Published By: Eli Lee

At some point, someone or maybe even you might have wanted to lose weight. Whether its because they want to feel good about themselves or just to physically look better. My friend, Charlie, and I used to jog every single morning at 9 am because we wanted to lose weight. Of course, we were not the fit at all so we would jog only 2 miles a day from my house to Weston Elementary School.

It was the middle of summer and Charlie and I was about to go jogging again. It was 9 am and I was feeling a little bit hungry and I was also running late, Charlie was about to arrive at my house soon for our daily jog. With an empty stomach, I decided to quickly eat a hotdog. Charlie arrived and I walked outside, and we started jogging towards the elementary schools.

After a while of jogging, we were about a half of a mile into our jog. We stopped by a water fountain to rest and freshen up. There was a porta-potty near us too and I was debating if I should use the porta-potty before we continued. Not using the restroom Charlie and I continued our jog and after about 5 mins in I started to feel a slight stomachache. Ignoring it the first time we started to talk about life or future goals that we had. We weren’t dating to so, of course, we did talk about girls and what a good couple life would be life.

Almost reaching the 1-mile mark, my stomach began to ache a lot more. I was beginning to regret not using the restroom. I told Charlie that we should turn back and without questioning, we both turned back. Going back I felt my stomach pounding, I wasn’t sure if it was best to jog or walk it off. I felt my inside not being able to hold it in anymore. Butt checks clinched I was sure it was over for me. The only thing going through my mind was regretting the hotdog in the morning and not using the porta-potty when I had the chance. Charlie kept telling me stories to help distract me from letting it out. Millions of questions were going through my mind, should I run into the bushes? Should I go knock on a random person door to use their restroom? How bad is it going to be?

“If it happens you promise not to tell anyone?” I told Charlie already making promises for the worst. Small farts started to come out and both butt checks clinched while we make the rest of the way to the porta-potty. We were next to a busy road so there was no way to hide anything. Only a few more blocks and my heart was pounding and we were sprint as fast as Usain Bolt going for gold in the Olympics. I couldn’t any longer and I told Charlie with already an embarrassed face and I stood still said, “I’m going to poop my pants, Charlie, you promised…”

Plop!!!! I felt my poop shoot straight out of my butthole and landed inside my draws! I was not going to leave it in my draws so I shock my left leg and BAMMMM!!!! It slid down my calf and hit the curve on the road!

“I didn’t see anything I didn’t see anything!” Charlie lied just to make me feel better. Almost traumatized, I looked down at my clump of poop it was dark, big, and mushy! Imagine taking a bowl and filling it with mud and then flipping it onto the ground and that was how it looked like. Mine and Charlie’s eyes will never forget it!

Leaving the hazardous site and both humiliated we jogged the next very uncomfortable blocks and I flung open the portal potty door and slammed it shut behind me. I stripped off my lower half and whipped every inch! Toilet paper was dispensed left and right, up and down! After I wiped, I emptied the hand sanitizer. While I was still cleaning myself, I called my brother to pick me up with a fresh pair of shorts, draws, and a bag. I opened the door and told Charlie, “Hey, you promised…”

I had never been so embarrassed in my life, never again will I eat a hotdog on an empty stomach, and never again will I pass up bathroom privileges. I will never forget that day and about how embarrassing it was, but on the bright side, I did drop a little weight at the end.

By Lucas Schaff

The best summer of my life (so far).

It all started as a joke. As is often the case with freshly graduated high school students, I was aimlessly moving my way through my first year in community college. I thought I had an idea of where my life was going, but that was only because I needed to have a response to the age old question “What are you doing after high school?” so often asked at the family christmas gathering. The truth is, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life.

My mom had a couple good friends from college, who followed their dreams and moved to Maine to open a food truck (and a wildly successful one at that). She often joked about shipping me off to them for the summer to get me out of her hair, as I had been outgrowing our 800 square foot St. Paul apartment that we shared between the four of us for the past year. The more she joked, however, the more interested I became in the prospect. Eventually, I ended up with an interview with Sarah, my mom’s best friend from college and co-owner of Bite Into Maine.

The skype interview well, and I was scheduled to start work in May of 2018 as a prep person. I rented a room in Scarborough, Maine, where the food truck’s commissary kitchen was located. I loaded up the Hyundai Accent (our only car, still to this day I don’t know why my parents let me drive it across the country,) with all my worldly possessions. This included a few clothes and my PC. I set off with a cousin, my aunt and grandma for the three day trek across the country. Our journey took us through Wisconsin, up the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and across the border to Canada in Sault Sainte Marie. From there, we took the grueling two lane highways of rural Ontario to Montreal. After that point, we dipped down into New Hampshire, and eventually down through northern Maine into Portland.

