While there is time .....

archive_Bjaarki · 10-04-2002, 01:01 PM

A lot of you older guys, I know, are pretty ambivalent about physical training, the whole bodybuilding scene. You've been into it for two or three years, maybe a couple of years more, and you've done very well. But ... you've hit the "lifter's plateau." You're at a place now where gains slow down, aspirations get cloudy, doubts set in. Young guys hit that wall, too, but it can really flatten you when you're feeling your years. Yeah. The part of you that likes to train and wonders what you can accomplish in your late 40's - the part of you that wonders what you could look like on your Big Five-Oh if you pulled out all the stops right now ... "Hmmm ... Maybe 210lbs of rock at 9%, tucking tight tees into 32" jeans, 17" arms cold ... yeah, I could do that ..." now gets joined by another part of you that feels conflicted about it, goes back and forth about how motivated you are, whether you have the time for it, whether you can really make progress, maybe it's silly, you should be content with the sensible middle-age thing, have another bagel, take up golf, fuck it be a pussy it ain't so bad ... a part of you that worries about falling into the "trap" of "drugs," gets hinky about gear and really dedicated training, about "taking it to another level." That's where the Journey stops for most guys, if they ever get that far.

Maybe it will stop there for you ... Or, maybe you committed a long time ago like I did, and now you're into this whole thing light years beyond anyone else you know. Typical of you. Education, your choice of spouse, your career ... Lifting was no different, no different at all. You wanna swim laps or shoot a game of pickup with your colleagues? Didn't think so ... No. You flipped over into lifting and then into gearhead bodybuilding, a different road, one less traveled, but that's cool, you've done illegal drugs and been into extreme shit all your life, you're okay in the underground, you feel comfortable there. I'll tell you ... You learn something about yourself when you're alone with your fears, just you and a gleaming spike of hard chromed steel, deciding if you're ready to move beyond conventional ethics to a place few men ever go.

Ready or not, here I come. Ready? Or not? That Terumo in your left hand can sort out the difference.

.......... Hmmmm ............ 2-1/2 cc's of oil in the small barrel. You'd used an 18g to load it with two different types of gear so the oils are still mixing, swirling around in there in mysterious-looking lines, filament-like, like watered silk or something. You stare at the whorls for a second like a Gypsy, as though you could read your fortune there. The clear light oil is 1-1/2 cc's of testosterone propionate, real potent test prop from Big Dog's private stock, 200mg/ml, but it's chockful of BA, benzyl alcohol that will build up a burn on injection and swell up nasty, red, hot and sore as hell for days afterward (and that's the good part), give you a huge fuckin' charleyhorse that will march with you into next week, make you think abscess if you didn't know better, you'll need a good excuse for why you're limping so bad. Then you siphoned up a single cc of trenbolone acetate into the same syringe: tren ... oh, fuckin-A ... Gear of the Gods, the most anabolic compound known to man. Seven or eight weeks of this shit, bro, and you'll feel so hard and flexed all the time it'll be like you're wearing armor or something. Some guys like to hug you when you walk into the gym, but next time they try they'll have to shove you away - "Holy SHIT!" - and stare you up and down, an awed, disbelieving look on their face - "WTF is UP with you, bro?" - unbelievable!, they can't understand how you came to be carved out of oak like that. You made this tren yourself from Finaplix pellets and one of Animal's kits, 10 solid grams of kick-ass gear too, just like the prop, 100mg/ml, a golden honey color but loaded with BA as well and you can practically feel it in your quad already, a steroid depot of sterile sesame oil in there like a huge, hot, aching ember.

You learn something about yourself when you're alone with your fears ..... You take a big cotton ball and soak it in isopropyl alcohol, the fumes swim up into your head while you drop your jeans to your knees and sit down on the bathroom throne, the bulging sweep of your right quad swelling out tanned and firm against the seat. Back and forth with the cotton ball, not too hard now, you don't want to plow up too much derma and maybe drive a particle into the muscle when you do the stick, but you want the spot sterile, a big spot, too, because you know how your hands might shake and you don't want to drive the needle through a dirty spot. Put the cotton ball back on the vanity and pick up the dart, you see a tiny air bubble when you up-end it. Grasp the transulent plastic protector that sheathes the needle and twist it hard clockwise, make sure the pin is locked on tight, then tug sharply and with a plastic popping sound the sheath is off, the 23-gauge one-and-a-half inch Terumo spike gleaming and evil-looking in the hard light ... Jeezus! What the hell is this thing, a HARPOON or something! ... You push very gently on the syringe's piston, flick the nail of your middle finger against the barrel, watch the bubble retreat up into the Luer-Lok collar and then disappear, a little more pressure and one or two tiny beads of oil ooze out of the tip of the pin and snake down the shaft, lubricating it for the stick ... Perfect ... The alcohol on your right quad is almost dry, so you position the dart with both hands, a little more than halfway down your thigh with the pin coming in straight from the side, but a little north of horizontal, maybe 13 minutes past the hour. Your breathing quickens a little .....

