Christmas to Memphis

Last weekend, I ventured up to Memphis. My cousin got a job and moved there this year. He's originally from Kentucky so this way, I actually get to see him a little more. Now, we usually go up to Kentucky every Christmas, but this year I am unable to go. My family is actually on there way right now as I type. Me, I had some duties at work to perform that just couldn't wait, and before anybody gets mad about that. Before anybody says that I need to get my priorities straight and all. Well, you're probably right, but there was some stuff that I needed to get done while everybody else was gone. I'm in the IT biz and sometimes you just gotta do things when nobody else is there to mess stuff up.

Anyway, where was I in my story. That's right, I went to Memphis instead this year. That way I could at least see my cousin and his wife. Friday, we went to an Indian restaurant to eat. Nothing says Christmas like Indian food let me tell you. We took the leftovers and made a scrambled egg su fle (spelling?) the next morning. It was delicious. Saturday, we went to a BBQ place right next to Christian Brothers University. It was highly recommended by my cousin's and Memphis is supposed to be the place to go for BBQ. The place was called Central Barbeque. I had the pulled pork sandwich (my favorite BBQ dish) and greens. The BBQ was pretty good. I also had a new beer. It was called Ghost River. I had their Glacial Pale Ale and the Black Magic. They were both delicious. I highly recommend them.

Next up, we went to BB King's BBQ and Blues. They've got some BB King beer there. It was alright, not quite as good as the Ghost River. We listened to some music for a while, but then we left to wonder Beale Street. Now, I've been to Beale St. twice now since turning 21. And maybe I'm not giving it a fair shake, but so far, unimpressed. Maybe it's because I'm trying to compare it to Bourbon, but still I expect a little more. There was nothing going on in any bar. There might have been 30 people walking around total down the whole stretch. The bars all had 10 or 12 people maybe in them. It was vacant. I guarantee you that there were more people out and about here in Little Rock at the River Market than there were on Beale Street. We ended up just giving up and going home to watch Batman Begins.

The next day we went to Jim and Nick's BBQ. I got some kind of smoked ham plate again with greens. It was tasty, but nothing special, except for the sweet cornbread was delicious.

All in all this is what I concluded in my venture:
Beale St 0 in 2
Memphis BBQ: Great, but I have had plenty of BBQ here in the Natural State that's' just as good.
Ghost River Beer, Delicious.

Oh, and I got to see snow. It dusted Friday night.

Oh yeah again. I saw Tron. It's awesome, amazing. I wish that I could enjoy 3D movies, because this would be the movie to see in 3D.

Hot Winter

Another food related story. Not a lot of exciting things going on lately. Friday, I ended up at Vino's. I ordered my favorite, a Pizza Margherita. It has Roma Tomatoes, garlic, mozzarella, and olive oil instead of sauce. Vino's is probably the best micro-brewery here in Little Rock. We had the Firehouse Pale Ale which is a delicious brew.

Sunday is where the real story is. I was challenged once again. This time the enemy was heat. My friend John who dominated the Midtown Burger challenged me in the Buffalo Wild Wings hot wing contest (I don't remember what it was called). Now, if you're going to do a challenge, this is not the one to do. Not only do you have to pay for the wings either way, but you also have to pay $15 for the T-shirt that says you did it. I mean come on, at least throw in the free shirt! Anyway, here's the deal: You must eat 12 spicy wings coated in Habanero Chili Sauce in 6 minutes. That's 1 wing every 30 seconds. Again, I failed. I was a little pissed at this loss though, because it had nothing to do with the spiciness. Don't get me wrong, these wings are very spicy. but I eat spicy food all of the time. My eyes were tearing, and my whole body was shaking but I can block out the pain. What I couldn't block was the temperature of the dang things! They pulled them out of the oven straight to our table. It was like somebody telling you to chug a full pot of coffee. Sure you could do it, but you would burn a hole in your throat doing it. Not only that, but you've gotta really put those things away quick to eat all 12 in under 6 minutes. I would have trouble with 12 honey BBQ wings in 6 minutes, especially when every bite scalds you mouth. Next time, I will ask to have them sit out for 10 minutes or so.

