Mekkes Vs. Therkildsen -- In Africa!

Where do I start? These two have been at it, well, for quite a while. In the Ghetto. At IV meetings -- heck, these guys were on the exec team that used to decide everything with wrestling matches. Inevitably, they had to have at least one good wrestling match while we were in Kenya. How anyone (and by anyone I mainly mean Eric) didn't die I don't know -- Mekkes at one time during this match, well, it's complicated to explain, but imagine that Eric and Joel are roughly in the same positions as they are in picture five. Then Joel kinda heaved Eric up in the air while at the same time he sat back (obviously, his legs were in front of his body then, unlike in picture five), which caused Eric to hit the ground headfirst with a horrible expression on his face; and then he just crumpled and relaxed for about half a second. I thought "That's it -- he's crippled for life, if not dead," but lo and behold he wasn't. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. Although, if my wrists and hands weren't so screwed up, I'd probably wrestle a lot more than I do now (current number of times I've wrestled in the past ten years: 0. Well, maybe once or twice with my brother Tom.)

These pictures were all taken with Bill's digital camera (thanks, Bill!), but I don't know if Bill actually took these or not. I'm not going to overly comment on them -- I'll mainly let the pictures speak for themselves.

• Picture 1 (17k): And they're off!
• Picture 2 (51k): In this picture it's clear that there aren't any really bad dirt/grass stains on their clothes yet.
• Picture 3 (38k): A break in the action. Mekkes has removed his long sleeved sweater shirt thing, and now they're waiting for each other to make a move. No, I don't know what happened to Eric's eyes in this picture either.
• Picture 4 (37k): Mekkes plows Eric into a spiky looking plant thing. I don't think it was actually that spiky in real life. Well, I hope it wasn't.
• Picture 5 (40k): Mekkes looks like he's enjoying himself.
• Picture 6 (40k): Mekkes really looks like he's enjoying himself.
• Picture 7 (36k): Then they stop to pose for the camera.
• Picture 8 (32k): Here Eric is thinking "What would Jesus do?"
• Picture 9 (42k): Joel prepares to steamroll Eric into the ground again.
• Picture 10 (42k): I think the flash failed to go off for this picture, for whatever reason, and it was just black. Featureless, black. If you cranked up the brightness on your monitor, you could barely make out the outline of a sock. However, I was able to get enough information out of it to make this. I'm including it because I can. If you ever wonder how the FBI retouches photographs, this is how (well, I probably don't do it exactly like the FBI does it, but it's the same basic idea.) It's black and white because the process I used to get more contrast out of it gives color images a lot of false color. Turning it into a black and white image preserves value while getting rid of the distracting neon greens and reds. It's obviously another angle of the scene in pictures 9 and 11 though.
• Picture 11 (36k): Again, this is pretty much the same thing, different angle. It's possible that this picture was taken as soon as the camera man (or woman) possibly could take another, after they realized picture 10 didn't turn out. In the original, uncut version of this picture, you could see a little bit of Josh Bilhorn's pants leg as he was moving in to try to stop them. (But you could tell he didn't want to stop them, he was just being responsible. In fact, I think he said "Hey, if we weren't in Kenya, I'd join right in with you guys.") (Side note: It would be fun to analyze the dirt stains and see what kinds of patterns emerge, and see if those patterns correspond to actual wear patterns of average clothes. Or, maybe I'm weird.)
• Picture 12 (39k): Winding down. I think at this point they're done and untangling themselves. That's Josh Bilhorn standing up. Cori White is in the background, thinking "Insane. They're absolutely insane!!!" or "How cute! I wonder if they do any other tricks!" or "I pity those poor fools."

Okay, so I guess Mekkes vs. Therkildsen is not exactly Monkey Vs. Robot, but it's still entertaining. . . . especially if you know those two. The next day Eric didn't even attempt to go out to work on the check dam, he was so sore. Mekkes went, but he was basically useless all day, so he took the next day off.

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