100 things a charlatan PC would be trying to make amends for. This is an idea brought up by a player at my table who wants a sort of "My Name is Earl" redemption story where she finds the person she wronged and tries to make up for it.

d100 Incidents a charlatan PC is making amends for

Leaving an acquaintance to blame for selling fake drugs to a noble [Sleepy_Bandit]
Tampering with a competitor's equipment to cause them to lose a competition so you can win a bet [Sleepy_Bandit]
Stealing candy from a child who has now grown up to become a rage-filled barbarian [Sleepy_Bandit]
Selling fake love potions to a desperate noble who ended up being embarrassed in public [Sleepy_Bandit]
Using a friend's identity for an illegal deal and getting them arrested / questioned by the authorities [Sleepy_Bandit]
Seducing away a minor noble’s daughter while posing as a noble, leaving them both destitute. [Marksman157 ]
bank fraud, resulting in the economic collapse of a village; a few deaths by despair, starvation or incidental robbery involved [LordsOfJoop ]
planting fake evidence of involvement with a string of robberies, resulting in a local noble being exiled for life [LordsOfJoop ]
popularizing a song that portrays a church in a strongly negative light, resulting in a purge from the region [LordsOfJoop ]
selling a crate of shoddy weapons and armor to a local militia, resulting in a humiliating defeat [LordsOfJoop ]
Playing both sides of a minor dispute between nobles that resulted in closed borders between the 2 regions (cold war situation). [always_gamer_hair]
Farting at a very inopportune moment in front of a noble's child. [always_gamer_hair]
Keeping a memento from a battle that should have gone back to the soldier's significant other or child. [always_gamer_hair]
Climbing up a wall with clearly posted "no climbing" signs, causing part of the wall to collapse [always_gamer_hair]
Accidentally melting the ice sculptures at a local ice festival. [always_gamer_hair]
Reselling stolen goods to the wrong merchant. [always_gamer_hair]
Informing the local captain of the guard that their wife is having an affair when, in fact, she is most certainly not. [always_gamer_hair]
Joined a convent for 9 months to hide from debt collectors, then burned the place down in a botched attempt at faking their death. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Let a refugee family use their name to get into a safe city, having forgotten that they are a wanted criminal there. The family was detained, brutally interrogated as potential accomplices, and then thrown out. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Used a set of vestments stolen from a cleric's wardrobe following a one night stand to sell fake indulgences and de-cursings. Many people were injured, and the cleric has been banished from their temple. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Made up a really impressive sounding fake name off the cuff while being arrested which turned out to be a real, very important person. Interpreting the announcement of their arrest as some sort of provocation, a series of insults and slights escalated into an actual border war... in which the character was an active profiteer. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Deflowered one of the participants in a critical political marriage the night before the ceremony, derailing a critical peace settlement and destabilizing the entire region for years [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Participated in a rebellion against an evil overlord, and named names when captured by the guards. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Hocked a critical spare part from an irrigation system for beer money, causing a massive crop failure when that part was needed and couldn't be found in time. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Engaged in some petty abuse of the local populace while wearing a guard uniform (stolen as part of another petty crime), which provoked a clash between the local peasants and the local law, resulting in many injuries and some deaths. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Took a large sum of money to act as a surveyor and just copied a previous surveyor's work, resulting in multiple recently founded villages being destroyed when a dam was built down-river from them. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Accidentally started a race war by spouting off about how much better elves are than dwarves...in a dwarf bar [WSHIII]
Accidentally started a three way religious war by claiming Torm was better than Ilmater...in Tyrian temple. [WSHIII]
Accidentally started the Blood War by pissing through a portal into Graz’zt’s throne room...while dressed as a devil for Halloween [WSHIII]
Betting (and losing) a party member on a gamble after already having lost all their money. The winner has ties to the slave trade and is not happy. [Zekaito]
Sold a man a bridge who was subsequently eaten by a very persistent troll. [Wolfenight]
The significant other of a person killed in a fireball mistake turned out to be a renowned and feared bounty hunter. [supersteve320]
Tricking a family member or friend into buying pointless insurance. [Umkynareth]
Tricking a family or friend into investing in a company that never existed. [Umkynareth]
Convincing a friend not to marry by using a loaded die / coin. [Umkynareth]
Upcharging significantly for beewine/mead at a close friend’s wedding. [Umkynareth]
Taking and completing a contract to kill or bankrupt a close relation’s parent, friend or lover. [Umkynareth]
Betting and losing a deed that wasn’t theirs to bet. [Umkynareth]
Stealing a horse. [Umkynareth]
Rewriting their parents’/grandparents’ will to their benefit. [Umkynareth]
Laundering money for a gang / beholder / trading company that then ruined the charlatan’s ancestral lands or city. [Umkynareth]
Convincing a former ally to make a pact with a shady entity at great personal cost in the name of wealth. [Umkynareth]
Extorting, blackmailing or embezzling from an orphanage. [Umkynareth]
Running an orphanage as a front. [Umkynareth]
Skimming/stealing tithes. [Umkynareth]
Hanging on to a memento from a cursed forest / temple, which must be returned lest extremely bad luck continue to befall them. [Umkynareth]
Selling a cursed memento to an acquaintance that granted them exceptionally bad luck. [Umkynareth]
Working with a troll/ogre to collect bridge tolls at great cost to life and limb for others. [Umkynareth]
Contributing to the extinction of a local beast / bird after selling snake oil made from its bits. [Umkynareth]
Conning a respected warrior into buying a weapon the charlatan enchanted to return to his/her position when the command word was spoken. [Umkynareth]
Secretly working with a nothic to learn too much at great cost. [Umkynareth]
Destroying a family’s crops and livelihood with shoddy agricultural remedies to cause their business and lands’ value to decline. [Umkynareth]
Eating that last slice of pie... it was not a good idea... [dermitdog]
Instigating a gang war between two shady (yet wealthy) casinos by cheating and pretending to be from the other casino. [dermitdog]
Sinking the prize ship of a navy while pretending to be a nautical carpenter [dermitdog]
Crashing the lord's masquerade by spilling all of the swindled gold lining your clothes while on the stage, then escaping and therefore discrediting the lord for allowing a vagabond to steal so much money and get away with it leaving the (generous and generally beloved) noble house destitute. [dermitdog]
Selling 'magical' 'snake' oil that, caused a child to die of blood poisoning instead of their terminal (yet curable) illness. [dermitdog]
Reading from the wrong scripture while posing as a preacher, causing a devout acolyte to be executed for heresy after reciting your teachings. [dermitdog]
Lying about your identity to someone while becoming their lover for a scheme. The love was eventually genuine from your side, but the scheme wasn't exactly for the other's benefit. The revelation of your lie has left them heartbroken and angry at you. [dermitdog]
Laundering money so well that it got into wider circulation and put multiple people into prison as they tried to use the money in more rigorous markets. [dermitdog]
Telling someone that you could make them fly, leading to their suicide. [dermitdog]
Selling family heirlooms while posing as a moving company worker, scattering the heritage of a dwindling noble family. [dermitdog]
Leaving your home city abruptly, cutting all ties and never looking back on the people you knew. [dermitdog]
Not stopping a clear case of marital abuse because doing so would blow your cover. [dermitdog]
Stealing the bricks from a historic building and selling them at extortionate prices while replacing them with weaker materials, causing the building to collapse during a busy day. [dermitdog]
Misquoting a holy passage, causing a schism in the church. [dermitdog]
Pressured an accomplice to not seek medical aid for a serious injury, fearing it would result in the detection of a criminal plot, only to wreck the plot themselves by running their mouth in a tavern while drunk. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Not wanting to be outdone telling tawdry tales at the inn, the character made up an atrociously lurid fib about their activities with a young princess they had never actually met. A bard heard it, made it into song, and completely ruined her marriage prospects. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Sold a map of the city catacombs to what they thought were drug smugglers for 50 gold and a cask of nice wine. The "drug smugglers" were an engineering crew from a rival city, and in a siege 6 months later used the plans to great effect by setting explosives under critical defense structures. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Convinced a young accomplice to take the fall for a crime they committed, on the logic that the character would be able to break them out later. Character instead got arrested for partying too hard in the next town over, and jumped a ship out of the country instead of trying to go back for their fall guy. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Persuaded several friends to bankroll them for a surefire gambling scheme, based on a plan to use advanced math to calculate the "true" odds of any particular play. Lost everything when they got too drunk to properly carry the "1". [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
While rummaging through a church for things to steal, they found an old bottle of wine, drank it, and put the empty bottle back in it's nook. The bottle was one of the earthly possessions of a man who ascended to a higher plane, and it's consumption was seen as a sign of his return. Several pretenders appeared, triggering a violent schism in the religion. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
When travelling, they met the last survivor of a pilgrimage, clutching a golden chest in his hands. They were attempting to return a holy relic to a temple, in accordance with an oath sworn by the founder of their order over 150 years ago. With their last breath, they begged the character to deliver the relic in the chest to their destination. The character, headed the other direction, chose to throw the relic in a creek and hock the chest for 10 gold. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
In a moment of cocky bravado, the character gloated over the fallen body of a dangerous litch, telling them that they were an idiot for not hiding their phylactery better, rattling off several examples. The lich then used a contingency spell to transport themselves and their phylactery away. The phylactery hasn't been seen since, but the lich has been a plague on the land for years... [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Accidentally fell in with a group of highway robbers and cutthroats, who told the character they were freedom fighters against a corrupt regime. The character found out after a week, but stuck around for a whole month because the "rebel leader" was just too hot. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Attempting to get a lover to leave them so as to not feel the guilt of initiating a breakup, the character went too far, gaslighting their SO to the point of actual madness. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Sold samples of their own blood to a group they knew to be demon summoning cultists as "virgin blood" (lol, no). They successfully summoned the demon, but completely failed at containing or dismissing it. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Got drunk and took a piss in a holy fountain, deconsecrating it. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Fiddled around with an elaborate sundial because they were bored, not knowing that it served an important role in timing the local planting cycle and triggering massive crop failure. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Agreed to act as a fraudulent guardian for a group of orphans who needed parental consent to join the Army. The "military recruiter" was actually an agent for a slave trader. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Hid the body of a dead man in a well, contaminating the only ready source of clean water within 5 miles of a small town. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Received a key to the city for services rendered, and then got drunk and lost it. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Sold a large pile of colored flour to a church, telling them it was rare medicinal powder. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Stole a statue from a town square and sold it for cheap to an art collector. The statue was actually the petrified body of a legendary hero, prophecied to return to life in the time of greatest need, and the "art collector" her ancient nemesis. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Yelled "do a flip" at a despondent man standing on a ledge. They did the flip. It was horrible. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Spent years convincing an old, half-blind noblewoman that they were their adult grandchild. When the real grandchild came to visit, the guards shot them as an impostor. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Knowingly gave a group of pirates a map of the harbor defenses of a city that had banished them for multiple crimes. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Blamed a rash of robberies they had committed on an in-city goblin community, giving their enemies a pretense to persecute and exile them, uprooting families that had been living there for generations and turning "Goblintown" from a thriving community to an urban blight. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Knowingly sold defective spell components to a group of student wizards, causing them to fail their final exams when the spells misfired. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
While drunk and in a fighty mood, played "devil's advocate" in an argument with a paladin, turning them Oathbreaker. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
After being saved from a shipwreck by a merperson, told a group of pirates where to find them in exchange for a fixed fee per fin they cut off. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Participated in a scheme to breed and train mimics to act as guard animals and security devices. It worked great for about 72 hours, and then people started getting beaten to death by their own nightstands. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Blamed a friendly old healer woman for cursing them, so they wouldn't need to explain certain symptoms of a STI to their significant other. The healer was a druid who was single-handedly responsible for keeping the Fair Folk at bay and placated, and after she was driven away as a witch they moved in on the town. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Sold swords with defective heat treating to a local militia, many of which shattered in their hands when they were attempting to defend their town from bandits. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Having come down ill before the night of a major party, the character paid a spellcaster to glamor them to hide the symptoms so they could go, carouse and steal. The party was in turn the epicenter of a massive disease outbreak, as many attendees were travelers from afar. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Deliberately triggered a trap on the way out of a dungeon to reduce the number of people with whom they would have to share the treasure. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Built a fake dungeon, and then spread about it at inns and taverns, so they could ambush the adventurers who came to "save the townsfolk" and take their stuff. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Bought a group of slaves on the intention of freeing them... and then changed their mind once they found out how good they were at keeping house and cooking meals. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Tuned out during a conversation with a significant other, giving them the "yeah, sure honey, sounds good" treatment when the SO was a young artificer asking for guidance on what ingredients to use, causing a large explosion. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]
Gave someone's name to the Inquisition because they figured it would be easier to rob their house when they were too busy being stabbed with hot irons in a dungeon to do anything about it. [Vote_for_Knife_Party]

