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Strange Vegetation: Don & the girls are taken by surprise. By BradentonLarry - Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. Chapter 4 Don slowly woke up from his very deep sleep. He felt a warm, soft feminine body pressed against his own. He didn't have to compare these sensations with those from the first time he'd awoken in the Manor to know that Toshia was in his arms. Somehow he just knew it was her. He smiled to himself, and only then started to remember the night before, with the rite, Toshia's sexual offering to the guardian of the portal, and his own deliriously erotic and ultimately painful encounter with the crone. While he reviewed these events, Don became aware, without looking around or even opening his eyes, that he was on the pillows in the witches' tent, and that quite a few other bodies were slumbering around him. Toshia shifted her weight a little in his arms, and he kissed the top of her head. She squeezed his arm, and pushed back against him a bit. Smiling, he hugged her, and kissed her tousled hair again. They lay spooned together like this for several moments, before she wriggled around in his arms to face him. They shared a sleepy smile, and then she buried her face in his chest. Don gently ran his hand over her hair, knowing that he was now wide awake, but not wanting to disturb her if she needed more sleep. After several minutes, though, Toshia looked up at him and asked, "What did you find out last night?" "Not an awful lot," Don answered quietly. "She said we're looking for 'the Sage of the Tower.' We're supposed to go down into the valley and follow the river there to its source, where we'll find the Tower." "Hmm," Toshia murmured thoughtfully with a frown and her eyes still closed. "Are you alright?" Don asked. "Hm?" She looked at him and saw the concern in his eyes, and said, "Yes, I'm alright. I feel like I got fucked enough for a year, but I'm definitely alright. I didn't know I could have that many orgasms." "Did the guardian come?" Toshia paused for a moment, then said, "That was amazing! Very strange, but amazing. It felt like he was coming all through my body. It kind of hurt, but maybe that's just because it was so intense. I think that's when I finally passed out. Then I woke up here with you. Why did you ask about that?" "Something the crone said," Don shrugged. "And how was that?" Don told her all about the encounter with the strange woman. "So, a weird night all around, eh?" she smiled. "Well, I don't know if you noticed, but everyone was else was busy having an orgy while we were distracted." "I thought something like that was going on, but yeah, I was distracted." "I have to admit, it was extremely erotic watching you on that altar." "Oh really?" she smirked mischievously at him. "Maybe next time a dark demon needs sexing up I'll watch you." Don chuckled and said, "Fair enough." "You know, now that I'm thinking about it, it seems pretty rude that they had an orgy without us." "I thought you said you got fucked enough to last a year," Don said wryly. "Well, I was probably exaggerating a little, but it's the principle of the thing, you know? How about you? It sounds like the crone pretty much drained you." "Yeah," he admitted, "but here -- well, obviously, I'm not exactly out of commission." "Yes, I had noticed that," Toshia smiled, giving his erection a squeeze and a pull. For the past several minutes she had been idly toying with him while they talked. Don leaned in and kissed her. Soon, they were slowly making love amongst the sleeping witches and the three girls from the Manor. Though they were quiet, and not at all energetic, several drowsy people noticed what they were up to, and before long wakeful friskiness was spreading through the big tent and a lazy orgy had broken out. Only hours later, after the sex had finally run its course, again, did the company get around to washing up and eating. Then, after Cassandra had given them each a large flask of water and a pouch of fruit, both of which could be slung over their shoulders, the five travelers from the Manor finally left the clearing at the top of the hill. Following the path into the valley that Cassandra pointed out, they began to work their way downhill. Eventually, they came to the foot of the hill, and Amy was the one who said, "Well, there's no river here." "Well, maybe this is one big valley," Don offered. "I don't understand," Shelonda admitted. "Maybe all these hills all gradually descend to a river, and then on the other side they climb back up." "So, this could take a while, eh?" Amy frowned. "All the more reason to keep going," Toshia smiled and led the way up the next hill. As they went, they tried to keep moving in the same general direction. Don insisted that he usually had a very good sense of direction, but pointed out that when all else failed they just needed to keep going for the lowest point, and that ought to work. It had been about noon when they had left the witches, and, perhaps sated by all the fun of the morning and the night before, it was late in the afternoon before anyone mentioned sex. And then the subject came up in a fairly indirect manner, considering how comfortable they were all with each other. They had come into a stand of trees on a gentle slope. The trees were wide spaced, so that there was a nice clearing underneath the green canopy of leaves. The trees were hung with thick green vines of some sort that ran down and through the thick mat of soft leaves that covered the forest floor. The woods seemed particularly hushed and still here, Don thought. Then Nicole giggled, "That looks like a dildo." "What?" Amy asked with interest, and then, after Nicole pointed, she said, "Hey, you're right. And there's another one." Shelonda had stopped and was looking with the other girls at a kind of outgrowth on the sides of one of the vines. Taking a closer look, Don had to admit that they were right; the vines did seem to have what looked like natural dildos of different sizes and slightly different shapes growing out of them at intervals. "That's pretty weird," Toshia admitted. She had been in the lead, but had come back to see what all the fuss was about. "Still, I'd prefer the real thing," Amy grinned. Pulling her tank top up over her head, exposing her full breasts, she sauntered over to Don and said, "What do you say, Professor? Can you help a girl out?" Don chuckled but looked to Toshia. He knew they were trying to make time toward the river, and didn't want to slow things down if the others weren't ready for a break. However, Toshia was merely watching with a smile, as Amy dropped to her knees in front of Don and reached up under his kilt for his organ, which was already thick in anticipation. "Sex break!" Nicole shouted, laughing, as she tore off her own top and then grabbed for Shelonda. Don watched as the two dark-skinned girls fell into the leaves while they stripped each other's clothes off. In front of him, Amy had pushed his kilt up and was already working her warm, wet mouth up and down on his shaft, which was responding by quickly hardening for her. Don dropped his staff, water flask and pouch on the ground and pulled his t-shirt off, and then undid his kilt, letting both items fall on the leaves. Now naked, he concentrated on the wonderful sensations of Amy's tongue and lips on his cock. He held her head in his hands as he fucked slowly in and out of her mouth. Looking up momentarily, Don saw that Nicole and Shelonda had already gotten themselves into a 69, and that Toshia was standing over them watching, with her left hand up under her skirt and her right clutching at right breast. He looked back down, then, to watch Amy's pretty face as she sucked enthusiastically on him. She looked up at him with unmistakable pleasure glittering in her eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, Don noticed that Toshia was undressing and had knelt down next to the other two girls, though she was now watching Don and Amy. Remembering some of the other things Toshia had enjoyed watching, he bent down and said to Amy, "Get on your hands and knees for me." "Fun!" Amy said with a grin as she let go of his cock and turned around in the leaves. She bent over and presented her behind. Kneeling, Don grinned over at Toshia, and pushed Amy's skirt out of the way. Without