Aspen or Bust...

It's been a tough last 14-15 months for me: pulmonary embolism, wife laid off from work, return of my atrial-fibrillation, death of my grandmother, my cardiac ablation, my dad's cardiac bypass surgery, preparation for my son's impending wedding...yeah, it's been chaotic.

Well, things have been looking up, a bit. The ablation took care of my a-fib, I've lost my winter weight gain, I've been lifting weights and biking so I look and feel better(bottom shot of me, my daughter and our dogs Basil and Buddha)  than how chunky I was looking when I was in Portugal back in February as you can see from this shot from a Benfica soccer game...(Our former exchange student Rodrigo is on the left, his buddy Duarte is on the right)

A couple of weeks back a couple of Metropolis Old Boys put out an e-mail looking for players over the age of 35 interested in playing at the Aspen Ruggerfest. http://www.facebook.com/aspenruggerfest
I decided that I am going to be 50 in October, I may not get another chance to play at this tournament and everybody I know who has gone to Aspen Ruggerfest has had a really, REALLY, good time. I decided to throw caution to the wind and get my plane tickets to go to Colorado in September. http://www.aspenrugby.com/ruggerfest.html


I am going to talk with my cardiologist about coming up with a plan to get off the blood thinner that I have been on for the past 15 months. I am increasing my interval training and I will start going to practices with Metropolis when my work schedule allows.(I work straight evenings)

I am really committed to doing this. I may be nuts, but I think going to this tournament serves as a great carrot on the stick to improve my fitness and play some rugby again. It won't be easy...I'll feel like a new kid at rugby practice...but it will put a smile back on my face.