So, yeah. I only got 9 wings down in the 12 minutes. Of course John somehow stuffed them all down, but I didn't let running out of time stop me. I gave 1 wing away to somebody who wanted to try the Spicy Wings (they took one bite and couldn't handle any more) and I ate the other two no problem. I knew because I had already eaten these wings before that the real challenge had just started. The Habenaros don't just give up after you eat them. They burn in your stomach all night. You can actually feel the sauce move through your intestines as as it burns its way out, and eventually you must expel it where it is just as spicy as the first time. This part is not fun, but it is the price you have to pay.

I'm coming for the Shutup Juice.

The Midtown Challenge

Current Status: Critical

Just an hour ago, I attempted The Midtown Monster Burger Challenge. When I found out about it, I couldn't help but to take it on. Now, I wish I hadn't. The challenge is: 4 big burger patties, 2 eggs, a full can of spam (about 3/4 pound), cheese, mayo, lettuce, tomato, and 4 buns all piled on-top of each other to make one massive burger. It took the entire griddle to cook 2 burgers.

I was not alone for this challenge, My friend, John, attempted as well . . . and well he succeeded where I failed. You have 30 minutes to complete the task, but he only needed 16. I finished about 80% of mine before throwing in the towel. The giant slab of Spam was too much for me to handle.

After my defeat, I hobbled out to my truck, barely able to even walk. It is even hard to type. My belly is swollen and I am miserable. I am soon going to retire to bed, but I really don't know if I will even be able to sleep.

I have been defeated.

Down With The Sickness

Wow. Sorry about that guys. I apologize. It seems like it has been forever since we last did this. So much has happened. Unfortunately catch-up posts are never fun, but I promise another post after this weekend.



1st thing's first. I went back down to Gurdon to do some more research. This photo was taken at 2:10 AM. It was a full moon night so it was bright enough to see where to walk without flashlights, but it wasn't quite as bright as the picture lets on. I was taking some very slow shutter shots, but I did find a possible explanation for the light. Notice how the trees overhang to form balls of light that become an optical illusion that look brighter than the actual sky. Now the lights we saw this night were different and nowhere near as bright as the time before so even if this was the cause, I still would like more evidence. Plus, what is that mysterious ghostly figure right below the balls of light. It shows up in all of my pictures . Hmm. . . .


Then, somewhere between the Gurdon trip and Halloween, I went to my cousin's wedding and got sick as a dog. Some sort of virus was going around and it knocked me down for the count. I lost 4 days of work to that thing. I actually ended up in the Hospital after fighting it for a whole day. I couldn't hold any fluids in. I was dehydrated and worsening as the day went on. The Hospital pumped a liter into me, gave me some nausea medicine and 3 days later I could drive without the whole world spinning. Speaking of Halloween, I carved pretty much the best pumpkin in the world this year. You know you're jealous. If you can't make it all out, here's what it is: It's an evil scare crow (think the People of the Corn) with a blackbird resting on his arm in a field of corn that is on fire. There is an eerie moon with a cloud rolling in front of it int the background with a rolling hill that has a mushroom cloud exploding a nearby town (the mushroomy part kind of fell out before I took the picture).

That brings us all the way up to last weekend where I went hiking along the Ouachita Trail near Lake Sylvia. Actually, we walked across Lake Sylvia, it has been that dry. The hike was great though. We hiked about 12 miles, saw a handful of deer in one spot, lots of squirrels and about 14 people along the way. I'll leave you with some pictures of the hike.

Gurdon Light is Real

We decided to go back to Gurdon last night. We parked on the dirt road this time, and 4 locals pulled up behind us and walked in with us. Some of the locals were under the influence of some type of mind altering drug so they were a little rowdy.

