Sink or Swing E-Book

Chad V. Holtkamp

• Herausgeber: Briefcase Media Group
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Serie: Home Gym Strong
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 263

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Are you struggling to stay on track with your diet and exercise routine? Do work and family obligations interfere with your gym time?

In Sink or Swing: Working Out When Life Isn’t Working Out, author Chad V. Holtkamp spent a year experimenting to develop the perfect exercise plan. After achieving success, he struggled with the interruptions of life and his father’s lung cancer diagnosis. By applying his methods of kettlebell training and working out in the face of hardship, you’ll find exactly the tools you need to power through any obstacle.

In Sink or Swing, you’ll discover:

-How to stop jumping from one fitness program to the next and commit to your plan

-The methods behind the 40 Days + 10,000 swings workout program

-The steps you can take to evaluate and overcome life’s roadblocks

-How to keep fitness a priority when you’re working through an injury

-How to stay true to your health commitment even in the face of personal tragedy, and much, much more!

This inspirational fitness memoir is the second volume of the Home Gym Strong series, which teaches you how to tackle the biggest threats to your healthy lifestyle. If you like humorous accounts of fitness journeys, proven action steps, and tips for coping with challenges, then you’ll love Chad V. Holtkamp’s guide to workout perseverance.

Buy Sink or Swing to gain the courage you need to get in awesome shape today!

Leseprobe

Also by Chad V. Holtkamp

HOME GYM STRONG FITNESS SERIES

Work Out Pig Out

Sink or Swing

Get Strong Get Lean

40 Days + 10,000 Swings: A Journal

Sink or Swing: The Complete Experience

Home Gym Strong: The Complete Collection

FROM THE VAULT MUSIC SERIES

Quad Cities Underground

1994

Lyrics, Poems, & Other Odd Bits

THE SPOOK & GOON SPACE ADVENTURES SERIES

Invasion of the Frorees

Escape of the Glitter Princess

Attack of the Mutant Miners

Return of the Father

Rescue of the Intrepid

Domination of the SPOOKS

The SPOOK & GOON Space Adventures Series: Books 1-3

Raptor Team

DAYDREAMS OF OTHER WORLDS SAMPLER SERIES

Outer Thoughts

Distant Thoughts

OTHER WORLDS SHORT STORIES

Practice Makes Perfect

Father of Waters

Running From Mars

The Cleanup Crew

Sweet Escape

Mystified

The Glitch

MUSIC ALBUMS

Someday

On the Edge…

Visit chadvholtkamp.com for more info.

Sink or Swing

Working Out When Life Isn’t Working Out

Chad V. Holtkamp

Sink or Swing is the follow-up to Work Out Pig Out in the Home Gym Strong series.

Visit chadvholtkamp.com to join my Reader’s Group to stay in the know.

You can also visit HomeGymStrong.com and follow my workout adventures on a more frequent basis.

Book publishing is all about reviews. If you enjoy this book or get anything out of it in any way and think it might help others as well, I have a teeny, tiny favor to ask of you.

Would you please leave a quick review at your favorite online store? They’re hugely beneficial for others seeking that same guidance, and much appreciated by everyone!

Click here to leave a review

To My Family

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: January 2015

Chapter Two: February 2015

Chapter Three: March 2015

Chapter Four: April 2015

Chapter Five: May 2015

Chapter Six: June 2015

Chapter Seven: July 2015

Chapter Eight: August 2015

Chapter Nine: September 2015

Chapter Ten: October 2015

Chapter Eleven: November 2015

Chapter Twelve: December 2015

Epilogue

Did You Like Sink or Swing?

Join the Crew!

And Still More Bonus Content!

Acknowledgments

Recommended Reading and More

Fitness Books by Chad V. Holtkamp

Also by Chad V. Holtkamp

About the Author

Introduction

In case you missed my first book, Work Out Pig Out, I like to work out. I also like to eat.

I’m a married 40-something living in Chicago with a day job in recruiting. I spend a massive amount of free time working out and eating a lot of food. I’m 6’4” and usually weigh around 225 pounds, so I have a lot of space to fill.

My wife is a successful advertising creative, and we didn’t meet cute in college, but as 30-somethings at a goth bar, of all places. Wearing a black suit and purple dress-shirt at 2:30 A.M., I was staring at her, so she had to come talk to me to find out why. A shared love of music sparked a romance that grew each day.

