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This is the Chris Abraham show. Hey there. This is the Chris Abraham show season 20. Sorry, Season 5, 5 episode 21. Bends Daewoo know that day.
What is what else? Is it?
Fun. See, I knew in Swansea is it on and Swansea. I don't know. Anyway, You are probably being completely distracted by the sound of diesel trucks and the sound of a waterfall.
It's really funny. I feel like the trucks and the construction trucks are just moving closer to where I'm trying to record, but I love this little area and I just got myself a huge espresso and two bottles, the both de do do both a do. Is it good boat a dual? Oh or is it just a boat a dough shape, huh? Anyway, today is just a really casual one.
I'm not talking about all the world's issues I'm talking about, my weight loss journey and a bunch of other little stories based on what it's like being a Completely obese, man with, I guess. Premature gray. Premature, white hair black don't crack. But white do crack. Is this white crack?
And there's another garbage truck. Another diesel garbage truck. This is so much fun. Hopefully they'll make the whole thing run and make a bunch of noise so we can listen to it. It's going to be an ASMR.
Rather than a podcast. So happy, belated heed to my Islamic Muslim brothers and sisters. I do believe that yesterday was Yesterday was Eid adha, Eid al-adha. And so, I live, people are wondering why I live in this neighborhood and why I live in the building. I live in, but when I was going to check my mail yesterday at the elevator was this like two, beautiful, Muslim, families, all dressed to the nines, so cute.
So, Able even a little girl. So adorable had a leopard, print backpack. And one of the ladies and her hijab had like a matching leopard print vest, and everybody had on their shiny sparkly like awesome, crisply pretty, strappy sandal shoes on because that's how Muslim, women Rock. The fashion is toes shoes, nails and and and eyebrows. I think I think they Rock eyebrows. I've never seen a Muslim woman who doesn't Rock eyebrows anyway.
They were on their way out and I wish them happy Eid and they their let their faces light lit up because like I really feel like there's a complete divided in America. And I wished everybody yesterday who I knew was Islamic or Muslim and their faces lit up because that was a celebratory day for them. I don't know what Eid al-adha is, so I will try to include that in the notes. But I mean, Mark called me and he always mocks me for living here. But I told him, I mean, what other place in the country, it's so rare.
Outside of maybe badly nor Patty or longer. I mean, I never even had this experience when I lived in, d.c. proper. But every day I say, you know,
You know, hola que tal Todo, bien Todo. Bien I say bonjour. Come on Telugu, or come over? Come over to or I say. How's it howdy?
How you doing? Good morning. Good afternoon. I say assalamualaikum every day and I still don't quite have down.
Is it alaikum? Salaam is it walaikum a'salam when you say and peace be upon you too? Is it a ruse? Allah Moosa, alaikum as-salaam, alaikum as-salaam alaikum. A salaam salaam has Salam alaykum assalamu alaikum, o allaikum assalaam I think is the response. So that's pretty awesome man.
Like what a great life, right? Like I don't want all y'all to move into 60 South Arlington and it's kind of like a bespoke Sue. I would say they're not everybody gets it or enjoys it or appreciates it. It can feel a little bit like you know, kind of it could feel like a shithole it could feel You know feels like the 70s here. I keep on saying that it's stuck in the 80s but honestly this neighborhood reminds me of when I used to visit my I forgot the neighborhood but my grandma and grandpa lived in a part of Northern New Jersey across the bridge from where Where that, you know, Northern New Jersey, Main Campus of like, whatever that universities called, and like, it felt scruffy.
And there wasn't like, it wasn't like, strip malls. It was legit low block stores store fronts. This is all about the low block storefront, right? No big. Parking lot in front.
It really is a different age and everybody talks about how it's going to change, you know, there's some there's a few executive Apartments kelp and I'm drinking coffee from Starbucks and I go to a giant and I've got a Giant Pharmacy, a CVS Pharmacy. In a Walgreens, all within walking distance. I've got three cap days to go to two of which I like one of, which I'm sorry ruff. Sonic. I just like don't like your coffee shop. You know, that really down-to-earth anyway back to that.
So the story starts when I am carrying around I bought a Chuck Berry slick version of the goruck gr1 26 liter which I'm realizing that Now isn't really that built, it's not over built for schlepping, but I bought it anyway because I like the color. I like the coyote brown and if I'd known how skanky and dirty it gets, I would have just gotten black but I like it. I mean I just need to take a brush and some diluted dishwashing detergent and it'll be good A little bit of Donald. Do you? But then, I had its cars updated with Molly on the shoulder strap.