We walked past the second trestle and the locals said it was far enough to start banging on the tracks. They banged away, but nothing happened. We walked another 75 yards or so and something just felt right. I stopped the group and we turned off all of our lights. (It was around 2AM) All of a sudden one of the locals starts yelling "Oh man! Did you see that. There it is. Right there man. How can you not see it?" We all thought they were pulling are legs, but at the same time, I was seeing something too. First, I would just see flashes of light way down the tracks 200 yards or more. Then, I started to see sparks of momentarily concentrated light way down near the horizon. You couldn't really look straight at it to see it well. You had to look off to the side a bit, but then we started seeing it more clearly. We could see it flickering and getting brighter. Then, we saw it swinging back and forth along the tracks. It would go down in the ditch and come back up, most of the time it hung around waist high. Then, it started to get closer. Slowly it swung closer to us and before you know it, it looked as if it were less than 20 yards away. The woods seem to flash around us. Then, we heard it. We heard the lantern swinging back and forth. We heard it off in the woods. It was coming from less than 10 yards away in the woods. The locals were freaking out. They wouldn't shut up! They said that they had never experienced this much in 14 years of living in Gurdon and that was a bad sign. Luckily they were scared off after just 15 minutes so it left just us 4. We watched the light swing back and forth towards us and away for another 10 minutes before deciding to get closer. When we got to about the point where we had been seeing the light, nothing was there. The light was gone. We walked all the way to the 5th trestle, but never saw anything substantially more. We kept walking and stopping all the way back, but again didn't see anything until we made it back the that same spot. It was about 3:45 AM before we saw it again. This time very faint and very far off, but still the same light.

After we got back to the car, we called in our cheeseburger order to the truck stop near the Interstate and we told everyone who would listen our story. Some travelers looked on wide-eyed as they asked where this took place. We told them just 3 miles down the road, and they quickly paid for the goods and high-tailed it out of there.

We have video footage. I'm pretty sure you can't see anything. The light was too faint to pick up on film. I took a couple pictures just because not expecting anything, but when I blew them up on the computer, there are all of these red, white, and blue dots all over the place. It is not digital noise, and I have been assured that lenses are very forgiving with dust on the lens and that shouldn't be the cause. If you look at some of the white dots in the picture, they look very much like the light that we saw, but at the time we didn't see all of this. The picture actually really freaked me out. I just looked at them for the first time and water just started rolling down my eyes. Very strange.

As far as possible causes. 1)I call BS on reflections off the rails. The moon had already set so there were only stars, and the rails were so rusty it took something as bright as a headlamp to make a reflection. Also, the place where we kept seeing it, brush had grown up over the rails. 2) Swamp gas: Yeah right, this stuff floated towards us and away from us. It never just aimlessly floated around in a ball. It never floated off into the woods, and it could move very fast at times. Not swap gas. 3) Quartz crystals: Really? 4)Hoax: Definitely not. This was not like a normal light from a flashlight or lantern. It's as if you don't believe it exists even as you are looking at it. 5) Car lights: No, but not for the same reasons other people give. We couldn't have been over a mile from the highway when we saw the light, but were looking west away from the highway, but we did walk 1.5 miles from the highway over about 6 trestles which is farther than most people even go and could still see cars crossing the highway very clearly. The reason it's not cars is that the cars give off a much different light. A much realer, more of this world, like you could touch and feel it unlike the Gurdon light.

There is nothing that can explain this light. Is it supernatural? Maybe. I can offer no other valid explanation. All I know is that IT DOES EXIST. Whatever IT is, it exists. This is not a joke, this is not a hoax, this is real.

PS, I'm still getting chills just uploading the picture. Oh, and the light part of the picture is the sky. It's not some ghostly trail.

Unfortunately, blogger compresses my picture quite a bit so you can't get the full effect. Definitely click on the image to view it bigger, but here is a close up of part of the picture. There's probably more than 40 of these dots everywhere.