any preliminaries, he took the fat head of his cock, wet with Amy's saliva, and pushed it into her very hot and willing pussy. Taking Amy's waist in his hands, he immediately set to fucking in and out of her vigorously. Amy grunted happily and shoved back against his thrusts. Toshia watched for a few moments with a smile on her face and her hand busy between her legs, but then finally bent down to run her hand over Nicole's back. Soon, she was laying with the other two girls in a happy confusion of legs and arms, pussies and tits, laughing, wet mouths and playful fingers. With a happy grin on his face, Don concentrated on giving Amy a proper fucking. He admired the view of her upturned backside and his thick cock-shaft sliding in and out of her, as well as her strong back and her strawberry blonde hair all messed up. He felt her fingers reaching back to play with herself as he fucked her, and it wasn't long before she was gasping out in a long, loud orgasm. Don thought he must still be depleted after his night with the crone, and from the single orgasm he'd had earlier with Toshia, because he could tell he was nowhere near ready to come. He leaned over Amy's back, kissed her shoulder, and said, "Why don't we go over and join the others?" "Good idea, Professor," she breathed. The other three welcomed them cheerfully, and it wasn't long before Don was looking down into Nicole's face as he slowly but firmly screwed her, while Toshia was in the middle of a little daisy chain -- hungrily going down on Amy, while Shelonda pleasured Toshia with her own lips and tongue. Aside from the rustling of leaves that they were all causing, they were all making enthusiastic sounds of pleasure and carnal joy. As a result, nobody noticed the additional rustling as a number of things moved slowly through the leaves toward and around them. Don was holding Nicole's wrists up over her head (which he had learned really turned her on) and felt some of the vines under the leaves brushing against his knuckles. He was also dimly aware that something had gotten wrapped around his ankles, but he paid it no mind. Don was too intent on fucking Nicole's sweet, tight pussy to worry about getting tangled in the undergrowth. Only when he felt something gripping his ankles tightly and pulling did he look around and say, "What the fuck?" As if on signal, he was hauled back, out of Nicole's delicious embrace, and up into the air, where he dangled, swinging back and forth. At the same time, there were shrieks from the girls. Don twisted around and craned his neck. It seemed that they had all been ensnared by vines and hauled up into the air. Off to his right, Don could see Shelonda who was also hanging upside down. By struggling, he could see that Amy was hanging from her wrists, as was Nicole. Toshia had somehow been caught by both wrists and one ankle. "Is everyone OK?" Don asked. A chorus of alarmed voices assured him that they were. He couldn't see what the others were doing, but he and Shelonda both tried to bend themselves up to get at the vines wrapped around their ankles. This was easier for the younger, lighter and more flexible Shelonda; Don made an abortive effort at loosening the vines before falling back down. He watched as Shelonda struggled to no avail. As she worked, new vines came down from the branches overhead and wrapped around her wrists. In another moment, she was hoisted upward, so that her head was again above her feet, though she was now spread-eagled, face down, high over the ground. At a loss for any other options, Don bent his knees in turn, so that he began to swing a bit from side to side. Once he started moving, he bent to the side to add momentum. The branches overhead creaked as Don and the vines that bound him moved through the leaves. He was dimly aware that other vines were descending toward himself and his friends, but he concentrated on increasing his arc of motion. Unfortunately, a thick strong vine caught him around the waist and brought him to an abrupt halt. Then, he was pulled upward, so that he was in a more or less upright position. The blood ran out of his head and he felt suddenly dizzy, but as soon as he could Don began to struggle against the vines that held him. He couldn't budge the vine that was wrapped around his midsection, though. Looking around at his companions, Don saw that more vines were moving along their naked limbs. He noted that the vegetative dildos they had noticed earlier seemed to be leading the way. In alarmed fascination, he watched as a thick green phallus pushed itself between Toshia's legs and into her vagina. Though she struggled against the invasion, the bizarre penis was soon up inside her, and then it began to move in and out of her slowly. At the same time, it was apparently expanding and contracting, pulsing visibly as it fucked her. Don saw that similar dildo-tipped vines were now violating Amy and Nicole. Looking to his side, Don could see that Shelonda not only had a vine penetrating her pussy, but that a thinner stalk seemed to have worked its way into her butt. It wasn't long before all the women had stopped struggling against their bounds but were moaning and whimpering in pleasure at what the vines were doing to them. Only Don was so far unmolested by the strange plants, but he couldn't do anything against the strong fibrous tendril wrapped around him. He watched and listened in a weird mixture of horror and excitement as the women began to come under the ministrations of the vines. Helpless to do anything else, Don saw Toshia twisting and trembling as the vine inside her pulsed and moved inside her until she was crying out in orgasmic delirium. Nicole came hard too, followed by Amy. When Shelonda finally climaxed she let out a scream that echoed in the forest, and Don could see that tears ran down her cheeks. The vines did not stop, though, but continued to fuck the women steadily. Before long, Don was witness to another round of loud orgasms. After that, the next set came quicker, and Shelonda wasn't the only one crying. After what seemed to be six or more orgasms, without the vines giving any sign of stopping, all the women were raggedly gasping for mercy. Don pounded on the thick vine that held him in impotent fury. Then, Toshia cried out incoherently. Don could see that the dildo-protuberance inside her was now at its thickest - about four times as thick as it had been when it had entered her. There seemed to be some sort of spasm in the plant's fibers, and then Toshia shouted out. Don watched as a thick, syrupy substance leaked out of Toshia and down her legs. There seemed to be a great deal of the viscous substance, and it kept spilling out of Toshia until it was spilling down onto the leaves below. The other women were now experiencing the same thing, as one by one the viney pricks came up inside them copiously. Gallons of the sappy jizz were shot into his companions and spilled on the forest floor. Don watched as the odd green cocks slowly withdrew from his companions. Each of the women hung from their restraining vines limply, wrung out from their exertions. Slowly, almost gently, the entire party was lowered to the ground, which was now sticky with vine-cum. As soon as he was released, Don sprang over to Toshia. "Are you OK?" he asked. "No," she breathed. "I'm definitely not OK. Let's get the hell out of here!" All of the women had trouble walking, but only Nicole needed to be carried. With the tiny young woman in his arms, Don led the others downhill away from the clearing under the trees. They didn't stop until they found a stream, where the women proceeded to wash each other diligently. Even the usually adventurous and cheerful Amy said that she had not had a good time. Sitting on a rock by the side of the stream, Toshia said, "Being forced to come like that, so many times..." "Not fun," Amy scowled. "And that felt like a fire hose inside me," Nicole said, "when it came." Don was acutely aware of the fact that he had neither suffered nor helped, so he kept his mouth shut. He wanted to talk about how weird it was that such a plant would even exist, but could tell that no one else was in any mood to discuss botany at the moment. "We'll have to be careful where we take our breaks from now on," Shelonda observed. "You can say that again," Toshia agreed, glaring at the trees around them. Chapter 5 Midnight