You lock everything together in a rigid assembly - both hands, wrists, dart, right thigh, though you try to keep the quadriceps flaccid so it won't resist the deep muscle stab - long slow breath ... whhhh-ooooo ... "Anakin here. Ready to become Darth." ... then ... in it goes, the pin lancing into your flesh almost effortlessly. Still, the pain comes and then, most of the way in, you meet muscle fascia, it's hard to get the pin in the last half-inch. Another deep breath, you can feel the fascia in there like a layer of glove leather or something - Jeezus H Christ! Can I fuckin' DO THIS??? - but you push a little harder and you feel it yield to the exquisitely sharp Terumo, just a little more now and the pin is firmly seated.

Deep breath ... Alright ... Push on the thumbpad now ... Man! Is that oil thick or what? Shit, you sure have to push hard! But finally the prop and tren begin to flow, you see the black rubber gasket slowly sliding down the bore of the dart's barrel pushing the gear ahead of it, but you can feel a buildup of pressure and an alarmingly sharp ache in your quad. It seems to take forever. Push. Push. Your thumb fatigues and begins to hurt. After a few seconds that seem to be minutes, most of the oil is in there now, but the pain has built up and is getting worse, you're pushing like hell but with a half-cc to go the gasket isn't moving and you panic for just a second - Should I withdraw, change pins, and hit another site to finish the stick? - but you think - "Hold on, just a little more ... " - and as you step up the pressure the last of the oil slides soundlessly out of the barrel, and the black gasket seats up against the needle assembly.

Shew! Almost home. Careful now, not too fast or you can slice yourself with the tip on the withdrawal if the angle gets acute ... Yeah yeah, nice and smooth, don't yank it ... and with a tiny squeaking, puckering sensation the pin is out, gleaming atop the spent dart, and a tiny bead of blood and a jillionth of a drop of oil glistens at the spot the needle just exited. Cap the pin ... Setting it aside, you see with surprise a wine-dark stain just inside the needle collar, a little blood must have backed up there at the end of the stick when you were pressing the last mg of gear out of the barrel and released the pressure ... Then swab the site gently with the cotton ball. Press. The bleeding stops immediately. Nice stick. Very nice stick. Already you can feel thousands of molecules of the esterified steroids - the testosterone molecule shorn of its hydroxyl group at the 17th carbon atom and mated to a short chain of propionic acid - test prop - the tren married to an even shorter acetic group - trenbolone acetate - leaching from the oily depot into your blood where acid-cleaving esterases will chew away the acid chains and replace them with hydroxyl groups as in the virgin molecules, liberating the steroid and permitting it to bind to the androgen receptors in your muscle cells. Gotta go work them now. Slam down a protein/carb shake then go lift like a motherfucker, put all this good gear to work. It might be smart to add in a couple of sets of leg press this morning, considering .....

Pants up and belted. Flex the leg a little. Very nice stick ... "Darth here," you say to yourself, "Right here, bro. And I'm fuckin' ... never ... goin' ... back ... to ... The Light." You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror - broad shoulders, nice traps, some lat spread and well-shaped arms, it turns you on to see your tanned upper body in a tanktop and to see veins and striations pop out when you twist under the light, it's cool to see a ripped, sexy male body looking back at you. "Not bad for a 50-year-old," you say to yourself. Then you recall what your wife said to you last week. "50-year-old!?!? Darlin', you look pretty goddamned hot for a 30-year-old! Look at you, you're like a kid. Hmmmm ... yeah ... C'mere, baby," and you shiver as the hungry, practiced hands that have enflamed you for more than 20 years are all over your body, dancing up your torso, along your limbs and down your front like fire, like searing velvet tongues of burning desire ....................