The first night I spent in Portland was in Old Orchard Beach, a tourist trap beach town, complete with a miniature amusement park and lots of cheesy gift shops. From there, I moved into my new temporary home in Maine. I was living in a house with a woman and her son, who was a similar age to me. My room was small, but it was plenty for me. I had my own bathroom, and my own part of the fridge. They had a cat and two dogs.

Up until this point, I had spent most of my life being told how to live it. When to go to school, when to have dinner ready, where I should work. But this experience allowed me to have full accountability for my actions, be they good or bad. If I overslept for my 7 A.M. shift, it was my fault alone. The main takeaway I have from my time in Maine is not how to make the perfect lobster roll, but how to be an adult.

In hindsight, one of the reasons this experience is so meaningful to me is the fact that I didn’t have the traditional moving out for college experience. Because of my mental state at the end of my highschool career, I had very little motivation to pursue college or any sort of higher learning. I mostly just applied to a local community college to get all the adults in my life off my back about it. Living at home within walking distance to class and my job kept me in the same 10 block bubble I had been living in for most of my life.

Breaking out of that bubble allowed me to realize what I truly wanted. It allowed me the courage to tell my parents that I wanted to take a couple of semesters off from college. It allowed me to evaluate what I really wanted in a career, and eventually led to me transferring to Stout, where I have been feeling more confident about my future than I have ever before.

I don’t know where I would be today without Bite Into Maine, but I think I would be a very different person than I am today. Learning who you are is a vital part of the human experience, and all it took for me was to move halfway across the country to work for people I had never met in a state I had never been to before.

A few months ago, I heard a rumor about an outbreak starting in China. Turns out, it wasn’t a rumor. It was a deadly virus that would soon plague the whole world, causing a global shutdown. I did not think too much of it until it was already way too late. Until the middle of March, it was just another event happening in the world. Nothing was to come of it, or so I thought. All it was at the moment was an internet meme of people stocking up on toilet paper before they would barricade themselves at home for a couple weeks. I thought people were being stupid completely drying out all the local stores of their toilet paper, but it turns out they were just ahead of the rest of us.

It was the last week of class at UW Stout before spring break started. I was walking to band with my friend, Devin, and we were talking about the first COVID-19 case in Wisconsin. All we knew was that someone in Madison had tested positive for the virus. It was hard to hear about how a virus that, up until that point, had been mostly foreign could make it all the way to the same state we were in. Our only knowledge at that point was that if we got through Friday, we would be safe at home the following week.

During the second half of the week, my friends and I heard about other schools closing down or moving online for a couple weeks. We did not know what would happen with our school. We thought that maybe it was a little ridiculous that schools were entirely closing all physical activities for several weeks. We never thought that would happen to Stout. We would go home for spring break, then come back the following week for class. That was our mindset.

On Wednesday, March 11th, I was in my English class working on our project that was due on Friday when the person sitting next to me spoke out to the whole class and told us that we all got an email. He was the one that told us all the news that we would not be meeting for class after spring break. After spring break, the following two weeks would be met entirely online. This came as a shock to me, and I could not believe the news. I checked my email, and sure enough it was there. We would not be meeting in person for class after break. I wondered how my teachers would change the courses around to fit with the two weeks of online learning.

Eventually I made it to Friday, and the week was done. I packed up a lot more of my belongings to bring home for break than I initially thought I would have to. I packed my car with as much stuff as I could, and I went home. Break would have been the same for me either way, since I was scheduled to work during it. I work at my local movie theater at home, and I was not expecting it to be busy since all movie releases were being delayed. Monday the 16th, after being at work for an hour, I found out that the theater would no longer be open until further notice. I went home in a state of shock, wondering what the future would hold.

The next day was when I found out that school would be held entirely online for the rest of the semester. We were told we had a week to move off campus while also adapting to the new online learning. All of this was going on while also being forced to stay at home until a future date that, to this day, is still being pushed back. Every day, it seemed that something worse would happen in the attempt to take down COVID-19. Today, we are all stuck at home, surviving and waiting patiently for this all to end.

Basic supplies in stores are hard to come by, food places are closed or only do pickup or delivery, and the world continues to make no progress in solving this pandemic. The only current solutions are to close everything and tell everyone to stay at home. Officials are attempting to come up with a vaccine, but it is coming at a slow pace. The virus continues to spread while all we can do is stay away from the world. The only connections we have with others are those we live with and those we can talk to online.

I saw a video on YouTube called “I’m losing control” by The Game Theorists in which a man shares his thoughts on the outbreak and its future. He brings up a great point in the video about how our present will affect our future. Currently many of us are afraid to go outside because of the risk of contracting an invisible disease. Is our current fear going to continue in the future? Even when government officials say it is okay to go outside and experience our normal lives again, are we going to be too afraid to? Is the future of mankind destined to fall because of our fear of this crisis? If the answer to that question is yes, then maybe the real virus isn’t COVID-19.