Interlude Toshia sagged against the X-shaped cross, sleeping fitfully and uncomfortably. She was apparently forgotten by her captors, who had obviously feasted and fucked themselves to unconsciousness. Worn out by her struggles, and having given up on the possibility of freeing herself, Toshia had resigned herself to trying to get as much rest as she could in her current situation. Still, all she was able to get were little cat-naps, frustratingly brief. She would be in the middle of a pleasant dream – and any dream that didn't have her tied up in this old ruin of a castle was a pleasant dream – when she would wake up, painfully reminded of the discomfort in her limbs and particularly her shoulders. In one of these waking moments, she thought there was someone there with her in the dark. A motion or a soft footfall betrayed someone nearby. "Hello?" Toshia tried. Her voice came out as a dry croak. She tried to clear her throat, but that only made her cough. Quiet little slaps, the sound of bare feet on the stone floor, hurried away in the dark. Cursing silently to herself, Toshia scowled at the shadows around her. She was sure she could hear someone, somewhere in the castle, moaning in sexual pleasure. Toshia was acutely aware of how terribly horny she was, in spite of her predicament. Since coming to Eros, but before being captured by the warrior women, Toshia hadn't gone more than a few hours without sex. The XYZ made sure she and everyone else was perpetually in the mood. Now, though, denied release, Toshia's libido was on a slow boil. She wondered if... The bare feet, or another pair, were coming back! Toshia could make out a small figure moving from shadow to shadow approaching her. In the pale moonlight that came through the few windows in the hall, she could see that a naked petite, brunette girl was carrying a bucket over to the cross. "Shhh," the girl hissed when she stopped in front of Toshia. She put the bucket down, and then raised a ladle up, tipping delicious cool water into Toshia's mouth. Toshia drank it down eagerly, and then all of the second ladle-full. She whispered, "Thank you!" "I brought some food, too," the girl said. Bending over to undo a small bundle she had brought and laid on the ground, she then brought an apple up and held it so Toshia could take a bite of it. While Toshia chewed, she said, "They say you were with the goats." "Goats? You mean the satyrs?" "I guess so," the girl said, giving Toshia another bite of apple. "The ones with horns, goat legs and big dicks." Toshia chuckled a little, swallowed and said, "Yeah, those are the ones." "They say all they think about is fucking women," the girl said as she continued to feed Toshia. "Yeah," Toshia said around the mouthful of apple, "that's about it." "Can you tell me about them?" "I don't suppose you could untie me first?" Toshia suggested. "Oh, no, I couldn't!" the girl gasped. "The sisters would beat me terribly!" "The 'sisters'?" "You know the women who tied you up," the girl explained. "They call themselves the Sisterhood." Calling the warrior women who ran this castle sisters made them sound like Catholic nuns, and that thought made Toshia chuckle. "I'm only supposed to clean you up, but I brought food and water," she reminded Toshia. "Fine," Toshia nodded. "Keep feeding me that apple and I'll tell you what you want to know." Over the course of that hand-fed supper of what became two apples, Toshia told the girl about her first encounter with the satyrs, and how they chased her, caught her and had their way with her. As the girl pressed her for details, Toshia obliged, and admitted that she had made the most of what was at best a bad situation and at worst rape. Toshia had to admit to herself that, as rough as her treatment by the satyrs was, it was much better than the incident with the trees had been, and that she had found herself having fun, up to a point. The girl, though, wasn't interested in hearing about Toshia's emotional reactions or any ethical considerations. Instead she wanted details about how the satyrs had fucked her, particularly about the times when Toshia had serviced more than one of them at a time. "The first night, there was a lot of that," Toshia admitted. On being pressed, she said, "Yes, in my pussy, my ass and my mouth." Then, "Well, I didn't do much of it before, but I was getting used to it." And, "Usually on my hands and knees, or sitting on one of them." "It sounds like alot of fun!" the girl enthused. She had finished feeding Toshia, had given her another ladleful of water, and was now getting the cloth she had carried the apples in wet in the bucket. "Oh, it wasn't that bad, I guess," Toshia said, as the girl stood on tip-toes to wipe down her bound right arm. The rough, wet cloth felt very good on Toshia's skin. After pausing a moment, Toshia went on, saying, "They never wanted to hurt me really, just fuck me, whether or not I wanted to. I made it better on myself by wanting to, at least once they caught me and for the first few hours." The girl rinsed the cloth and began to wash Toshia's left arm. "I would love to be fucked for hours!" "Well, after that it started to get old," Toshia admitted. She was enjoying the caress of the cloth, and was more than a little turned on by the horny little brunette. "They let me sleep finally. They were kind of sweet about it, for them anyway. The next morning, though, after breakfast, it was more fucking. They just kept at it all day long, with only short breaks." "All at the same time?" the girl asked as she moved the cloth over Toshia's forehead and cheeks. She stood very close as she wiped down Toshia's neck. "Um, not so much," Toshia said. "By then it was mostly one after the other. It was exhausting, and started to get monotonous." "Monotonous?" The girl was lingering over Toshia's breasts. "Uh, boring," Toshia shuddered as the rough cloth moved over her erect and straining nipples. "We don't get to fuck cocks," the girl said as she moved her washcloth down over Toshia's abdomen. She was breathing on Toshia's skin. "The men are just for the sisters. We serving girls have each other and the sisters when they want us. I can't imagine being bored with fucking." As the girl rinsed and rung out the cloth, Toshia said, "Well, let me put it this way, the satyrs weren't exactly good lovers. They were good fucks, sure – amazing stamina and energy! But they weren't ever trying to make sure I was having a good time. Sex is so much better when you're with someone who is interested in your pleasure as much as his or her own." The girl was on her knees now, moving the washcloth over Toshia's legs. She said, "I guess I understand that." "Besides, cocks can be a lot of fun, but after a while, I like to have a woman's touch, if you know what I mean." "Like this?" the girl asked as she ran her fingertips up along the inside of Toshia's thigh and then very lightly over her pussy lips. Toshia shivered, and said, "God yes!" "Shhh!" the girl hissed. "I'm only supposed to clean you up. If we wake someone up, we'll both be in trouble." Then she leaned in and kissed Toshia's exposed pussy. "Tell me what happened then." "Oh, uh, well, they kept me busy, fucking me that day. I was in no shape to try to escape, and I never got a chance anyway. Yes, that feels so good! Don't stop!" The girl stopped licking Toshia's pussy and clit, looked up at her with a face shiny with Toshia's nectar, and said, with a playful grin, "Keep telling me the story then." "Yes, OK." Knowing what the girl wanted to hear, Toshia said, "We all fell asleep for a while, and then, I woke up when I felt one of them fingering me... Yes, like that, only not so nicely." Toshia wished she could hold the girl's head in place, keep her mouth on her, but all she could do to that end was to keep telling her story. "Even though we'd been fucking all day, my pussy was wet, and I wanted to fuck some more. I got up on my knees and he pushed his cock in me and started to fuck me. We weren't trying to be quiet so we were grunting there, and that woke up the other two. They started to play with my tits, which felt very good. Then the one who was fucking me, pulled me up and back, so I was lying back against his chest. God, that feels so good, don't stop! Uh, then one of the others got in front of me... He took his cock and pushed it into my pussy... right in my pussy with the