Three Years of Trying to Do More than 10 Push Ups (and the 60+lbs I Lost Along the Way)

Introduction

From "Day 1" in 2017 to Whatever-Day-It-Is-Today, I actually have only dropped from 301.1 lbs to 239.9 lbs. But, I didn't start at 301. I just happened to be at 301 when I started. This is a long-winded story I've been thinking about writing for a minute and finally have the time, the data, and some results and thoughts to share with others.
Here I am today: https://i.imgur.com/APotoNb.jpg and https://i.imgur.com/nBO6Ndj.jpg
Here I am at Day Zero: https://i.imgur.com/KGXuu3I.jpg
So, we'll start from the beginning:
I have always been "husky" or "big boned" or whatever other adjective that loving parents use to describe their morbidly obese children. I liked to EAT. Fundamentally, I lived to eat. And this was compounded by a number of factors:

My family is made up of overweight adults with a palate for fatty, carb-heavy food and, more importantly, seconds. It was weird for someone to fill a plate and then not go back and fill it again!
When I was younger, my mother was an important business-lady and my father was notoriously horrible at cooking. This lead to the common "It'll take too long to cook dinner, so we'll just go out." Next thing you know, you're at a steakhouse eating cheese fried smothered with ranch dressing and bacon two to three nights a week.
My mom tried a few of the crash diet fads in the early 2000's. I remember Atkins being her BIG one; I think she paid for the big box of recipes and all that nonsense (which, ironically, was made funnier by the fact that she didn't start really cooking dinner at home until I was graduating high school in 2008). I remember seeing her "try" and "fail" to lose weight and at a certain point, eh - why try?
My weight never stopped me from doing the lazy things I wanted to do. Not like I'm going to lose weight so I can play Diablo II (I did have the Lord of Destruction Expansion) all weekend. I had more than my fair share of "neck-beard" mentality and a whole LiveJournal of cringe-worthy bullshit that came out of my brain in the 2003-2008 era of High School.
I didn't have any health issues because of my weight, so my weight was obviously not a problem. Right?

Whatever the reason was, I very quickly got fat around age 10 and stayed that way (ask me today and I'll still say I'm fat, just less so).
At my biggest, I KNOW I was tipping the scales at 330-340 lbs (this would have been 2009, 2010). I don't have any proof because if you don't weigh yourself, you can't be as fat as you know you are. I'm taking credit for the undocumented weight loss. If you don't want to count it, eh - 60 lbs is still pretty cool, too.

Stats

Today (September 24, 2020)

Age: 30
Sex: Male (XY - I've seen my 23 & Me report)
Height: 6 feet 2 inches
Weight: 239.5 lbs
Goal Weight: 240 lbs by Jan 01, 2021

Lifestyle

I am a bread bakepastry cook at a restaurant in Missouri and live in a secluded little apartment with my Wife. She ~~farms chickens~~ is the Poultry Specialist for the local university and does science with them, so I get a pretty good deal on eggs. No kids, yet, and no pets, yet. This leaves me with a lot of free time.
Especially since I'm a baker - I wake up around 4am daily and leave work between 12pm and 2pm. The wife works 8am-5pm, so I have a good amount of spare time to myself. I also, because I know this matters, ALWAYS go to bed between 830pm and 9pm.
As far as general fitness, I have just finished running a 4-day/wk variant of 5/3/1 (SSL, 5's Pro) which I did for the last 12 weeks. I've been lifting for most of my journey. I also took up running (on and off) for the last 6 months and have pushed and pushed from a 50 minute 5k to about a 30-32 minute 5k which I tend to mostly maybe run every other day regardless of what else is going on (so, Mon-Wed-Fri-Sun-Tues-Thurs-Sat, repeat). I also tried to include some Strongman conditioning twice a week depending on time.
I also bought a bike in August and have generally enjoyed biking to-and-from work 3-4x/wk despite the ride being downhill in the morning and uphill in the afternoon.
To put it simply, I'm active and I love it.

Starting Stats

Day 1 (August 6, 2017)

Age: 27
Height: I think it was the same
Sex: Male (probably - I didn't do the DNA test until 2019)
Weight: 301.1 lbs
Goals: Do 10 push-ups
Relationship Status: I hate my girlfriend

Why did you Start?

So I've told you about me in High School. I've told you about me now. What is missing is everything in between.
I was working in a BBQ Restaurant in Kentucky (where I'm from and grew up) and would regularly gamble with my coworkers over little bullshit things. Some of them were knowledge based, others were feats of strength, others were...look - we got REALLY bored sometimes and we had to pass the time. On my Day Zero, I specifically remembered being called out and challenged to do 10 push-ups. In a row.
I could totally do that. Any person who couldn't do that was obviously a big dumb idiot or a Fatty McFatFat. Right? This was the mentality I went into this challenge with.
I hadn't done a single push up in...ever? Since I thought about losing weight one time in college? Who does push ups for fun?
Guys - I'm gonna level with you. I couldn't do 10 push-ups. I could do 5. I lost $50 that day. I was bet $30 that I couldn't do the push ups (I lost that one) and then immediately called out my similar-sized-Boss to do 10 push-ups for $20 (he did 15).
Fuck.
I was torn up. I went home that night and was like - yo, who can't do 10 push ups? That's like, basic shit. I've seen babies do push ups! Ugh.
So I joined a gym. I started a MyFitnessPal. First workout selfie!

Counting Calories - But Never Tracking Weight

For the first few months of my Journey, I tracked calories pretty okay, maybe. I guessed a lot at what I ate (didn't own a food scale) and assumed I was making progress in my weight-loss because my lifts were going up in the gym (I was so, so, so dumb about some of that shit). Oh! I didn't own a bathroom scale. I thought about buying one, but didn't because it was too expensive. HA! God I had excuses.
Based on the exactly 6 data points I collected, I managed to lose 10 lbs between August 6 and Jan 1.
Here I am in November 2017: https://i.imgur.com/fF60Kr8.jpg
Here I am in January 2018: https://i.imgur.com/5bgM5v0.jpg and https://i.imgur.com/HYneJXh.jpg
That's about 21 weeks and about 0.5 lbs/wk. Which is great, sustainable weight-loss.
While I think that MFP overestimates your needed calories, I did manage to lose a good amount of weight at an okay rate over a reasonable time. Here's a major consideration though: I never once tracked exercise via MFP and I set my activity level to Sedentary. If you want slow, consistent results - I think that not tracking weight daily can work. Not for me, but hey - everything works for everyone.
I also dropped 150 lbs of good-for-nothing girlfriend that I didn't much care for. That took WAY longer than it should have. It was a horribly toxic relationship and one that I was glad to be out of. Frankly, the more I focused on bettering myself, the less the relationship was "good" for me. She wanted to drink and drink and drink and I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour. My goals shifted and I realized that this particular girl was not The One. Mental health improved considerably.

First Setback

Due to circumstances fully beyond my control, I was rendered bed-ridden and calorie deprived for 165 days. I had no physical activity and I lost 40 lbs in 24 weeks. There were entire days where I didn't stand up. I lost a ton of weight but this came at a huge cost: I lost all the muscle I had worked to put on. Remember how I looked in January 2018? Here's what I looked like in July 2018: https://i.imgur.com/5x8ViQG.jpg
At this point, I was 245 lbs, fully clothed, Doctor Weight. And y'all know Doctor Weight is the realist weight. I was weak, fragile, and barely able to walk 50 feet without needing a break. When I finally did make it back to the gym, I was unable to squat the bar - seriously. I failed a squat with a 45 lb bar at 245 lbs BW.
So I did what any reasonable human being does: bulking season, bitches!
I bought a bathroom scale.
I brought my weight up to 260 lbs by September and held it there through Jan 2019.
This was important for me though - I went up and down a couple 5 lbs here and there but I really did try and keep my 7-day running average around 260 lbs. This took discipline that I was not used to - I realized that some of the cues I took to "eat" were just boredom. I stopped using food as a comfort, as a reward, or even as enjoyment. Food was fuel - and you don't top off the gas tank when the lever clicks.

Diet

This is what works for me, and I know this won't work for a lot of people, but I think it's an important note here, before I lose the weight again: I eat the same foods daily. I find that I cannot handle the mental stress of 1) losing weight 2) having to push hard in workouts despite being purposefully under-recovered and 3) counting calories.
So I don't.
I figure out what every day needs to look like and then I eat that diet every single day.
Currently, I just finished 12 weeks of weight loss. I wanted to shoot for about 2400-2500 calories consumed on any given day. Here's exactly what I've been eating:
Breakfast: Half a gallon of coffee, 6 eggs (ranging in size from peewee to jumbo, but all mixed), 1 tbsp butter, 40 grams of oatmeal, 1 tbsp brown sugar, 140 grams of frozen fruit (blueberries, strawberries, etc), 30 grams blanched slivered almonds.
Lunch: 450 calorie protein shake (50 grams of carbs, 50 grams of protein, give or take) (if I make it at work, add 2 shots of espresso)
Snack: two random yogurts ranging in caloric content from 90-190 calories.
Dinner: 1 chicken breast (8-12 oz) grilled, 160 gram serving of cooked mixed grains (quinoa, barley, farro, and white rice), 180 grams of steamed peas.
And I ate this every single day (with a few exceptions when my wife got bored) for 13 weeks.
To maintain weight, I'll probably just add 6 eggs or yogurt or peanut butter to my snacks and see where that puts me. I like to make easy swaps (like, 2 servings of PB2 is basically 1 yogurt's worth of calories and it solves my peanut butter craving). I don't like to track my calories. And this works for me. YMMV.
Oh! Also 5g of creatine. Every day.