It’s fear.

Have you ever wanted to achieve something so badly you would do just about anything it took to make it happen? Well that is what I did last summer when I set mt mind on landing my first ever flip on a wakeboard, a Tantrum. A Tantrum is basically a fancy name for a backflip. You start at one side of the wake and jump across while flipping in the air. Though it looks relatively simple from the view of a person who does not know much about wakeboarding, but it takes lots of skill, technique and practice to master this trick.

I have been participating in watersports almost my entire life, however, until recent years I was never any good, I was quite the opposite. However, watersports had always interested me. Over the past few years, my friends and I had been slowly getting into the sport of wakeboarding. Unlike other water sports, wakeboarding came natural to me and I progressed very fast. I soon fell in love with wakeboarding and would live and breathe anything that has to do with it.

One summer day a few close friends of mine and I were out on a local lake fishing. This was a weekday, so the lake was very slow, with only a few boats on the water. As we were fishing, we noticed a very nice wakeboat on the other side of the lake. All my friends are what I would call boat junkies so, naturally, when we would see a nice boat, we were very quick to point it out. We instantly reeled in out line and started the motor to go take a closer look. When we got closer, we noticed they were getting ready to go wakeboarding, so we decided to stick around for a bit and watch. I had seen some good riders before but never like this. When this rider got out of the water, he immediately started throwing down some huge tricks that my friends and I had only ever seen in videos online. We were all very impressed and shocked. When we got of the lake later that evening we started discussing what we had witnessed and came to a group decision than we wanted to dedicate this summer to improving our wakeboarding in hopes of one day beginning as good as the rider we had seen earlier thar day. And just like that our dream was born.

Over the next few months all my friends and I did was work and wakeboard. We would get home from work at about 4 pm and be on the lake by 4:30 pm. We may have not had the best boat or the most expensive wakeboards, but we did have determination. With a little help from some YouTube tutorials we all started practicing the Tantrum. We chose the Tantrum because we had seen it landed by the wakeboarder who we had watched while we were fishing and we thought it was a cool trick that was not overly complicated. We had  attempted to do a Tantum countless times on many different days but all we were getting out of it was a sore neck and a few bruises from our crash landings but that did not stop us from getting up and trying again.  After about a month went by, I could feel myself getting closer to landing it. Instead of totally face planting I was actually coming down on my feet. I knew I was close to landing it, but I just could not pull it off, or so I thought.

It was nearing the end of summer and we were all slowly giving up on the thought of landing a Tantrum. However, about a week before all my hometown friends and I were going to ship off for our first year of college, it happened. I landed the Tantrum. When I rode away after landing the trick, I felt a true sense of accomplishment knowing that I had finally done what I had put my mind to a few months past. When I got on the boat my friends were all shouting and giving high fives. One of us had finally landed the seemingly impossible trick. Now it was up to me to teach them how to land it. And with the Tantrum checked off my list, I was ready to start all over again and learn a new more challenging trick.

The Story of My Quarantine

Although the name may seem daunting and evil, this cult is all the opposite of those things. This is a “cult” that me and a few buddies have been actively partaking in over quarantine and it is all for a good cause. The main points and objectives of the cult are to put on muscle mass, donate blood and plasma to blood banks to help with COVID and then booze more economically. I will describe the steps to each below.

So the backstory of the group is that it was created by a Kid named Billy Football, Billy like my friends and I is a fellow D-III college football player from the East Coast. Billy appears every Monday on the number one sports podcast in the world named Pardon my Take the first Monday of quarantine Billy was talking about his Berserker Blood cult and from the time me and my friends heard his idea we decided to join along. The premise of the “cult” like I said earlier is about three things and I will detail each step along the way. To start though the name Berserker means to be out of control with excitement or rage, and in our case it is both. So with that being said here is what we do in this cult. Starting on Mondays me and my friends meet at my garage where we created a so called bunker with a couch, TV, and Xbox set up, next to that is a squat rack and dumbbells to workout. We have been spending a lot of time in our bunker to stay away from the public to avoid the spread COVID. We have been doing this for a full month now and it is working to say the least.The first step of the Cult like I said is to put on muscle mass, so from Monday-Friday in the bunker all we do is workout and play video games. Before we work out it is important to be taking lots of pre workout to get your blood flowing and creatine after to add mass. And most importantly we need to stuff our faces and eat as much as we can to add muscle and put on more weight. Me and my friends have each put on close to 5 pounds in this month of muscle so step 1 is a success. The second step of the cult is the most important and that is donating our blood and plasma to local blood banks to help with COVID on late Friday afternoons, before going to the blood banks we get our workout in and then slam a red bull right before giving blood to pump more blood. I also really dislike needles but saving lives is more important than my fear of needles(even though I just about pass out every time). Me and my friends also believe we contracted COVID each while we were at school and just did not know about because of the no-symptoms and the doctors are donating our anti-bodies for the virus as well. This is the most important step and really what the cult is all about, I think more of the Youth should be donating blood because it really does so many wonders for so many people. And lastly the final step of Berserker Blood Cult is all about boozing economically. As soon as we are done giving blood then it is all about having a good weekend, and because we all just donated blood we can buy less alcohol and it will take less alcohol to have a good time because we gave blood and our BAC will be higher due to less blood in our bodies. Which is a happy ending to every week and the key to booze more economically.