other cock... It felt amazing! They fucked me like that – me between the two hairy goat-men, two cocks inside my pussy... I came so hard... Oh, god! Oh god! Yes, yes!" Toshia clenched her teeth to keep from shouting out. She pulled against her restraints and the cross creaked as she tensed every muscle in her body. Then the orgasm exploded through her body. She twisted and writhed against the wooden frame, as the little girl's tongue and lips pulled her on and on into a flood of fiery release. The girl kept at it, and Toshia came again and again, until she collapsed against the cross, spent. After a few moments, Toshia felt the washcloth wiping up the insides of her thighs, cleaning up her own juices. When she was done, the girl stood up in front of Toshia and asked, "What happened then?" Toshia sighed, "The rest of the night was more of the same, fucking and more fucking. We finally all fell asleep. When I woke up, they were gone. I have no idea what happened, but they were gone. The next thing I knew, before I could even get up off the ground, I was surrounded by the sisters and men who brought me here." "Why don't you do what they ask?" the girl asked. "Well, partly because they didn't ask," Toshia smiled. "You said the satyrs didn't ask." "Yes, but they weren't mean." "I think I understand," the girl nodded. "I'm Toshia, by the way." "I'm Nina." "Thank you, Nina. For everything." "You're welcome," Nina smiled. "I hope they untie you soon." "Me too!" Nina then took her bucket, washcloth, ladle and two apple cores, and disappeared into the shadows. Toshia tried to get some more sleep. Atop the Cliffs Chapter 6 The whole group was quiet and not at all cheerful when they resumed their hike toward what they hoped was the river at the bottom of the valley. The women were all pained from their experience with the sex-vines, and very far from thinking the forest through which they were moving was a nice place for a stroll and the occasional frolic. Don had not been violated in the same manner, but he was acutely aware of their physical and emotional discomfort. Moreover, though he had truly been unable to help in any way, his impotence during the attack (he could think of no better word for it) left him in a dark mood.  When he had convinced Toshia that he was up to leaving the Manor in search of a way home, he had only considered the danger to himself, and then, when the subject came up, to Shelonda and Amy, who were only coming along out of friendly helpfulness and a lust for kicks, respectively. He had not taken seriously the extent to which this course of action might put Toshia herself in danger. Of course, Toshia was her own person, and she was determined to find a way home. Nothing Don could do or say would deter her from that course of action. Neither would he try to do so. He had no right to forbid her anything of the sort. That wasn't what was bothering him. What worried him was the very thought that something bad might happen to her here, and that he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Sure, everyday life was full of random risks and dangers, but somehow you forgot about the possibility that someone you loved might get hit by a drunk driver while walking home from the store. Here, in this strange little adventure, it was now impossible for Don to put the dangers out of his mind. He didn't know if he could handle it if something actually terrible happened to Toshia. He had loved her for years, and even more so now. These thoughts and the mood of the women, kept Don in a subdued, remarkably un-horny mood. When they bedded down for the night – after making sure the area was free of dildo-shaped vegetation of any kind – they set a watch, and nobody started any mischief. It was the first night since arriving in the Manor that Don went to sleep without having sex just beforehand. It helped a bit that he took the first watch, and didn't have to try to fall asleep with still wakeful beautiful women lying next to him. Only after noon on the next day did a spirit of friskiness return. Naturally enough, it was Amy who got things going, spanking Shelonda hard on the ass and then fleeing just long enough to make the other girl exert herself. By the time the others caught up to them, they were making out on the grassy hillside. Nicole joined in the fun, while Don and Toshia looked on, both amused and aroused. That night, things were back to normal, if a bit less boisterous than usual. Don fell asleep with Toshia's head on his chest, while Shelonda took the first watch. The next day, they found themselves descending a steady, rocky slope to a sudden drop. They came to a halt at the top of a cliff face at least 20 meters high, at the bottom of which was a fast flowing, broad river. "Think that's the river we're looking for?" Nicole asked. "Hard to say," Don shrugged. "Well, we can't climb down that," Toshia said. Amy suggested, "We could jump." "That's crazy," Toshia responded a bit sharply. "We'd just hit the water," Amy pointed out. "Yeah, but you could hurt yourself hitting the water, and we don't have any idea how deep the river is," Toshia explained with a genuine smile, apparently regretting her crankiness of a moment ago. "You could break every bone in your pretty body." "Why would we want to get down there anyway?" Shelonda asked. "Exactly," Don nodded. "We need to either go that way, up-river, to find the source, or the other way, to see if this river joins up with another, bigger river. Either way, we don't need to risk breaking our necks climbing or jumping." "Well, which way should we go, then?" Nicole asked. "I think we should go downriver a ways and see if we come to another river, or someone who can give us some more information," Don said. Nobody had any objection to this plan. Neither did they object when he said, "But first let's take a break." In another few minutes they were all naked and Amy was sitting on a big moss covered rock, while Toshia knelt between her legs, licking and sucking at Amy's clit and pussy. Shelonda and Nicole clambered up on the rock on either side of Amy and were taking turns kissing her, each other or Amy's tits. Don stood back for a moment, hard cock in hand, admiring the scene. In front of him, was Toshia's upturned butt and ready pussy, ready for him if he wanted either or both of them. Above that were Toshia's thin, muscular back, Amy's strong legs and abs, and then a confusion of wonderful breasts and sexy, beautiful faces. Don could join in anywhere and be happily welcome. All around them were rocky outcroppings, trees and green underbrush – a beautiful natural garden of sorts – almost Eden-like. Off to the side, only a dozen meters away was the cliff edge. In the other direction, back the way they had come, the hillside was broken at intervals into sloping shelves. On an outcropping upstream and away from the river, so doubly uphill, but with a clear view of the spot where the women were already having so much fun, were two figures wearing black robes with hoods covering their heads. Don saw them first out of the corner of his eye, and then confirmed their presence without looking at them directly. Thinking quickly, Don reached down to caress Toshia's ass. He ran his hand down between her cheeks and trailed his fingers over her dewy outer lips. He bent down over her back as he pushed two fingers gently up inside Toshia's very wet pussy. He whispered to her, "Don't stop what you're doing. There are a couple of Watchers watching us. I'm going to take Shelonda and try to sneak up on them. Keep up the show." "Uh-hum!" Toshia managed and nodded a little. Don stood up and moved around to Shelonda, who was on the side of the rock furthest from the Watchers. Trying not to be conspicuous, he leaned over and kissed one of the girl's beautiful breasts, catching her nipple in his mouth. While he suckled at her luscious tit, Don parted her legs and pulled her a bit toward him. Happy to cooperate, Shelonda scooted forward a bit, allowing Don access to her pussy. Though he could easily fuck her this way, he wanted to move her further from the group, so that's what he did, coaxing her away from Amy and Nicole. Soon, Don and Shelonda were fucking against the side of the rock, away from the Watchers. Shelonda had her arms around Don's neck and her beautiful, full breasts against his chest as he screwed her vigorously. While