River North CrossFit and HeritageBBQ Chicago

I flew to Chicago last Wednesday for stop 3 on the HeritageBBQ by COCHON555 tour. (Fun fact, we're supposed to write Cochon555 when it's found in the middle of a sentence, but I think it looks better always capitalized and since this is my blog, I'm going to be a rebel and do what I want.) I overslept and had to take a later flight, but it worked out for the best because I got on the same flight with two of my coworkers. We had so much luggage because we had to bring a bunch of stuff from Toronto and it really helped to have all three of us. We landed at ORD and then took a shuttle to the rental car place. I was able to put my functional fitness to use by throwing a 79# bag of pop-up banners on my back and dragging it to the shuttle stop. The driver made some cute comment about how I must workout and then tried to take the bag from me. His tone changed after that.

By the grace of God, my schedule permitted me to drop in at River North CrossFit for the 8 AM class on Friday. I felt like such shit from San Francisco and Toronto - exhausted, hungry, bloated, dehydrated, and just plain frustrated. Getting an hour to myself to do what I love made all the difference. My only complaint about tour is not really having the space to recharge - both in time and physical space.

Functional Fitness

Last week I started my awesome new job at COCHON 555 and I flew out to Napa on Thursday for our Heritage Fire event. It was FANTASTIC! Honestly, I've never been to a cooler event. I'm extremely excited for the Heritage BBQ tour to start in September. If you're in San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, Austin, or D.C., you should buy tickets. I promise it will be a great time.

So a major component of event production is setting up for the events. Thank you Captain Obvious. Since we know I love lifting and carrying heavy things, setting up for events is kind of like a CrossFit Christmas for me. Clearly I am in the correct line of work.

I would like to report that my CrossFit membership totally paid off this weekend when my new bff Matt and I headed to the storage unit with the U-Haul van. We needed to pack up the rest of the items in storage so that they could be properly inventoried on site. This included a 23" Saffire kamado grill (think the red version of a Big Green Egg) and a gigantic plastic pallet.

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I almost lost an ear when I accidentally trapped my head between the egg and the back door latch on the van, BUT we didn't drop it.

I am extremely proud of figuring out how to get this pallet into the back of the van. It wouldn't fit into the side entrance and we couldn't get it high enough to clear the back. Then I realized that it would flip exactly like a tire, so we put it down on the ground and flipped it right into the truck. Strongman training for the win!

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