Well, this is starting badly, judging by the title, isn’t it? That’s about how it went down. Unprepared yet undaunted, YHC agreed to fill in as Q for the Starbucks run for UncleJesse, who was under the weather and couldn’t make it. Get well soon and #TClaps for texting 12 PAX about filling in to make sure it was covered.

Top Gun is one of my Top 5 all-time favorite movies and I always think of Wolfman saying “Where’d whoooo goooooo?” after they got beat by Viper early on in training. There are PAX going all directions.

• Some left early for 7-8 miles
• Some left early for 6 miles
• Some left early for 5 miles #Clydesdales
• Some left on time for 5 miles #SugarRays
• Some ran the old skool original 5K
• Some ran the old skool original 5K backwards
• Some ran the new but not dangerous 5K. To run the dangerous 5K, one must play the Top Gun soundtrack and begin and end with Kenny Loggins’ “Highway to the Danger Zone.” #SafetyFirst
• Some ran in circles
• One even ran FROM his house to Starbucks and that was a-plenty

The Starbucks run has become much like Starbuck itself – many, many options but some cost more than others and some have a little more sweetener added. Not Kobayashi-level sweetener, but pretty dang sweet.

So at 0515 the disclaimer was given and PAX scattered like cockaroaches when the lights come one – some this way and some that.

Around 0600, a gaggle of fools and idiots showed up and got in a circle. That’s one crazy looking circle, bro. But that’s what happens when it’s formed by fools and idiots. Somewhere in there I noted that if you don’t do A, then you’re a fool and if you don’t do B, then you’re an idiot. While those assessments may or may not be accurate (thankfully, we have a 5th amendment and YHC doesn’t have to speak to the accuracy), it was not a literal interpretation. When has YHC ever been PC? My job, as one pAX noted yesterday and another notes often, I sit around all day, make up lies, report them as fact and then attack the entity about whom I have lied. #ReporterProblems You may need to lower your expectations.

Anywho, I was tap-tap-tapping away on this backblast and I got to thinking. This is where most of you say, “Oh crap. He was thinking. This can’t be good…” And you’re right. Just ask all the AOQs about my emails…

Anywho (again), it occurred to me that we all really are fools and idiots. YHC can conjure any number of reasons for himself (most notably his fascination with referring to himself in third person), but it really is true.

We have all this knowledge yet we lack wisdom. We can put a man in space for an entire year yet we can’t reach across an aisle. We will fight tooth and nail for a cause we perceive as just yet we won’t fight against our jester, that one thing that besets us. We discuss and condemn presidential candidates ad nauseum yet we refuse to look in the mirror.

We are continuously referred to as sheep in the Bible. Why? YHC thinks (in third person, of course) that it is for one simple reason: no matter how much we know or think we know, in the eyes of the SkyQ it amounts to one loud, annoying, “Baaaaaaa!” We can’t even form a word.

We’re in a very real battle, men. Our shields may be proverbial, but we nonetheless need to lock them with each other to be what we are called to be, to serve those we are called to serve.

And we need to bleat at each other every now and then to make sure we don’t wander off and have to have our legs broken. Just like fools and idiots.

Aye!