he did this, he also whispered to her what he had in mind. When the two of them dropped to the ground next to the rock, they thought it must seem to the Watchers that they were merely continuing their fucking, but unfortunately out of sight. Don was pleasantly surprised that Shelonda immediately dropped out of horny sex kitten mode and stealthily followed his lead. Don had left his staff, along with his other things, on the wrong side of the rock, near where Toshia was still going down on Amy, but Shelonda was able to pick hers up off the ground near where they had dropped out of sight. Don lead the way, first toward the river, and then up hill, staying screened behind shrubbery as they moved quickly and quietly, hunched over. When Don was sure they were well out of the view of Watchers, Don risked a dash across an open area and a quick clamber up a steep rise to put them behind and above the position where he had seen the Watchers. He slowed down and crept forward, hoping to catch the black-robed voyeurs unawares. They could hear the sound of Amy coming loudly, as well as some sound from Nicole. Don suspected Toshia had found a way to encourage them to ham it up a bit. Unfortunately, though, when he peered around the trunk of tree to the place where the Watchers had been, they were nowhere to be seen. "Damn!" Don hissed. He looked around carefully through the trees and undergrowth, but couldn't see any sign of the black robes. "Do you think they heard or saw us?" Shelonda asked as they stood up and walked out to the little clearing where the Watchers had been standing. "They must have," Don shrugged frowning. "I thought we did a good job, though." "I smell shampoo," Shelonda said. "Huh, yeah, so do I," Don nodded, "and that looks like a shoe print there in the dirt." Just then, though, a loud shout made Don and Shelonda look toward the rock where they'd left their friends. Apparently, while Don and Shelonda had been sneaking up on the Watchers, a bunch of men had been sneaking up on Toshia, Nicole and Amy. One of the men had come up behind Toshia, caught her from around the waist and pulled her up and away from between Amy's legs. Toshia, who was the one who had given the initial shout, was kicking and struggling in the grasp of the man who held her, while a second man tried to close in on her from the front. Yet another man had already managed to get between Amy's legs and was shoving them roughly apart. Another man was rudely pulling Nicole from off the rock, where she had been kneeling over Amy's face. Two other men were on the rock, either helping with Nicole, or trying to hold Amy down – it wasn't clear from where Don and Shelonda were. All of these observations were made in the second it took for Don to spring into action, jumping down from the rocky shelf, and running down toward the women and the men. Shelonda followed close on his heels. While he pelted down the slope, Don noticed that all of the men had long, unkempt hair and seemed to be quite dirty in general. They seem to have brought crude clubs with them, but most of them had dropped them to the ground when they had jumped on the women. The one trying to get close to Toshia seemed to be wielding some kind of a knife, which made him a priority. Unless there were more men in hiding, there were only six of them. This meant that, while they outnumbered the women they had seen by the rock two-to-one, they had brought too few guys to actually pull off this gang rape or abduction. Shelonda, who was on that side of Don anyway, made for the guys on and next to the rock, leaving Don with Amy's would be rapist and the two after Toshia. Intent on enjoying the fruit of their surprise attack, the men didn't notice as Shelonda and Don closed in on them. The guy between Amy's legs glanced to the side just in time to see the flat of Don's hand coming in fast and hard. Don had never hit someone with full, multiple-board-breaking force before, but he wasn't surprised to see the man's head snapping around with savage force. As the man slumped to the side, Don realized that he might have killed him, but was frankly past caring. In the moment that he took to scoop up the staff he had left on the grass earlier, Don saw that Shelonda was effectively delivering a beating to the men who had been closest to her on the rock. Nicole was now able to more effectively fight back against the one guy who continued to wrestle with her. Now that Amy was free, she would be able to join in the fight. With one-to-one odds and Shelonda and her staff involved in the fight by and on the rock, Don was confident he could focus his attention on Toshia and her two attackers. In her struggle to free herself and to keep the second man from getting close to her, Toshia had forced the group of three back until they were perilously close to the cliff top. She had her right hand up over her shoulder with a tight grip on a handful of hair of the man behind her. With her left arm she was alternately elbowing that man in the ribs, and fending off his right arm – the one that wasn't locked around her waist. Any time the guy in front of her with the knife got too close, she would kick out violently with her bare feet. Don knew she was in grave danger of getting badly cut, if she didn't back herself off the cliff first. Don was directly behind the guy with the knife and prepared to bring him down with a single, decisive staff blow. Unfortunately, the man behind Toshia saw Don and yelled, "Behind you, Burt!" Burt twisted around and managed to avoid the slicing blow that would have split his head open. The staff in Don's hands spun around and came down again at whip-crack speed, and again Burt was able to just barely get out of the way. This time, though, Don brought the end of the staff sharply to the side, hitting Burt hard in the cheek and mouth. Don was satisfied to note blood running down Burt's cheek and chin. Pressing the advantage, Don snapped the other end of the staff around to smack into Burt's gut, which caused Burt to exhale sharply and nearly double over. Don was close enough to get hold of Burt's knife arm, and was about to finish the guy off, when, at that very moment, he saw that Toshia had managed to twist herself free of her attacker's clasp. Unfortunately, doing so cost her balance at the lip of the cliff. Her arms flailed a bit, she managed to call, "Don!" and then she fell. Don would have followed her over without any hesitation, if Burt hadn't chosen that instant to bring his knee up into Don's groin. As Don gritted his teeth against the explosion of pain, he saw Burt's knife arcing down toward his chest. Everything seemed to be moving in a kind of slow motion; adrenaline and years of martial arts training served to ramp up Don's perception and reaction time. Ignoring the pain in his crotch, Don let go of his staff, caught hold of Burt's wrist and, calmly stepping out of the way, he let Burt's arm continue down and then pulled it around, slipping his own arm under Burt's bicep and behind his back. One good jerk upward, accompanied by a particularly nasty, wet pop, served to dislocate Burt's arm at the shoulder. Don was vaguely aware that Burt was crying out in pain, but he was already focused on the fact that Burt's friend, who had managed to avoid falling over the edge of the cliff, was charging at him. There was a flurry of motion as Don twisted to the side and Burt's friend crashed past him, only to fall to his knees. The hilt of Burt's knife was sticking out of the left side of the man's ribcage, blood welling up around it. Don ignored the critically wounded man, and took a second to check on the others. One of the men was lying sprawled against the big rock, probably unconscious, and the other two were running away as fast as they could. Nicole had turned to look in Don's direction and saw one collapsed man, another with a knife sticking out of his chest, and the third sobbing on the ground at Don's feet while clutching at his shoulder. "My god, Don!" she managed. As if he agreed with Nicole's surprise, Burt cried out, "We were only trying to have some fun!" "With a knife?" Don scowled, and then added, "I don't have time for this." He kicked out hard and fast with his heel, snapping Burt's head to the side with stark finality. Without looking down, or back at the girls, Don hurried over to the cliff edge and looked down, searching