“What’s the difference between toilet paper and drapes?” Mr. Hand asked me as we left Genesee Park near the beginning of last Fall’s Seattle Slog — twenty mile night hike through Seattle with thirty pound ruck backpack. “Uhh?” I said. “So it was you!” Six months later I discovered Genes Park — a dump until 1963 when Seattle refurbished it — hosts Mr. Hand’s home Area of Operation, Columbia City aka “The Pit.” Mr. Hand works out at The Pit every Tuesday morning, taking the dumping-grounds-to-mended-park a step further than the name imagining himself crawling out a Sarlacc Pit on Tatooine when tapping me for a Pit shirt design. “Less Pit eats Sad Clown,” when showing Mr. Hand roughs, “more Pax overcomes Pit.”

When hearing Mr. Hand share his decade-long testimony to Hell and back at last Sunday's GTE — GoRuck Team Exercise; I better understood the metaphor given the hard fact he lived it. If Mr. Hand can scrape and claw out of a hellhole of his own machination, surely we can too...one step at a time.”