And like I stated earlier although the name of the cult and the fact it is called a cult may seem odd, that is why me and my friends like it. Our parents think were crazy yet they think were doing the right thing by giving blood and they think that the boozing economically is hilarious and probably does not work as well as we thing but we don’t care. It is for a good cause and that is all that matters. All in all this is the story of what my quarantine weeks have been like, I think it is a great mix of stupid, entertaining and beneficial all in one and a great way to get gains and save lives while doing it. This may sound wrong but I believe joining this cult has made me save lives and be a better person.

Do you remember you senior year prom? Did you go out to eat? Take nice pictures? For me, I flew across the country to Virginia to go to prom. But before we get into that, let me explain why I went to Virginia.  It all started in 2017 when I met my friend, Livia, online playing a video game. We kept talking and became great friends. One day, she told me that she’s never been to one of her high school proms before. I was surprised, but jokingly I said “I’ll fly out and take you to your prom.” Time flew until about October 2018, when she brought it up again, but this time the joke turned into reality. I told my parents about it, and they were a bit shocked, but they supported it. We planned out all the specifics and before I knew it, I had a plane ticket to Dulles, Virginia.

This was my first time traveling, especially flying alone, so I was scared. I’ve flown with my parents but I didn’t remember if it was complicated. I asked my parents a bunch of questions about traveling, trying to mentally prepare myself for my first big journey. Finally, the day had come. I was flying out of a very small airport, only one terminal. I was walking around with my parents trying to ask any final questions to make sure my trip went smoothly. I had to leave my parents behind as I got in line for security. As I saw them walking away, it kinda hit me that I was alone until I flew back 4 days later. I got through security smoothly, and I was thinking to myself “Wow, that was a lot easier than I thought.” I waited for my flight, and then boarded the plane and I was off on a new adventure. The plane ride was very smooth, which I’m happy it was because I was nervous enough. When I landed at the Dulles airport, I was surprised at how big it was, I’ve never been to an airport that big, but surprisingly it was easy to navigate.  Now you’re probably thinking, I would be picked up by Livia’s family… well that’s not what happened, she was preparing for her musical, which I was going to go see that night. I had another friend I met online, who was a friend of Livia’s sister, Nate, pick me up instead. You must be thinking that I’m crazy for having people I met on the internet determine my trip/fate, but I had full trust in them. After I was picked up we talked and we “met” for a second time, this time in person. I remember feeling odd because meeting someone for the first time in person after knowing them for a couple years is cool and has this “reuniting” feeling but is also weird because its your first in person interaction. We went to a local Pho restaurant and had some dinner before I needed to go to the musical. I’ve never had Pho before, but when I first tried it, I thought it was very good. After dinner, he dropped me off at the high school, and I was on my own again.

When I first stepped into the school, to me it looked like your typical high school from the movies. Long hallways, multiple floors, it was huge. My school only had about 500 people k-12, which was about 30 people per grade, while this school had about 800 people per grade.  I got my ticket to the musical and went into their theater. It was a weird feeling to be sitting in the theater alone, because I was a small school kid from a state 1,300 miles away that knew no one from that school except one person. The musical was Legally Blonde, and it was very good. One thing I noticed was that they had a lot more talent than my high school, just because they had a lot more people. When the musical was over, I was awkwardly wondering around trying to find the one person I knew, and after about 10 minutes she appeared out of the large crowd of cast members, and ran towards me and give me the biggest bear hug, and almost suffocated me. After having that weird feeling of “oh this is actually you,” she introduced me to some of her friends from her high school, and they were wondering why I was there, considering I was from Wisconsin. After some quick introductions, she gave me a tour of her school, and I was amazed at how big schools can be. After she was done showing me around and having me meet her friends, we left the school to go back to her house. I met her parents and the first thing they said was “I’m glad you’re not a murderer” jokingly. Her parents and I talked for a bit, getting to know me and such, and then they went to bed, and we thought we should do the same because we had prom the next day. The next day we woke up and had breakfast, and went to get the corsages.