for any sign of Toshia. He heard the others come up and join him. They all agreed they couldn't see Toshia, either clinging to the cliff face anywhere or in the river. Don scowled, his mind strangely calm and clear. "Get your things and Toshia's, quickly. We have to find a way down there fast." In another minute, the four of them were hurrying along the cliff top, moving downriver, looking for a way down. Chapter 7 The Easy Way; Toshia is thrown to the men. It was late in the morning when a pair of serving girls and four sisters came into the hall of castle where Toshia hung from the big X. "Get her down from there," one of the sisters commanded. The two girls hurried to comply. Toshia was pretty sure the small brunette was Nina, but the little girl avoided making any eye contact with her. They undid her ankles first, and Toshia breathed a ragged sigh of relief as she supported her weight on the ground for the first time in almost 24 hours. Pushing up, she relieved some of the strain on her shoulders. While the two girls worked to untie Toshia's wrists, the warriors moved a bit closer and seemed tensed in case Toshia should make an escape attempt. She realized how ridiculous their concern was when her right wrist was released and her arm fell to her side, a numb, useless appendage. Toshia cried out as her shoulder complained against suddenly moving after so long in the same position. When the other wrist was freed, Toshia's whole body followed the downward motion of her arm, collapsing in a pile on the stone floor. "Get her some food and water," the same woman ordered, and then walked away, leaving the other three guards to watch over Toshia and the serving girls. One of the girls ran off, while the one who was almost certainly Nina caressed Toshia's forehead with a moist cloth. Toshia groaned a bit as she worked to move her arms. Already, her hands were alive with a million pinpricks as the circulation returned to its normal levels. Probably-Nina began to gently massage Toshia's shoulders and upper arms. Then the other girl, a somewhat plain blonde girl with pendulous breasts and wide hips, returned with a flagon of water and three apples. The flagon was tipped up so Toshia could down several mouthfuls, and then the first apple was held for her, much as Nina done during the night. Toshia felt the rejuvenating effects of the water and fruit almost immediately. She fed herself the second apple, and drank down the rest of the flagon's contents. Her body seemed to have suffered no real damage from being tied to that damn cross. Though she could use a good night's sleep on a horizontal surface, Toshia felt reinvigorated. Naturally, given the XYZ, this meant that her sex drive was again kicking into gear. However, her feistiness was, if anything, only encouraged by the treatment she'd received by the warrior women. When the blonde offered her the third apple, Toshia smiled at her and said, "No thanks. You have it. I appreciate the help, both of you." The blonde smiled and nodded her head, and Toshia was sure she felt the briefest kiss on her shoulder from almost certainly Nina. The girls gathered up the apple cores, the empty flagon and the wet cloth, and hurried away. As if on cue, a half dozen of the so-called sisters came into the hall. Leading the way was the haughty Daphne, today wearing a shear red robe that hung from her strong shoulders, and parted down the front to show her cleavage, bare abs and the flowing swatch of gold-yellow fabric that hung from a belt around her waist to cover her privates. Toshia thought she looked like an adolescent boy's fantasy, something ripped off the cover of a Conan paperback or something. Too bad she's such a bitch, Toshia thought. Behind and to Daphne's right was also the blonde Viking woman, Brigit. Like the other warriors, Brigit was wearing the patched-together armor Toshia had seen the day before. The party of women surrounded Toshia. One of them, a big brunette with brown hair cut short, said, "Well, she smells better today." Toshia thought she recognized this woman's voice as that of Wanda, who liked a good butt fucking, but not from a "goat". "Yes, but has her attitude improved?" Daphne wondered. She looked down at Toshia, who was still crouching on the stone floor, with a raised eyebrow and a cold-disinterested expression. "Well, pup, are you going to behave yourself and do as you're told?" Toshia looked around at the armed and armored women, momentarily wondering which one was most likely to hit her if she got out of line. Toshia had been expecting something like this sort of question, and had actually not decided on which response she'd actually give. Finally, she went with, "That depends; are you going to tell me to go on my merry way?" Toshia expected to be hit, but wasn't. Perhaps it was the fact that Daphne actually smiled that kept the others from punishing her. Still, that particular smile was not one Toshia liked seeing. Daphne's smile was the sort that went along with a villain saying, "I was hoping you'd say that." Daphne shook her head and said, "Have no doubt about it, pup, you're not going anywhere. Your pale ass belongs to us now. You'll do whatever we tell you to and you'll do it with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. If I tell you to lick out Wanda's ass, you'll get in there and bury your face between her cheeks and say 'Yum!'" "Why is everyone talking about my ass lately?" Wanda asked, confirming Toshia's guess about her identity. Daphne ignored Wanda, though, and continued addressing Toshia, saying, "The only question is whether you're going to play along like a good little pet, or make us go to all the trouble of breaking you. Playing along is the smart thing, and certainly easiest for all of us. Plus, I'm sure Wanda's ass could use the cleaning. Don't get me wrong, breaking you will be fun too – for us. And be quite confident that we will break you; we've got all the time in the world. Honestly, just between you and me, I hope you're going to keep resisting." Toshia didn't even pause to consider her options, but said, "You know, Daphne, I'd really rather lick Wanda's ass than keep listening to you talk." This time she was smacked, and hard, by someone on her right. Catching herself as she slumped to the left, Toshia heard Wanda saying, "Wait, does that mean she's going to behave?" By way of reply, Daphne ordered, "Give her to the men." Abruptly Toshia was hauled up to her feet, by sisters on either side of her with firm grasps on her upper arms. They compelled her off to the side of the hall, where they led her down a short corridor that in turn led to a small, open courtyard. There was a big section of the courtyard's floor that was missing, and a number of chairs were arranged around this big hole. Daphne led the way, circling around the hole and taking a seat on what looked like the most comfortable chair. Toshia was led to the edge of the hole. Looking down, she saw a big chamber, the center of which, directly underneath her, was taken up by what looked like a very large mattress, covered with a dark red sheet. Brigit came up next to the sister who held Toshia's right arm, and said, "Our men have an easy life, really. They do our manual labor, of course, but there isn't much of that. Now and then we use them as playthings, but not very often. For one thing, they're men, and for another, dangling the possibility of sex in front of them, without giving it to them, serves to keep them well-behaved. So, they're pretty much always in a state of frustration, and they never ever get to just have their way with a woman." Brigit paused and smiled at Toshia, with what seemed to be actual friendly amusement. "Have fun." Then Toshia was shoved forward out into space. Fortunately, the mattress was soft enough to absorb her fall without hurting her. Still, she was left sprawling ungracefully on the red fabric, while above her the women laughed and clapped. Toshia noticed first that the sheet beneath her was not unpleasantly rough, and then that the mattress was thick enough keep her from feeling the hard ground underneath. These were good things, if she correctly understood what was in store for her. Looking around, she saw that three sides of the room, which only extended a small distance from the edges of the mattress, had only bars for walls. The room was, in effect, a large