About Me: I don’t want to spend too much time here as you can easily gather a ton of information about me on the resume page. I cover over 25 years of professional life on that page. I created that page to compliment my resume that I submit to companies and businesses. My actual resume is only a page and a half.
I was born in Carnegie, Oklahoma way back and within six month’s of life, my parents brought me to California where I remained all the way up till my twenty-first birthday. That’s when I joined the US Navy. The Navy changed my life forever! I will forever be grateful for all the doors that have been opened by signing on that dotted line back on December 27, 2007.
Before I get into my family life, I’d like to let you know about all the places the Navy has taken me. I will inevitably forget some as it was over 20 years ago for some of the port of calls. I will start off with the States first, then head off overseas… So here goes:
- Great Lakes, Chicago
- Lakehurst, New Jersey
- Whidbey Island, Washington
- San Diego, California
- Norfolk, Virginia
- Mayport, Florida
- China Lake, California
- El Centro, California
- Hawaii (Need I say more?) Multiple times
- Fallon, Nevada
Okay, I think that covers the States. Now I have to really tax my memory and list all the countries:
- Philippines
- Japan
- Thailand
- Singapore
- Paradise Island, Bahamas
- Oman
- Jerbal Ali
- Abu Dabai
- Diego Garcia
- Perth, Australia
- Tazmania
- Hong Kong, China
- Greece
- Turkey
- Italy
- France
I think that will cover the countries I’ve seen while I was in the navy. If not and I remember one I’ve missed, well, I’ll just update the list…
The first part of my Navy career was a blast. I got to do what the commercials used to always say, “Join the Navy, See the World”. The second part of my career was even better in my book. I becamse jump qualed and got to be a part of Special Operations with EODMU-11. I was able to do all kinds of cool stuff with those guys!
My entire navy career I wanted to be in special operations. I put in five packages total; two for Navy Seals, Two for EOD and one for SWCC. My rate prevented me from joining the community three of the five packages as our rate was undermanned and the military wouldn’t release me from regular Navy. My last two packages were returned to me with a note stating I was career oriented. In other words, you’re too old!
Anyway, even though I worked my ass off with the mobile unit, it was also the best time of my life. Who can complain about being able to get paid to jump out of airplanes & helicopters? I did a lot of cool things like repelling out of H-60’s, jumping into the water from a helicopter and yes, even landing guys in trees on a couple of not so good jump master spotting. Ahhh, those were the days…
My last tour in the navy had me working at the combat conditioning tank where I was able to have fun drowning pilots and aircrew. We would simulate crash landings in the water and they would have to work their way out of the METS Device. All it is is a tuna can that rotates 360 degrees under water and when it rotates the aircrew have no idea what’s up or down. After two years of that, I was bored to death and so a couple of us worked with search and rescue to set up a training event out in the woods. This was a blast!
I have to talk about this event in particular as it was a riot to play some of the stunts we played on aircrew. First off, A white van would show up on the tarmac in front of an aircraft turning where aircrew were getting ready to go on a flight. The aircraft would be forced to shut down and we would put the aircrew in the van blind folded and driven two hours up into the woods.
Once we got on location, we would drop the guys off in different areas in the woods as if they had ejected from the aircraft. They would then have to find each other and navigate to a safe location. We had all kinds of little traps set up and the terrain was really difficult to get around in. The object of the training was to allow the aircrew to train and use the survival gear they fly with every day.
At night, we would set them up in a camp made to be like a prison camp after capture, we would drop MRE bombs into the tent at night and it would scare the hell out of them. Well, this is where we got into a lot of toruble and SAREX never happened again.
Two of the boys from the training unit decided they were going to really mess with this one group of aircrew. To start, the two in question were drunk as hell and you can imagine where I’m going with this…
Anyway, the two decided they were going to add sea dye marker to the MRE bombs. BIG MISTAKE! When the MRE bomb exploded inside the tent, the sea dye powder went everywhere! The guys in the tent came running out of the tent and they glowed as light flashed on them. It was hilarious at the time and even now I’m still laughing…
One of the aircrew literally shit his pants and evaded us. He ran at least a mile and a half in the dark before stopping and realizing where he was. It was probably the funniest thing I’d ever witnessed. And the icing on the cake with this guy? The next morning when we could see him in the light, he had sea dye all over him! The MRE bomb blew up right over the top of him. He had his hand on his face which stayed there for days because the sea dye stained his skins. This guy had to walk around with sea dye marker all over his face with the exceptions of the area where his hand was. It was so damn funny, well worth the trouble we got in.
I could write a book on the stupid shit I’ve done in the navy! I learned a lot in the military, but there is one thing that will always stick with me. No matter what you are doing or much you make doing it, if you’re not having fun, then why bother! Life is too short to be a miserable wreck all the time. Before you know it, you’ll be 6 feet under wonder what the hell happened to your life…
Family: I could go on and on with some of my So called, “sea stories”. But this page is getting longer by the second. Anyway, why do we do the things we do? Most of us do things we don’t necessarily want to do for our families. No matter how bad things get… Each and every family on the planet has had rough times and ours is no different.
But I won’t be talking about those! I have a lovely wife who I have been with for 25 years as of this writing. She has been with me through thick and thin. No, seriously, thick as in fat and thin as in super shape… Between the two of us, we have three children, Jason, Holly and Taylor. Those three are the reason I’ve prematurely greyed! And I thought I was a trouble maker…
I believe they’ve struggled in life do to my constantly being gone. I will leave that part of the story alone though. If they want to talk about it, they can. Those days are in the books as far as I’m concerned. I love my kids to death no matter how shitty they can be at times… But what kid isn’t? We all grow up and things hopefully get better. In our case, some have and some haven’t.
