The Explorers Club
No. CX - Otto Lilienthal (1848-96), the Glider King.








Operation ÖSTERREICH
Well, kids, Operation ÖSTERREICH is off and running, and has been since Monday. That first day was a fiasco, the One Hundred Push Ups kicked my flabby arse and the end of the day found me with Cheeto-caked fingers. Yesterday was better, and today better still. Being slightly hungry much of the time is rather unpleasant, but necessary, I suppose. I've switched tracks in the Push Ups and today's successful, though taxing, completion of the full Day 2 set imprinted my decision with an indelible seal of approval.

I'm in this for the long haul. I shall have to take a page from Sir Ernest Shackleton's guidebook to leadership and devise some ingenious ways to maintain high morale, optimism and tenacity being the two most powerful tools of success.

Operation ÖSTERREICH: Fortitudine Vincimus.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Dance Hall Crashers, "Do You Think You're Beautiful" from Purr (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: A reminder to myself that while the one of the principal objects of ÖSTERREICH is to increase my attractiveness to the fairer sex, vanity is a sin in which one indulges to one's eternal peril.

"Where should we start?
Beauty queen, magazine, steroids, and silicone.
Pick apart,
Mirror, mirror, who is the fairest of them all?
Wouldn't you rather be smart
Than worry about what it means to get by
If you don't look right?"