Yeah ... You learn something about yourself when you're alone with your fears, just you and a gleaming spike of hard chromed steel, deciding if you're ready to move beyond conventional ethics to a place few ever go. You learn that you have the power to imagine yourself into being. That's right. Just that. You imagine yourself into being. The Roman Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, said it best, he really laid it all out for you. Here it is, the Secret of Life, brothers, crystalline, clear and sharp as a diamond, you always knew it, but now I get to tell you too:

"First, say to yourself what you would become.
Then, do what you have to do."

The great part of this is how different you'll feel from anyone else you know - stronger, fitter, more youthful with your clothes off. But, by the same token, the painful part of this is how different you'll feel from anyone else you know. Only maybe 3 million American men have ever stared shit-scared at a dart full of gear like that - one in 50 men - and in your age range, maybe one in 200, one in 300 has done something like that recently enough to cop a decent pump off it. So, you'll learn things about yourself ... that you're out of the herd now, brother, on your own, half-listening to meetings drone on while you're surreptitiously massaging the ache away from that pinstick a little while ago, wondering all the time "What the fuck would these dudes think, what could they possibly think, if they knew what I was just doing?" and scheming, always, about lifting and training, while "Blast" by Crystal Method, or Massive Attack's "Angel" hammers, heard only by you, in your head.

You'll feel acutely a sense of loss, a loss of relatedness to your age-mates, but ... remember ... you didn't change, they did. They agreed to start to die, to abandon the youthful warrior within them. You have not, now you stand forever apart from them, and that's just how it is .....

And you'll say to them ... if they should ask what happened to you, you'll say:

"I lived up in my head, waaaaaaay the fuck up in my head ... just like you ... all my life, bro.

I could have died there. I really almost died there. It was THAT close .....

Now I live in my body. And ... I'm FREE HERE!

If you want to, you can join me. All you need to do is say to yourself what you would become. Then, do what you have to do ... while there is time.

And you'll sing softly to yourself, as you, and they, walk away in different directions, you'll sing beneath your breath those lyrics that always spoke to you, that Stevie Winwood wrote, just for you, in "Finer Things":

While there is time ...
Let's go out and feel everything.
If you hold me ...
I will let you into my dreams.
For time is a river ...
Rolling into nowhere.
We must live while we can ...
And we'll drink our cup of laughter.

Be well, brothers. Be happy, lift heavy, and journey safely.

Bjaarki

... Then, do what you have to do.

archive_45goingon20 · 10-04-2002, 01:19 PM

Thanks BJ. It belonged here maybe more so.
45

Decaman · 10-04-2002, 01:45 PM

This is a fine of example of what steroids do to an aging mind.

DECA- IT'S WHATS FOR DINNER!

archive_45goingon20 · 10-04-2002, 01:53 PM

And a good thing to, Decaman you whippersnapper. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
45

Fukkenshredded · 10-04-2002, 02:49 PM

An interesting reflex to stretching the body's capabilities...live in your body instead of your head?

Our physicality is most certainly finite and hopelessly limited, even if we temporarily supercharge it with drugs.

I often lament the fact that the brain is, after all, a body part.

Of course, that fact does lead to the possibilty of molecular manipulation, even of the syntax, which I have found to make the whole wretched condition a type of veiled blessing. Or, maybe the veiling itself is a blessing.

Anyway, I still think that a date with a tryptamine is just what the doctor ordered for Bjaarki.

Might I suggest Ayahuasca. It is legal in a religious context.

Until then, just buy low, sell high, and lift hard.

archive_Nate · 10-04-2002, 03:09 PM

Bjaarki, i just didn't read that, i lived the whole thing for those few minutes. i may have played my future out in my head different then you or anyone else for that matter, but i strongly believe in the meaning of the quote you gave. couldn't have said it better myself.

Decaman · 10-04-2002, 03:27 PM

Hey now i am still only 32 [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

DECA- IT'S WHATS FOR DINNER!

archive_Ulter · 10-04-2002, 06:37 PM

Thanks B
You are one of the reasons this board is different and so valuable. There are precious few people of your caliber posting on these boards.

archive_FitnessChick · 10-04-2002, 06:58 PM

I will never feel the same about injecting myself again!

10-04-2002, 07:34 PM

B,
It seems as though we are on the same journey..