Fitness - and Fittin'-This-Pizza

For the most part, I do resistance training. In Jan 2019, I had a few goals:

Join the 1/2/3/4 Plate Club (spoiler: I didn't)
Do 1 Pull-up (spoiler: I did)
Drop from 260 lbs to 245 lbs (spoiler: I did).

By and large, I was able to go to the gym and lift weights for almost all of 2019 and it's during this time that I really did start to notice "changes" in the mirror and in my body. In March of 2019, I was starting to see a few muscles, my belt fit a little better, and I think I even took up trying to maybe consider jogging with my then-girlfriend-now-wife. Turns out, life is WAY better when you a partner with similar goals. We both wanted to be stronger and so we had a lot of fun weight training together.
One particular instance stands out in 2019. The Lady and I were hungry and antsy on a rest-day from the gym. We wanted pizza but didn't really think we deserved it since we'd done literally nothing all day. Like, you know those days where you sit on the couch and do nothing while binge watching Game of Thrones? That kind of day.
So we decided we were going to walk 5 miles to get a pizza, eat the pizza, and then walk 5 miles back home. And we did. Was it a bad use of food-as-a-reward? Sure. But the journey was really the more fun part! We both play PoGo and had a blast chasing pokemon down the road on a mission to get food. It's a great memory for both of us.
Here I am in November 2019 (243 lbs) about 2 weeks before I proposed: https://i.imgur.com/WldpVU5.jpg And I know what you're thinking - that might be the outline of abs!
BTW - she said yes, we were married in December, and life is good.

2020 - And the 90 Day Challenge (That We Failed Miserably)

In December 2020, I proposed to my Lady (get the double entendre?) that she and I try and lose weight for the first 90 days of 2020. Here's how that went:
January 1: 255 lb weigh in after a night of horrific binge drinking https://i.imgur.com/xaM1E9a.jpg
Feb 23: 238 lb weigh in after my birthday weekend and the last time we tracked weight: https://i.imgur.com/IcMd32Q.jpg
In January, we found out that we would be leaving KY and moving to MO in March. Like, we needed to be packed up and living in Missouri in the first week of March. So we canceled the gym membership in Feb, rented an apartment sight unseen in Missouri, and moved 500 miles away. Life was too hectic to also worry about things like our weight or the fact that we tried to lose weight in a crazy crash-diet for funsies.
We moved to Missouri without issue and then - COVID-19. The gyms closed. I was unemployed. Deep depression set in as I unpacked our new home and did nothing all day. I must have spent a month in this horrific sneaky hate spiral.
March came and went. April came and went. I started to go to the park nearby for a walk and that eventually became a good routine for me. There weren't many Pokestops, so I started to want to get between them faster. Walking became slow jogging and jogging became dedicated running and Pokemon fell by the wayside in that endeavor. Hey - do what works for you, right?
My first attempt at a 5k (which happens to be exactly 5 laps at the local park) was 52:44 walking. I knew I could do better. (Spoiler: My best time to date is 30:30 with a 5-run average of 31:24).
July 20: https://i.imgur.com/KYEaXKA.jpg 252 lbs. I had regained 15 lbs during COVID-quarantine.

Losing the COVID-19

So I set about losing the COVID-19. How hard can it be? I figured I'd lose weight at about 2lbs/wk (which at 250 lbs, should be easy enough). I did the math, figured out my diet (see above) and set to work. For the next parts of the story to make sense, you'll need a graph: https://i.imgur.com/4uec8KV.png
I put my plan into place. A local powerlifting gym was open and I joined on their first day open. It's 24/7 and generally pretty empty when I want to be lifting, so it was going to be safe and had all the equipment and support that I would need to make serious lifting gains.
You'll see that I had Setback #3 around the first week of August: I had literally burnt myself out. I started pushing the 5k times for faster and faster. I bought my bicycle and rode it more and more often. I wanted more conditioning. More cardio. Faster lifts. Heavier lifts.
In short: I kicked my own ass.
I had to readjust. The calories I was eating previously (about 2000/day) were not enough to support my activity level. So I bumped the calories to 2500ish/day and finished my training block.
You'll also see big spikes in weigh-ins - yeah, those are days when the Wife was tired of chicken/rice/peas and demanded something more fun (pizza, chinese, spaghetti, nachos). And you'll see that even those occasional "oh my god why did I eat that?" days didn't really hinder progress. In fact, I will credit my wife with helping to fight the mental fatigue of losing so much weight so quickly.

Milestones:

I have joined the 1/2/3/4 plate club as of this month after...let's call it 18 months of real training.
I hit a 1000 lb PL total, too (265 Bench/325 Squat/420 DL).
I can do 4 pull-ups in a row! I'm hoping to hit 10 by Jan 1.
Ran a 30:30 5k. I need to shave 30 seconds, but I think I can do it.
I am at my lowest adult weight.
I don't get winded walking up the stairs.
I don't get winded biking up the big stupid hill I have to bike up to get out of the driveway at 430am.
I cleaned off that dresser from the Day Zero Pic.
I got a chest tattoo.
I got married to my best friend: https://imgur.com/Y8gDZI4

Conclusion and Takeaways

Guys, I see it all the time in Fitness. This is a fucking marathon. It's not a sprint. It is a lifetime of real, slow lifestyle changes that build and continue to snowball until you look back and cannot believe how far you've come. I could not do 10 push ups! Now I can do 20 in 30 seconds. If you told 27 year old me about what 30 year old me would be up to, I would not believe it.
I don't have much in the way of advice.
My lifts aren't stellar or even really impressive on the internet.
My progress is okay, but I've seen people really crush it and lose more. I'm gonna run the full 21 week program Average to Savage and that should end around my birthday. See where I am at 31.
But I do know that 1 day isn't enough to fuck up your progress. Hell, 1 week isn't even a big set back. 165 days bed ridden didn't hold me back. I have a completely rebuilt shoulder and that doesn't hold me back. Why would one day hold you back?
So, take it one day at a time. Today sucked? Tomorrow you'll do better. Gotta make a sacrifice today? Tomorrow you'll do better. Be better. Do better.
My wife jokes that I live by two rules: 1) Never lie to yourself and 2) There is nothing I can't do.
I'll leave you with that great advice and here's a video of me failing a 435 lb deadlift attempt for shits and giggles: https://youtu.be/LbWHDkCuqjM I have plenty of excuses, but tomorrow I'll do better.

Updates I’ve seen posted that would be really good to have:

My Personal Market Research & Statistics in 2020: Countries That Gamble the Most

Baccarat Life With Woori Casino – Playing Online

Shotgun Fantasy - Part 21: Fowl Origins

First Part
Previous Part
George tinkered in the workshop for the next two days without resting. He knew his hands, hair, and face were all smudged with greasy soot, but he didn’t realize the extent of it until looking in the mirror. A complete mess. All of his priorities had been shifted towards designing the shotgun. He always delayed eating when he was in the middle of a problem, which was often, and the solutions they settled on always generated more complications that needed to be addressed, creating a horrible feedback loop that resulted in malnourishment. In the end, Rhangyl had to step in to make sure the young gunsmith took care of his body. George ignored his advice until collapsing from exhaustion. He later learned that Dalura also fell face-first on the other side of the workshop a few seconds afterwards. She only remained conscious because she didn’t want to pass out before him. That was when everyone decided they needed a break.
It was easier said than done, though. The fact that they would have to leave in a couple of days meant that every minute needed to be spent on making the weapon as good as possible. They went through dozens of conventional shotgun designs, assembling each of them with traditional blacksmithing so that Dalura could understand every mechanism and their functions. She was immediately onboard with the idea of the weapon after hearing the basic concept behind it.
One of the bigger weaknesses of normal guns was the fact that a sufficiently skilled warrior could parry the bullet consistently if their reflexes were fast enough. The shotgun circumvented that by firing a spread of pellets that were too many to deflect. It was a lot more powerful and accurate than a rifle at the cost of losing some of its range. Dalura understood the benefits better than anyone else. Fighting the assailant had exposed the Rebellion’s biggest flaw. While its bullets were too powerful to deflect, it still required a high degree of marksmanship to fully abuse its potential. The shotgun, on the other hand, was originally made for the sole purpose of aristocratic bird hunting. Its popularity came from the fact that even the wimpiest, untrained noble in the land could hit a nimble target with it.
Dalura wasn’t dealing well with the deadline either. Her mind was focused on the project, but her heart was elsewhere. Leaving Forgeberth, a place she had idealized and loved all her life, became a bittersweet thought she couldn’t escape. Who could blame her? The outside world sounded terrifying from her perspective. Monsters and bloodthirsty elves lurked in every corner. She couldn’t even be revived should anything unexpected happen. Working on the shotgun distracted her from her anxious melancholy. George understood what she currently went through without needing her to explain it. He felt the same way before leaving Kolt. Strangely enough, though, he didn’t miss his old home as much as he expected. It shouldn’t surprise him. A city as amazing as Forgeberth had the ability to outshine the mundanity of many other places in the world.
Rhangyl made sure that George and Dalura rested for the entire night but, now that the blacksmithing festival had begun, he couldn’t stop them from continuing their horrible work habits anymore. He was too busy marketing the Shadowtrail Inn and setting up a distribution chain for the hafling couple. Thankfully, the profits from that endeavor were almost immediate thanks to the large influx of new customers. The money from their first night finally allowed Rhangyl to acquire the emeraldbloom lumber needed for the experiments. George was fascinated by the material. Although it looked like normal lumber, it possessed a strange aura that was hard to notice at first, a faint shimmer that warped the air around it, only visible if you stared at it for long enough.
Their first experiment was observing how a shotgun shell full of jagged wood shavings reacted to a weak propulsion glyph. Dalura seemed obsessed with safety after her first attempt at gunsmithing, producing a thick wall of earth between the testing area and the workshop before hesitantly pressing a remote button to activate the glyph. George wondered if she was being too paranoid until hearing the results. It left a ringing in his ears that didn’t go away. The gelatin target had exploded into a liquified mess. There were even shards of wood stuck to the walls and ceiling.
Dalura approached the glyph, stunned for a second. “I’m pretty sure this is the weakest I could make it. What the hell is this stuff? I knew it got stronger with mana but this is nuts.”
“Are you kidding me? This is great!” George chuckled with glee, walking up next to her. “It means we can make it ridiculously stronger!”
Dalura winced away. “Why are you yelling?”
“What?!?”
Dalura mumbled something unintelligible.
“I can’t hear you!” George shook his head, scratching his inner ear with a pinky finger. “I think I’m going deaf!”
“That’s what I said, idiot!”
George winced away. “You don’t have to yell!”
Dalura clenched her fist for a second, bulging a vein on her forehead. She then sighed and walked away to fetch a cleric before her patience ran out.
The legion adapted to their new routine with relative ease. Most of the squadrons took turns on the rear while members of the elite demolished any monsters that appeared. The ecosystem here remained a mystery to their scholars due to its harsh conditions. A wide variety of creatures thrived in this snowy landscape, each more different than the last. Some were grounded, others could both fly and walk, one was even gaseous. It was hard to predict what would come next. The most common trait among them was a resistance to normal magic and a disgusting dark-purple ooze that dripped out of their mouths and open wounds.
The elite didn’t have a problem crushing them, though. Some soldiers even welcomed monster attacks. Watching their leaders show off their skills became a source of entertainment that broke up the monotony of marching all day. They even arranged an intricate network of bets, gambling on things like how long the fights would take and whether or not someone would survive. All of the elites had low odds against them, except for Xastile, who was pressured into fighting next. Most of the soldiers were interested in this one due the very real possibility of an upset. As a young prodigy at seventy years old, he remained an unproven warrior with a flawless record in the noble dueling circuit. Nobody really liked him. His popularity with women only made it easier for the men to want him dead, betting against him. He was also lazy and spoiled, avoiding his duties with the creatures until getting called out by another member of the elite.
Valkyrie didn’t know what to expect from his performance. He also kept hitting on her despite their age difference, which was annoying and made her hesitant to call on his aid. Unfortunately, once they were halfway through their third mountain, the troops had to climb a steep incline that was easily a quarter of the mountain itself. They couldn’t even see the peak yet. Wind conditions were poor, but they couldn’t get around this obstacle without a significant detour, which left them with no choice but to begin the slow hike. Valkyrie didn’t like it one bit. It left them too exposed to an attack. There hadn’t been any since early in the morning. For most, that was a welcome reprieve from an entire night of combat. Valkyrie, however, learned to never relax while in these mountains so an extended period of uninterrupted progress left her anxious wreck. She was too concerned about the next threat to lower her guard again.
Valkyrie made it to the top of the cliff after a few hours of climbing. Xastile greeted her with an aloof smile and returned to playing with a bird on his finger. The elite had made it there long before anyone else. They even set up their tent of their own accord. Usually, soldiers did it for them, but they didn’t have the patience to wait for everyone to catch up. Valkyrie dusted herself and turned her back on Xastile, overlooking the rest of the troops. That was when she spotted another winged creature barreling towards them. An adult one with two heads. It was aiming for the soldiers that were still halfway up the incline. Valkyrie glanced at Xastile, who was still distracted by the bird. She threw snow at him to get his attention, scaring away the bird. Xastile wiped his face, saying:
“What’s the big idea?!?” He spat out more snow. “You could’ve just said something!”
“You’re supposed to be on lookout; not messing around.”
“Whatever. Is there a problem?”
Valkyrie pointed at the unholy abomination speeding towards the soldiers.
“Ah, it flies.”
“What of it?”
“Well, you see, I’m just a humble swordsman. My attacks don’t have enough range to deal with it. Can’t we get someone more suited to flyers? I promise I’ll take care of the next grounded one.”
“There’s nothing humble about you. In fact, you know very well that you’re more than capable of defeating it.”
Soldiers started screaming. The creature was eating them whole two at a time with its pair of heads. Many of them were at risk of falling. They dangled from their safety ropes without anyone to assist them.
Xastile laughed. “This isn’t very fair to me.”
Valkyrie arched an eyebrow. “Do I have to throw you off this cliff?”
Xastile scoffed. “I doubt you-”
Valkyrie pinched him by the tip of his ear, yanking him towards the ledge.
“Okay, okay I’ll go!” Xastile swatted away her hand, drew his sword, and leapt off the cliff, diving toward the creature. Many soldiers cheered, not out of admiration, but because they wanted the beast to win. Xastile never lost his cool during the freefall. He kept a confident grin all the way down, spinning a few times before delivering a graceful strike… which missed. He continued plummeting past the monster at an alarming rate. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”
The soldiers made conflicted expressions, facepalming or pursing their lips with dread. They knew they’d be dead if Xastiel didn’t get his act together. This was the only circumstance in which they showed concern for his well being. The bets were worthless if they didn’t get to enjoy their winnings. Valkyrie couldn’t ignore the second-hand embarrassment. This wouldn’t help his reputation in the legion.
Xastile stuck his sword into the rocks to stop his momentum. The creature threw a volley of its razor sharp feathers at him. Xastile dodged them by perching himself on his sword. At the very least, he was distracting the creature from attacking the soldiers.
The monster pecked at him with both heads. Xastile jumped on its back. The creature began to thrash around to shake him off. It crashed itself into the mountain, causing a handful of soldiers to fall off. Xastile managed to keep his grip, though. Once the monster stabilized its flight, the swordsman found his footing and raised his sword, decapitating the creature’s two heads with a clean swipe.
Some of the soldiers started booing.
Xastile stuck out his tongue at them as he jumped away, clinging to the side of the mountain.
“What are you doing?!?” shouted Valkyrie. “Look at the corpse!”
Xastile widened his eyes. The creature’s body was on a direct course towards Hentil’s tent. He didn’t have much time to act. The corpse was three times the size of the tent. It would definitely crush it. Valkyrie started mentally preparing for Henthil’s wrath. The consequences would be nasty. Xastile hadn’t given up yet. His face finally grew serious. He kicked himself away from the mountain, propelling himself towards the corpse.
In a single breath, the young prodigy unleashed a flurry of attacks that desintagrated the creature’s remains into a pile of mushy purple goo. The viscous liquid rained all over the legion, sparking more ire towards Xastile, but Henthil remained blissfully unaware of the event. Valkyrie sighed in resignation. No one seemed to care that the eaten soldiers couldn’t be revived anymore. Normal infantry archers. They weren’t important, but they still deserved some sympathy. Valkyrie felt like she was the only person in this legion that mourned their death.
Xastile landed safely in the snow with an artful pirouette, dashing up the steep cliff again in less than a minute. He had a cocky grin when he made it to the top, saying:
“I guess you were right; I was the right person for the job!”
Valkyrie rolled her eyes as Xastile walked into the elite’s tent. The boy had a long way to go. Cithrel would’ve ended this battle in her first attack… without messing up.
After getting a cleric to restore George’s hearing, the pair of gunsmiths headed straight back to the underground compound, deciding to get some sleep for the time being. It would only get more dangerous if they started performing tests while they were sleepy. The next day, the emeraldbloom continued to baffle their expectations. All of the normal disadvantages of wooden projectiles didn’t apply to it. Mana seemed to harden it without affecting its weight, allowing it to exceed the speed and power of a metallic projectile when fueled by a glyph.
Their second objective was to see how strong they could make a shotgun without injuring the wielder. With a strong enough glyph, the explosion could send the user flying backwards if they weren’t particularly heavy. The other limiting factor was the weight of the weapon. Originally, George insisted on making a double barrel shotgun, but soon realized that it would be too heavy to aim quickly. He had a hard time justifying it after a bit of bickering. Dalura had to remind him the whole point of the project was to design the opposite of that. They already had the Rebellion for firepower. A single barrel shotgun led to a more efficient design. It created space for a repeating chamber that allowed five bullets to be stored inside the weapon and a lever action in the trigger guard that automatically loaded them into the barrel.
The first prototype of this nature was a thing of beauty, with a polished black steel barrel and a wooden grip. George had seen a couple of these models back in Kolt but Mister Terk prohibited him from ever trying to make one. Getting to try out all of his new ideas was a thrilling challenge he always wanted to tackle. The lack of any real blueprints they could base their designs on made it intimidating at first, but their work on their revolver project made it easier to improvise the things he didn’t already know.
Dalura spent an entire day working on its propulsion glyph. She was really concerned with finding the appropriate balance, paranoid of making it too strong. After mounting the prototype shotgun on a chest high pillar, she tied a bit of string to the trigger and hid herself next to George behind their safety barrier. This test would definitely be louder than the first one so they both stuffed their ears with wax to protect their hearing. They also didn’t bother preparing a gelatin dummy for this test. The prototype was aimed at a solid wall, away from any other room in the compound. There shouldn’t be any safety issues anymore.