Gurdon Car Light

Wow. Super busy as always. I had completely different plans for the past week, but somehow they got changed. I've been called back to Conway twice to call the PeeWee football games and this Saturday my Boy Scout Troop needed an extra adult to go mountain biking with the kids. We went to Burns Park on their 5 mile loop. We all had a great time, but I was exhausted. I didn't get near enough sleep the night before, didn't eat breakfast, didn't rehydrate or bring a waterbottle with me. Yeah, it was one of those mornings.

I ended up on a houseboat Sunday, cooked sausage on a sand bar in the Arkansas River and my friend brought up the Gurdon Light again. I told him that I'd be up for going right then and there (not actually). That got him excited and around 9PM we left for Gurdon. 5 of us were brave (stupid) enough to travel 2 hours (from Conway, only 1.5 for me here in Little Rock) down to Gurdon. I feel like I am THE authority on giving directions to the Gurdon Light:

Take I30 West out of Little Rock. Get off and head South at exit 63 onto HWY 53. Stop in at the gas station and have a chat. The guy behind the counter is awesome and he wants to hear about your Gurdon story. Anyway, keep heading South on HWY 53 for 3.3 miles. Before you reach Gurdon, you will come up on some train tracks. They will be the first tracks that you come to after leaving the Interstate. You have two options to park. It seems that most people tell you to take a right just before the train tracks onto a dirt road. Follow it for a couple hundred yards and there is a turn around to park at. If you don't want to take that, there is a spot just on the other side of the tracks back on the HWY to park your car at. The proplem with that is the trussle count.

You will pass 1 trussle between the HWY and the preferred place to park. From all of my research this trussle does not count in your trussle count. From here you continue walking down the tracks. It takes a few minutes before you come to the first official trussle. The second trussle is close to the first, but the third is a few hundred yards past the second (It seems much farther in the dark). You must past the 4th trussle to see the light. Now I have heard stories that the light has been seen all the way back to the second, but most people claim that it can't pass the 4th. If you make it this far, it is recommended that you go past the 5th trussle. Also the light has been reported as being seen from both directions going out as well as coming back so always look behind you.

Now for our story. 5 of us packed into Austin's car. I drove and Austin filmed. We're making a sort of documentary out of it so Austin ran the camera. We left Little Rock at about 9:15 PM and got down to Gurdon at about 11. We stopped in at that gas station and had a talk with the guy behind the counter. He told us all kinds of stories about how people he knew swore they've seen it countless times. He was new in town so he hadn't seen it himself but he confirmed that it was real. We got down to the site and parked on the HWY because we didn't know any better. Suddenly the realness started creeping in on everybody. We were out in the middle of nowhere by ourselves looking for a ghost. Luckily I brought a headlamp, because nobody else had one so I led the way. Every now and then we would hear something in the woods. The girls would freak out, but it was just some armadillo looking for a snack. We kept on. Crossing the trussels are a little tough Most of them are rotting out pretty good so you really have to watch your step. It took about an hour to finally get past the 4th trussel. We stopped, turned off our lights an tapped on the rails (that's another thing that you're supposed to do after the 4th trussel). We looked back and we saw a light. We all got excited, but then it turned red and we realized it was just a car going over the tracks so we continued on. We made it past the 5th trussel and repeated the procedure. Again, light followed by red taillight. We continued on past the 5th trussel. We ended up walking 1.5 miles from the road before we said enough. There we saw another light, except this one in the sky. . . a nice shooting star near Orion's Belt. We turned around and walked back and repeated the clanking when we got back to the 5th and 4th trussel. Again, at the 4th trussel, we saw something. You could feel it before it came. You could feel everyone's hair rise. You could sense the excitement and adrenaline in the air, but alas, it too was followed by a taillight. We had been duped yet again. At about the 2nd trussel I gave everyone a good scare as I let out a load HOLY $#!+ A shooting star, definitely in my Top 10 of shooting stars, seared the night sky. It was truly amazing. That is when the disappointment started creeping in. We quickly walked the rest of the way out and went back to the gas station to tell our story.