The mass's could not possibly understand.

Live well brother.

Doggy

Q · 10-04-2002, 08:03 PM

You left out the feeling of the muscle repositioning itself as you withdraw the needle.

Bjaarki, how long have you been using gear?

Q

South of the border · 10-04-2002, 08:51 PM

I take it that you like the test prop and tren combination? [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

udub · 10-04-2002, 11:23 PM

Bjaarki,you nailed it bro.

bigboy · 10-05-2002, 06:51 AM

I relived the drama of the injection....

DaMan · 10-05-2002, 09:05 AM

Is it me or did you forget to aspirate? :-D

archive_Badrock · 10-06-2002, 09:51 AM

Bjaarki, that was some really deep stuff right there. I only hope that when I am older I still feel the same way I do now. Don't give up on being youthful!

"Yeap. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around, you could miss it."

DREXX · 10-07-2002, 10:54 AM

Bjaarki, I always come away from your posts a little wiser and a little more cultured. For that I thank you [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

You should write a book or something!

If it's not hard it's not worth doing...

##spiderbaby## · 10-07-2002, 02:55 PM

Beautiful, that was true sharing, thank you.

##spiderbaby##

All bleeding eventually stops.

Mister B. · 10-08-2002, 10:10 AM

Very inspiring!

I think you're really Stephen King [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

B [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

---------------------

GETTIN' HARD!!

5252 · 10-08-2002, 02:11 PM

That was great Bjaarki. Once again you shed light on a common topic, that effects us all and of course makes us unique. A life long dedication to the iron is a mind set. I embraced it 9 years ago and I have never been the same......

We are better for having you around.

5252

gtaman · 10-09-2002, 04:53 PM

Bjaarki, pure poetry.

You did forget, though, that I've sworn off gear for good now that my cycle is ended and I feel like crap with muscles that seem to take weeks to recover.

It's just not worth it!

(Yeah OK you can ask me in December how my next cycle is going.)

gtaman
36GoingOn66

Badatta2d · 10-10-2002, 02:58 PM

With all the posts on Personal Tragidy (E2, lethal Burn) and Bjaarki's "while there is time", time post, We have had a serious week or two here on the board.
That's what makes it such a great place. We are so much more than meat-heads pounding out reps. There is so much more out there. Training is part of a much bigger picture. I really enjoy hearing that others still shake and question themselves while staring at a needle. Hell, I know I do. I question everytime is it worth it. I think when you lose the ability to question your actions, perhaps you have gone too far or been in the game too long. Maybe, just maybe, your knowledge is great enough to comprehend what affect your actions will have over the course of a cycle, but what about 10 years from that cycle? Every cycle is my last, but somehow I do another. I do not stay "on" I do maybe 1 or 2 good ones a year.
Why? I will never compete, I am in a happy marriage, I don't need to impress anyone with physical appearance. I am a step away from the geezers at 37 Y.O. I guess it's an internal drive to see what I may become. I still anticipate working out. It's a lifestyle, it carries on outside of the gym.

Attitude is Everything!!!

Curious George · 10-14-2002, 04:10 PM

I love it when Bjaarki talks that way!!!!

