Only 100 days to pain and suffering, Chinese style...

Other than making up Tiger Jokes and twittering them all day, it's been pretty uneventful. Today was a slow day at work and training doesn't start until next Monday, so I have nothing but time on my hands. Today I decided to de-classify the Mantracker e-mails.

The short set up is as follows. John Barclay and I applied for the show Mantracker. It's a show where they drop you into the woods with a map and a compass and you have 36 hours to get to a destination point without getting caught by Mantracker.

The guy has amazing tracking skills and catches 70% of his prey. The shooting for the upcoming session is between December 1-15th in Hawaii. Because we haven't heard back and it's now December 3rd, I assume we didn't get selected.

To set up the story, John and I emailed everyone we knew to send an email to Mantrackers production office and suggest they put the two of us on the show. I also asked others on twitter, facebook, Linkedin and triathlon forums to do the same. As a matter of fact, I shut down my companies email system because I sent so many emails from my entire contact list.

The ISP thought I was spamming and shut our account down. It took me an hour on the phone to get the engineers at the ISP to start our account up again. Good thing it was a Sunday night. I don't know how many emails that were sent to Mantracker, but I would predict about 300 plus. One of my nephews, Eric, sent six himself.

Mantracker Correspondence

Hi Bryan,

Thank you for your application. We will keep it on file for consideration for Season 6. At this time we are really trying to find Hawaiian locals to appear on our Hawaiian episodes. While I think it's great that you have so many friends rooting for you, I have to request that you ask them to stop sending emails. My inbox has been flooded with nearly 40 such emails today and, quite honestly, that does not have any positive effect on steering us to select your application. I trust you understand my position.

I can assure you we will consider you and John when we are casting for Season 6.

Thank you,

Christine

Sorry Christine, we didn't mean any harm and I completely understand. I'll do my best to stop the email train ASAP.

Part of the reason I did it, was because according to the application it mentioned you wanted "passionate, exciting, competitive, compelling people who want to challenge Mantracker and have what it takes to out fox him" and having our friends help us would help show some of those characteristics.

On a positive note, a least it's getting the message out there and promoting Mantracker. lol. Albeit, at your expense, again, sorry about that. Please don't hold it against us. We really are a couple of good guys.

I do have an offer though, I'm open to paying ALL of the air fare to get there. Just an offer to consider. We REALLY want to compete against him. And truthfully, John has serious skin cancer, has been operated on a couple times in the past 18 months and it may prevent him from doing any future Ironmans or strenuous activities. It is quite serious, he's healthy right now, and being on Mantracker is on his bucket list. As a friend, that is one of the reasons I was pushing so hard.

I'll do everything I can to stop the emails. Again I apologize. Please consider taking us up on our offer, we're ready to go.

In either event, I really do appreciate you keeping our application on file for season 6 and if John's healthy, we'd definitely love to do it.

No hard feelings I hope.

Life should always be fun!!!!

B

Hi Bryan,

No worries or hard feelings. I am sorry to hear of John's illness and will consider your application for Hawaii if we are unable to find local participants. We do not select people based on emails from friends, people offering to pay their own travel or anything else as such. We base our selection on the video - it's great that your friends say you are passionate, exciting, etc., but we want to see that on the video. We are watching the video closely to see if the applicants would make for a good hour of television.

I appreciate you trying to stop these emails as I have received at least another 20 since my last email.

Thank you,

Christine

Bryan,

I just received a lovely plant from you and thank you from the bottom of my heart. It was unnecessary to go to such trouble and expense over a few emails, but I greatly appreciate it. This gesture has touched me deeply and brought a ray of light into an otherwise dark day.

With gratitude and kindest regards,

Christine

C, thanks for the nice email. You've now touched me with your kind words and made my day.

I hope we meet one day, whether I'm on Mantracker or not.

Life should always be fun!!!!

B

Hey C, I just found out from my IT people that because I sent a large recipient list last night from my address book and then sent two more this morning telling people to stop sending, my account shut down the company system for a while and our Service Provider flagged my account as a spammer. Not good. The stop emails I sent were blocked and didn't end up getting out.

They have the engineers at our Internet service provider trying to fix everything and then I'll have to resent STOP notices but can only send 50 an hour. Hopefully by tomorrow the emails will stop or at least only trickle in.

Now I've got my IT people freaking at me. Again, my sincere apologies.

Last time I do something like this :-)

B

Hi Bryan,

Please don't worry or fret about it. I actually enjoy reading them. It seems you have a lot of people who believe in you two. I will ask our producers to look at your application for Hawaii. Can't make any promises about the outcome, but I will certainly make sure it's seen.

Take care,

Christine

Wow. Thanks C. Your the best!!!

P.S. If any of the people I know are being truthful, and not trying to help us look like responsible upstanding citizens, I'm sure the emails would be entertaining to read. LOL.

Take care

Life should always be fun!!!!

B

Hey C, sorry to bother you. I know your probably sick of hearing the names Bryan and John. lol.

John and I didn't like the first video we sent in, we had too many beers before we shot it and felt we could do better, so we shot this new one on the weekend. Hopefully more representative and relevant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhZe54jdLTs

If it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you be able to replace the old one with this new one? Unless of course you think the first one is better. We'll take your lead on this one.

Thanks C.

Life should always be fun!!!!!

B

P.S. I'll send in a new DVD to your office. Should arrive Tuesday.

Hi Bryan,

I forwarded both vids to our Exec Producer to watch. He'll make his decisions soon.

Thanks,

Christine

C, Your the best!!!!

Thanks

B

Hey C, I figured we didn't get picked, but wanted to confirm. Have you folks make your decision already?

If we didn't make it, that's cool, but I still want to thank you for your help and putting up with the emails.

B

Hi Bryan,

We did make our decisions to go with Hawaiian locals for the episodes. We are keeping your apps on file for Season 6 and hopefully Jon will still be feeling healthy at that time if we should select you as prey.

Thanks,

Christine

C, thanks for the update. Yes, definitely keep us on file we'd love to be considered for season 6.

Thanks again for all you help.

BTW, how many emails of support for John and I do you figure you ended up getting?

B

You're welcome. And I would say I got well over 100 emails. You obviously have a great number of people who believe in you. That's excellent!

Take care,

Christine

Thanks again. Have a great Christmas.

Take care,

B

So that's what happened. Maybe they'll call us for an upcoming episode that shoots in Canada, or maybe we weren't good enough. The one thing both John and I agree on, is that whether we get picked or not it, was worth applying. With all the emails back and forth it added to the suspense and drama. We felt like kids again. It was fun!!!

Below is a video of Reid being the lunch office monitor at school. This week he was working the front desk when the school secretary went on lunch break. His job was to buzz people into the school and work the front desk. He loves the job so much I told him "I gotta see this". He reminded me about 3 or 4 times this morning that his shift starts at 12:15 pm.

Rest Day - Can hardly wait to have some beers this weekend