The explosion still caught them off guard. It caused an earthquake that lasted more than thirty seconds. Stalactites in the workshop began to crumble. George started to panic, but Dalura’s geomancy prevented any of them from falling. They both feared observing the results of the test.
George peeked around the barrier and frowned. The prototype was blown to smithereens. Dalura had made it too strong. It created a small cave out of the wall that was about fifty feet in diameter. George was bummed about the prototype. He should’ve known better than to grow attached to an unstable, experimental weapon. It was easy to get over, though. Dalura, on the other hand, couldn’t cope with failing here. She immediately returned to the workbench and started working on another propulsion glyph. They still had a bunch of emeraldbloom left but they couldn’t afford to keep wasting it on these tests.
Dalura’s second attempt took five hours to finish. George in the meantime handled the mechanical aspects of the device, going through the tedious task of re-forging, polishing, and oiling the parts again. It was good practice for his blacksmithing fundamentals, which had definitely improved under Dalura’s guidance, but required more practice to reach an adequate level of proficiency. Once the second prototype was finished, George had a better understanding of assembling a shotgun, to the point where he was already thinking of ways to make the next one better. This one took half the time to create than the first prototype. It wasn’t aesthetically pleasing, but they weren’t interested in that aspect anymore. They just wanted to see some results.
The earthquake only lasted ten seconds now.
George breathed a sigh of relief. The prototype was still functional. The pillar that held it up was cracked, though. A sign that it still needed tuning. George had been lying to himself by acting detached from the prototype. He wanted it to survive, at least. After measuring the new cave it created, they noticed it was approximately twenty feet in diameter. The difference in power appeared to also scale with the magnitude of the tremors. Dalura wasn’t satisfied. She quickly started making a third propulsion glyph. It only took half an hour this time. George buffed up the prototype and checked its internal components for damage while she finished. Just as he thought. It was completely intact. They were about to test the new glyph on another wall when Urtan and a squadron of guards rushed into the room, saying:
“What in the cataclysm is going on here?!?”
Apparently, the previous two tests had affected the entire city, not just the compound. Some stalactites fell and damaged a few buildings, but everyone was safe. Urtan had been tracking the source of the first one when the second occurred. It allowed him to notice it came from the compound. George looked away, ashamed. He understood Dalura’s concerns now. They could’ve endangered someone. Their experiments had to be performed more thoughtfully. Dalura didn’t feel like working after getting scolded by her father. They had been at it for eighteen hours today. Considering their progress, this was a tremendous success.
George woke up the following day and was surprised to see Bork in the compound again. He hadn’t visited in a while. The rock elemental exodus was his top priority this entire time. George could tell the golem was tired by the way he lumbered into the room. He brought good news, though. All of the logistical preparations were complete. They only needed a few more days to leave the city. George felt bittersweet about the news. He had grown fond of the golem and would miss him once they parted ways. Now that his responsibilities to the tribe were finished, Bork had some time to aid with the shotgun project.
Dalura was flustered when she saw her master in the workshop. He heard about their involvement in the earthquakes and teased her over it, offering to use his geomancy to prevent any further tremors. The pair of gunsmiths weren’t in a position to decline. They lost track of time again calibrating the weapon with Bork’s help. It took a lot of attempts, but by the end of the day, they toned down the shotgun until finding a balance. The adjusted prototype could still carve out a significant chunk of the wall, but it wouldn’t harm the user anymore.
George felt content with it. He had enough information to draw out a detailed blueprint that contained all of his notes. With the remaining days left they would be able to make a bunch more, adding tiny improvements that rounded up the rough edges of the design, both literally and figuratively. After a day of rest, Dalura couldn’t find another excuse to keep staying in the compound. She wanted to avoid her family for as long as possible, but she didn’t have much time left to say goodbye.
Bork had a private conversation with her after noticing her sullen mood. Whatever was said appeared to be what Dalura needed to hear, since she decided to leave shortly afterwards. George knew that was for the best. He never felt comfortable telling people what to do so he decided to stay out of her business. Unfortunately, that left him with no one to talk with… again. Slowly, it started to affect his concentration, until the manic focus that fueled him the entire week had been completely drained. George didn’t realize how hard he had pushed his body throughout this project. It ached with pain every time he got out of bed and begged him to take some time to recover. At some point, he had to be satisfied with what he could make. The fact that he also carried the puffling egg whenever he paced around left a lot of his muscles sore. His misery was so obvious that Bork felt compelled to approach him. The rock golem went on to say:
“I must apologize. I’ve been packing my belongings all day and forgot that you humans are the conversational type. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. It’s just hard to come up with a name for the new shotgun. You got any ideas?”
Bork made a soft rumble. It sounded like a chuckle. “Not particularly. Language isn’t my specialty.”
“You speak like three…”
“I actually speak seven, but I see your point. I’ve met a lot of people with a lot of different names. I should be of use here. Let’s see… The best ones are usually meaningful. What do you love the most about it?”
“That’s the problem! It’s hard to tell. I’ve wanted to make something like this for a long time. In a lot of ways this is my dream gun.”
“I see…” Bork paused for a second. “What about… Fantasy?”
George squinted. “That’s just silly.”
“Yes, it’s not threatening at all.” Bork hung his head, ashamed. “I don’t know what happened to my judgement. My bad.”
George regretted saying that. He didn’t mean to sound dismissive. “N-no, Bork, please, I’ll take it under consideration, okay? At the very least, I think it got me on the right track.” He sighed. “Besides, that’s not the real problem.”
“Then what is?”
“The shotgun just doesn’t feel… finished.”
“The latest model appears to be functioning within acceptable parameters. What more could be done to it?”
“Well, one of the main advantages of shotguns is the wide variety of ammunition one can prepare for them. Some are made only for hunting small prey. Others for… uhh...”
“Killing?”
“Yeah... There’s even some made to be warning shots. The emeraldbloom shells are great, but I feel like I’m not taking full advantage of the weapon by only having one type of ammo.”
“What if I make some for you?”
“Really? Do you know how?”
“It’s not immediately obvious, but I am a fully trained wizard, graduated from one of the top academies in the elven empire. Magic is my biggest passion. Of course I can come up with something!”
George had never seen Bork act so animated before. His strange smile was wholesome, if not a bit unnerving. He quickly shuffled away to a workbench and started tinkering with some of his alchemical ingredients. By the end of the day, Bork had created two types of bullets. George inspected them with eager curiosity. They were the correct size. One was stuffed with a green powder and the other had a solid white substance in it. George loaded them into their latest prototype and cocked it, taking aim at a target. He then remembered he wasn’t wearing ear protection and got some wax before taking aim again. The incident had left him anxious. It was better to develop the good habit now before they lost access to a cleric.
The first bullet, the green powder, spat out a literal fireball.
George started coughing.
Bork cleared up the debris with geomancy. “Sorry about that, I always forget you breathe.”
“Forget it. That was amazing!”
“I knew you’d like it. It’s called alchemist’s fire. A chemical made from the same substance that fuels a dragon’s fire. It’s also a material component in a standard fireball spell. The emeraldbloom seems to pack more force, though. Now try out the second one.”
George pulled on the trigger guard again, loading the next bullet. After shooting, it covered the entire target with the white substance. Mana had given it elastic properties, making it look like a liquid until hardening.
“That one is a special compound I just created. The process is a bit complicated, but it’s great for capturing targets. I will teach Dalura to make them should you ever need more.”
“This is great! Thank you!”
“It’s my pleasure. If I’m being honest, it feels nice to be a wizard for a day. I’m going to miss it.”
“You don’t really have to quit being a wizard.”
“No, I’ve been contemplating this for some time. My responsibilities as tribe leader need to be prioritized. I thought I could maintain a balance, but I can’t justify pursuing my own interests anymore. We have a lot of work ahead of us. This is intended to be a new society for us. Every step needs careful consideration.”
“I think that sounds worthwhile.”
“Then I hope you’re right. If my vision comes true, our new city will be a monument to beauty.”
“I wish I could see it one day.”
“You will. Once we establish ourselves in the heart of the mountains, I’ll personally build a bridge to humanity. Hopefully, I’ll see you on the other end.”
Valkyrie was tired of being cold. Her fur jacket could only protect her so much. The legion had been hiking these mountains for a week and a half now. Morale began to dwindle again. Henthil didn’t intend to slow down either. His deadline pressured him more than expected. The Emperor probably had an ulterior motive for this excursion. Valkyrie suspected something was wrong the minute he accepted Henthil’s offer. A legion shouldn’t be gambled away so easily if it didn’t gain him anything. The only reason he would be eager to accept was because he wanted Henthil out of Emeroak. That wasn’t good. The Emperor might suspect Henthil’s true aspirations. He could feel threatened by the warmaster’s growing political influence. Valkyrie could only come to one conclusion. The campaign was a thinly veiled way to kill anyone loyal to Henthil’s cause.
Henthil didn’t seem bothered by that. This was a trial by fire for him. If he succeeded in recovering the old territories of the empire, his march back home would end with a coronation. There was also an unexpected advantage from fighting so many beasts. The normal infantry began to develop tactics for dealing with the creatures on their own. They grew stronger after each encounter. The smaller, one-headed flying monsters weren’t a threat anymore. They still needed assistance whenever one of the bigger ones showed up, which meant that the elite were still taking turns on lookout duty.
“Fetch me more oil, assistant!” commanded a deep, masculine voice. “My pectorals quiver with sadness whenever they can’t glisten in sunlight!”
Valkyrie longed for the day she didn’t have to hear that voice anymore. It was Breek’aus, a member of the elite currently on shift. His muscular physique and tall body propelled him to the peak of elven athleticism. By Valkyrie’s estimation, he weighed four times the amount of an average infantryman, with veiny biceps and thighs as big as a child’s skull. Nobody could deny his power. What made him a threat, though, was a much more simpler fact.
Breek’aus was actually a demigod. More specifically, the bastard son of Marthux, god of victory and ruler of the divines. His boastfulness spawned from that divine ancestry, which granted him a ridiculous capacity to endure damage, along with incredible strength. The man wasn’t even wearing clothes in the middle of this snowy terrain. He only had a loincloth covering his protruding member, along with a harem of women who oiled him up, feeding him fruit. His main source of entertainment was flexing his muscles and watching himself in a full body mirror, which was carried by servants that always followed him around everywhere he went.
That became a bit of an impediment when the legion reached a hill entirely made of ice. It was unlike anything they had seen. Valkyrie was hesitant to continue further without scouting, but she knew Henthil wouldn’t suffer any delays. Breek’aus and his retinue managed to climb easily despite the logistical challenge, being among the first to reach the summit. Valkyrie couldn’t believe how well the servants balanced the full body mirror.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly until the ice hill grew a mouth and started rising out of the ground. It quickly became twice its original length.
Many soldiers were injured in that initial move. The creature had the texture of ice despite possessing a fleshy interior. Valkyrie slowly began to fear for her life. She was right at the top, along with Breek’aus, and there didn’t seem to be anything they could do up there. The rest of the elite might have to get involved.
“Worry not, puny mortals!” said Breek’aus. “My abdominals throb in anticipation, for today I shall perform a feat that will be told in every song of my legend.”
The retinue clapped for a few seconds.
None of the soldiers were soothed by his proclamation.
Valkyrie began to wonder if death was a better alternative. Breek’aus stretched his arms a bit, winding up for a punch. Valkyrie wrote him off as delusional until seeing him follow through on the attack. He struck the ground beneath him with enough force to generate a small vacuum of air around them, causing a large crack on the monster’s head. The creature stopped moving. Valkyrie gaped her jaw. It was dead.
Breek’aus flexed his muscles in victory, loudly boasting about his feat as he walked away.
Valkyrie shook her head. She didn’t have time to complain. At the end of the day, jealousy would only cause her misery. The legion needed to be mobilized again. If they kept up this pace, it wouldn’t be long before they reached the heart of the mountains.
Next Part