So I could have a chest strap, sternum strap, and then I had cinching two pairs of cinching straps, put in and all this other stuff. And so now it's a rucking bag and In order to. So I've been carrying around around 12 kilograms, Without a plate and then I'm like, you know what, I want to carry as much weight as I've lost. So I wimped out and I should have gotten a 30-pound plate, but I got the 20 pound plate so I put a 20 pound plate in and now my bag is like 43 pounds. The last time I weighed it between 43 and 45 pounds, which is around 20 kg and I wear that everywhere. I wear that everywhere the 20 pound plate. It's all of my tech gear.
It's my super old x 220 Lenovo. Another garbage truck with a with a, with a base, a docking base. So it's like all the heavy in the world and so, I just left it around. Now, it's also got a little bag with my homemade, do it yourself orange doubled paracord cable, handle cable machine, handle suspension trainer anyway, so I'm walking home and the woman next Or is apparently 83 she's pretty spry, she's very Lively. There is a, I don't know, 30 40 year old Driver. He, he works.
He has his own gives his own Suburban or whatever, like black car and it is black car services and he his family lives in the building and his sister looks identical to him. But he's such a mensch that he goes up and checks on her almost every day. And I don't I don't need another
Old lady looking after me in my life right now, still suffering PTSD from my mom. So I don't really interact with her, but I got the, the I got the data, which is, I am successful. I've spent the last year and I've told this to Mark. I've spent the last year trying to make myself as old and invisible as humanly possible. And at 350, like, You know, my buddy, Keith even said it looked like I was pushing for bills at some point.
And like, nobody can believe. I'm quote, only 53 for me, I'm like, holy shit. I'm 53 for everybody else. It's like, we thought you were 60. We thought you were 65. We thought you were retired.
We thought you were 70. So apparently, my success has been too good and my response to that is always the more invisible. I am the better, the more nobody casts a sweet. I At me the better, the more, I'm Grandpa and not boyfriend, the more I'm Grandpa material and not boyfriend material. The moment I've moved past that creepy middle-aged where your creepy uncle and I'm more safely and invisible. Granddad the better but that happened with the guy on Uber like he's this handsome black guy in his 50s and I joked with him when he told me, he thought I was 65. I told him that's not fair black, don't crack and I feel like the CPAP machine has really aged my face because like I'm literally wearing this thing crunching, my face to keep a seal with straps on my head, and my face. And this like breathing apparatus, just look at, look at the recent photos of Joe Biden as they're trying to make a mountain out of a molehill known as his CPAP machine and look at the strap marks.
At his face. Like, there's no denying that at least, you know, for a few hours after you stop using it. Your face is like Is like, you know that fresh for women and men who sleep with their face down when they wake up from a nap and they've got completely that she'd face kind of like that. So, yeah, so I'm doing it. I am doing it and the longest torch long and short story about this is that the reason why I'm carrying around this 43 pounds, Ruk everywhere. I go, when I'm not biking, when I'm not sitting when I'm not podcasting.
And when I'm not at the cafe, when I'm not at the library, or when I'm not meeting friends, I'm not going to schlep a 43. Pound Rock what? I'm just going to meet friends or going to a movie theater or whatever. When I'm slipping back and forth, medical Bulow do Meto blue do. Then I I carried The Rock.
And the reason is is because I want to prove. It's not about dude, you're going to kill your dooney's, dude, you're going to hurt your back. I felt fragile since I died in 2017. Since I had the heart failure since I died since I attained. Let's say 350, 400 pounds since I had edema in my in my legs since I had afib since I had panic attacks, I felt so fragile. I felt 75 years.
Sold. I had an old man's disease. Afib is an old man's disease and caring effortlessly, the 43 Sunnah, be 53 pound rucksack. Everywhere I go is a renewal of vows its renewal of vows to myself. It's like a self marriage. It's like a commitment to a future. It's like a commitment that I'm just not sputtering until someone smells.
Something awful from my apartment in calls, you know, calls the fire brigade. So my recommitment to myself and my recommitment to my goals and my recommitment to a long healthy life and even my recommitment to say to us, daily practice of slow, jogging is based on how comfortable I feel. Slipping around a pack that one would say is only the foolish Venture of a much younger man. So that's my pledge. My pledge is even though it sounds stupid, and it is stupid.
