Shared hugs with some old friends yesterday at Highlands.
We broke up and I blamed it on them. But that gets back to measurement, which is so nowhere.
The guy in the picture, the good looking one, has a helluva story. It happened after we broke up. But as I understand it, it goes like this:
One day he was in his furnace room, try to get the furnace going. The furnace blows up. He ends up in the ER, burns (not sure what degree) on most of his body and struggling for his life.
He makes it out of the ER, but it’s still iffy. He’s covered head to toe in whatever they put on burn patients.
Then his wife shows up. Basically pushes the doctors out of the way, tells them there’s a new Sheriff in town. She takes control of what he eats.
Before I go on, he was always fit as a fiddle. I mean, super fit. And, he always ate clean. Not a vegan, but clean. In fact our plant based life tracks back to him. Because when we used to ski together he’d tell me about nutrition. Then he’d pull some kind of burrito out of his pocket, which I associated as part of his arsenal. When my PSA numbers jumped way up, he told me about some foods to eat, one of which was cardamon. To this day, I still put cardamon in my smoothies and on the morning porridge. Each time I do, I think of him. Thanks, old friend.
Back to his wife pushing the doctors aside. She starts feeding him, doing the nutrition thing. She was doing other stuff too I heard, something with honey.
Fast forward. He comes back from the dead. It’s all because of what he ate and how strong he was.
He starts cycling and skiing again. The last time I saw him, two plus years ago, he still had scars on his face. I didn’t see any scars yesterday. I didn’t see his turns. But he’s at Aspen Highlands skiing with a group of hacks. There’s no beginner terrain there, the blue runs are black runs at Vail. Today he wrote me an email, said he was hiking the bowl. Knowing him, he’s looking to pass people on the way up. Good for him. He looked every bit as fit and strong as when we used to hang out.
He’s literally a walking talking picture of how powerful food and health is. Because without either, I’d have shared a hug with his widow.
He’s got a book coming out. I’ll add it to my stack. When I do, I’ll put up a post.
Hugs have a way of erasing the past, getting us back to zero. Go find someone you used to be friends with but aren’t now. Give them a hug.
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