After that we went to a park near her house and just walked around and went on a small hike. It was a nice area, everything was green, there was a river that cut right by the park, and we just hung out for about two hours.  When we got back from the park, it was time to get ready for prom. Normally when I went to my schools prom I didn’t wear anything too fancy, just some nice pants a nice shirt and a tie, but for this prom I went all out, because it was my last prom and a very special occasion.  I rented a tux with a lavender undershirt, a bowtie, and gelled my hair. Definitely felt a bit fancy for that night.

Once we took pictures and all that, we went to (pizza place) and had some brick oven pizza. When we walked in, it was basically empty, so we were able to order immediately and get our food very quick. The lady working there owned the place, and commented on us looking nice. We explained to her that we were going to prom and she was so happy that we came into her restaurant for our prom meal. We got our pizza, and finished it quickly, as it was very good. We we’re just talking after finishing out pizza and the lady who owned the restaurant came out with some tiramisu in her hand, and said “Since you chose this restaurant for your prom meal, and you are very nice and look very fine, here is some complimentary tiramisu.” I’ve never had tiramisu before, so I was surprised at how good it was.

We left (pizza place) and it was time for the main event. Let my explain my prom for comparison. For my prom, I’m used to going into my high school lunch room, and we have a DJ set up and we just come in and hang out, and the cost to get in is $5. For her prom, we went into a hotel ball room that they rented, they had a DJ, a dance floor, photobooths, and a giant table for food. The table of food was huge and contained random snacks, like brownies and cookies, but also two bowls of melted chocolate to dip things in, like fruit, pretzels, and marshmallows. The ticket price for her prom was $75. So from what I’m used to, this is a massive upgrade for the price. We went in and I immediately felt out of place, it was such an odd feeling. We walked around and talked to some other people, introducing myself as we went. And almost every person was surprised I was from so far away. As the night went on, we danced and ate some snacks, and then took some pictures. One thing that I noticed was the music was so much better compared to my school. Since I live in the middle of nowhere and have a small school, most of the music was country. Personally, I don’t like country too much and its not the “dancing” style of music.

After spending hours after prom, we were both exhausted, but decided we were going to end the night with some sweets. We went to a bakery nearby, and it was a really cool building because it was like an 80s diner but turned into a modern sweetshop. We went inside and there were so many choices of things.

We decided to get some baklava, and then we headed home. I have never had baklava before, but it looked really weird for seeing it for the first time. When I first bit into it, the syrup from it was the first thing I noticed. It fell apart in my mouth and the syrup was really rich, but it was very good.  Once we finished our treat, we went to bed after a long night, and of course we slept in the next day.

The next day we decided to take a road trip to Philadelphia. We decided to go to Philly because we had nothing else to do and there was another friend that we could meet there. We picked up one of Livia’s friends, Rishab, and we started our 3 hour drive to Philly, we took turns driving and it was a bit stressful for me because it was a 6 lane road, I’m used to at max 3.  When we got Philly, we picked up our other friend, Brian, and we decided to go to the Philadelphia zoo. While we were at the zoo, we saw a lot of cool animals, like iguanas, giraffes, and a lot of cool birds. There were also these cool Lego sculptures of animals around the zoo, I thought they were cool because they were pretty big and accurate. When we were done at the zoo, we decided to walk around at a park. In the park there was this Japanese building with a garden and a Koi pond. We got to investigate it from the outside, but we looked if we could go inside of it and we were 15 minutes late, so we just observed from a distance. When we were about to leave the park, it was starting to rain so we basically started running towards the exit, but the exit that we came in was closed off, so we had to run in the rain to find another exit. But apparently, the park was closing, and all of the exits were getting closed. We got out by sneaking under a hole in the fence, so that was an experience… Once we got back to our car soaking wet, we decided that we were hungry, so we went to get some authentic Philly Cheese steak. We went to this small local cheese steak restaurant, and I was surprised because it was such a small restaurant, but the line was out the door of the building and down the street a bit. So we decided that waiting would be okay because it would most likely be worth the wait. So we waited and after about 30 minutes of waiting we finally got our sandwiches. The first thing I noticed was how heavy it was. It didn’t look like it would weigh a lot, but when I picked it up I was not expecting it to be that heavy. When I took a bite, I noticed the bread was almost tough, but not tough to the point where you had to try to tear it off. The steak was super cheesy and flavorful, not like anything I had before. I will not ever look at a non-authentic Philly cheese steak the same every again after eating that. After eating, it was about 8 pm so we decided to say goodbye to Brian and start our journey back to Virginia. When we got back home, we relaxed for a bit and talked about what we were going do for my last day in Virginia.  We decided, to head into DC and go to the Smithsonian, and also to go the Smithsonian aerospace museum.