The drive back home was a long one. It was 4:10 AM when I crawled into bed. . . and I had to work the next day. That was not fun, but it was all worth it. I wouldn't take it back, and I will probably be back. I must see this light. Too many people say it is real for it not to be, and we will get it on film.

Post Race Recap

Ok, so I didn't get to bed early the other night. I think it was about 1:30 AM or so before we finally made it to bed, but it was worth it. I whipped up a batch of spaghetti with mushrooms and sausage so we could get our carbo-load on. Then, I had to change my inner-tube on my front tire and time just kind of slipped by on us.
(Not to confuse, the pic is from the Sprint Triathlon)

No worries though, Jacob and I made it down to La Harpe in plenty of time to get a warm up lap in and push our way to the front of the extremely large crowd. It seemed like it took forever for the race to start, but it finally did and off we went (sort of). The start was on a slight hill and we were packed in like cattle so it took a few minutes before we were moving well enough to clip our shoes into the pedals. Before I knew it we were over the bridge. There was a little mix up after we got to the North Shore and we were sent right when we were supposed to take a left, but we figured it out before long. Next thing I knew, in no time at all we were passing through Mayflower. I felt amazing for the first 50 miles. My muscles were fresh and were operating in autopilot cruising at around 18-22 mph. I kept having trouble keeping a group together though. We kept splitting apart. People would break off and do their own thing. It was hard to keep more than about 4 or 5 people in a nice tight group to help break the wind.

We made it 50 miles before I had to stop and refill my gatorade and water bottles. I wasn't originally trying to go the whole way without stopping, but after the great start I was. We only stopped because the others that we were with stopped. Later, I was thankful I stopped when my liquids lasted me until 8 miles from the finish line. This is when the picture was taken. I apologize for the strange face, but I am stuffing down oranges and drinking pickle juice. Oh, and I just rode 50 miles.

The next 10 miles in my opinion are the hardest 10 miles of the race. They are just east of Conway heading towards 107 and back to 89. I honestly almost had to get off and walk on the hill after crossing 107. That hill is straight up and long. Then after that, you have the longest stretch, Highway 89. It seems like it stretches forever, but once I hit Mayflower again my second wind caught on. At this point, my buddy Jacob had been riding stronger than me all day, but right at the county line he faded. I thought that he had just moved back the end of the line, but the next time that I looked back I couldn't even see him. I thought about holding back and waiting for him, but I was too close to the finish line. I could taste it and I wanted to beat my last time as bad as I could so I pushed forward. I found 2 other guys that had some gas in the tank and we roared past everyone else, each taking turn pulling the other two. We picked up about 4 people and formed a good little group. My muscles were gone, but somehow I was able to convince them to keep peddling. When we hit downtown North Little Rock, our group dispersed. It was every man for himself. I attacked early and often. I quickly passed everyone in our group. There were only 2 people between me and the finish line. As I turned the last corner I used the last of my energy to pass them just before crossing the line. It was amazing. There's no way anybody has ever finished as fast as my time. . . well except for all of the people who finished an hour or so ahead of me. . . but we're not talking about them and they're not telling the story are they? I am and in my story I didn't SEE anybody finish ahead of me, therefore I did finish 1st! haha, Take that!

Anyway, long story short my cycling time was 5 hours 15 minutes plus approximately 5-10 minutes for that 1 stop. The quickest times were somewhere around 4 hours, and my time 2 years ago was 7 hours plus 1 hour of aid station breaks so I crushed my old time by 2 hours and 45 minutes. Hey, at least I'm improving.

Guess what, I did it. I signed up for the Little Rock Marathon. This will be my first marathon ever. Maybe I'll get a few other people to do it with me. I encourage everyone to give it a try with me. Sign up now before November or else it goes up by $10. It's like 6 months away so we have plenty of time to train. Even if you are totally 100% out of shape, you have plenty of time to change that.

Bow season starts tomorrow. I'll see you out in the woods!