Meeting so late in life meant that fate wasn’t going to grace us with children, so we have a lot of free time on our hands. We put it to use with exotic Caribbean beach vacations and, in my case, working out as much as possible. My wife likes to work out too, though not as obsessively as I do. It helps that we only have to walk downstairs to our fully equipped home gym: squat rack, barbells, bumper plates, kettlebells, resistance bands, treadmill, yoga mat. Oh, and an ab wheel — thanks, Dan John!

After playing baseball and basketball through junior high school, and working in a bicycle shop in high school and college, I quit sports until I started going to the gym as a 25-year-old in January 1998. In 2007, I discovered Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength and picked up barbell lifting: squats, bench, deadlift, press. From then on, working out became an obsession, reading about and practicing the finer parts of each lift, trying to get stronger and in better shape. It wasn’t just vanity though. I’ve had high blood pressure most of my life, passed down from my mom. She died of a heart attack at the age of 65 in 2008, so part of my obsession is to avoid that fate, get off those meds, and live to see 100.

In other health-related woes, in late 2012, my dad was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer and given six months to live. After untold rounds of chemo, he had beaten the disease well into 2014 and beyond.

As I detailed in Work Out Pig Out, I spent 2014 following countless crazy diets and exercise programs. Some were awesome, while others were awesome failures.

I tried so many things — crash diets, low carb, high carb, high-fat keto, 40-hour fasts — all followed by gargantuan feasts of breads, cookies and ice cream. I worked out with barbells, kettlebells, wore out the belt on our home treadmill with all the walking I did, went through successful highs and severe depression, and the gamut of emotions in between.

But I tracked and studied and kept moving forward, finally finding success by sticking to one plan and letting other goals fall by the wayside. I resolved to follow the same path in 2015. I thought I’d found a way forward, away from the shiny object syndrome of chasing the diet du jour. But I’m always on the lookout for new ideas. Would I be able to resist for a whole year and continue to keep my weight in check, and finally achieve the best shape of my life? Or would I fall back into old habits and have another roller-coaster year?

Chapter One: January 2015

Week 1 – January 1-3: New Year, Food for a King, Down with a Cold

I need to stop going on vacation.

Or just boycott the holidays altogether.

Then I might be able to keep myself in shape and my body fat in check.

Yes, I did it again, same as every year. We went to Florida to visit family over the holidays, same as every year. I ate and drank way too much good food and wine, same as every year.

I was fat again when my wife and I returned to the brutally cold arctic tundra that is Chicago after the holidays. I didn’t really care. I was just happy to have been around family for a while as neither of us have any in the city. It was great that my dad could join us in the warm Florida sun too, leaving his home in Iowa after two long years fighting lung cancer.

I was happy about celebrating the holiday with my wife’s family and her sister’s home-brewed beer. And her mom’s endless supply of chips and queso, eggnog and Courvoisier, Bell’s ice cream, ribs, and Cuban sandwiches, all washed down with decadent bottles of Justin and Decoy Cabernet Sauvignon.

I was also happy about the excellent progress with my workouts — before the holidays. Having put myself through the ringer with all my diet and exercise programs throughout 2014, I was sick of dieting. I’d learned a lot of what to do and what not to do though, useful knowledge for the future. I’d spent the last three months of the year working up to a deadlift goal, eating steak and potatoes, eggs and heavy cream. I wasn’t as lean as I was the preceding summer, but I actually looked like I lifted instead of just looking skinny.

After achieving my deadlift goal on Christmas Eve in Florida, I should have taken a week off to recover. Deadlifts take a toll on your body in a good way, and personal record deadlifts take an even greater toll. I was proud of my accomplishment and spent the rest of the day chowing down on all the food my mother-in-law made for the Christmas Eve feast.

To make up for the gluttony, I went overboard on Christmas morning with an hour-long session of loaded carries, walking up and down the street in front of my in-laws’ house with 24 kg kettlebells in each hand. After that, I finally took time off, which wisely continued when we got back to Chicago. The change from 70-degree warmth to single-digit cold was an even greater shock to my body. Mixed with some less than ideal food and drink leading up to the New Year, I started coming down with sniffles on New Year’s Eve.

