that day.
  
  
  • The Eagles signed Shady McCoy to a big contract…good for him. I’m sure I’ll watch the Eagles, but football tastes pretty sour since the players seem to average about 3 good post-retirement years before developing Alzheimer’s.
  
  
  • In Soccer news, Liverpool played crap ball since Christmas. Aside from the League Cup win, that is. On our side of the pond, Philadelphia Union is horrible, but the US Men’s squad has won its last three international matches and has a good chance in the Olympics this summer. They have to play France (awfully tough), Colombia (less tough), and North Korea (which has a team consisting entirely of Oompa Loompas). Are you asleep yet? Let’s move on.
  
  
  • In weightlifting news, I squatted 365 and benched 235 today, with which my 410lb deadlift from Wednesday puts me in the “Thousand Pound” club. I may try and bump those numbers next week, because I feel like I can do more, and I’m in an online powerlifting meet, and also the ladies love big squat numbers. Really. Ask any lady.
  
  
  
  
• President Obama came out in favor of gay marriage last week, following the vote by a bunch of rednecks to keep homosexuals second class citizens. This is great and all, but forgive my skepticism for not thinking that white trash voters aren’t likely to be swayed by the black guy in the white house.

That’s about all I’ve got for the day, so have a nice weekend, and stay loose, killers.

It’s been a few months since the last time we looked at the search engine queries that lead people to matthearn.com, but let me tell you: I continue to apparently be America’s main source of information about Dwyane Wade. Some of the searches that led folks here:

dwyane wade muscle 30 (searches)
dwyane wade muscles 18
dwyane wade men’s health 9
dwyane wade shirtless 7
dwayne wade muscle 3
dwyane wade body fat 3

In order to knock out these questions in order: yes, I believe D-Wade has muscles, I am fairly certain he is concerned about men’s health in general and prostate health in particular, his body fat is somewhere around 10%, and he actually looks better IN a shirt because of his skin tone and sad eyes. I’m not sure how to answer this one:

d’wade you mad 2

because I find it difficult to believe that a professional athlete, particularly one in the top 10 players in his sport, could ever really be mad about anything. Then again:

I got a lot of these:

thatching rake 18
thatching race 3

I think we should clear this up; a thatching rake is this:

A thatching race, however, is this:

Know the difference. Since I’ve been posting a lot about diet and training, I of course get a lot of hits from folks who are trying to get in shape.

how to gain 15 pounds of fat 16
before and after running weight loss 9
before and after running 8
running weight loss before and after 8
ideal protein diet before and after pictures 8
running before and after 7
running before and after weight loss 6
weight loss running before and after 5
before and after weight running 5
skinny to muscular before and after 4

Just a gentle reminder to everyone: if you’re running to lose weight, and aren’t being careful about your diet, you will look like this:

If you diet right, you don’t even need to run, which is good, because running hurts, and it sucks. I write one little post like eleventy-bajillion years ago about my car, and the hits just keep on comin’:

protege 98 10
98 mazda protege 9
mazda protege 1998 9
mazda protege 98 8

It’s worth noting that I donated that car roughly 5 years ago. All I can tell you about it was that it was very reliable and utterly boring.

dunkin donuts chocolate glazed donut 3

They are FRICKING DELICIOUS. Please don’t ask about them again, you may have heard I’m on a diet.

maria bamford husband 2

I had forgotten who Maria Bamford is, so I checked Wikipedia, and it turns out she’s a stand-up comedian. The article makes no mention of a husband, just a couple of dogs, so I think just contact her agent and try and get them digitz, playa.

a tired rugby player after 30 minutes 2

is a rugby player who’s not scoring a lot of trys or, uh, what’s the other way you can score in rugby? Wickets? Chukkers? I can’t remember. Speaking of scoring in rugby:

rugby players f***ing 3
chubby rugby player 2
big rugby player testicles 2
naked rugby players 2
hot rugby ass 2
gay pacific rugby 1

Most of these are the result of a post I wrote a few months ago in which I mentioned that rugby players are tough, and American football players are (usually) not. Apparently there’s a demographic for rugby nookie, and at least one person out there interested in getting a little Ring of Fire Homo Rugby Love, which would be an excellent name for a Hindi-Pop band.

rae dawn chong 4
rae dawn chong naked 4
rae dong chong naked 3
rae dawn chong hot 2
rae dawn chong ass 2

I can’t really help y’all with the “nude” part, because this is family website and all, but here’s a nice portrait I stole from afro-style.com, which I visit almost daily:

I really, really don’t know what’s going on here:

freddy mercury the only acceptable duckface 3
freddie mercury balancing on a ball 3
freddie mercury on a bench 2

I don’t think the duckface is ever really acceptable, perse, but we do give the late Freddie some allowances, since he was fricking awesome, and everything. I mean, this actually happened:

And this:

And oh god my eyes this:

So you know what? If Freddie Mercury wants to make a duckface…you let him.

freddie mercury teeth 2

Not his finest feature.

woman lifts wieghts with ass 2

That seems…ill-advised, and misguided.

matt hearn gay sports massage 1

Where do I sign up?

plumber’s cleavage photo 1

Yeah, not going there. Unless the plumber in question is Hayley Atwell.

rascal flatts stand on the piano 2

I feel like that would be awfully damaging to the piano. I mean, that lead singer is awfully husky.

“dog flavored cigarettes” 2

I thought Google was blocked in China?

quantum energy slim line carp 2,75 lb 1

Wh…what?

bacon dinosaur 1

That’s about it. I suspect next time we do this there will be nothing but searches for Freddie Mercury’s nipples. I’m okay with that.

