Self-Indulgent Post of the Week: Take Down the Five Beasts You Meet in Heaven

Self-Indulgent Post of the Week: Take Down the Five Beasts You Meet in Heaven


March 9, 2019

After a couple weeks on the back burner, the self-indulgent posts are back with the three questions of the week:

What am I reading? I just finished reading Takedown by Brad Thor, which is a Scot Harvath novel about a terrorist attack on New York City. These Harvath novels don’t always end with cliffhangers, but this one did. Usually I order books three at a time and would have the next one ready, but I don’t have the next one yet, dangit. So I grabbed Beast by Doug Merlino off the shelf, which had been sitting there for a year or so. Merlino embedded himself with a few aspiring (or has-been) fighters and wrote a book about it. I love watching MMA fights, even though a lot of people think it’s barbaric. And the book I have in my car is The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.

What am I googling? I’ve been looking up clinic videos of inside zone and power RPOs. Next year we should have a quarterback who can do some of this RPO stuff, so I’m looking at some stuff to give him options. He’s a good athlete without a cannon arm, so we need to find ways for him to spread the ball out laterally and within 15-20 yards of the line of scrimmage.

What am I looking forward to? The spring and summer include some 7-on-7s, so I’m looking forward to getting in some 7-on-7 action when the weather allows. It’s a little early still, but we’re putting together our rosters.

One comment

  1. Comments: 1356
    Joined: 8/13/2015
    Roanman
    Mar 09, 2019 at 4:24 PM

    The Outlaw Trail: A History of Butch Cassidy and His Wild Bunch. Not necessarily accurately named, it’s more a history of The Outlaw Trail, before, during and after Butch Cassidy employed it so well for purposes of running his business.

    It ran from Canada to Mexico, the most famous stops being Hole In The Wall, Robber’s Roost, Cassidy’s favored respite and Brown’s Hole. It was an almost inaccessible set of trails and valleys that came together in Brown’s Hole at the corner of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Three states had jurisdiction over the area, and none of them cared much to mess with the people who lived there.

    Interesting book in that the movie was a reasonable facsimile of Cassidy’s life. Woodcock was a real guy who got blown up at least once when he wouldn’t open up for the Wild Bunch. Etta Place was the real deal, and Cassidy bought himself a bicycle. Butch and Harry Longabaugh, The Sundance Kid did work as payroll guards in the Andes where Cassidy likely took his first life.

    The part the I found to be outstanding is that The Wild Bunch were extremely well thought of as employees. They were highly skilled horse and cattlemen. They would never steal from their employer or people they did business with. They would stream into some range mostly one by one, get a job at some ranch that they would protect from cattle rustlers when nobody else could. Cassidy frequently would be promoted to the foreman position. They’d finally drift out of the outfit a couple at a time. About a week after they were all quit, the local bank, mine payroll or train would be robbed. The jobs were very well planned, nobody ever got hurt bad, replacement mounts and supplies were always stationed at intervals along the escape route. Then they could ride for hundreds of miles over impossible terrain until the law gave up chasing them.

    Butch was pretty much beloved, possibly because of a relentlessly kind and fun loving nature along with a willingness to over pay for meals, supplies, replacement mounts and lodging. Nobody ever took note of his coming and going or could even remember with any detail the last time they saw him.

    Hoping to do the Hole In The Wall trail ride late this summer.

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