We kept our reservations at Art Tango, only a year later than planned due to the New Year’s Eve snowstorm that kept us away in 2013. Since it was only brutally cold and not a blizzard of snow, we joined a couple of friends for a multi-course prix fixe BYOB affair. Great steak, great wine, topped off with the usual party hats, noisemakers, and cheap champagne at midnight. After a cab ride home, my wife and I faced New Year’s Day alone.

Since I had a feeling I was coming down with something and we needed food for the weekend, we decided to order the biggest pizza possible from Al’s Pizza — THE PIZZA KING! That was putting it lightly. The sucker was 24” across and dwarfed my iPad Air in a comparison snapshot. My wife and I couldn't agree on toppings, so we split it up: my half of Canadian bacon, pineapple and green pepper and hers with green pepper and pepperoni. Not content with just pizza — it was a three-day weekend after all, and leftovers are half the fun — we ordered onion rings, calamari, mozzarella sticks, and a dozen BBQ chicken wings as sides. We thought we were set for the rest of that day, at least. Then we hunkered down and watched T.V. as I slowly developed the worst chest cold of my life.

My cold got progressively worse on Saturday morning. I’d always avoided over-the-counter meds since they only really ever masked the symptoms. I picked up a variety of herbal teas while out grocery shopping for the next week. I figured getting in some good tea with raw honey and lemon would do the trick.

While drinking as much tea as I could that afternoon and trying to get a nap in, I spent my time on homegrown tech support for our collection of Macs. I had my first inkling that my previous data backup plans were running on borrowed time. It wasn’t the most exciting way to spend the first days of the New Year, but with being sick and bored of watching T.V., it was something to do.

Despite all the honey and lemon and herbal remedies, my cold was knocking me down hard. I’ve had countless sinus infections over the years but this was something different, centered directly in my chest. I was coughing up so much disgusting green phlegm; I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen that shade in nature before. Not good. I needed sleep and pronto. Never one to argue with going to bed early, I was asleep by 9:00 P.M. on a Saturday night, hoping that the extra sleep would help me feel better. Never one to go to bed early unless we’re flying to the beach the next day, my wife stayed up and watched T.V.

Week 2 – January 4-10: Herbal Teas and Writing Frenzy

The extra sleep seemed to help a bit, and the noxious green phlegm slowly became less disgusting. While the cold was slowly going away, my gut was steadily expanding. I faced my first choice of the new year as to what diet and exercise plan I’d start once I got better. Lyle McDonald’s “Rapid Fat Loss” program of high protein, minimal fat, and almost zero carbs was my usual New Year’s go-to. After all the ups and downs with it throughout 2014, I wanted to try something less drastic, something more sensible. I also had the idea of writing my first book, Work Out Pig Out, based on everything I’d learned the year before.

I went into my office in the Loop on Monday, freezing my butt off with the rest of the bleary-eyed zombie commuters. Not much happened that first day back from the holidays, so I was able to make it home by 6:00 P.M. and get straight to work on writing. I was religious with it, spending an hour each night while waiting for my wife to get home from work. I’d plop down on the couch and grind out a chapter of about 2000 words describing how I’d spent each month last year. It was fun looking back on all the stupid things I’d done. Once I got started, I wanted to finish it as quickly as I could.

The rest of my nights were spent thinking about what diet to start after I got over the chest cold. I was fatter than I wanted to be, but rushing and killing myself to strip it off my gut wasn’t what I wanted to do. I thought maybe I’d try out those sensible diets, you know, the ones I’d always heard about but had passed over in favor of something more extreme. Our annual Caribbean beach trips were coming up in the spring, but it was only January. I told myself I still had time and didn’t need to hurry.

I’d been reading up on Scott Abel over the holidays, and he’d recently written about how a client of his was a pro bodybuilder and had gotten pretty lean doing keto. It had been the rage since at least the late ’90s with the umpteenth resurrection of the Atkins Diet. The only problem was true keto was a high-fat diet with minimal protein and very low carbs. Most people seemed to miss the high-fat portion of the equation. They ended up eating way too little fat and way too much protein.

I love eating fat: heavy whipping cream, full-fat cheeses, milk, cottage cheese, rib-eyes, eggs, avocados, coconut and olive oil by the spoonful. I’d never had a problem eating a ton of fat.

