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automan
blasted chipmunk


Registered: 09/18/03
Posts: 8,272
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you all should watch this
#5972712 - 08/17/06 12:29 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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-------------------- No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical. ~ Niels Bohr
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barfightlard
tales of theinexpressible



Registered: 01/29/03 
Posts: 8,670
Loc: Canoodia
Last seen: 14 years, 1 month
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: automan]
#5972745 - 08/17/06 12:40 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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makes me smile and cry at the same time
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"What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?" - Bill Hicks
Edited by bellylard (08/17/06 12:41 PM)
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automan
blasted chipmunk


Registered: 09/18/03
Posts: 8,272
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: automan]
#5973313 - 08/17/06 03:50 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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Strongest Dad in the World
[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.
Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.
Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.''
But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain.''
"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks.''
That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''
And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. "No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''
How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.
Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?
Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.''
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. `The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''
-------------------- No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical. ~ Niels Bohr
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eligal
Noobie


Registered: 05/25/05
Posts: 7,021
Loc: California
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: automan]
#5973619 - 08/17/06 05:23 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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-------------------- \m/ Spanksta \m/ "do you have the freedom to do with your nervous system what you want?" "MolokoMilkPlus said: I'll respect you if you let me give you a blow job" "tactik said: respect the can."
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Dreamer987
The VerbalHerman Munster


Registered: 04/15/03
Posts: 5,326
Loc: Texas
Last seen: 16 years, 1 month
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: automan]
#5974275 - 08/17/06 08:50 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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For fucks sake its so heartwarming
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The_Hobbit
Bilbo Baggins


Registered: 04/06/04
Posts: 1,382
Loc: The Shire
Last seen: 16 years, 10 months
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: Dreamer987]
#5974427 - 08/17/06 09:26 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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Cool stuff.
-------------------- Smoking my hobbit leaf... Please keep in mind that I am just a human being. Please read my posts carefully and interpret their meaning for yourself.
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Cracka_X
Spiritual Dirt Worshipper



Registered: 01/25/03
Posts: 8,808
Loc: Swamp
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: barfightlard]
#5974569 - 08/17/06 10:16 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
bellylard said: makes me smile and cry at the same time
-------------------- The best way to live is to be like water For water benefits all things and goes against none of them It provides for all people and even cleanses those places a man is loath to go In this way it is just like Tao ~Daodejing
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Gomp
¡(Bound to·(O))be free!


Registered: 09/11/04
Posts: 10,888
Loc: I re·side [primarily] in...
Last seen: 10 months, 23 days
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: automan]
#5975248 - 08/18/06 06:14 AM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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JacquesCousteau
Being.


Registered: 06/10/03
Posts: 7,825
Loc: Everywhere, Everytime.
Last seen: 1 year, 8 months
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: automan]
#5975277 - 08/18/06 06:55 AM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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That was fucking beautiful.
I couldn't help feeling them well up... a single tear fell down one cheek as the last "CAN" appeared on the screen.
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BlindLemon
waves


Registered: 04/20/06
Posts: 628
Loc: so cal
Last seen: 10 years, 7 months
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makes me wanna be a better person
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Im a fucking spiral..
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trunksan
PsyChicken


Registered: 02/04/03
Posts: 291
Loc: UK, Hellas
Last seen: 10 months, 4 days
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: BlindLemon]
#5981454 - 08/20/06 01:22 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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Me too! Makes me worries look ridiculous!
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ExecutionStyle
Entheo


Registered: 07/27/06
Posts: 34
Loc: Fruiting Chamber
Last seen: 16 years, 2 months
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: trunksan]
#5981507 - 08/20/06 01:54 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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Geat video. That's a true dad.
The music made me fucking sick though.
-------------------- "We can only be what we give ourselves the power to be."
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Gomp
¡(Bound to·(O))be free!


Registered: 09/11/04
Posts: 10,888
Loc: I re·side [primarily] in...
Last seen: 10 months, 23 days
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Re: you all should watch this [Re: automan]
#5982176 - 08/20/06 07:17 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
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“No matter what you do or do not, there will always be a chance for you to choose! Unless you have chosen, that you cannot chose! …”
I wrote this in another post, but think if suits the context of this thread. 
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