Thanks so much for asking. Keep up with my via twitter and I’ll try to get more things going!

- Dean

I found your site because I was trying to explain to my husband why I wanted to fly all the way to Arkansas in order to try to cheat death. Clearly he didn’t understand the value of being able to eat a meal off of the reward for a hero’s quest.

To An Athlete Dying Young

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come, 5
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay, 10
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers 15
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man. 20

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head 25
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

A. E. Housman. 1859–

My life is but to serve.

- Dean

His partner told him he was nuts to start playing Rugby at such an ‘advanced’ age. He came back from a worldwide over-40 rugby tournament in Ireland that had some 40,000 participants, some even in their 70’s. The event spanned 10 days or so.

When he reported that 2 guys died of heart attacks over the course of the event (one on the pitch and another in a bar, I think), his partner gave him the inevitable “I told you so” speech.

Joe’s response: “If you took that many men of that age and had them sit in a large gymnasium for 10 days, chances are that at least 2 would keel over with heart attacks for no apparent reason. At least those guys went out in style.”

I wonder what the actuary tables would say on the mortality rate of 465,00 random people with same age profile as marathon runners. It might even be higher than 0.000008.