We woke up at about 7 AM, because we had a bit of traveling to do, and we wanted to hit all of the placed before I needed to be at the airport at 3 PM. So we left at about 8 to go to the Smithsonian. I remember seeing the Smithsonian in the movies, especially “Night at the Museum.” When we walked into the museum, I was surprised at how huge it was. There were 3 floors, with at least 10 exhibits per floor. You could spend an entire day in that place and still not see everything. So, we decided to go through two exhibits, the fossils/bones and the geology one. First we went through the fossils and bones one, and it was really cool to see skeletons of tons of animals arranged perfectly from white tale deer to angler fish. As we moved through the exhibit, we found the dinosaur stuff. This was really cool to see because you always hear about how big and cool they are, but it’s a completely different experience once you actually get to be up close and almost touch them. We saw the famous T-Rex skeleton, and a triceratops. We also found a megalodon jaw, which was really creepy to see because it had lots of sharp teeth, but also it was taller than us. Then we went to the geo exhibit, and before you think it was really dull and boring, it wasn’t really about rocks. It was more about gems and crystals, and there was some really pretty rocks in there. The highlights of that exhibit were towards the end of the room, where they had all of these fancy gems. One gem was called a “cat eye stone” and when light was shined into it, it would reflect off of the stone and it would look likes a cats eye. Another highlight was to see all of the crystals and the different geodes that they can form in. And then there was the Hope Diamond. The Hope Diamond had its own room, and it had two security guards in it. The Hope diamond was on a pedestal in the middle of the room with a glass capsule. The Hope Diamond is an extremely rare gem that has a blue shade to it, which is worth about $350 million. Since we were low on time, we had to book it to the aerospace museum.
The aerospace was full of, well you guessed it, planes and other things that can fly. It contained a lot of WWII bombers and fighters, but also a lot more modern jets and missiles. The obvious thing that stuck out was the Discovery space shuttle. The shuttle was a lot bigger than it looked like in pictures. Another cool thing about it was you could see the scorch marks on it from when it reentered the atmosphere. They had a whole rocket propelled weapon section, and there was a missile that was probably close to 100 ft tall. One other spacecraft that was cool to see was the Blackbird. The Blackbird was used during the cold was to sit on the edge of space and gather intelligence about the soviets. It a black, super smooth aircraft and it doesn’t look like another other spacecraft. Its top speed was about 2,200 mph. It was really cool to see these old aircrafts and learn how they were used in the past.  Once we were done exploring the museum, I had to go to the airport.

As my trip was coming to an end, I was sad but I learned a lot of things on the way, like how to travel alone and go through an airport.  I also met my friends, and experienced some new things with them, like prom at a large school. It really opened my eyes to the world that I could have experiences like this that I normally wouldn’t get at my small school. I got to travel to some cool places, like Washington DC and Philadelphia, and had some good experiences along the way.
overall it was a fantastic trip, and I would 100% go again if I had the opportunity.

Every March since the third grade my mother would take me and my brother, who’s two years older than me, to the high school state basketball tournament at the Kohl Center in Madison, Wisconsin. The experience of being there as a spectator, especially on Championship Saturday, was something special; however, my brother and I quickly made up our minds that we wanted to be the ones playing on that court one day and raising the gold ball above our heads. That scene ran through my head nearly every night for the next six years.

It wasn’t until my freshmen year of high school that we finally had the chance to make this dream become reality and the setting is already set for it. It was Saturday March 19^th, 2016 at 9:30 a.m. in a locker room inside the Kohl Center waiting to run onto the floor for warm ups. As we made our way towards the tunnel, the roars of the two student sections got louder and louder. At this point the nerves turned into an overwhelming sense of excitement. This excitement made our 15-minute warm ups seem like it was only about 5 minutes. The one thing I do remember about those 15 minutes is that when I was waiting for my turn in the layup line I was able to refocus myself for a split second and take in the moment. The 360-degree view of the crowd, the overall size of the stadium, the bright lights shining on us, and the fact that everyone there was there to watch us wowed me in this moment.

Maybe the most thrilling experience on Championship Saturday was the introductions. Without warming, the bright, white lights turned off; flashes from phones started, and the announcer began announcing our names. I thought I was excited before the game and during warm ups, but that was nothing compared to how the adrenaline was rushing now. It was now, when the lights were out and the PA was shouting out names that it really sank in: my brother and I had the chance to fulfill our childhood dream of winning  a state championship!

