People like Rubin who offer up sandy kisses and people like Mark who offer up cheeks are GORUCK’s magicians. They smile and they laugh and they run around with rucks on and they ask who needs carried next and they pull more rabbits I mean friends out of the hat to come and drink beers and smile with a growing GORUCK Nation.

I just saw their latest magic show called GORUCK Light and I’ll tell you it’s their most fun one to date and I can’t remember smiling so much during anything resembling training like I did at Light.

I gave my class the following scenario: All the world needs is peace and love. And our job is to spread the good word, so I hereby appoint you all the Peace and Love Committee. GORUCK Light is no Bed-In for Peace John Lennon Yoko Ono style, instead you’ll be moving all over the Beaches, building rapport and performing random acts of kindness. And since people the world over love sugar cookies, we’ll bring them everywhere to demonstrate love’s powers.

In case you’re new to GORUCK, we baked them ourselves and the recipe is pictured above. Yes, they’re pretty awesome and come highly recommended.

OK, so Light ≠ Easy but it does equal fun. The so-called welcome party of The Challenge is borderline non-existent. They learned to love one another in the Tunnel of Love and we baked a couple sugar cookies and I thanked the class for helping us test the 60lb sandbags and promised them that their mission was vital to the community they were going to be visiting.

Building rapport starts with police, and with fire. If you’re new in town, any town, or if you’ve been in a town forever, stop in and say thanks. Bring smiles and sugar cookies and they’ll love you for it. This was the first random act of kindness of the Peace and Love Committee.

The Peace and Love Committee needed an ambassador to wave and smile and say things like peace and love to all. And then the stars aligned and I found a golden-ish carriage and though we were short an elephant, the class happily carried its ambassador everywhere we went.

Peace and love to all.

Kiss kiss wave wave peace peace.

And excuse me but would you mind helping me out. I need some more sugar on my cookie thanks a million have a great day peace and love to all.

The Tunnel of Love, come one come all.

So above is Stroud’s best side and he was a vital member of the Tunnel of Love and he’s another one of our magicians and you won’t meet a nicer guy. My intro to all things Stroud, including Stroud x Ranger Panties, was at Selection 000, which he finished and he’s been a staple at the Team House since. And this pic is the most fitting introduction I could give him to anyone who doesn’t know him and even more fitting to those who do.

More Stroud, more peace and love.

Shadow crews seems to make the world go round at GORUCK. So thanks for coming out and thanks for guarding the Carriage of Love while we were in the Tunnel of Love. Your role was vital.

It’s summertime and be safe at the beach and thank your local lifeguards. You can’t buy many of them beers but you sure can present them sugar cookies.

And if it’s someone’s birthday you can all gather round and sing happy birthday and make the birthday boy blush with just a kiss.

Speaking of shadowers and magicians, Kovac was back and he’s still training up for Selection. I offered his services to the Peace and Love Committee to help carry 60 lbs of sugar aka sand for the home stretch and he happily obliged. Imagine that. I saw him twitching to get in on Light, smiles and all. But he’s better off for now to just keep ruckin’ and show up ready for Selection. If there is anything more different from Light, it’s Selection. As Jules Winfield said, it ain’t the same league, it ain’t even the same f*@%$%# sport. Wanna suffer, do Selection. Wanna have fun, do Light.

And the Carriage of Love and the ambassador and the Peace and Love Committe trekked on, building goodwill and inviting all to partake.

And then Stroud needed a turn as ambassador, a natural extension of his role as a GORUCK magician. So I present you his worse side and his waving hand of peace and love. This wouldn’t be so funny if he weren’t such a good bud, of course. Maybe like a lot of you out there, he was skeptical of Light. I’ve done a Challenge and I finished Selection, why would I want to do Light – that kind of deal. And by the end – hell, by an hour in – he was like man Light is where it’s at. It’s all fun, all smiles, and no beat down. We’re lucky to have such friends at GORUCK and when you see Stroud around, give him a kiss from me. You get to pick which side, of course, but you have my vote.

One final mission with a serious time hack. Light can’t be all fun and games, you know. So we had to buy beers to bribe our way back into a Cadre Team House full of Cadre. It’s not the world’s worst mission, after all, and the Peace and Love Committee accepted it happily.

And despite rumors floating around, you have to be clean to party at the Team House, so the team locked arms and rinsed off and got ready for the rest of the party and then I heard some laughs over by the Carriage of Love but I didn’t think much of it at first so I chilled with the bathers.

And then finally I walked over to find the dude who said hey this is my couch, man, I threw it away this morning. And I was like no it’s not a couch it’s a Carriage of Love and do you wanna go drink some beers with us at the Cadre Team House?

Java assumed his rock star status, sandbags were emptied and the smiles continued.

The descent was inevitable and fast forward 12 hours to waking up on the Team House floor and sending me a text from Georgia about how you tried to take the trash out and thanks and sorry because actually you didn’t. Oh wait, that was Rubin. Love ya, man, and come back anytime.

If you are the company you keep, I’ll let the world judge me by the friends I’ve met through GORUCK. But more importantly, we needed more beer and that was maybe the last random act of kindness of the Peace and Love Committee on this day. We had done right by the world and made people smile and love one another and, like I said, all you need is peace and love. And some magicians and some beers and some smiles and and some friends and GORUCK Light has them all and that’s why I love it.