Take Good Care,

Cg

10-04-2002, 01:01 PM	#1 (permalink)
archive_Bjaarki Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2000 Posts: 3,673 Rep Power: 9560	While there is time ..... A lot of you older guys, I know, are pretty ambivalent about physical training, the whole bodybuilding scene. You've been into it for two or three years, maybe a couple of years more, and you've done very well. But ... you've hit the "lifter's plateau." You're at a place now where gains slow down, aspirations get cloudy, doubts set in. Young guys hit that wall, too, but it can really flatten you when you're feeling your years. Yeah. The part of you that likes to train and wonders what you can accomplish in your late 40's - the part of you that wonders what you could look like on your Big Five-Oh if you pulled out all the stops right now ... "Hmmm ... Maybe 210lbs of rock at 9%, tucking tight tees into 32" jeans, 17" arms cold ... yeah, I could do that ..." now gets joined by another part of you that feels conflicted about it, goes back and forth about how motivated you are, whether you have the time for it, whether you can really make progress, maybe it's silly, you should be content with the sensible middle-age thing, have another bagel, take up golf, fuck it be a pussy it ain't so bad ... a part of you that worries about falling into the "trap" of "drugs," gets hinky about gear and really dedicated training, about "taking it to another level." That's where the Journey stops for most guys, if they ever get that far. Maybe it will stop there for you ... Or, maybe you committed a long time ago like I did, and now you're into this whole thing light years beyond anyone else you know. Typical of you. Education, your choice of spouse, your career ... Lifting was no different, no different at all. You wanna swim laps or shoot a game of pickup with your colleagues? Didn't think so ... No. You flipped over into lifting and then into gearhead bodybuilding, a different road, one less traveled, but that's cool, you've done illegal drugs and been into extreme shit all your life, you're okay in the underground, you feel comfortable there. I'll tell you ... You learn something about yourself when you're alone with your fears, just you and a gleaming spike of hard chromed steel, deciding if you're ready to move beyond conventional ethics to a place few men ever go. Ready or not, here I come. Ready? Or not? That Terumo in your left hand can sort out the difference. .......... Hmmmm ............ 2-1/2 cc's of oil in the small barrel. You'd used an 18g to load it with two different types of gear so the oils are still mixing, swirling around in there in mysterious-looking lines, filament-like, like watered silk or something. You stare at the whorls for a second like a Gypsy, as though you could read your fortune there. The clear light oil is 1-1/2 cc's of testosterone propionate, real potent test prop from Big Dog's private stock, 200mg/ml, but it's chockful of BA, benzyl alcohol that will build up a burn on injection and swell up nasty, red, hot and sore as hell for days afterward (and that's the good part), give you a huge fuckin' charleyhorse that will march with you into next week, make you think abscess if you didn't know better, you'll need a good excuse for why you're limping so bad. Then you siphoned up a single cc of trenbolone acetate into the same syringe: tren ... oh, fuckin-A ... Gear of the Gods, the most anabolic compound known to man. Seven or eight weeks of this shit, bro, and you'll feel so hard and flexed all the time it'll be like you're wearing armor or something. Some guys like to hug you when you walk into the gym, but next time they try they'll have to shove you away - "Holy SHIT!" - and stare you up and down, an awed, disbelieving look on their face - "WTF is UP with you, bro?" - unbelievable!, they can't understand how you came to be carved out of oak like that. You made this tren yourself from Finaplix pellets and one of Animal's kits, 10 solid grams of kick-ass gear too, just like the prop, 100mg/ml, a golden honey color but loaded with BA as well and you can practically feel it in your quad already, a steroid depot of sterile sesame oil in there like a huge, hot, aching ember. You learn something about yourself when you're alone with your fears ..... You take a big cotton ball and soak it in isopropyl alcohol, the fumes swim up into your head while you drop your jeans to your knees and sit down on the bathroom throne, the bulging sweep of your right quad swelling out tanned and firm against the seat. Back and forth with the cotton ball, not too hard now, you don't want to plow up too much derma and maybe drive a particle into the muscle when you do the stick, but you want the spot sterile, a big spot, too, because you know how your hands might shake and you don't want to drive the needle through a dirty spot. Put the cotton ball back on the vanity and pick up the dart, you see a tiny air bubble when you up-end it. Grasp the transulent plastic protector that sheathes the needle and twist it hard clockwise, make sure the pin is locked on tight, then tug sharply and with a plastic popping sound the sheath is off, the 23-gauge one-and-a-half inch Terumo spike gleaming and evil-looking in the hard light ... Jeezus! What the hell is this thing, a HARPOON or something! ... You push very gently on the syringe's piston, flick the nail of your middle finger against the barrel, watch the bubble retreat up into the Luer-Lok collar and then disappear, a little more pressure and one or two tiny beads of oil ooze out of the tip of the pin and snake down the shaft, lubricating it for the stick ... Perfect ... The alcohol on your right quad is almost dry, so you position the dart with both hands, a little more than halfway down your thigh with the pin coming in straight from the side, but a little north of horizontal, maybe 13 minutes past the hour. Your breathing quickens a little ..... You lock everything together in a rigid assembly - both hands, wrists, dart, right thigh, though you try to keep the quadriceps flaccid so it won't resist the deep muscle stab - long slow breath ... whhhh-ooooo ... "Anakin here. Ready to become Darth." ... then ... in it goes, the pin lancing into your flesh almost effortlessly. Still, the pain comes and then, most of the way in, you meet muscle fascia, it's hard to get the pin in the last half-inch. Another deep breath, you can feel the fascia in there like a layer of glove leather or something - Jeezus H Christ! Can I fuckin' DO THIS??? - but you push a little harder and