Everything after that was all a blur. The game went so fast it seemed as if they played it without me. In what seemed like no more than 30 to 40 minutes but was actually about an hour and a half, I found myself looking up at the scoreboard with the clock at double zeroes reading the score: Burlington Catholic Central-41, McDonell Catholic Central-63. We did it! My brother and I embraced each other with a sweat-filled hug and we both had a permanent grin appear on our faces knowing we had achieved our dream. There was just one thing left to do.

Unlike warm ups, waiting in line for our medals to be placed around our necks were the longest few minutes of my life. It wasn’t the medal I cared about though. It was that glistening gold ball. Finally, after what seemed like forever my brother and I were finally given the opportunity to raise it over our heads and yell out to the crowd with excitement. This was the moment we had waited for, for six years, and we can finally say that our hard work for so many years paid off, and that we, Cory and Nathan Hoglund, are state Champions!

In 2020 there was this pandemic called the corona virus. It started in Wuhan China at a live food market when a bat defecated on food and someone ate it. It started spreading person to person and by the time they knew it. China had a pandemic on their hand. Well fast forward a few weeks and someone brought it back to the US. With people showing no symptoms for two weeks. It was incredibility easy for it to be spread before someone even knew they had it. It eventually started spreading like wildfire in big city’s. Before you knew it, most people were ordered to stay home. K-12 schools started online school. Big universities started online only classes with no face to face meetings and only “Essential” Businesses were allowed to stay open. That is where we are all today. Today I have left my house about four times in two months. At the time of writing this short story to be able to be looked back on, College graduations have been canceled/ postponed. Same with high-school graduations. It has been incredibility hard not to have a set schedule day by day sometimes its a blessing, sometimes its not. Not seeing friends every other day has been really hard. My daily schedule has been going as followed.

1. Wake up at noon,
2. Do some random stuff through the day to pass the time, video-games, working on cars etc.
3. Then come around 2am its usually homework time.
4. 5am is bed time then repeat day after day.

Stay at home orders have been in place for around a month and a half now. They have slowed the spread of the virus but unfortunately with some people being so hard headed not staying home. The stay at home order is going to be lifted before the virus is 95% gone. So far 2020 has been a year I will never forget, and its not even half way over yet. At this rate, fall 2020 classes will likely be online only. This “Pandemic” wont be done until 2021 or it might become a regular thing, it is currently to early to tell.

During my first semester at UW-Stout, in the Fall of 2019, I was enrolled in a class titled General Ethics. It covered the topic of moral philosophy and was taught by a man named Glenn Kuhn. This guy was the complete opposite of what one would expect of a philosophy teacher. Many would expect a much older man, wearing khakis and a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe through his Aristotle-like beard. This was not Glenn. Glenn was a jolly, flamboyant character who came to class with his hair dyed a different color every other week. This is why I admired the man.

See, Glenn was not only a philosopher, but also moonlighted as a banquette chef at the 29 Pines Restaurant near Eau Claire, WI. One day, when we were discussing Aristotle’s virtue ethics, he explained how Aristotle thought that courage is a spectrum, where cowardice lies at one end, and foolishness at the other. Near the end of the class, he offered each of us a small spoonful of the Carolina Reaper chili that they serve at 29 Pines and asked if any of us where courageous enough to try. He first warned that this was one of the hottest foods on earth, and that he once ate a whole bow. He said that it was one of the most painful things he had ever experienced. I and three others accepted. And it hurt.

The chili that he gave to us in the classroom was a bit watery, and that was probably intentional, so that wouldn’t be responsible for any deaths that way have occurred. He told us that 29 Pines Restaurant offers this chili as a challenge. If one eats an entire ten-ounce bowl in under ten minutes and can endure five minutes of pain without any drinking anything after finishing, then they get a free T-shirt, and the chili is free.

I wanted to win this challenge, but I do not know why. Not because I needed a shirt, not because in really liked spicy food. Not even because I thought that I was super courageous. Maybe I just wanted Glenn and my classmates to think I was cool. I do not know.

Eventually I did find time to take the challenge, on a Saturday, December 7, 2019. I went to 29 Pines, asked for Glenn, and told the lady at the entrance that I was taking the challenge. She gave me a table, took my single item order, and left me to ready myself for the storm. In only a few minutes, Glenn appeared, holding a bowl of chili in one hand and ice cream in the other.

He sat down with me and I gave him my phone to record what might be my final moments. If I died, then of course the rest of the class might want to see it. Before I started, he warned me that once I finished the bowl and waited the five minutes, that I must immediately go to the bathroom in case body rejects the peppers and tries to throw them up. It happened to him.

I was ready. I stared at the bowl in front of me, planning to eat it as fast as I could, as per his advice. I took a spoonful and smelled it, and the capsaicin in the steam made my eyes burn. I breathed in twice to ready myself, then ate it. This was not a good idea.

