Adventure

Mark’s march toward a rating of 2000 in chess.

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My intent in creating this article is to make me accountable for progress toward the rating of 2000 on Lichess.com. My username is Pullen1961. I can be messaged on Lichess or at MarkPullen@DCDocumentReports.com. My goal is to enter one or more videos of my chess play into this article daily. I have been using my ALS as an excuse to not work daily toward this rating.My peak rating was at 1570, however, for some period of time, I was feeling lightheaded and dizzy. My rating dropped a hundred points. I will give a brief description of each…

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Mark’s second, and third brush with death.

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I was in Fresno for the fire season. I was scheduled to have duty for six days a week for five months. I was between my two marriages. This was just a day before the 9/11 attack on our country. I remember it as if it was just yesterday. I was driving to the firebase the morning after my last two brushes with death when I stopped for fuel for my truck. As I entered the station market, I glanced at the elevated television. I saw the twin towers in NYC burning. I thought; "That's a movie…

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My first brush with death.

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I have ever since my childhood awoke at 5 .am. I have a built-in alarm clock. I am 100% when my eyes open in the morning. To the woe of my wife, Mary, I still arise at 5 .am even though I am retired. While I worked, I didn't use an alarm clock. I have never been late to work.  I was 16 years of age when I went to Lake Tahoe to attend a summer runner's camp. The last track season, I had beaten the world's greatest athlete's time in the 1,500-meter run. I had beat…

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My Journey with ALS.

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The reason I am chronicling my journey is there are some things my doctors can't explain. As best I can figure, my ALS started in 1993. When I took my girls to see Disney movies tears flowed uncontrollably during certain scenes. My girls had never seen me cry before. Then in 2007, I lost my ability to run. It was as if a switch had been thrown. Just the day before I had run like the wind. A few months later, I noticed in the shower I had lost my ability to blow my nose. When I…

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After the passage of 14 years, I am still grieving her death.

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I first got interested in German Shepherds in the Sheriff's academy. I had volunteered to be the target for Thor, a 110-pound male German Shepherd. The power and speed Thor displayed were both awing and frightening. No man in the world could have won a fight with Thor. Pictured above, is Shultzie and my wife, Mary. I got Shultzie from our county animal pound. I had decided on a male that was there, but when I came back after the quarantine period, he had been put down for fighting with other dogs. Shulttzie was still there. All…

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An occurrence caused by sickness 40 years prior and over 2,000 miles away.

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I was adopted by Leonard and Ilo Pullen in 1965. Leonard and Ilo were foster parents to 48 children through the years. They raised two boys, Slim and Stan, along with their two sons before my adoption. Slim and Stan both moved to Montana where they both died in workplace accidents. Thereafter, Ilo only accepted babies that were waiting for placement. Leonard was a civil servant who took blind people grocery store shopping and fishing on his boat. Fred Zine was totally blind. Fred amazed my father and me by being able to give the grocery clerks…

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Mark’s last adventure.

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It was the summer of 2008. I had been sent to Cal Fire's base in the city of Ukiah. I had the goal of paying off our home's mortgage. As I had done in summers past, I saved the per diam that I received by not renting an apartment. I instead slept in the wilderness. My duty cycle was 15 hours a day and I was only allotted one day off every week. And my wife was insistent that I would come home on my day off each week. It seemed money foolish to rent an apartment…

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