you feel it yield to the exquisitely sharp Terumo, just a little more now and the pin is firmly seated. Deep breath ... Alright ... Push on the thumbpad now ... Man! Is that oil thick or what? Shit, you sure have to push hard! But finally the prop and tren begin to flow, you see the black rubber gasket slowly sliding down the bore of the dart's barrel pushing the gear ahead of it, but you can feel a buildup of pressure and an alarmingly sharp ache in your quad. It seems to take forever. Push. Push. Your thumb fatigues and begins to hurt. After a few seconds that seem to be minutes, most of the oil is in there now, but the pain has built up and is getting worse, you're pushing like hell but with a half-cc to go the gasket isn't moving and you panic for just a second - Should I withdraw, change pins, and hit another site to finish the stick? - but you think - "Hold on, just a little more ... " - and as you step up the pressure the last of the oil slides soundlessly out of the barrel, and the black gasket seats up against the needle assembly. Shew! Almost home. Careful now, not too fast or you can slice yourself with the tip on the withdrawal if the angle gets acute ... Yeah yeah, nice and smooth, don't yank it ... and with a tiny squeaking, puckering sensation the pin is out, gleaming atop the spent dart, and a tiny bead of blood and a jillionth of a drop of oil glistens at the spot the needle just exited. Cap the pin ... Setting it aside, you see with surprise a wine-dark stain just inside the needle collar, a little blood must have backed up there at the end of the stick when you were pressing the last mg of gear out of the barrel and released the pressure ... Then swab the site gently with the cotton ball. Press. The bleeding stops immediately. Nice stick. Very nice stick. Already you can feel thousands of molecules of the esterified steroids - the testosterone molecule shorn of its hydroxyl group at the 17th carbon atom and mated to a short chain of propionic acid - test prop - the tren married to an even shorter acetic group - trenbolone acetate - leaching from the oily depot into your blood where acid-cleaving esterases will chew away the acid chains and replace them with hydroxyl groups as in the virgin molecules, liberating the steroid and permitting it to bind to the androgen receptors in your muscle cells. Gotta go work them now. Slam down a protein/carb shake then go lift like a motherfucker, put all this good gear to work. It might be smart to add in a couple of sets of leg press this morning, considering ..... Pants up and belted. Flex the leg a little. Very nice stick ... "Darth here," you say to yourself, "Right here, bro. And I'm fuckin' ... never ... goin' ... back ... to ... The Light." You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror - broad shoulders, nice traps, some lat spread and well-shaped arms, it turns you on to see your tanned upper body in a tanktop and to see veins and striations pop out when you twist under the light, it's cool to see a ripped, sexy male body looking back at you. "Not bad for a 50-year-old," you say to yourself. Then you recall what your wife said to you last week. "50-year-old!?!? Darlin', you look pretty goddamned hot for a 30-year-old! Look at you, you're like a kid. Hmmmm ... yeah ... C'mere, baby," and you shiver as the hungry, practiced hands that have enflamed you for more than 20 years are all over your body, dancing up your torso, along your limbs and down your front like fire, like searing velvet tongues of burning desire .................... Yeah ... You learn something about yourself when you're alone with your fears, just you and a gleaming spike of hard chromed steel, deciding if you're ready to move beyond conventional ethics to a place few ever go. You learn that you have the power to imagine yourself into being. That's right. Just that. You imagine yourself into being. The Roman Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, said it best, he really laid it all out for you. Here it is, the Secret of Life, brothers, crystalline, clear and sharp as a diamond, you always knew it, but now I get to tell you too: "First, say to yourself what you would become. Then, do what you have to do." The great part of this is how different you'll feel from anyone else you know - stronger, fitter, more youthful with your clothes off. But, by the same token, the painful part of this is how different you'll feel from anyone else you know. Only maybe 3 million American men have ever stared shit-scared at a dart full of gear like that - one in 50 men - and in your age range, maybe one in 200, one in 300 has done something like that recently enough to cop a decent pump off it. So, you'll learn things about yourself ... that you're out of the herd now, brother, on your own, half-listening to meetings drone on while you're surreptitiously massaging the ache away from that pinstick a little while ago, wondering all the time "What the fuck would these dudes think, what could they possibly think, if they knew what I was just doing?" and scheming, always, about lifting and training, while "Blast" by Crystal Method, or Massive Attack's "Angel" hammers, heard only by you, in your head. You'll feel acutely a sense of loss, a loss of relatedness to your age-mates, but ... remember ... you didn't change, they did. They agreed to start to die, to abandon the youthful warrior within them. You have not, now you stand forever apart from them, and that's just how it is ..... And you'll say to them ... if they should ask what happened to you, you'll say: "I lived up in my head, waaaaaaay the fuck up in my head ... just like you ... all my life, bro. I could have died there. I really almost died there. It was THAT close ..... Now I live in my body. And ... I'm FREE HERE! If you want to, you can join me. All you need to do is say to yourself what you would become. Then, do what you have to do ... while there is time. And you'll sing softly to yourself, as you, and they, walk away in different directions, you'll sing beneath your breath those lyrics that always spoke to you, that Stevie Winwood wrote, just for you, in "Finer Things": While there is time ... Let's go out and feel everything. If you hold me ... I will let you into my dreams. For time is a river ... Rolling into nowhere. We must live while we can ... And we'll drink our cup of laughter. Be well, brothers. Be happy, lift heavy, and journey safely. Bjaarki ... Then, do what you have to do. __________________ First, say to yourself what you would become. Then, do what you have to do.

