Hello my friends, what an exciting week this has been. And this coming weekend is going be just as exciting. As all of you know from my last column that my ATV, the Honda Foreman 400, was put in the shop at Overkill UTV in Brandon at 305 Falkenburg Rd, for repairs, upgrades, including the installation of something I have been wanting for a very long time.. a heavy duty winch. I was greatly hoping it would be ready by Saturday so I could finally make it out to Croom.
Friday was going great already. I had come out to Alderman Ford with Leonor and we hiked the 1.8 mile loop and I got a few shots from my new camera. We were hoping to find an alligator to take some pictures of and they are Leonor’s favorite animal. How could a woman not love a six foot dragon lurking in the dark water, so cute. Surprisingly though we did not see any which is not to say that they weren’t there. When we were driving back home though my phone rang and it was my mechanic to tell me the good news. The Foreman was ready and it was running like a beast. We immediately changed course and made best possible speed to the mechanic’s shop and driving up I saw it all polished and detailed ready for pick up. It cranked right up!! What a relief, because for me the ole Foreman is so much more than just a utility vehicle or something to ride on. It is a passport. My own horse, my brave steed so to speak, that takes me through the backwoods, hills, and mud bogs to the hidden places beneath cypresses. Felt a little Poe come out of me there.
Saturday at Croom was definitely a go BUT, there was a wee hitch in the operation. You see our group is three people but the size of Adam’s new truck cannot hold his Polaris and his dirt bike. The Polaris 570 pretty big and there is no way to load that and the dirt bike on the truck at the same time. Enter Lord Armstrong of Ardmore to save the day. You see, Big Red, my ’79 Ford Pickup has like an eight foot bed or longer. I honestly can’t recall at the moment but it is also wider. I tell ya people in the 70’s knew what they were doing when they were making cars, I have no idea what is happening to the world, anyways, I had totally forgotten so I asked Leonor if she wanted to take a ride South with me to pick up the dirt bike from Adam’s. Of course she did, we love taking road trips together. We have gone half way across the country by now. Anyways, I filmed everything and the lightning was so beautiful. The sky was really dark and we had our country music up loud and the heat lightning, that’s what I always called it, was lighting up the sky in the distance. It is moments like those that really make me happy to be alive. Those little moments in between, sometimes single serving moments we can never get back.
So I get to Sarasota and we load up and then Leonor and I make the drive back home, I drop her off and then head home to get the rest of my gear ready. I slept great, woke up refreshed, but unfortunately the weather was not refreshed at all. In fact it woke up with a bit of a temper. Now, others had told me it was going to be raining and I did expect some rain but I had a winch now. I never have to worry about getting stuck again. Then I started the drive and the amount of rain that fell from the heavens on the drive North on I-75 would have made Noah look up and wonder if it was ever going to stop. It came to a climax when I arrived at Croom and pulled into the gas station. I had to wait for Adam so I grabbed some Doritos, Cool Ranch, and a Powerade, unpopular opinion, I think the blue is the best and the zero calories one has more of a berry taste to it. Go on my YouTube and tell me if you think I am wrong, Dan Goes Outside. Now, Adam arrived and we started making our way in and the rain finally fell off and the breeze really picked up and the weather turned into a beautiful picture only Bob Ross could paint. For me that was the moment that Fall had finally arrived.
The mud was overflowing everywhere and we absolutely loved each second of it. The Foreman plowed through every bit of mud like a tank. Adam was on the dirt bike and Chris on the Polaris. Adam got stuck about 20 min in. Now, he got stuck in the same spot that some years back I got stuck, then he got stuck there in the Polaris when he first got it, and now we are back in the same bog and it has now claimed the dirt bike as its latest customer. I turned around and hopped off to go help him out. Well, for those of you that do not know the mechanics and anatomy of a dirt bike you wouldn’t know or even think about the fact that there is no mud guard. And if someone was so inclined, say someone pushing it out of the mud to help his friend, might take a load of mud straight to the face and more when he hits the gas. Yes, I didn’t know this either, and to my dirt bike riding brothers I hope you got a laugh out of that.
The Foreman ran like a dream. By the time we loaded everything back up we were already thinking about the next trip out. In the bush it is easy to forget the business and craziness of the world and it returns to a certain simplicity of fellowship and friendship. Out there if you see someone who needs help you stop and help, it’s the rule of riding, off roadin’, and four wheelin’. If you see someone needing help you stop and help. It’s pretty much the society we all dream of living in all the time. I already started planning the camping trip for Halloween.