Maybe I'm being as careful as possible. You big diesel truck. What do you even doing on this street? This is a freakin Road Columbia, Pike. It's a pike.
I guess. Big Pepsi truck is you pass during my podcast. Big diesel city bus with optimal hell all good health plan you can count on going by a big F-350 pickup going by you go girls you go girls three snaps, three snaps. Anyway, I guess this is the end of pride month, tomorrow's the 30th in sha Allah and also yeah. Like I don't know if I ever mentioned this probably not but I really had a hard fall when I was wearing big ass Hoka on a own, a bond eyes and I was walking walking walking and I freaking went down and rolled Old and went down hard and it like bruised. My entire sympathetic chain to the point where it had no sympathy.
And I, you know, my ankles swell swole swelled and it sucks. So now that I've actually added a 20 pound cast, iron plate into my bag. I don't care about my. My laptop getting damaged because I have three other. Like it identical, just let to others three.
Others just like it. And they're about, you know, two hundred dollars on eBay still. But but what bothers me is, I don't want to roll my ankle and then go down in like injure myself under a plate or under a 43 pound bag. So, Walgreens truck, Walgreens diesel, truck. So I'm wearing no bull my Noble booties.
My no goal weight, lifting booties. That I bought used off of eBay their size 14, apparently, I need size, 14 and Noble. Apparently, if you get Noble shoes, they run a little little small and they're weightlifting shoes. So there's virtually there zero drop. They might be called, they might be called barefoot shoes if they were a little bit more flexible but They're definitely more along the lines of if you own original, Chuck Taylors, or original Vans, or other type of weightlifting, casual shoes, and I love them very much.
So I'm wearing those instead and on the days that I am really going for long walks, I'm going to just wear like a Hill People Gear chest rig and a 3-liter bladder on my back. So I'm not going to carry A43 pound bag on my long rocks, that's just stupid. That that's just stupid. Only when I do my local, my local trips, you know, from my apartment, to the library, to the cafe, to the Penrose Park, to Walter Reed community park and so forth. That's when I'm going to carry it.
Oh, and there's an addition of my bag. I might have told you that I've been carrying hey city bus. I might have told you city bus and second city bus. My beloved Route 16 buses and my beloved bus drivers. Oh, don't forget if you take a city bus or any bus always say thank you to your bus driver. I feel like they treat buses like they're run by robots but they're not and bus drivers respond very well even from the dorky white guy who says hello sir. I hope you're doing well and have a good. Sir, thanks for the ride but I'm that guy I am. That guy I would do it to the Metro Riders. The Metro drivers if I could but that's not really a thing. Always be generous, always be grateful, always wave at people letting you through.
Always be very generous with people who are driving. They could kill you always be nice to drivers cuz they have a death vehicle, a death dick, always be nice. Two drivers because they're driving a deathmobile that could kill you without even doing any damage to their vehicle, their car, their trucks, their bus, their truck, their car, their bust. Oh my alright. So I was carrying around a TRX strap and a set of jump rope that don't have any rope on them, just rubber balls at the end and I realize that I'm not quite up to up to You fake jump rope yet so I downgraded a little pouch.
I carry things on to the gr one pouch that Ruckus goruck makes its sexy little coyote brown one to match my sexy, hot Barry bag, you garbage truck going by and I decided to come up with my own suspension strap workout tool. So I went onto Amazon Prime and I bought a, I bought high-strength orange paracord. So instead of like 300 pounds, this is our 500 pounds or 42 pounds. This is a 700-pound, right? Orange California, California. you know the California Street Works Orange, you know the color the safety orange for for you Hunters out there and then I asked and my buddy my business partner buddy and one of my closest friends Dan Krueger told me okay well baby, you know, make it 30 feet So, I decided, well, what am I going to do, like, at the end?
Like, so I started to look for maybe just Titanium or aluminum pipe, and then I Came Upon aluminum, aluminum grips for at the end of, you know, cable machines. So, so, they're two grips at the each end of a cable machine. This one on, On Amazon is so good. I really love them. They are.
The brand is The brand is Brian Fitness. So I bought the ones with the gray straps, and the silver handles and they've got these d-rings. And then what I did is I got the orange paracord. And since I'm six foot three or six foot four, I measured the Paracord by extending my arms three times which is I guess 6, 12, 18 feet. Then I did it again so so because I wanted to double it up, right?