I’d tried and abandoned the diet after Thanksgiving in 2014 when it made me too weak to deadlift, but now I needed to lose all the fat I’d gained from my 2014 quest and the holidays. I opted to mix keto with Phil Maffetone’s "Two-Week Test" — nothing but fat and protein for two solid weeks before assessing the results. Then I could slowly add carbs back into the mix, again assessing how my body reacted.

I ended up eating a lot of cheese and drinking a lot of heavy cream and raw eggs. I ate no carbs. I was also drinking a lot of different herbal teas to try to get over my cold. It was still pretty nasty and kept me from working out. Once you overwork your body, it will quickly get your attention one way or another and bring you to a stop. I needed to start listening to my body rather than ignoring the warning signs.

On Saturday, I forced myself to write more chapters and just work through them at a wicked pace. I used a few different apps for the Pomodoro time management technique where you do something for 25 minutes, take a short break, and then repeat. I’d set the 30/30 app for 25 minutes and then write like crazy before taking a five-minute break. Rinse and repeat all afternoon.

Writing about everything I’d done was pretty easy as I’d kept a detailed food and workout log via the Notes app over the course of 2014. I had no idea what was going to become of the book once I finished, but I just wanted to get that one out of my head and on the page, and then move on.

My writing obsession made for a boring Saturday day for my wife, but I was getting it done. We ended up making tacos at home that night, but since I was on the keto diet, I ditched the shells and just dug into a plate of greasy ground beef. We ended up watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives with Guy Fieri all night. It maybe wasn’t the best choice while I was trying to be good with eating, but I kept to my keto plan.

Sunday was another boring day for her as I was obsessed with cranking through my thoughts and getting the words on the page. I finally finished the first draft late that afternoon and settled in for the evening with my wife.

Week 3 – January 11-17: Keto Attempt, Bulletproof Coffee, Party Time

After having written nearly 25,000 words over the course of the week, I was so tired of writing I had to take a break. My next mission was to figure out what I could actually eat on the "Two-Week Test.” What not to eat is pretty easy — pre-packaged carbs, and bread, etc. What was allowed is a different story, and Phil Maffetone’s site was a great resource of approved foods.

My wife loves cheese so she was in heaven: habanero cheddar, garlic cheddar, lots of different options. The egg shakes were still my main source of sustenance for lunch with some steak or pork for dinner. I also picked up a few avocados and discovered how easy it was to make guacamole from scratch. I threw in some avocados, added some salt, lime juice, and a bit (or a lot) of garlic. Yum! It was awesome, even just straight from the plate without any chips.

I was even doing the bulletproof coffee thing again, dousing my home-brewed coffee with unsalted Kerrygold and heavy cream. I could have just doubled up on the heavy cream and gotten the same effect since unsalted butter is basically cream that’s been churned.

The early stages of a keto-type diet are a drain on your energy levels as your body adapts to the lack of carbs. To fend off the “keto flu,” I was also on a quest for the perfect cup of coffee, or more accurately, the perfect caffeine delivery method. I scoured the Home-Barista.com forum for the best brew method with the biggest caffeine kick. Espresso was popular but actually pretty low on the caffeine scale. Plus, a decent home espresso machine was beyond what I wanted to spend. Making quality espresso not only requires a great machine but more importantly, a great grinder. One of those can often cost more than the machine itself.

I learned that drip coffee had the highest dose of caffeine per cup, which was enough for me. I was still doing pour-over with my Hario V60, so I read up on the idea of the Bunnzilla! Buy a Bunn grinder, add in some expensive Ditting burrs, and then you have the best home grinder of all. Then the only thing I’d need would be a coffeemaker. Moccamaster seemed pretty good, but pricey, though there were some others in the mix.

Tuesday, I was back in the mode of revising the draft of what was to become Work Out Pig Out, even though by that point I was a bit sick of it. I made it through and started polishing up some chapters, adding bits and cleaning it up.

The rest of the week was the same, revising, revising, revising.

Thursday night I ended up at Reckless Records downtown on Madison picking up vintage 45s for my wife’s friend’s 45th birthday party that upcoming Saturday. “Glory of Love” (the #1 song of 1986), “Mony, Mony” (my wife was in the crowd for the Billy Idol video shoot), “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” (a favorite of my wife’s family), and “That’ll Be the Day” (who doesn’t love Buddy Holly?).