cage, or cell. There was one gate, manned by two particularly brawny sisters. On the other side of the bars was a crowd of naked men, all trying to get a good look at Toshia. The fourth wall was solid, and covered by an ancient mirror, pockmarked and cracked. Toshia could see herself in the surface, though not exactly clearly. Looking up, Toshia saw that Daphne and all her friends were gathered around watching. Daphne raised her hand, which seemed to command a measure of silence from the crowd. When everyone was quiet, she called down into the cell, saying, "Let's start her off with five." This caused both a round of applause from above and some commotion below, on the other side of the bars, as the men jostled for position. Toshia thought that, as Daphne had indirectly suggested, there were two ways to go with this, the easy way and the hard way. The hard way included putting up a fight. Toshia couldn't see any up-side to that approach. In fact, she thought this was what Daphne expected from her, and it would amuse the bitch no end to see Toshia gang raped for the entertainment of the Sisterhood. On the other hand, the easy way would certainly thwart Daphne's intentions – though it might only piss her off all the more. In addition, it had now been days since Toshia had been with the satyrs, and she had had only one orgasm in that time. The five men were now coming into the room with her. They were all naked and in good shape. Two of them were particularly muscular, and two were particularly cute. Their cocks were all semi-hard already, energized by the XYZ in their systems and the prospect of sex with her. Toshia noticed that none of them were graced with the kind of monster pricks she'd had with the Player or Igor, though the biggest guy, a dark-skinned Adonis with a shaved head, had one that was about the size of the Lord's, if his current state was a good indicator. Yes, Toshia thought to herself, the easy way has much to be said for it. To be continued. By BradentonLarry for Literotica

For more, visit www.BishalSarkar.com or WhatsApp our team: https://wa.me/918880361526In this episode of the "I Love Public Speaking" podcast, Bishal Sarkar shares five powerful tips to fix a monotonous voice and make your speech more engaging and dynamic.Join Bishal Sarkar as he explains how small changes in pitch, tone, pace, and pauses can drastically improve the impact of your voice, helping you connect with your audience more effectively.Learn how to avoid sounding dull or robotic and bring energy and enthusiasm to your speaking, ensuring your message resonates with your listeners.Tune in to the "I Love Public Speaking" podcast with Bishal Sarkar to discover how to transform your voice and speak with power and charisma.

Party Crashers /mixed by DJ SPRY ART/ | Tracklist -> t.me/muzpoint/373 |

Today we're studyingD&C 3:2 in just one minute! Grab your scriptures and let's dive into them together! And grab study guides for the whole family here:  - To get Cali's scripture study guide for adults click here:  https://comefollowmestudy.com/shop/ Discount code: OMSS Or purchase on Amazon: https://amzn.to/49xBWNv - To get Kristen's scripture study guides click here: https://kristenwalkersmith.com/starthere Get our 365-day Doctrine and Covenants daily devotional book: https://a.co/d/aE3Wp4D  

No one is immune from life happening — the ebbs and flows, the ups and downs, the exciting and the monotonous. But it is this variety that makes life a beautiful tapestry.Someone recently asked me what I do when I get sucked into the mundanity of life. So, what tips and tricks can we employ when life gets boring or repetitive? And is it our external situation that needs change, or our internal one? I answer these questions and more in today's podcast.Please enjoy other episodes where I share meditation techniques, tips and spiritual lessons from around the world for peaceful and stress-free living. Remember to subscribe to stay up-to-date.*****If you ever feel like my words brought a change in your life, and want to show your SUPPORT for what I am doing, click here. Find all of my BOOKS for wherever you are on your spiritual journey: https://www.eastwesticism.org/spiritual-meditation-books/Want to gift a book to a prisoner? Go here.

In today's episode, Bex Scott shares vintage advice and tips for the retro homemaker from “The Homemaker's Encyclopedia - 1952” book that she recently acquired. Featuring of-the-time shopping advice, meal ideas, kitchen planning suggestions, and more, this is a genuine blast from the past glimpse into the housewife's day-to-day mealtime expectations. Join Bex for a trip into the past and learn some new (old) ways to shop and cook to please your family. “The Homemaker's Encyclopedia -1952” includes such chapters as “Marketing Know-How”, “Different Items You Can Stock in Your Larder”, and “How Much Is Enough”. The author encourages women (the target audience for this book since it was women, the wives and mothers, who did all the grocery shopping, meal planning, and cooking in the 50s) to be unafraid of experimenting with “new foods, new recipes, and new ways of cooking”. She maintains that careful planning will enable women to provide balanced nutrition and budget-conscious meal preparation for their families. Bex also shares an amusing section on grocery store etiquette (including the gem “Dogs must be left outside, but children must often be brought inside”) and specific kitchen design shapes that maximize efficiency in prep and service. For lovers of vintage, retro cooking ideas, and amusing throwbacks, this episode is a must-listen. Resources discussed in this episode:“The Homemaker's Encyclopedia 1952: Food-Buying and Meal-Planning” photo—Contact Rebecca Scott | Pyrex With Bex: Website: PyrexWithBex.comInstagram: @pyrexwithbex—TranscriptBex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat. Bex Scott: [00:00:31] Hey everybody, this is Bex Scott and you are listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. On today's episode, I thought it would be fun to go through a newly acquired book that I have called The Homemaker's Encyclopedia Food Buying and Meal Planning. Now this beauty is from 1952, so it is exactly what you might expect. The content is all about the woman being at home being the homemaker, the man going out and working his 9 to 5 job and coming home to his children and his wife being ready to serve him his meal and for him to relax with a drink in his hand. And I wanted to read some excerpts of this book to you because it was honestly very entertaining to read and to just note how different times are now than they were before. In my household right now my husband does all of the cooking. I like to do the cleaning. We both work and we both equally contribute to raising our three kids, and it was just really interesting to read through the difference in how they used to do things. And I know a bunch of you can probably remember this from your childhood, maybe your parents. That was the dynamic for them back in the 50s, and it would just be interesting to hear your take on things in your memories of how things were. Bex Scott: [00:02:11] So I wanted to start off by going through the introduction, because I believe that this gives you, as it says, a good introduction to this interesting book. So it says "Every homemaker is conscious of the need to try to get the greatest value for the money she can spend. How to do this while still continuing to provide meals that are nutritious and varied, is the subject of conversation whenever good housewives get together. Books such as this can be of great help. In an interesting fashion with easy-to-follow suggestions, the author ranges over the fields of marketing and menu planning in an effort to help you in your daily program". Now, when they say marketing, this is kind of embarrassing because that's my field of work. I'm in marketing. And when I read that, I was really confused about what they were talking about. Marketing is actually going to the supermarket. So yeah, that was an interesting enlightning fact for me. "While keeping the main objective in view, that of securing the most nourishing foods at the prices you can pay, she nevertheless succeeds in proving to the reader that this branch of homemaking need never grow uninteresting or monotonous, just as the meals you serve need never become