So as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been doing the Lean Gains diet, along with an RPT routine. Methinks it’s time for an update on progress, and a general review of the programs.

Short version: everything is awesome. Well, pretty much. I’ve been on Lean Gains for about 8 weeks, I’m down 11 pounds, and the bodyfat percentage number is down about 3.5 points. In case you missed the post about it, here’s a bit of detail on how the diet works.

LG was developed by the remarkably shredded Martin Berkhan. It’s based on Intermittent Fasting, the gist of which is that you go for significant periods without eating, usually from 16-40 hours, although some folks go nuts and shoot for 72 hours or more; at that point you’re losing as much muscle as fat so it’s usually not recommended. The Lean Gains protocol calls for 16 hours of fasting and an 8 hour feeding window every day, with macronutrient cycling, which is just a fancy way of saying you eat more on training day (usually lots of extra carbs) and less on rest days.

The original design specified that on training days, you eat 20% more than your “maintenance level” (the amount of calories you would eat to remain at exactly the same weight), with about 3 times as many calories coming from carbs as fat, and on rest days you eat 20% less than your maintenance, with fat and carb calories being fairly equal. The idea is that on training day, you build muscle with plenty of protein and carbs, and then on rest days you’re cutting fat by eating fewer calories overall, and reducing insulin response by keeping carbs low. It was designed to help guys and gals who are already at low bodyfats get into shape for bodybuilding competitions without having to crash diet, and while building muscle at the same time. It basically turns the “cut and bulk” process, wherein you spend months building muscle and then months cutting fat, into a daily system that keeps you relatively lean all the time (instead of developing the major chubbiness that pro bodybuilders usually have in the offseason when bulking up).

While it was designed for those already in pretty good shape, an enterprising young man named Andy realized that there really was no reason that an out-of-shape person couldn’t do the program and lose a bunch of fat while maintaining, or even gaining, muscle. So instead of the -20/+20, he devised the -35/+10, which is what I’m doing. My maintenance level is approximately 3000 calories (based on weight, height, age, gender, and general level of activity), so on my rest days I eat 35% less (about 1950), with half of the calories coming from protein and the rest coming roughly equally from carbs and fat. On workout days, I eat 10% more, with about a third of of the calories from protein, and at least 50% from carbs.

My feeding window is usually about 1pm to 9pm, which means of course that I don’t eat breakfast. This has been less difficult than I thought, to be honest. Coffee helps a lot, but even without it, it’s not really THAT hard to just not eat. In fact, to compensate for going away to the beach a few weeks ago (where I ate and drank like a Walmart shopper for 3 days), I did two 40-hour fasts (one before the trip, and one after), where I took in nothing but water and coffee. 40 hours. I won’t say it was easy, but it sure was interesting, particularly after the hallucinations started (just kidding, I’m sure that talking pink moose was totally real).

As to the workout, I honestly can’t say I’m enjoying it, but I don’t think I’d really enjoy any routine while losing fat. If your lift numbers aren’t going up, it’s not fun. It’s almost like practicing the piano for weeks and never getting any better at the song. I do see the results at the scale and tape measure, but it’s awfully slow, and adding weight to the bar at every workout is nice and fast. Also, I’ve been fighting a weird hip pain that doesn’t want to go away; I injured it squatting over a month ago, stopped all the lower body stuff for a few weeks until it felt better, and it basically came back as soon as I lifted again. Right now I’m working around it (a narrower squatting stance results in almost no pain at all during the actual workout), but it’s a nuisance.

Still, I think the Reverse Pyramid Training workout is generally easier on the body than SS and Madcow, while achieving similar volume. It makes more sense to do the heaviest set when the body is freshest, and then tack on longer/lighter sets afterwards to achieve the necessary volume. I’ve got my squat numbers back to maybe 25 pounds under my January maxes, my bench press is down only about 10 pounds, my overhead press is about the same, and my deadlift is almost back to the 405 max I pulled in February before the lack of carbs hit me. I’ll probably be on the “Lean Gains cut” for another 5-6 months (gotta get that 6-pack, son), and if I can keep my bench press over 200 pounds until then I’ll be pretty happy. Plus, I can do chins again (4 in a row!).

The gist of my program is that it’s a bit of Madcow plus Starting Strength plus RPT:

• Monday:
  
  
  • Back squats – Warmups, then a top set of 5, then 6 at 90% of that weight, and 7 at 80%.
  
  
  • Bench press – Warmups, then a top set of 5, then 7 at 85% of that weight, and 9 at 70%.
  
  
  • Chins – I do at least 15 total reps, divided into however many sets that takes. When I can get 5 reps a set, I’ll start just doing 3 sets of however many reps I get. When I reach 8 rep sets, I plan to start adding weight, but that’s months away.


• Wednesday:
  
  
  • Front squats – Warmups, then a top set of 5, and 6 at 90% of that weight. Really just resting my legs from Monday’s heavy routine, and preparing for deadlifts
  
  
  • Overhead presses – Warmups, then a top set of 5, 7@85%, 9@70%.
  
  
  • Deadlifts – Warmups, top set of 5, then 6@90%.


• Friday:
  
  
  • Back squats – Warmups, then a set of 6 at about 94% of Monday’s max, 7 at 90% of the 6 rep set, and 8@80%.
  
  
  • Bench press – Warmups, then a set of 6 at about 94% of Monday’s max, 8 at 85% of the 6 rep set, and 10@70%.
  
  
  • Chins – Same drill as Monday.

I’m very happy with the routine. Fairly quick (under an hour), and only three workouts a week.

If you’re having trouble losing fat and getting/staying strong, I’d give LG and RPT a look. It’s working like gangbusters on my big ol’ gutty gut.