Kubala, the path to glory of Barcelona's most loved legend: A story of overcoming, adventures, crazy nights, majestic matches and of a good man who made everybody around him happy.

Nothing in Kubala's life was normal. Now that TV series about sportsmen are fashionable, the one that could be made about the adventures of Ladislao Kubala Stecz (Budapest, 1927) would raze through many seasons. In one season we could go deeper into his facet of legendary footballer, capable of changing the way of playing this sport, how he saved his life at the very last moment by not getting on the Torino plane that crashed in Superga, or how he was ten minutes away from signing for Real Madrid or enrolling in the Pirate League of Colombia, all of this in order to end being Barcelona's biggest icon... who ended playing for Espanyol.
We could add a season of adventures due to his incredible escape from communist Hungary. His journey through Italy with a football team, the Hungaria, of stateless people in which in addition to Hungarians also played Croats, Albanians, Romanians and Serbs who were looking for a life as good as they could get. One could also add to this the facet of the social phenomenon that dazzled a country during the dark years of Franco's regime by becoming a pop star, and end up with another season about the legends, real, invented or simply exaggerated, of his adventures in Barcelona's nightclubs.
Everything about Kubala is like a movie.

The legend of the escape.

Born in Budapest to a Hungarian man and a Slovakian woman, he always considered himself as both Hungarian and Slovakian, even when this republic was part of the now extinct Czechoslovakia. By the age of 20, Kubala was a football star known for his performances with Slovan Bratislava and Vasas Budapest. In fact, he had already been capped by Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Later, he would go on to play for Spain, and is still the only player to have been capped by three countries. But fed up with the system that was preventing him from developing his professional football career, he embarked on an escape proper of a movie to the West. He contacted a human trafficking organisation, a mafia that, in exchange for a large amount of money, facilitated a partial escape. As is now the case with criminals who gamble with the lives of people who want to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe or pass to the United States through the southern border, the smugglers did not secure anything. The last part of the journey depended on the luck and expertise of the escapees and often ended tragically.
"I remember that when I escaped from Hungary I was just a kid. The traffickers left us in the middle of a mountain to do the last stretch on foot. We were a large group. The adults gathered the children and gave us palinka. A liquor similar to brandy to get us drunk and fall asleep. A child's cry could alert the border guards patrolling the mountain. And they had orders to shoot to kill. The group split in two. My group was lucky and we were able to win the Austrian border. Once we were safe, we learned that the other group that had travelled with us and took another road was discovered and killed." The chilling story is that of Zoltan Czibor, the son of the former Barça player who tells how he had to flee Hungary with his family to join his father in Italy. The odyssey of Kubala, six years earlier, was mirrored.
The traffickers disguised Kubala as a Russian soldier and put him in a truck that would leave the escapees at an undetermined point in the mountains so that they could cross the border into Austria on their own. Kubala remembered that this journey scared him to death because unlike his comrades, he was a national celebrity and any soldier who checked the military truck would recognize him. He was endangering his life and the lives of those who accompanied him.
When they were left in the mountain on January 27, 1949, Kubala walked, and crossing a river helped by a tire that carried him, managed to reach Innsbuck, Austria, without any documentation. He was a stateless man starting from scratch.
In Austria he managed to sign with Pro Patria, a team from Milan, but he could only play friendly matches. His escape provoked the anger of the Hungarian regime, which denounced him and blocked his registration. Kubala had married Anna Daucik two years earlier, sister of Fernando Daucik, a veteran player of the era who would later become a famous coach. When Kubala fled, he left behind his family, whom he was unable to reunite with until six months later, when Anna was able to cross the border and meet Ladislao in Udine. He arrived with one more member of the family. A baby, her firstborn, whom Kubala did not yet know.
While he is irregularly enrolled in the Pro Patria, he gets the chance to sign with Torino, Italy's dominant team at the time. He is offered a trial match. Nothing better than a friendly match that Il Grande Torino had in Lisbon as a tribute to Xico Ferreira. However, when the Turin team's plane is about to take off, the president of Torino prevents Kubala from boarding because he fears a federal sanction. On the return flight, on 4 May 1949, the Fiat G 212 of Avio Linee Italiana crashed into the retaining wall of the Basilica of Superga due to the wind, poor visibility and an error in the altimeter of the aircraft. At 180 kilometres per hour and with a visibility of 40 metres, the pilot saw the stone wall of the basilica too late when he thought the plane was at 2,000 metres and was actually at 690 metres above sea level. The 31 people who were travelling in that aircraft died. Kubala had saved his life again.

The legend of Hungaria.

With no possibility of playing in Italy because the back then very powerful Italian Communist Party was pressing to prevent people fleeing from countries in the orbit of the USSR from taking refuge in Italy, Kubala had no choice but to form a team of stateless people who hired their services throughout Europe to play friendly matches against whoever hired them.
The team was called Hungaria, was managed by his brother-in-law Fernando Daucik and was mainly made up of Hungarians, although there were also players of other nationalities. It was made up of: Kis, Marik, Torok, Mogoy, Lami, Rákosi, Hrotko, Majteny, Nagy, Kubala, Otto, Licker, Turbeky, Monsider (Croatian), De Lorenzi (Albanian), Szegedi (Romanian) and Arangelovic (Serbian).
They played their first match against Italy's B team, but again pressure from the PCI forced them to play outside Italy. And that is how they arrived in Spain, hired by Santiago Bernabéu. On June 5, 1950, they faced Real Madrid in Chamartin, losing 4-2, but with a stellar performance by Kubala, who scored both of his team's goals. Three days later, they beat the Spanish team that was preparing for the World Cup in Brazil, where they came in fourth, 1-2 again with a great performance by Kubala, who received an offer from Real Madrid to be signed.
Kubala requires that to join the team, Madrid must also hire Daucik as a coach, something that Bernabéu does not agree to. The Madrid coach at that time was the Briton Keeping, a great connoisseur of WM tactics. Daucik is offered to train the Plus Ultra, a Madrid branch that plays in the third division. That negative and the federative problems that drags Kubala cause that Madrid becomes disinterested in his transfer, that was already agreed lacking of some fringes that turned out to be determinant.
The Hungaria moves two days later to Barcelona, where on June 10 plays against Espanyol losing 6-4 in a match with Pepe Samitier, the technical secretary of Barça, in the stands. It is necessary to emphasize that Hungaria had been playing three matches in five days with a very short team and without being able to make substitutions. Even so, Kubala amazes and Samitier does not mess around. Six days after that match, on 16 June 1950, at half past six in the evening, Kubala signed his three-year contract with Barça at the Pasaje Méndez Vigo. Obviously, with Fernando Daucik as coach. President Montal, Sr., signed him as an "amateur player" in order to avoid any trouble for the federation.
Real Madrid rages and is shocked. Pablo Hernández, general secretary of the white entity and Santiago Bernabéu's right hand, assures that Barça had broken a non-aggression pact between both teams and had hired a player with whom they were in talks. Samitier, who was unbeatable in the media, declares that he had been following Kubala for months and that the pact had not been broken because it referred only to players who played in Spanish teams. And Hungaria was not Spanish. In fact, it wasn't from anywhere.
But Kubala's problems didn't end there. He still didn't have a registration card or an international certificate. Vasas in Budapest and the Hungarian Federation had reported him to FIFA. Barça used the weak argument that since professionalism had been abolished in Hungary, any amateur player could choose his destiny. But the fight was not going to be so easy.
Barça, it is fair to say, had the total support of the regime and the Federation to carry out the transfer. At the level of anti-communist propaganda, Kubala was perfect. A young and extraordinary sportsman who fled from the red hell to take refuge in Franco's Spain was a candy too sweet to let go. Muñoz Calero, president of the Federation, rowed in favor of Barça as did Ricardo Cabot, secretary of the organization, who, in addition to his affection for the regime, was a well-known Barcelona supporter.
But the procedures were very slow and Kubala could only play friendly matches. He made his debut against Osasuna on 12 October, scoring two goals on the day the Barça fans knew instantly that they had just signed a star. Then he played against Zaragoza, Frankfurt twice, Girona and the Badalona. In six friendlies he scored 11 goals. The fans and the player himself were eager to meet in an official match. For all this, the Federation to play the role with FIFA fined Barça every time he lined up Kubala with the symbolic figure of 50 pesetas.
It is at this time that Kubala is about to leave everything and go away from Barça. He needed the money and wanted to play at the highest level and in Colombia he was offered the chance to do so. The South American country had organised the so-called Pirate League outside FIFA and many of the world's biggest stars joined, including Alfredo Di Stefano who went to Millonarios in Bogota. Kubala had a tempting offer from Atletico Bucaramanga. With the option of Kubala leaving, events accelerated. To begin with, Barça fixed his financial situation by means of a peculiar amateur contract in which they paid him 1,200 pesetas for "compensation" and 3,800 for "encouragement and overfeeding".
On April 2, 1951, he was granted the status of political refugee as a stateless person, which was a step towards granting him Spanish nationality. But for this step, Kubala first had to be converted to Catholicism through the sacrament of baptism. Every Spaniard had to be a Catholic. Kubala was baptized in Aguilas, Murcia, the birthplace of Muñoz Calero, president of the Federation. It is then when Barça, to avoid problems, settles its differences economically with Vasas, which despite being against capitalism accepts a payment of 300,000 pesetas to provide the transfer, while the Pro Patria, which also complained, is satisfied with 12 million lire.
The Kubala era could now really commence.

The legend on the field.