So that's what I did. I I guess, right? 36 feet total 36 feet total divided in half is Is, is 18 feet and so, what I did is, I looked online to get a good like way of meeting the two pieces at the very end, so I found a fisherman's knot, which I made perfectly the first time. Thank you, YouTube, and Google images. And then what before I made that not, of course, I put the two d-rings on there and then so it's Over and then I made sure I found the middle and then I made then I every foot or so, maybe every two feet every path. M actually every every foot or 15 12 to 15 inches. I put a knot in both.
So so the, so I Loop the two handles into the giant 36-foot Loop. So it's doubled. So it's only 18 feet and then I made sure that I tied every 12 to 15 inches. I made a simple knot so that the entire thing wouldn't be moving around or sliding around. So essentially it is those two cable handled met by 18 or so feet of Orange. Power cable paracord.
That's doubled over. And so it should have technically speaking enough test is that the word enough breaks train that my simple and stupid TRX, exercises will be fine. The one thing that I didn't Implement that I bought was a bunch of shrink-wrap tubing, you know like shrink wrap rubber tubing that they put on things like Paracord pulls that are on backpacks and stuff, but I'm not going to. I could cut the I could cut the, I could cut the Paracord and then put you know back into fishermen fisherman's knots and everything would be fine but I'm just going to leave it the way it is so I can get a real-world test as to when I throw it over tree limbs how long before the Paracord phrasing breaks. X. And then, you know, paracord sheep. I'm not using then, I can decide whether I want to go with Kevlar cord, or if I want to go, I don't want to go with with, with rope.
This is fine. Very light. And then the next time before I, you know, make all the knots and everything else. The next time I make one or if I make a second one I will put loads of I will put loads of shrink Rubber tubing onto the abrasion point but I won't know what the abrasion points are until I use it without the tubing for now. So it goes everywhere.
I go it's just really light. I feel like the bag that overbuilt bag is is way heavier than the and the handles are kind of heavy even there are though their aluminium alloy aluminum but Making their perfect. You know what they do? They they spin beautifully. You know, when you're doing things like like flies and fall over, xand reverse flies and and things like that.
It's nice to have a real kind of smooth transition as opposed to one, that might be extremely gritty or whatever. So the lightness that I suffer by not having like Titanium or PVC handles directly connected to paracord by doing some sort of you know not triangle nod or something like that. I think is worthwhile just for the fit and finish of this and the knurled aluminium aluminum handles, they feel good in the hand. So, That is worth that. I also bought a bunch of carabiners, but I'm using a really cheap petzl. What's called the carrot tool L called a large carrot tool, which is made out of basically blown plastic. It's only looks like a carabiner. I'm going to.
It says that it doesn't have any value as a real Carabiner at all. So, we'll see if my If my weight? Using it as like I said, press has pulled bicep tricep fall overs flies T flies wife lies, assisted squats. Biceps triceps, all those things. Those are really easy.
Way to assisted kill t-they're not. This is not replacing, some sort of hanging from the ceiling gymnast, just gymnast where they called are called not Loops gymnast. This is the way it's down. They're not T-Rex has to be up to be hung from and they're not
Circles, damn it. What are they called? I wish I could visualize it would jog my memory. Gymnast. Hoops circles.
I don't know, you can tell me in the comments or send me a dummy message. So that's me every day after I finish working at the libraries, I slept over to Walter Reed Park at between six to eight pm depending on how much work I have at the library. And when the library closes, if the library closes at 5:00, I will go over to Columbia. I'll go over to commodious. I'll go over to Walter Reed community park at, you know, 5:15 5:30 or 5:00, because I'll leave early. So, as to not stress out the Librarians, I also say, thank you and hello, and goodbye to them all the time, too. So be nice to the people around you, right? They deserve love.
And you need to compensate for every Karen or every, every, every what is it, Carl? What's the male form of a Karen men and women who are Karen's or Karen? So, Since we live in a gender-fluid world, you everyday need to compensate for the fact that someone suffered a Karen and they need that. They need that life-affirming, love that you have to give to them. Look them in the eye, always meet their eye and less you have Unless you're on the Spectrum or are complete introvert and that is like the worst thing in the world to you.
