In 1799, Denmark Vesey, a slave, bought a ticket to Charleston’s East Bay lottery.  He won.  With the stunning $1500 jackpot, he bought his own freedom.  Then for the next twenty some years, he planned and recruited for the fearsome Vesey Slave Uprising of 1822.

When you win the Mega-Millions jackpot tonight, what will you do with $540 million?

Hullo?! You’re not going to win the Mega-Millions jackpot. The odds are 1 in 175 million, the equivalent of getting hit by lightning 12 times in a row.  It’s not going to happen.

What does happen all the time, though, is winning mini-jackpots.  About a year ago, I picked an old sledgehammer for $2 in a pawn shop in Pascagoula, Mississippi .  It is functionally identical to this cheesy “War Hammer” that I spotted online yesterday being sold by Rogue Fitness…for $125.  That’s one hundred twenty five dollars.  That’s a Benjamin + a Jackson + a Lincoln. So how happy does that make me? Very happy – I just swung my one dollar sledgehammer around in big circles over my head to celebrate my $123 jackpot. Read more…

Atlanta is oh so aglow with damned pollen bomb throwers gorgeous flowering trees, it must be springtime in the southland.

Hunger Games opens today, finally giving us a cinematic teenage heroine who does something a little more action-oriented than biting her nails while choosing between vampire boy and werewolf boy.   From the trailers, seems there’s a lot of very fast running about, ducking behind trees, and archery.  The movie also seems to include a makeover using large sized Nad’s body wax strips.

We will  do a good deal of very fast running about tomorrow + some things on/under/around trees.  If you have a bow & arrow, bring it (lawn darts count).  The body waxing you’ll have to handle on your own.

As always, we start right at 10:00, so plan on getting there at 9:50 to park, find us, etc.  We are at a NEW SPOT this week: meet up at the corner of Euclid Ave. NE and Hurt St. NE.  This is the small park immediately north of the Inman Park-Reynoldstown MARTA station.  We’ll have extra Claritin on hand to share.

No inspiring videos this week of Honeybee doing bar muscle-ups.  Rather, I simply share with you – and to show off my extraordinary constraint, with no commentary of any sort – this scientific study.

How about a weekday Queerfit in East Point? We did a trial run this morning, checking out the playground that’s wedged between the town’s  library and police station.  In pairs:

1-3-5-7-11-13-17 pushups, dips each.  Before moving up to the next prime number, one of the pair went up & over the 9 foot bars while the other did squats.

You have another 10 days to weigh in with your preferences before we set a day, time, and place for a weekday queerfit session.   The frontrunner right now is 8:30 Wednesdays in East Point, but different times and locales (West End is in 2d place) are still in the running.

Day & Miyoshi getting it DONE.

Great turnout for our last Saturday workout in Candler Park.  We had a visitor from Germany and a Reverend in attendance, and both made it through the grinder with grace and dignity fully intact.

In groups of 3, complete 6 tasks:  (1) 150 capoeira inspired ginga-esque side steps, (2) 150 pushups, (3) 150 donkey kicks,(4)  150 squats, (5) up and over the bars of a half moon structure, (5) throw an unwieldy 20 pound log/stump 50 feet, uphill.

It was up to each group how they wanted to divide up the reps, and in what order they wanted to get it all done.  We had  a couple of long pauses at the top of the half moon structure – much harder to come down something then to get up – but unlike last week, at least there were not 7 -year old girls hanging off the bars singing to us: It’s your birthday! You can do it!  Hmm, maybe that would have helped.  In any event,  QF-er of the day went to Glo and Shae, for being a 2-person team and so having to each do 33% more work than everyone else.

Great work – we move to a different park next week.  It will be intown near Little 5 Points, look for the location in Friday’s post/email.

Tomorrow being St. Patrick’s Day, the formerly and would-be Irish (that is, white Americans) honor the patron saint of Ireland with great bouts of throwing up.  Though throwing up is always a possibility at queerfit, we will be celebrating two different saints tomorrow:

Saint Jude, of desperate causes, and Saint Drausinus of Soissons, of invincible people.

As you may remember, last week Jillian was struggling to get a 30 pound log up on her shoulder, under no small amount of pressure because everyone else had to keep pumping out weighted squats, pull-ups, etc. for as long as it took her to haul the log up to her shoulder and make it to point A and back again.  It was looking a little hopeless.  Then she thought, Hey, if this were a child…and boom, figured it out right quick how to throw the log up on her shoulder and took off on a trot.

Come on out tomorrow and you too will find yourself overcoming a desperate cause by tapping into your invincible.  We will be at the playground in Candler Park, 10:00 sharp.

Largest White Oak in Georgia?

In a semi-secret location between Atlanta’s airport and downtown:

12 min. AMRAP with 3 people at each of 3 stations: log flips (bottom left), overhead squats (with branches on the bottom right), close hand pushups.  Time at each station is however long it takes to flip the log 5 times up the hill and roll it back down.

Didn’t know this place as anything other than a good place to run the dog until after we did this workout and learned this spot is home to a rare stand of super- old white oaks. Didn’t know there’s a whole point system that takes into account circumference, crown & height to determine whether a tree is crowned a state champ.  Didn’t know this tree is an ex-champ…sorry about tramping on your tender roots, Mr. Giant ex-champ Tree – no more log flips in this clearing.  Log flipping or not, a workout in the forest beats the gym anytime.