Jason lives in California and doesn’t speak to me or Vicki anymore. I haven’t seen him in over three years. I miss him, but he is living his own life now. Maybe someday he’ll come back to us. Holly lives just 60 miles away and has four children of her own. Taylor lives in Houston and is struggling with putting his life back together. He has two boys.
We have six grandkids and I’m not even 50 yet. Close, but still have another three years. Grandkids are the real reason we have kids! I love each and every one of them! Ethan, Laila, Emma, Jackson, Landon, and Mason. The age ranges from ten years old to 21 month’s. Ethan is the oldest at ten and I have spent a lot of time with him. My kids should be jealous of the grandkids as I treat them the way I probably should have treated my own kids. Anyway, can’t change the past, so moving on…
Currently we are raising Mason and I have grown so attached to him, it will be hard when I finally have to give him back to Taylor. That is, when Taylor is ready to be able to handle him and take care of him. All my grand kids are awesome. Each one has a personality that just lights up the room when they are present. You put all six in the room together and life gets insane. I love it!
I will look back at this post and will hopefully see that there have been a ton of changes for the better someday… But for now, I enjoy where we are at and the lifestyle we live. Even if we are grand parents taking care of one of our grand kids.
Fitness: My favorite part of life and of course, if you ask Vicki, its an addiction I have. I can think of much worse things to be addicted too for sure! Like gambling or alcohol… There was a time in my life though that I did not have balance and work to over my life. In the navy, it was a requirement, in civilian life, it’s not.
My fitness started a long, long time ago. I used to race BMX bikes (not very well mind you) when I was roughly ten years old. I’ve had a passion for bicycles as long as I can remember. When I was 14 years old, I built up my first road bike and have been riding them ever since with only a couple years not riding. I can still remember watching the Tour De France on ABC Sports for the first time! Every July, I am glued to the television nowadays watching the Tours. All three of them! I also get to watch my new favorite race, The Tour of California!
I just wrote a bunch of stuff only to lose it! I hate when that happens…
Anyway, Where was I? Oh, back to fitness and in the navy. I was very pro-active in the navy when it came to fitness. I loved it and ran the (Fat boy) program in every command I was in. Of course, we didn’t have a fat boy program in EOD. Those guys were in awesome shape.
I hit the weights a lot back then and did the traditional stuff like back/bi’s and chest/tri’s. You know the drill. I was friggin’ bored out of my mind and that is why I was never really concistent. That is until functional fitness came along. I loved it. Being ADHD, it was the perfect combination for me. So that’s what I did for the remainder of my military career. Of course, I did a lot of swim, bike and run stuff too.
I’ve competed in more triathlons than I can remember. I started those in 1990. Triathlons progressed into adventure races and I absolutely love those. I am a damn good navigator and currently thinking about building a team and start racing them again. We shall see!
After I retired from the navy, I got involved in the corporate world working in Oil and Gas. I was making a ton of money! I got lazy and pretty much stopped working out like I used to. I packed on almost 50 pounds in four years. I woke up one morning and had had enough! My balanced lifestyle was completely gone!
I could not believe I gained that much weight in such a short period of time. It was rediculous. I was absolutely disgusted looking at myself in the mirror. That’s when I met the TRX System. I still use TRX to this day. I lost about 5 pounds and that set the stage for the next year of slowly taking off the weight. No matter how little I ate or how much I worked out, I just couldn’t lose weight. That’s when I met up with Crossfit and Paleo. That’s when things really changed for me physically.
I started doing traditional Crossfit first and felt pain in my body all over all the time. I hated even more the way I was feeling. That’s when I started remembering how I used to work out in the navy. So, I incorporated that into my lifestyle once again. I bought a bunch of equipment and filled the entire right side of my garage. My wife calls it the “Chalk Box”. Even though I rarely use chalk. I am gifted (or cursed) in the fact that I am about the driest person you will ever meet. Lizard skin… Between working out in the garage, commuting by bicycle to work and my paleo lifestyle, I’ve dropped 25 pounds total. Lost 7″ around my waist and gained a shit ton of muscle. I think I am somewhere around 16% bodyfat. I still have about 4% to go before I am happy with my body once again. And that where the diet plays a huge role.
Diet: This is the most important part of anyones lifestyle. Without the right diet, you will just spin your wheels like I did for quite some time before finding paleo. I bought a bunch of books on Paleo and read them out loud to my wife whether she wanted me to or not. We would be sitting on the couch and I basically had a captive audience. I’m sure I pissed her off on more than one occasion. But hey, I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t done what I did.
So anyway, We jump straight into Paleo. We completely cleaned out the cubbards and refrigerator. My daughter got a bunch of food. We both lost weight immediately. I think we are both in the best shape of our lives. I know I am. But, I still have a ways to go in my numbers. I really want to get back under 200 pounds. I’d like to be about 189 pounds at 10-12% body fat. In order to do that, I am going to need to enter the Zone diet.
Only my zone diet will be strictly Paleo. The zone diet is based on 40% carbs, 30% Protein and 30% fat. But you can eat dairy and gluten based products. I refuse to go back to gluten based products, they really mess with my digestive system if you know what I mean. The zone diet is based on blocks whre 9 grams of carbs in a block of carbohydrates, 6 grams of protein is a block of protein and 3 grams of fat is a block of fat. The object is to eat a balanced diet of the macro=nutrients. Macro-nutrients are Carbohydrates, Protein, and Fat. I don’t wanna bore with all this diet talk, so if you want more information, I wrote an eBook on my 45 day plan that talks about all this.
With that, I think this is as good a place as any to stop. We are almost at 3,000 words on this page and I’ve probably already bored the crap out of you. So on that note… Welcome to GaryMarsh.Net. Stick aroud, poke around and let me know if there is anything you’d like to see me write about.