But if you meet someone in the eye, and hold it for a second, and show with your face, that they're not just words that will make up, that will improve their day as much as a Karen destroys their day. And I guarantee you while you might not be part of their cocktail party cocktail day Predator about complaining about the person they met that Each day you will build them up and I think we need to build each other up. And telling me, I look 70 is exactly what I want you to do, but it still hurts my, my big brother. I don't know if you guys know the fraternity system, but I I joined a fraternity chartered Fraternity in GW called Phi Kappa. PSI and my big brother. The person whose job it was to Mentor me. We called love Be Love. them and love the guy, he's such a like He's he's awesome but like he's the kind of guy who like ribs you right.
Like he's that he's so much love though. Like I realize that, all that ribbing was really just out of so much love and the moment he realizes that he hurts you. He gives you like a big virtual hug or a big real hug or loves on you. So love, he's always been like that, but I would never ever try to show weakness. Like, he helped teach me the Greek alphabet.
He helped teach me that his History of Phi, Kappa, PSI, he helps, you know, get me through the whole thing. And so we're still friends on on Facebook and he's a made man. Now, so all he does is travel around and visit friends and visit cities and goes to the best. Jewish delis in the world. Love the guy, we've gotten closer because of Facebook. I really think like there was 20 years just after college, where I just didn't do a very good job at all of keeping up. Up.
Anyway, my fraternity pledge name was Zeus, right? So first of all, that is the best pledge name ever. It's a Greek god, it's it's the god of Greek god just like the daddy of Greek gods. Just like the god of gods and they made a story up about how. How how they were going to call me Lord? Because of Jack Lord, because of growing up in Hawaii, but they thought calling me Lord, was going to be go to my head, so they call me Zeus instead.
And every time he sees me looking 75 years old he's like we might need to revoke your name, you're not looking very Zeus, you're not looking very Zeus so I should have become a doctor, I should have gotten a PhD and become dr. Zeus anyway, so hopefully in the next year, I'll become beautiful enough to be to be to be Zeus again.
So anyway that's that's my stories for today. Sorry I didn't carry water for Putin today. Sorry I didn't do any heterodox things. I'm sorry. I didn't blame Ukraine for being in a war sorry about all these things but I love you anyway.
And if you're here for that kind of conversation, I'm hoping that the incredibly loud sound of all that water at Penrose Square Park. The it's a kind of a plague. Sounds like it's, it's, I guess shell, or, or it's. Anyway, it's flat stone. Shall Stone flat stone.
And the water comes up from the ground, from the, from the, from the stone tiling. And at a certain point of the day, it becomes kid. Kid world, write 1,000 little kids, and in their swimwear, come out here with moms but they're not here yet because they might be hiding inside. Because it says, Is that the weather quality is terrible and I can't see very far. So it looks like a foggy day but this is Canadian Wildfire brand fog in Arlington right now.
If you go to I don't know. You go to some place, you go to my Reddit profile. I think you might see, I don't know. I don't know where I posted a photo from my apartment. You can go find it.
So yeah so maybe if all you One is really kind of my heterodox stuff about opt-in. Eugenics, movement, sore, or the are we? The baddies concept of Western imperialism. Very literally stroke slow.
A slow-rolling or saying that Germany actually won World War Three because they fooled everybody into the EU. All these things you want to hear that kind of heterodox con hetero. Ducks heterodox content, then just hold on. I'm sure another one will come out. Like I made an awful comments.
Saying there were new. There was news to. Okay, I'll give you one. There was news yesterday about how either a rocket. Bomb a missile or a terrorist act, blew up a pizza restaurant in a town in Ukraine, killing like a million moms and kids and babies.
And I think that there's like 16 dead and 30 not 12 dead and 39 or 40 injured and my asshole what an asshole it's answer was why the like people stayed inside for covid 42? Two fucking years and you're in the middle of a hot war and you can't fucking stay home and not go to a crowded pizza restaurant for fuck sake. And then I realized that that's only what an asshole would say. So I put the whole thing into quotes More likely, it's bullshit. And just the result of a propaganda machine because it doesn't make any sense and I love you and I'll talk to you soon. And please don't hate me too much. Because I don't know, at all.
What I'm talking about. I am like the Leia, slowest, Laius, layman in the lowest lamest, Layman world. I got a Fantasia Nest, am I don't have a master's degree. I started in political science degree but got it, American literature degree. And And all my friends think I'm that crazy uncle even though I don't drink anymore so I'm not drunk uncle. So thank God for that.
Love you guys. Come back soon. Talk to you later. Ciao.
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