The chili that I ate in the classroom was thin and watery, as I mentioned, but it was good. It had three kinds of beans, it had tomatoes but wasn’t too acidic, and had plenty of meat. It was a solid chili, better than what is served at other restaurants. But this first bite did not taste like that, it didn’t taste like anything. There was no flavor. There was only pain. An unending pain. I do not have the words to describe what this pain felt like. Imagine what it feels like to place your hand on a hot stove. The kind of pain that causes your body to pull away on its own to once your cells start dying. This is what I felt on every surface in my mouth, except I couldn’t pull away.

That first bite stopped me I my tracks. I had planned to inhale to entire bowl as fast as I could, but that was no longer possible. I was already sweating, and tears were in my eyes. I took another bite, and the pain increased for a second then remained constant. I put the spoon down and checked to see if my heart was still beating. Unfortunately, it was, so I had to keep eating. I took another bite and recoiled into my seat, shuddering at the third shock of pain I felt in the back of my mouth. Glenn was laughing as he recorded me. He understood exactly how it felt.

I kept eating, making small talk between bites to try and stall the next punch that the peppers would throw at me. I ate at a pace of about one large spoonful per minute. I nearly threw up at the table, but I was ready to use the coffee creamer bowl if I had to.

I finally finished with one-minute left, but the reaper wasn’t yet finished with me. The five minutes of waiting was probably the worse part of the experience. It felt like an hour, probably the adrenaline in my body distorting my perception of time. I stopped the recording, to preserve some of my dignity, and covered myself with my jacket and laid down in the booth and convulsed until the five minutes had passed.

Eventually, they would pass, and I was congratulated for doing the nearly impossible. I ate the ice cream, but it wouldn’t put out the fire. Not even a tall glass of milk would help to cool the burns in my mouth. Soon, the waitress who seated me returned with black T-shirt with Carolina Reaper pepper on it, with the statement” I don’t fear the Reaper”, clearly an homage to a well-known song by Blue Öyster Cult.

Unfortunately for me, eating the chili was only half of the battle. I did eventually throw up, not even ten minutes after finishing, my finally body rejecting the chemical weapon that I subjected myself to. The drive home was frightening. The delirium, sweating, and painful cramps forced me to stop at a Kwik Trip to puke for a second time, and then buy more milk and antacids. The rest of the day was worse than actually eating the chili. The details are not suitable for polite conversation, but I spent a portion of the night cramping and convulsing in a cold shower, wishing to die and see an end to my suffering.

The next morning, I felt hungover because of the stresses that my body had endured. I couldn’t enjoy my beloved coffee, or even an ironically named Dr. Pepper, because of the chemical burns in my mouth that diminished my sense of taste for the next three days. I had no appetite until Sunday night, and was nauseous all day, due to the battle scars in my stomach.

By Monday I felt better, except for my inability to taste, and I came to my ethics class wearing my hard-won trophy. I was once again congratulated by my teacher, and even the rest of the class, and we continued our end of semester discussion. Though we had long since moved on from Aristotle’s Virtues, and had a new understanding of what courage means. At on end of the spectrum there is cowardice, having so little courage that you are afraid to try new and scary thing. At the other end, foolishness, having so much courage that you always put yourself in harms way. Through this experience I learned that I am a fool, and I fear the reaper.

Two words, kids go in anxious and come out just a little more noble, high school. Most people recollect high school with the same old cliché memories. There’s prom and football, but nobody recollects the kid who always goes missing. It is never expected for someone to go missing, and it happens way to commonly. It’s not rare when a missing kid goes unrecognized because sometimes, they may not be lost.  Austin, he went to high school in a small town in Ohio.

Austin was one of those guys who was friends with everyone. His senior year of high school started off smoothly. He had the same girlfriend since he was a sophomore. The big “responsibilities” were over, Austin did well on his ACT, and he had already been accepted into his preferred college. He maintained his grades well and his social life even better. It was almost like parties and good times followed Austin wherever he went.  

Midway through Austin’s senior year he realized something important. Life isn’t always rainbows and butterflies. Throughout his whole life everything had been easy. In most cases everyone’s childhood is easy. Up until your 18 everything you know is school.  Austin knew what was next and that’s what made the kid inside of him go missing. The real world brings responsibilities nobodies ready for and the kid they were once were never survives.

The kid inside most people always goes missing in either high school or college. It just happens to be when reality hits people. For Austin he knew his relationship with his friends and girlfriend wouldn’t stand a chance when he left for college. He knew that there was going to be a last for everything in the upcoming year and many firsts. The only way to prepare for what was ahead was to forget about what was behind. Austin left the kid behind along with things he knew weren’t going to last in the road ahead.