I got home just in time to scrub the mud off and throw on my boots to go with Leonor to a pork cook off competition at her old school. The food her cousin Rick made was probably the most amazing pork I have ever ate. Now, I am going to most certainly spell this or call it out wrong but it had “mojo” sauce and the stuff is insanely delicious. I mean I don’t understand how people can waste their money on crack and not go broke eating food like this. I mean my credit advisor had a word with me about my fine dining spending. That’s my Credit Karma app by the way. Unfortunately though it was the only pork I was able to try because the pork for the competition had been ate up before the first hour. I mean think about how good that pork had to be that an entire supply of pork had been eaten in the span of around forty five minutes. I didn’t mind since the cheeseburgers were also delicious and hanging out with Leonor’s family eating a burger doing something at the church is always a very great time. It’s great feasting with others and being a part of a community.
As I said my friends, this week and coming weekend has been a thrilling one. For me personally, I have not thought of the past much but as I go through OCIA which for those of you not in the “know” that is the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults and it is the class you have to complete before you take your sacraments and are officially a Catholic. In taking this class we receive two discussion questions towards the last bit of the class. These questions are sometimes deceptively simple and can really cause introspection. For the last couple months it has really made me look at my life. How extremely far I have come from where I started. I have never really shared my back story my friends but I hope you will allow me this courtesy to tell you a wee story of where I started and where I am and the wild trail that brought me here. In the interest of time I will not go into details but will just outline the larger specifics.
The year of 2022 I was on my fifteenth year being addicted to heroin. I had lost just about everything and the only friends I had, which was like one person for a very long time, and Brent.. you know who you are, so I won’t tell you. In December 2022 I had become desperate. I had started listening to the gospel on YouTube and I was trying to quit but I just couldn’t get over that hill in my head. I would rather kill myself than live as a drug addict so I took a revolver into my bathroom. I was gonna do it quick. But, I didn’t want to die. I couldn’t quit though I just was not strong enough, I had become so weak. I got on my knees and this was when everything changed. I didn’t ask and I didn’t pray in a way your average person might consider a “proper” way to pray. I told God He had to save me. I could not do it alone and I did not want to die but I could not do it. I said, “God! You have to save me! Don’t let me go like this, take this away. Save me God!!”.
That is when it happened. Maybe there was a breeze, a shift in the air, or the room got darker for a moment as everything inside my heart completely changed. It is hard for me to recall because I never felt like the same person when I walked out of that room. I took the bullets out of the gun and I put everything back. I told my family everything, absolutely everything that I had done. Where I was getting it and who I was getting it from, there were no secrets anymore and there never would be again. I had started listening to Hallow and I became interested in the Catholic church and my journey to Our Holy Mother Church started there.
I had been clean a year when I started my YouTube channel Dan Goes Outside that pretty much started everything. Friends who were good to me and were excited that I was doing well turning everything around returned to my life. They came by more frequently. Circumstances and God’s blessings brought me to a cross road in my life with an opportunity to start my own business as a filmmaker and videographer. A couple months later I get a chance to film in Dallas for about eight months for FIFA.
I have the most amazing adventures. Before God was part of my life I would watch National Geographic and only dream of that life; and now it is my life. I would dream of driving a classic truck with a big ole four wheeler to the woods with my buddy camping and exploring the wild. I even had something even more wild happen. I fell in love with a beautiful woman that not only shares my values and loves the outdoors but she truly supports me and makes me complete in this world. She goes to Mass with me, camps, and hikes with me and now that we have another ATV she will be riding with me too.
I won’t pitch it to you that there haven’t been any losses, any disappointments, or really hard times getting to where I am right now but can I say that they were all the right losses. I am not sure if that makes sense but they were the losses I needed to happen in my life to make me who I am and bring to where I needed to be. I am not saying I am sitting on cloud nine either mind you, I still don’t have any real clients lined up for after this job yet and a laundry list of other problems but the real big picture I have to remember is this. I learned soon that this all is left to my Father. My Heavenly Father has brought me here, in spite of my detours of sin and sometimes downright stupidity, He has brought me to exactly where He needed me to be to be and that is with Him and isn’t it nice that even though I didn’t realize it but I wanted to be here more than anything too.
I know these days the divide feels greater than ever, but I have discovered something and that is our Father always provides and He is not some idea or non active watcher. Our Father is an active participant in every second of every minute of every hour of our lives. I cannot tell you how many times I almost messed up, almost relapsed, almost got hurt, almost got killed and God stopped it. And in spite of me not understanding anything and just trying to understand “God where do you want me to go” and He still brought me, of all people, somewhere I had only dreamed of. Deacon Joe tells us a revelation is something to be accepted not exactly understood.
Sometimes we cannot understand God’s plan. I know it can sound kinda hokey and trust me.. I get it… But as I sit here eating the most delicious homemade cherry cobbler after feasting on supper with my family I think I might be the happiest man alive. And not one second of it would have happened if it wasn’t for God. If what happened to me isn’t a miracle then you tell me how I got here. Spoiler alert, it was God. Thanks so much for reading my friends. As always I will see y’all on the next adventure, God bless all of you, and don’t forget to go outside!