Kubala made his official debut with Barcelona in Sevilla in a cup match. The Sevillistas at that time were one of the best teams. Sevilla and Barça had developed in that period a great rivalry in the high places of the table. In 1946 Sevilla had stolen the possibility of winning the championship from Barça by drawing in Les Corts on the last day, in 1948 Barça beat the Sevillians in the final of the Eva Perón Cup (which would be the current Supercup) and in that campaign a Barça without Kubala had lost all its options to win La Liga after losing 4-0 in Nervión three days before the end of the season.
The Cup, by that time was played once the regular season was over and in those circumstances the official debut of Kubala took place. On April 29th in Nervion, Barça arrived to play against Sevilla in the middle of a difficult atmosphere. The Andalusians had lost the league in a dramatic outcome when they drew at home in the last match against Atletico Madrid with a refereeing performance that the locals judged scandalous. For further concern, the Federation allowed Kubala to line up with Barça in the first round of the Cup, which in Sevilla was taken as a surprise.
With the stadium full to the flag, Barcelona defeated Sevilla in an exhibition of Kubala. He wasn't just the best of the match but he showed Spain a way of playing football unthinkable until that time: chest controls, shots with curve, millimetric changes of play of 40 meters, protection of the ball with his back, use of the body in the shot and touches with the heel.
Domenech, Sevilla's attacker who was the direct protagonist of that match, explained years later how he remembered that day.
"It was something never seen before. Ramallets kicked it and he would receive her with his chest, or with either of his legs. If you tackled him he would dribble you in a brick. He'd put the ball where he wanted her. Besides, from time to time he changed with César, he'd be a center forward and César would be a midfielder. They drove us crazy. The anger of the people became clamours. We were witnessing something extraordinary. It was like going from black and white cinema to colour," explained the former Sevilla player. The Sevilla crowd, who had welcomed Barça and its new superstar with anger, ended up giving Kubala a standing ovation for every action as if they were watching a glorious bullfighting performance.
Kubala's actions on the field change football forever. Since there was no television, his exploits are reported orally. There is no other way to see it than to go to the field of Les Corts, which is packed for every game Barça plays as a local. It is a very common argument to say that Kubala forced Barça to build the Camp Nou because the old Les Corts was not enough to accommodate all the people who wanted to admire him. Maybe he had an influence, but as the journalist Frederic Porta, author of an interesting biography of Kubala (Kubala, l'heroi que va canviar la història del Barça. Ed. Saldonar) explains, "the truth is that Barça had already bought the land to build the Camp Nou two years before and the idea of making a bigger field already existed, but Kubala advanced everything and justified the change".
Blessed with brutal technique, a sensational strike of the ball and an unusual physical strength, Kubala changed football. He would throw free-kicks over the wall with curve or by making the ball bounce in front of the goalkeeper, he would take penalties (he was practically infallible) with what was later called paradinha and was credited with the Brazilians although he was the first in Europe to do so. Physically he was a bull. In his youth he had practiced boxing and if he didn't become a recognized fighter with a great career it was because he had short arms. His lower body was sensational. He had a butt and legs that allowed him to protect the ball like no one else. Frederic Porta says that "in his time of splendour they measured his thighs and each one had a circumference of 69 centimetres, which would be the waist of one of his companions". He was also capable of running the 100 metres in less than 11 seconds. A total athlete with a very refined technique.
However, that physical strength and the confidence he had in her, for he never avoided a collision, were his downfall. Kubala became the target of a hunt by rival defenders. He never went into hiding and that's why in eleven years at Barcelona he suffered up to eleven injuries of some seriousness. With matches without television, the harshness that bordered on violence was the order of the day. He was being kicked to death.
But Barça was living its most golden period to date. Moreover, the club revolved around Kubala. Frederic Porta compares it with the present time: "Now they say that Messi commands the club and surely he commands, but nothing to do with the influence that Kubala had. Kubala was the boss and even the one who decided the transfers. And no one was surprised. That Barça adopted the socks with the horizontal stripes blaugrana is his imposition. He saw them on the rugby team, liked them and incorporated them into the football team by decree. In fact, it is he who insists on signing Luis Suarez when he impresses him in a match against Deportivo. Kubala was Suarez's first fan, but what happened in the stands, which was divided between Suaristas and Kubalistas, is another matter.
Suarez was eight years younger than Kubala. He arrived at Barcelona at the age of 19, Kubala was 27 and his physique was very punished by his injuries and the life he was living, as he did not deprive himself of anything. If he held out, it was because of privileged genetics.
Therefore, there never was a real competition between them, but there was a lot of influence here from the figure of Helenio Herrera, the Barça manager, who saw Kubala as older and slower and was looking forward to a quick change by the young Galician as the leader of the team. The debate reached the stands and the media. It was an absurd debate, because they didn't play in the same position, with whom Kubala really had a certain rivalry with Eulogio Martínez, who was the one with whom he alternated the position.
Kubala's physical problems were not only due to injuries. He had the whole of Spain in suspense when he suffered a tuberculosis that could have cost him his life. There are apocryphal versions that explain that this tuberculosis was actually a stab wound he suffered in a fight in a cheap pub in the fifth district (Barcelona's Chinatown) and he has to retire to Montseny to recover. Nobody is betting on his return to the pitch if he survives a "hole in the lung the size of a silver bullet" according to the chronicles of the time. But once again, Kubala's ability to survive prevails. He returns to the pitches, but already heavily punished and slowed down.
It is against this backdrop that the 1961 European Cup final arrives, with Kubala arriving at the age of 34 with a herniated disc that barely allows him to walk, but he wants to play. He knows that the club is going through a critical situation despite having reached the final of the maximum trophy for the first time: the club is bankrupt because of the construction of the Camp Nou, the fights in the board of directors are chaotic, Luis Suarez has signed for Inter (the one in Bern will be his last game with Barça), which was where Helenio Herrera had left the team in the hands of Enrique Orizaola.
Kubala tells Orizaola to line him up, that like all the Portuguese will go for him and he can barely move because of the back pain and will play with painkillers, it will give more opportunities to his teammates. But the match is a pile of misfortunes for Barcelona. Ramallets scores an own goal, Barça shoots three times to the damn square posts of the goals (from then on they would change their shape) even Kubala kicked a ball that hit a post, went through the goal line until it hit the other post and came out repelled. Barça lost and Kubala's time at Barcelona came to an end.

The man of the year.

Kubala's significance goes beyond the playing field. According to a vote made for Radio Barcelona by journalist Joaquín Soler Serrano in the mid-50s, the Catalans most loved by their fellow citizens were Doctor Barraquer and Ladislao Kubala.
"He was literally the most famous person in the city, people really venerated him, and even Messi's influence cannot be compared to that of Kubala in those years," explains Porta.
His life off the field was notorious. An unrepentant night owl, it was common to see him in Barcelona's fashionable coffee shops and nightclubs. He was a man who stood out. Alfredo Relaño defines him in some of his articles as "a demigod. Tall, strong, blond with blue eyes and an overflowing personality. He aroused the admiration of men and women alike. An idol". Frederic Porta sums it up with the argument that "he would be the sum of Messi and Beckham and on top of that, he would go out every night".
Faced with Kubala's disorganised life, the Barcelona management decided to set up a private detective agency to follow him at night. The reports of the detectives are still in the Centre de Documentació del FC Barcelona and Frederic Porta published them in the history magazine 'Sàpiens'. In them, he gives a detailed account of the nocturnal wanderings of "Mr. K.", the code name of the Blaugrana star in an exercise in absurd discretion. There is also a letter from a Sabadell businessman in the club's archives, expressing concern that Kubala and Czibor had been "found in a Sabadell establishment after 2.30 in the morning accompanied by some of those ladies who were once gentlemen, I don't know if you understand". What the businessman doesn't explain in the letter is what he was doing in the same place.
Kubala's fondness for drinking was no secret. Helenio Herrera explains in a television interview that "one day at an airport in customs they asked Kubala if he had anything to declare and he said two bottles of whisky. The official asked him to show them to him and he, laughing, touched his belly and said: 'X-ray, I have them inside'. On another occasion, in the same situation, but carrying the bottle in the bag, he was told to leave it at the airport because no alcoholic drinks were allowed to be taken on board. Neither shy nor lazy, he drank it in front of the astonished official.
The legends about the occasions when the night was made longer and he did not arrive at training sessions or matches were recurrent. In that case, he called on the services of Angel Mur Sr., the team masseur who knew where to find him. He would start a pilgrimage through the usual places or floors until he found him, took him to the changing room, gave him a cold shower, a coffee with salt, a massage and played. The fans forgave him everything and were aware that their star was a man of joyful life. But he never failed on the field. Among the crowd at the time there were comments about the Kubala ritual in those games that followed a busy night. "He started off badly, and vaguely, but the signal was when, ten minutes into the game, he rolled up his sleeves as if to say 'I'm here, let's start, I've already cleared off', and the machine started to work.
You can't find anyone in the world who speaks ill of Kubala. Absolutely no one. Everyone highlights his huge heart and that despite being by far the highest paid player of the time (he earned six times more than his teammates) he didn't have a no for anyone. His detachment from money was legendary.
As proof, the anecdote explained by his biographer Porta: "one day he arrived at the dressing room and commented that his car had been stolen and that in the glove compartment he was carrying an envelope with 200,000 pesetas, which was a fortune for the time (a good apartment could cost 130,000 pesetas). When his colleagues tried to encourage him, he simply said: someone who needs it more than I do must have taken it".
It was also usual for him to take off his coat and give it to a poor man who begged in Barcelona's winter, or to take in any Hungarian who came to Barcelona asking for help in his house in Carrer Duquesa d'Orleans. Kubala, remembering his times as a stateless refugee without papers, asked nothing. He would take them home and pay them a boat ticket to America. The motto among the refugees fleeing the Iron Curtain was that "if you get to Barcelona, look for Kubala, he will help you". He never failed.
Later, now retired, he set up a bar next to Czibor in Capitan Arenas Street, the mythical Kep Duna (blue Danube in Hungarian) that became an unofficial refugee reception centre that was monitored by the secret services of the United States, the USSR and the Spanish police. Something like the Rick's Café in the film Casablanca, but in the upper area of Barcelona.
He was the great character of Barcelona loved by all, but there was a moment when this was almost broken, strange as it may seem. It coincided with the defeat in Bern, when a part of the press came to write that "Barça must be de-Kubalized as the Soviet Union must be de-Stalinized" and, especially, when he signed for Espanyol. The earthquake was a huge one.

From the bench to Sarrià.