On Friday night, I finally mustered up the courage to show my wife the first chapter. I was nervous as hell because she was a writer for a living at her advertising job. I was just somebody who had the talent but hadn’t put it to use for a while.

She laughed twice in the first page, so I knew I was okay. She ended up learning a lot of things about me that I hadn’t bothered to mention the year before, but it was all okay. I ended up sending it to her via PDF so she could read it on her Kindle. She was happy with it, though she did have some good suggestions. We stood around the kitchen kicking around title ideas. I had thought of On Track and Off the Rails: A Year of Losing Fat, Gaining Muscle, and Eating Lots of Ice Cream — especially the ice cream bit.

Though, oddly enough, I didn’t eat any ice cream for the first month of 2015, unlike the gallons upon gallons I’d eaten the year before.

I couldn’t sleep that night, but wasn’t sure if it was the carb withdrawal or just anxious thoughts of writing ideas. I woke up and must have cranked through a dozen variations of things that I could write about. I was obsessed. I’d minored in writing in college, so my long dormant writing muscle was beginning to flex and grow.

At the 45th birthday party Saturday night, we let it slip that I was working on a book, and it was a kind of neat thing. No one in our group had ever thought of doing that before, so it was definitely a novel idea. My wife’s friend also had his usual nuclear spicy chili, and my wife had baked up a giant Guinness cake with Bailey’s buttercream frosting. He’s Irish, so it was a good mix, and it was really good. Of course, I was too tired and full to eat most of it by that time. I’d been snacking all night, picking at the food piled high on the table, downing glass after glass of wine.

Week 4 – January 18-24: Simple & Sinister, Egg Shakes & Pork, Pizza Pizza Pizza

Monday was Martin Luther King Day, so a holiday for my wife and I took the day off too. Finally, fully recovered from my chest cold, I jumped back into working out that morning and got on Pavel Tsatsouline’s “Simple & Sinister” kick again, kettlebell swings mixed with Turkish getups. Two weeks into the New Year, I felt healthy again. My previous shoulder injuries from early 2014 were mostly healed, so I thought I’d give “Simple & Sinister” another shot.

The rest of the day we just sat around watching the latest version of King Kong and whatever else popped up on T.V. We pulled the taco meat out the freezer and spiced it up with some guacamole, sour cream and SAAS hot sauce, all scooped up with tortilla chips. We still had some Guinness buttercream cake left over, so I downed that with some actual Guinness. I’d pretty much abandoned the "Two-Week Test" at that point so was scarfing down carbs to make up for it.

The rest of the week I continued with the “Simple & Sinister” routine first thing in the morning. I was still doing the egg shakes for lunch with pork chops at night, dousing them with a bit of grape jelly to make them more palatable. I was a little bored by Friday, and the dreariness of Chicago in January was in full force.

My wife worked late, so I wasted time looking up ideas for workouts on Dan John’s fitness blog. I liked the idea of the 40-day workout that I’d done the previous spring — five lifts done almost daily for 40 workouts — but I wanted to kick it up a notch. The same squat, bench, chin-up, deadlift, loaded carry got pretty monotonous after a couple of weeks.

There was a lot of talk about his 10,000 swing challenge, basically doing 500 swings per day until you rack up a total of 10,000. I figured I could do something like that and add it on top of the 40-day workout, which would be one hell of a challenge. Would it be the best idea? Probably not, but I certainly wouldn’t be bored.

Saturday was our weekly day to spend running around town. I had been trying to get my wife hooked on Roots Pizza, which is a variation on my hometown Quad-City style pizza. I succeeded as we ended up getting the most amazing cheese sticks and a half-taco/half-BLT pizza. Sufficiently stuffed, we headed off to another friend’s birthday party, bringing along some awesome Justin and Decoy cab to share. My wife’s sister turned us on to both of those over the holidays. Someone else brought along fresh hot tamales, and we were set for the night.

Week 5 – January 25-31: Pizza Again, 40 Days + 10,000 Swings, Moccamaster

I hadn’t gotten enough of pizza with the trip to Roots on Saturday, so we ordered Al’s again on Sunday, this time my favorite Canadian bacon and pineapple. My sweet tooth was still raging, so I tore into a box of organic Oreos. I also had some cherry almond jam left over from a farmer’s market the previous fall I’d never opened, so that went well with French bread. I bumped up the swings to 200 per day and was ready to kick it off the next day. I’d abandoned my diet attempt, but convinced myself I was just fueling up for my upcoming workout plan.