10-04-2002, 01:45 PM	#3 (permalink)
Decaman Super Moderator Join Date: Nov 2000 Posts: 3,008 Rep Power: 10297	This is a fine of example of what steroids do to an aging mind. DECA- IT'S WHATS FOR DINNER! __________________ Deal with reality or Reality will deal with you

10-04-2002, 03:27 PM	#7 (permalink)
Decaman Super Moderator Join Date: Nov 2000 Posts: 3,008 Rep Power: 10297	Hey now i am still only 32 [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] DECA- IT'S WHATS FOR DINNER! __________________ Deal with reality or Reality will deal with you

10-04-2002, 06:37 PM	#8 (permalink)
archive_Ulter Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2000 Posts: 15,388 Rep Power: 21828	Thanks B You are one of the reasons this board is different and so valuable. There are precious few people of your caliber posting on these boards. __________________

10-04-2002, 08:03 PM	#11 (permalink)
Q Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 333 Rep Power: 5118	You left out the feeling of the muscle repositioning itself as you withdraw the needle. Bjaarki, how long have you been using gear? Q __________________ Q

10-04-2002, 01:19 PM	#2 (permalink)
archive_45goingon20 Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Posts: 484 Rep Power: 5933	Thanks BJ. It belonged here maybe more so. 45

10-04-2002, 01:53 PM	#4 (permalink)
archive_45goingon20 Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Posts: 484 Rep Power: 5933	And a good thing to, Decaman you whippersnapper. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] 45

10-04-2002, 02:49 PM	#5 (permalink)
Fukkenshredded Super Moderator Join Date: Dec 2000 Posts: 1,035 Rep Power: 7561	An interesting reflex to stretching the body's capabilities...live in your body instead of your head? Our physicality is most certainly finite and hopelessly limited, even if we temporarily supercharge it with drugs. I often lament the fact that the brain is, after all, a body part. Of course, that fact does lead to the possibilty of molecular manipulation, even of the syntax, which I have found to make the whole wretched condition a type of veiled blessing. Or, maybe the veiling itself is a blessing. Anyway, I still think that a date with a tryptamine is just what the doctor ordered for Bjaarki. Might I suggest Ayahuasca. It is legal in a religious context. Until then, just buy low, sell high, and lift hard.

10-04-2002, 03:09 PM	#6 (permalink)
archive_Nate Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Posts: 249 Rep Power: 5648	Bjaarki, i just didn't read that, i lived the whole thing for those few minutes. i may have played my future out in my head different then you or anyone else for that matter, but i strongly believe in the meaning of the quote you gave. couldn't have said it better myself.

10-04-2002, 06:58 PM	#9 (permalink)
archive_FitnessChick Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2000 Posts: 1,119 Rep Power: 7002	I will never feel the same about injecting myself again!

