Tough Mudder

It's me again.

So, yesterday I did this little race thing called Tough Mudder. For those of you who remember, I tried to run it last fall, but it was cancelled. (see original post if you'd like to hear me complaining about the stupidity of cancelling a mud run due to rain).

This one was not cancelled. It was quite the interesting event. Perhaps we can sum up this event through some before and after pictures.

Before:

After:

Hmm... Now if you're going entirely based on direct observation, some of you might be thinking

"So all I have to do to be a Tough Mudder champion is to swap my tutu for a some brown shoes, and wrap myself in tinfoil?"

While I would love to see any of my readers try that, there are a few overlooked factors in the whole Tough Mudding process. Perhaps some more in-depth explanations will give a better picture than a surface glance.

First off- why is Daniel in a tutu? (Actually, I don't know if anyone was asking this. I think most of my friends just take these things for granted now. *sigh* Let's pretend no one actually knows me)

My stated reasoning behind the tutu was proving that I wasn't doing the race just to be tough and to satisfy my egotistical male desire to do impressive things. However, by saying that, I realized that I was just actually making myself sound way humbler than I actually am. Which is, in a way, still showing off. There's just no way to get around being a narcissistic slimeball some days...

The real reasons I did it were

1) I wanted to wear something ridiculous over my swimsuit to be entertaining.

2) Party City was out of grass skits, otherwise I totally would have done this. (Thank you, Lion King!)

Anyways, the actual event itself wasn't too bad. I'd done all this before, so I was psychologically prepared for everything.

Except of course, for the fact that they added new challenges.

Okay, so they randomly added 3 miles to the course, making it about as long as a half-marathon. So what? That's just an extra lap around the outer loop. Okay.

Yes, so they added the Chernobyl Jacuzzi, where you have to submerge yourself completely into a tank of ice water. So what? That's just UNBELIEVABLY FREEZING COLD.

And that was in mile one. It took me until mile 4 of running before my body stopped shaking and my fists unclenched. Not even kidding. Having no body fat has its downsides.

The upsides of being so small though is that climbing 10 foot walls, crawling through tiny, dark, mud-filled tunnels, and balancing across beams over pools of water is really easy. Oh, and the cargo nets.

The silly people hung a cargo net obstacle like this-

Let's see- one net, two trees. Statistics alone could have told you I would climb a tree rather than the net.

Everything was hunky dory for the rest of the course. Hopping over logs, crawling through mud, getting tutus caught in barbed wire. I was very pleased with the amount I got to use my power-wading technique aka-

Anyways, one last thing I wanted to bring up, if you're actually still reading (attention span statistics say probably 70% of people have already left the page).

I mentioned adding new challenges to the race. A new one, that I definitely hadn't heard about, was added, affectionately called "Shocks on the Rocks". I think the only reason it was named that was because "Sadistic Nazi Torture Weapon" was already trademarked...

It's a remix of their favorite mud run event- where you crawl on your stomach through mud under barbed wire.

Only instead of mud, it's piles of ice, and instead of barbed wire, it's dangling electrical wires that SHOCK THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF YOU BECAUSE YOU'RE SOAKING WET!

Seriously, why would anyone ever make you do that? You've run a half marathon, soaking wet and freezing cold in the middle of January, and you have to lie down in trench full of ice, and crawl 20 feet while being shocked with enough voltage that it makes your entire body twitch. Really? Oh, and in case you're wondering- no, that's not me in the picture. I do not have a full mohawk, and my shoulders are not larger than my head.

But anyways, I got another cool t-shirt out of the event, and life today has seemed much warmer, easier, and electric-shock free thanks to my crazy event habits.

Yes, it's raining.

Twice this month now, we're having flood warnings here at Rice. Houston has a great drainage system to remove water from the city- namely, by creating mini-river systems in all the streets. Rice gets it's fair share of this- with streets and sidewalks pooling enough water to wade ankle deep through on the way to class. And I'm not even going to mention West Lot...

On the other hand, we're still in really good shape. Sure, we get wet, a few cars get stuck, we create our own tidal system in the inner loop. But after a few hours, it all goes away, and nobody is much the worse for wear.

Compare this flooding to Thailand last fall.

Almost 10 million people had their homes and livelihoods damaged. 657 people lost their lives. A quarter of the country's rice crop was destroyed. (Thailand provides 30% of the global supply of rice, to put that in perspective).

So really, is getting wet on the way to class that bad?

For more pictures, click here.

First World Problems

I was almost annoyed by this sign.

And then I realized what a stupid thing that would be to be annoyed by. Only in such a elitist, overly-endowed, high-tech location like Rice do we have an additional college-specific ID card reader IN ADDITION to the specially cored locks that work with all the keys that also correspond to individual rooms across the campus.

First. World. Problem.

For anyone unaware of the concept of a first world problem, it's a petty issue that is only relevant in the most developed, over-affluent areas of the world and pales in comparison to any issue people struggle with in the rest of the world.

For more commentary on this deeply rooted issue of life perspective and socio-economics, I will now refer you to a highly respectable expert in the field- a teenager with a youtube account. First World Problems.

Back to Business

Yeah, yeah, it's been forever since I've posted on my blog. I'm going to blame it on the fact that I during the past few months I had to suffer through a debilitating viral infection from the tropics while still spending hours every day working on a project to help fight starvation in Ethiopia. (Not that this was what happened, but it sounds like a pretty cool excuse.)

Anyways, it would make sense to kick things off again with a really cool story with pictures of me running through flames in a tutu or unicycling around Rice covered in orange spandex, but I'm sorry.

Those are posts for next week. :)

All you get today is a somewhat silly video of me talking about this Stop Online Piracy Act, a so-called attack on freedom of speech that wants to restrict access to illegal material online.

Discussion is highly encouraged.