On Monday night, I started off my 40 Days + 10,000 Swings challenge. This kettlebell workout consisted of the two sets of five reps with press, chin-ups, front squats, ab wheel, and loaded carries. Each set was interspersed with 50 kettlebell swings for a total of 250 swings and 10 reps on each of the lifts. It took me an hour to do the workout and I was dying! I immediately devoured a pound of steak and a couple of potatoes loaded with butter in an attempt to satiate myself. Those simple foods had fueled my successful deadlift attempt in late 2014. I hoped this time they’d do the same. I also started a journal of the workouts with the idea to turn that into a book at some point too. Crazier things had happened.

Each morning before work, I was back on the treadmill for some light recovery cardio. Then at night I’d have more steak with a side of rice to bump up the carbs. I needed them to keep up with all the activity.

Wednesday ended up being Day 2 of the workout. It was just as tough as Day 1, but I kept at it. Steak and two sweet potatoes followed. I was on fire and really wanted to see it through.

Even with all the extra carbs, I was starving the next day when I got to work. After catching up on a few things, I picked up an omelet, potatoes, and a side of toast and jelly from the cafe downstairs in our office.

I took Friday off work and measured in for the week. I had actually gained some weight, I was guessing due to the workouts and the extra food that went with them. We finally booked our beach trip to Turks and Caicos in April, so I was hoping it would start heading in the other direction and I’d lose some fat. The trip was still a few months off and I still had time, or so I kept telling myself.

I also went to look at coffeemakers and ended up getting a red Moccamaster. My wife and I love the color red so it fit in well with our kitchen. I was a bit concerned about all the #7 plastics in it, but it had rave reviews so I was all set to get my caffeine fix. I also got a call from a friend back home in Iowa about doing a Star Wars fan film later in the spring. I said I’d be game for it, but he said I should shave my head as I’d need to play way younger than my 42 years.

I was able to get Day 3 of the workouts done later that afternoon in just 28 minutes, faster than before.

Saturday dawned to a beautiful sunrise. Even though it was the end of January, snow had been mostly absent all month. My wife had to work again — yes, even on a Saturday — so I just got up and did a quick treadmill workout. The rest of the day was spent running around and getting things ready for friends’ annual Super Bowl party the next day. We wanted to make whoopie pies! All the news channels were forecasting a major winter storm, but with how perfect the day looked, we thought they were crying wolf and we’d believe it when we saw it coming down.

I squeezed in Day 4 of the workouts, and cutting it to less than 30 minutes for the second day in a row wasn’t as tough. Of course I was starving afterwards and took it out on a loaf of cinnamon bread. We also defrosted some leftover chili from our second place cook-off back in December.

Measurements: I ended January pretty much where I’d started:

Aha moments: I’d worked myself into the ground chasing a goal to deadlift 405 pounds and immediately went back to work at the next one to cut off the excess flab I’d gained in the process. My body wasn’t ready for it.

Recommendations: Once you’ve achieved a goal, take some time off for rest and recovery, or else your body will force you to do so.

Chapter Two: February 2015

Week 1 – February 1-7: Super Bowl Snow! D.J. CHAD V, 40 Day Fail

The snow started just as we went to bed on Saturday night. It was still snowing when we woke up Super Bowl Sunday and showed no signs of stopping. The forecast called for snow to continue all afternoon and evening, which would make it a Top 5 Chicago snowstorm.

Things were looking dim for the party, but we had all the fixings ready for our whoopie football pies. We went ahead and made a couple dozen of them, just in case the snow stopped in time. We also made a batch of new marinade for the roasts we were going to bake up later.

Trying to keep on track with the workout plan, I headed downstairs midafternoon. I’d been pretty stiff and sore that morning from all the new activity and was ready for a break. Three days in a row of workouts was tough, even if it was still fairly light weights. Adding in 250 swings on top of it all was the real challenge, and maybe not the smartest.

The storm proved too much for us, and we called our friends midafternoon to let them know we weren’t going to venture out. The Super Bowl was spent at home with a few dozen whoopie pies of our very own. We also had several pounds of roast baked up for the week since I wasn’t in the mood to grill outside, one of the only times the weather proved to be too much.