10-04-2002, 07:34 PM	#10 (permalink)
Guest Posts: n/a	B, It seems as though we are on the same journey.. The mass's could not possibly understand. Live well brother. Doggy

10-04-2002, 08:51 PM	#12 (permalink)
South of the border Gold Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 938 Rep Power: 6523	I take it that you like the test prop and tren combination? [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

10-04-2002, 11:23 PM	#13 (permalink)
udub Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 72 Rep Power: 5667	Bjaarki,you nailed it bro.

10-05-2002, 06:51 AM	#14 (permalink)
bigboy Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2000 Posts: 1,170 Rep Power: 7047	Awesome. I relived the drama of the injection....

10-05-2002, 09:05 AM	#15 (permalink)
DaMan Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 735 Rep Power: 6078	Is it me or did you forget to aspirate? :-D

10-06-2002, 09:51 AM	#16 (permalink)
archive_Badrock Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 327 Rep Power: 5270	Bjaarki, that was some really deep stuff right there. I only hope that when I am older I still feel the same way I do now. Don't give up on being youthful! "Yeap. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around, you could miss it."

10-07-2002, 10:54 AM	#17 (permalink)
DREXX Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2000 Posts: 1,328 Rep Power: 7215	Bjaarki, I always come away from your posts a little wiser and a little more cultured. For that I thank you [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] You should write a book or something! If it's not hard it's not worth doing... __________________ If it's not hard, it's not worth doing...

10-07-2002, 02:55 PM	#18 (permalink)
##spiderbaby## Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Posts: 260 Rep Power: 5491	Beautiful, that was true sharing, thank you. ##spiderbaby## All bleeding eventually stops. __________________ ##spiderbaby## All bleeding eventually stops.

10-08-2002, 10:10 AM	#19 (permalink)
Mister B. Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 817 Rep Power: 5434	Very Nice Bjaarki! Very inspiring! I think you're really Stephen King [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] B [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] --------------------- GETTIN' HARD!! __________________ --------------------- &quot;Um... I checked around. The girls are calling you &quot;fatty-fat fat fat&quot;, and Nelson&apos;s planning to pull down your pants, but ... nobody&apos;s trying to kill ya.&quot; &quot; -- Milhouse

10-08-2002, 02:11 PM	#20 (permalink)
5252 AF Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Posts: 49 Rep Power: 5718	That was great Bjaarki. Once again you shed light on a common topic, that effects us all and of course makes us unique. A life long dedication to the iron is a mind set. I embraced it 9 years ago and I have never been the same...... We are better for having you around. 5252 __________________ Once there was a warrior that walked the land......

10-09-2002, 04:53 PM	#21 (permalink)
gtaman Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2001 Posts: 231 Rep Power: 5992	Bjaarki, pure poetry. You did forget, though, that I've sworn off gear for good now that my cycle is ended and I feel like crap with muscles that seem to take weeks to recover. It's just not worth it! (Yeah OK you can ask me in December how my next cycle is going.) gtaman 36GoingOn66

10-10-2002, 02:58 PM	#22 (permalink)
Badatta2d Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2001 Posts: 285 Rep Power: 6064	It's been a deep week here at AF With all the posts on Personal Tragidy (E2, lethal Burn) and Bjaarki's "while there is time", time post, We have had a serious week or two here on the board. That's what makes it such a great place. We are so much more than meat-heads pounding out reps. There is so much more out there. Training is part of a much bigger picture. I really enjoy hearing that others still shake and question themselves while staring at a needle. Hell, I know I do. I question everytime is it worth it. I think when you lose the ability to question your actions, perhaps you have gone too far or been in the game too long. Maybe, just maybe, your knowledge is great enough to comprehend what affect your actions will have over the course of a cycle, but what about 10 years from that cycle? Every cycle is my last, but somehow I do another. I do not stay "on" I do maybe 1 or 2 good ones a year. Why? I will never compete, I am in a happy marriage, I don't need to impress anyone with physical appearance. I am a step away from the geezers at 37 Y.O. I guess it's an internal drive to see what I may become. I still anticipate working out. It's a lifestyle, it carries on outside of the gym. Attitude is Everything!!! __________________ The figure stands expressionless, impassive and alone, unmoved by this victory or the seeds of death he&apos;s sewn.

10-14-2002, 04:10 PM	#23 (permalink)
Curious George Moderator and Future CRNA Join Date: Jan 2001 Posts: 2,458 Rep Power: 19292	I love it when Bjaarki talks that way!!!! Take Good Care, Cg