After the defeat in Bern's final, Kubala announced his retirement from the fields. He had taken the coaching course and was ranked number one in his class. He made a pact with the president Llaudet, who was also an interesting character as we will see, that in principle he would take charge of the footballers' school of the club and that in a couple of years he would be in charge of the first team.
Meanwhile, Barcelona is directed by Lluís Miró who faces a team in disarray. Suarez has been transferred to Inter in the worst decision in the club's history and myths such as Ramallets, Tejada and Czibor were in the decline of their careers. The season starts badly and after losing at Mestalla to Valencia by a humiliating 6-2 that forces the resignation of Miro. It was time for Kubala, who was promoted to the first team in front of the joy of the fans. And the project results from the beginning. The Barça of the second part of season 61-62 recovers in La Liga and finishes second (the distance with the white ones when Kubala arrived was almost insurmountable) and avenges the 6-2 of Mestalla beating Valencia in the Camp Nou 4-0.
Facing the next season, the 62-63, Kubala can make his team by giving painful drops of some of his former teammates as it is the case of Eulogio Martinez or Evaristo. One of Llaudet's reluctances to give Kubala the job of coach was that he would have to manage some of his former teammates.
The positive expectations about Kubala's first full project were frustrated at first when the Blaugrana team had to play the final of the Copa de Ferias against Valencia, the team that caused the fall of Miró and the promotion of Kubala. And the history, by rare that it seems, repeats: Valencia returns to him to put 6-2 to the Barça. The fans explode against the team. In the return match, obviously, there is nothing to do, but Llaudet's ability to self-flagellation has no limits. As Alfredo Relaño writes, the Blaugrana president calls a dinner with the press the day before the game and makes this statement that if it happened today would open all the news.
Llaudet, in front of the press and accompanied by the coach Kubala and Gràcia as captain, asks the fans to forgive him and announces changes in the protocol of the start of the second leg. "Valencia will go out first to receive the applause, then Barcelona, to receive the whistles. Then Kubala will come out, so he can get the thunders. And finally me, so that all the whistles fall on my person, because I am the barcelonist who loves the club the most and who is destined to die on the pitch, if necessary...". He ends his speech crying. As we can see, Gaspart didn't invent anything.
The match ended in a draw and Kubala's project as Barça's coach was doomed. The manager is fired in the middle of the season and then a bomb explodes in Barcelona. Kubala accepts the offer to return to the pitch, but not as a coach, will be as a player and nothing more and nothing less than in Espanyol, Barça's eternal rival.
On 3 September 1963 Espanyol, then Español, announced that Kubala would be hired as a player. At 36 years of age, he was capable of being competitive.
His decision divides the public opinion. On the one hand, Federico Gallo and Juan José Castillo support his decision, on the other hand, Carlos Pardo or Ibáñez Escofet shoot at him. They call him a "Jew who sells himself for a plate of beans", a "traitor" and they see political interests in his decision.
Kubala explains that he wanted to continue playing and that he saw himself capable of doing so, although he accepted that he was not at Barcelona's level. He had received offers from important clubs, including River Plate and Juventus, but he doesn't want to leave Barcelona, where he feels like another Barcelonian. The Espanyol meets his expectations.
His start of the season is not bad, on the contrary, he scores in his first two games, but the team doesn't work out. The coexistence between the veteran newcomer Kubala and the team's symbol, Argilés, is not easy. Scopelli is dismissed as coach and de facto command of the team is given to the two team leaders despite their differences. The crisis erupts when the Spaniard visits the Camp Nou. The periquitos lose by 5-0 in a match in which the Barcelona crowd booed Kubala who they are eager to humiliate with his new team. Even so, at the end of the match, Kubala has a gesture to his former team that shows that he does not hold any grudge against what he has heard from the stands. At the end of the match, he organizes his teammates to make the corridor to Barça applauding the rival in recognition of the exhibition made. That gesture feels bad among the Espanyol fans and among some of his teammates. Argilés does not make the corridor and goes straight to the changing rooms.
The following year, Kubala becomes a manager-player and among the departures that he causes, there is the one of Argilés, but by contrast, Di Stéfano arrives, also hurt by his bad exit from Madrid fighting against Bernabéu.
Di Stefano and Kubala are like brothers. Even though they haven't officially played together, they have a special chemistry. A friendship that is forged when the Argentinian is about to sign for Barcelona.
When Di Stéfano arrives in Barcelona to sign for Español, he stays first at the Avenida Palace Hotel, but after a month he is living in Kubala's house as one of the family. The children of both always maintained a relationship as if they were brothers.
One of the players under Kubala's command was Jose Maria Rodilla, one of the players who would soon form the famous 'Dolphins' forward line. At 80 years of age, Rodilla remembers Kubala.
"I have a wonderful memory of Kubala, I always had a special affection for him. Not in vain, he was the one who signed me for Espanyol", he remembers when answering the call of this newspaper to which he confesses that* "normally I do not make declarations, but to speak about Kubala I do whatever is needed"*.
Rodilla, former teammate at Espanyol, has clear that "he was the best player in the world in terms of technique. Di Stéfano was the best footballer, but he didn't have his technique. Alfredo was more intense and more player of the whole field, but he could not do things that Kubala did"
Those who had the privilege of playing with both of them remember that "for example, Di Stefano wouldn't leave you alone for a minute, he was all over you and the fights were intense, but he always set an example, he never asked you for anything that he didn't do. Kubala was more paternalistic and tolerant. For example, he would ask us to do as he did in training, and while sitting down he would be able to make 3,000 touches on the ball without dropping it. Only he could do that."
Rodilla adds a story that explains Kubala's quality as a player-coach at the age of 38: "We went to play a friendly at Amposta and they called a foul on the edge of the box. Kubala takes the ball and whacks it into the corner. The referee made him repeat it because someone had moved or I don't know what. Kubala takes the ball and wham, back to the square. And the referee tells him that he has to repeat. That day Kubala got angry and left the field."
Rodilla recalls that Kubala's move from Barça to Espanyol created controversy in the city, but that he was oblivious to it. "He was still a magnificent person, I never heard him say a bad word against anyone. He never got into an argument, he was goodness personified, he was unlucky in his time as a coach, but as a coach he is one of the best I've ever had, with a great love for young players and always trying to help you improve."

Boys well, optimal morale.

He extended his playing career for a couple more years by playing for Zurich and even trying out the American adventure at the Toronto Falcons, where he coincides with Branko and Daucik's son. At the age of 40 he played 19 games and scored 5 goals.
In 1968 he returned to Spain and trained the Córdoba team for a short period of time until he was called up to the national team. Kubala will manage the Spanish team until 1980, when he signs for Barcelona again as a coach.
Kubala's debut with Spain was, once again, a propaganda match for the regime. It was played in the Estadio de la Línea de la Concepción against Finland and Spain beat their rivals 6-0 in a match that was no longer useful. Spain had missed out on qualifying for the Mexico '70 World Cup, but the idea of that game was to showcase a great field that could be seen from Gibraltar as if to give jealousy to those in the Rock for the sports culture of Spain. Dictatorship things.
It's true that at that time Spain was struggling more than anything else on the international scene. It did not qualify for the 1974 World Cup because of Katalinski's goal in the play-off match in Frankfurt, and in both the 1978 World Cup and the 1980 European Championship the team fell in the first round, but there is still no one from that era who will make a judgement against Kubala.
"Kubala, one ahead of his time. No doubt he had a lot to do with his past as a footballer. And not just like any other player, like the best! I remember him always saying to me: 'Ruben, you have to get out of the way on the other side of the ball. Look for the space, not the ball. The goal I scored in Yugoslavia has to do with everything he taught me," he told Fermin de la Calle in an interview with AS Ruben Cano, the hero of the famous 'Battle of Belgrade' in the match that took Spain to the World Cup in Argentina. Yes, the one with the goal by Cardeñosa that could have changed Kubala's record with the national team.
He did a lot to improve Spanish football and his idea regarding the incorporation of foreigners to improve the level of Spanish football was key in the future development of the Spanish competitive level.
His players remember him as a didactic person, tactically bold and very close. At a time when fury was the hallmark of the game, Kubala never forgot that he was the heir to the Magyar tradition of the Honved and the Hungary who, by moving the ball, shocked the world the day they destroyed England at Wembley 3-6.
For the average football fan, Kubala may have been a half-hearted coach who embodied an era of the national team in which nothing was won, as has been the case most of the time, and he became popular for his expressions that would now be meme material on social networks. The national team was known as the 'Kubala boys' and the coach's catchphrase before the matches saying "boys well, optimal morale" was the fashionable phrase in the coffee shops of the 70s in Spain.
But among his colleagues, Kubala still deserved reverential respect. "The first goal was authentically Latin, cunningly scored and perfectly studied. I can only congratulate Kubala on his previous tactical work," said German boss Helmut Schön after facing and losing to Spain in a friendly in which the recent world semi-finalist and next world champion fell to the Kubala boys at the Sanchez Pizjuan with two strategic goals from Arieta. Yes, Arieta against Müller. Seeler, Beckembauer, Maier, Netzer and company.
He left the national team in 1980 to join Barça as the coach of Núñez's second project in an operation that was the prelude to what would happen in the World Cup in Russia with Lopetegui. Kubala committed to Barça while he was coach and tried to alternate functions, but Porta refused. Finally, on 8 June 1980, four days before the start of the European Championship, Kubala signed for the Blaugrana team, which he would join after the European Championship.
His second spell at the head of Barça did not go well either and he was dismissed mid-season. He continued his adventure on the bench as coach of Saudi Arabia (in that he was also a pioneer), training Malaga and the Paraguayan national team before retiring from football on the bench of Elche.
He spent his final years in Barcelona as active as ever. Playing with Barça veterans, helping his teammates, not having a no for anyone and playing tennis every day or going for a run or cycling routes exhibiting an enviable physical condition.
Until the light of genius and the glory faded away 18 years ago. A degenerative brain disease put an end to the adventure, but not to the legend of a world football myth. An icon that changed the lives of so many people that they wouldn't fit even in a stadium.
The coffin with the mortal remains of Kubala was carried on shoulders, amidst the applause of the fans who gathered at the doors of the church of Santa Tecla, by Alfredo Di Stéfano, Gustau Biosca, Eduardo Manchón, Estanislao Basora, Joan Segarra, Josep Bartomeu, Luis Suárez, Antoni Ramallets and Gonzalvo III.
He rests in the cemetery of Les Corts, next to the Camp Nou because that is what he left written in his will, while Serrat sang to him about how...
...Pelé was Pelé and Maradona was the one and that's it. Di Stéfano was a pit of mischief. Honour and glory to those who made the sun shine on our football. Everyone has his merits; to each his own, but for me none is like Kubala. Respectable silence is requested, for those who haven't enjoyed him, I'll say four things: he stops it with his head, he drops it on with his chest, he sleeps it off with his left, crosses the pitch with the ball attached to the boot, leaves the midfield and enters the box showing the ball, hides it with his body, pushes with his ass and gets in with his heels. He pisses on the centerback with a dedicated piece. and touches her gently to put her on the path to glory.

by Santi Gimenez for AS.com (2020)

Kubala, the path to glory of Barcelona's most loved legend: A story of overcoming, adventures, crazy nights, majestic matches and of a good man who made everybody around him happy.

The legend of the escape.

The legend of Hungaria.

The legend on the field.

The man of the year.

From the bench to Sarrià.

Boys well, optimal morale.

by Santi Gimenez for AS.com (2020)

The Emerging Adults Gambling Survey is a longitudinal survey of young adults aged 16-24 living in Great Britain. It aims to explore a range of gambling behaviours and harms among young adults and examine how this changes over time. Online gambling in the UK: Remote betting has grown hugely in the UK. Online and mobile betting accounted for Gross Gaming Yield (GGY) of £710.19 million in 2011-12. Under new legislation, that ... In the Gambling Act 2005 gambling is defined as betting, gaming or participating in a lottery. That definition distinguishes between activities which need to be licensed and other activities which do not. We categorise different gambling activities into what we call sectors: Arcades (those for adults and those for families) This study investigated the prevalence of casino gambling as a social activity for active senior citizens (aged 65+). Activity directors from residential and assisted-care facilities as well as from senior and retirement centers completed mailed surveys of eleven different types of social activities available to older adults. Because gambling is quite popular in our society, many teenagers try out different gambling activities, including poker, dice, scratch cards and sports betting, among others. Few adults and adolescents are aware of the risks associated with excessive gambling, which is expressed by a gradual loss of control over gambling behavior.

GAMBLING IN LAS VEGAS & ACTUALLY WINNING! - YouTube

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Introduction

Stats

Lifestyle

Starting Stats

Why did you Start?

Counting Calories - But Never Tracking Weight

First Setback

Diet

Fitness - and Fittin'-This-Pizza

2020 - And the 90 Day Challenge (That We Failed Miserably)

Losing the COVID-19

Milestones:

Conclusion and Takeaways

Updates I’ve seen posted that would be really good to have:

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Kubala, the path to glory of Barcelona's most loved legend: A story of overcoming, adventures, crazy nights, majestic matches and of a good man who made everybody around him happy.

The legend of the escape.

The legend of Hungaria.

The legend on the field.

The man of the year.

From the bench to Sarrià.

Boys well, optimal morale.

by Santi Gimenez for AS.com (2020)

Kubala, the path to glory of Barcelona's most loved legend: A story of overcoming, adventures, crazy nights, majestic matches and of a good man who made everybody around him happy.

The legend of the escape.

The legend of Hungaria.

The legend on the field.

The man of the year.

From the bench to Sarrià.

Boys well, optimal morale.

by Santi Gimenez for AS.com (2020)

GAMBLING IN LAS VEGAS & ACTUALLY WINNING! - YouTube