dull for your family. The willingness to experiment, to try new foods, new recipes, and new ways of cooking should be part of every housewife's equipment. In many an old-fashioned American household, the food followed an unvarying pattern: a roast on Sunday, hash on Monday, chowder on Friday, beans on Saturday, or whatever". Or whatever. "Before the family entered the dining room, they knew exactly what would be on the table". Bex Scott: [00:03:58] Growing up, we had roast every Sunday and that was honestly the best day of the week for me. My mom's roasts, they were amazing. And when we go back home to visit with them, my mom still likes to make a roast for all of us when we get together. "Most younger women are more flexible than the old-time cooks. They are learning some of the secrets of using unusual flavor through spices, herbs, and sauces to borrow from other nations some tricks of applying imagination to the food they serve their families. American menus would be the poorer without Swiss and Italian cheeses, Hungarian goulash, French and Vienna breads, chili con carne, chow mein and chop suey, Irish stew, frankfurters and sauerkraut, England's plum pudding, or whatever your particular favorites happen to be. Bearing this in mind, you need never be afraid to experiment or pioneer in foods or methods. In this book, along with practical advice on efficient shopping techniques, cooking shortcuts, and dollar stretchers, you'll find a view of meal planning as a family affair. To many women, marketing and cooking is a burden because they do all of it alone. The author suggests ways in which the other members of the family can help. Father with the marketing, the children in preparing meals and helping to serve them. Making these projects a part of your family's life seems a practical application of homemaking. That art, which is, in the last analysis, the most important profession open to any woman". Bex Scott: [00:05:28] So now we get into the good stuff. So we've been introduced to the book, know a little bit about it, so part one is meal planning. "Number one, a good meal doesn't just happen. The experienced traveller knows that the success of a trip depends on thorough, beforehand planning. Just so homemakers whose meals get consistent rave reviews from family and friends will tell you that a good meal is made at the meal planning desk rather than at the cook stove". And there's a nice picture of a woman sitting at her meal planning desk, and it says, "when you plan ahead, you can relax and enjoy meal times too". I can tell you that my husband doesn't have a meal planning desk, but I'm going to ask him now if he would like one, and I'll let you know what he says. Okay, so it says, "and while impromptu meals can be lots of fun once in a while, a steady succession of haphazard conglomerations tells its story in flurry and worry, not to mention the added expense which substitutes for proper planning. Your family will probably be most interested in how the food looks and tastes, and in whether you are calm and cheerful or cross and worn out when you join them at the table". I can tell you that our two sons could care less what the food looks like. They are more interested in how it tastes and how quickly they can consume it. "You, on the other hand, will be equally concerned with balancing the budget and the nutritional scale, for you know that the actual health of your family is dependent upon the meals you serve. Every smart woman knows that you can lead a husband to vitamins, but you can't always make him eat". That is something that I have never heard before. "This holds true of children as well and harping on food values usually creates eating problems rather than converts to balanced nutrition. When you plan ahead, you can relax and enjoy meal times too, secure in the knowledge that you are giving your family food they need in ways they enjoy it, with a maximum of economy and a minimum of work". Bex Scott: [00:07:39] And then it goes into "four ways to help you turn meal planning from a hand-to-mouth operation into a pleasant and worthwhile habit". Next up, this is a little pull quote that I had to share with you guys. It says "Entree, usually a made-up dish of an unusual food". So if anybody ever asks you what an entrée is, please be sure to use this definition. Okay next up we have the elements of a successful meal. "When you get right down to the business of meal planning, you must remember to coordinate a number of other factors with your four menu factors of: number one nutrition values, number two economy or money-saving, number three efficiency or time and effort saving, and number four" is my favorite "honest to goodness pleasure in eating". That's why I eat. Not to survive. I eat to enjoy and experience the pleasure in eating. "So you may want to introduce new foods, provide an invalid diet or entertain company on a budget. You may decide to streamline the family's collective waistline through a high-protein but low in calorie diet. Or you may yearn to cut down on dirty dishes and utensils so as to have more time for after-dinner fun with the family. And don't think for a moment that to do all these things, you're going to have to sacrifice personal or family preferences and foods, or throw out the window sectional or national ways of eating that are dear to your heart and traditional in your family. Actually, whatever you want to accomplish through your meals, within reason, of course, can be yours if you plan it that way and then follow through to the best of your ability". Bex Scott: [00:09:27] Next, it says "nutrition needn't be complicated. Once upon a time, you may have worked your way through a school course on home economics. Remember the complicated charts of vitamins and minerals, the graphs of calories and carbohydrates, and the mystic terms you studied? It was all very complex, and you may or may not have absorbed enough to apply to your own food problems when you set up housekeeping. Today, a very simple and pleasant formula has been devised to help you see that your meals are going to nourish your family by supplying the foods and food elements that are needed for good health. You don't have to worry about each individual vitamin and mineral. Instead, you follow the basic seven food group outlined here. And if your family eats the suggested number of servings from each group, you can rest assured that their food needs will be well supplied". Bex Scott: [00:10:17] Next up we have "Part two, marketing know-how", not the marketing I thought it was. "How to shop: attitudes and ideas. With the caveman, getting food was a matter of tracking it down, whacking it over the head, and dragging it home. It was dangerous, yes. Monotonous? Hardly". This is a good intro. It's a solid start to this chapter. "Today, the getting of food or shopping is much simpler, yet much more complex. While the caveman never had an opportunity to choose from the marvellous array of foods to be found in the modern market, neither did he have to cope with nutrition or decide which of 65 varieties of vegetables was the right one for him". Man, times are tough for those cavemen. "Small wonder that today's homemaker finds shopping such a challenge. With so many things to choose from, how is she to know which foods were stocked with her in mind? Actually, marketing can be a job in which the whole family takes part. Once upon a time, men played a large role in buying the family food in this country. Then it became exclusively the woman's province. Today, Dad is not only bringing home the bacon, but buying the groceries too, especially on weekends. Current figures show that at least 25% of the groceries in this country are bought by men. And if you can make shopping a real family project by getting dad and the children into the act, you'll be doing a real educational job as well as making fun time for something that might be just another chore". Bex Scott: [00:11:47] Okay, here are the "certain fundamental things to remember in shopping. Choose the right store. Some books on food give glowing descriptions of the joys of searching out rare spices and unknown foods at little shops, buying bread here, meat there and cheese somewhere else, and so, on until you've been all over town assembling your groceries. And indeed, this is the way that housewives in many other countries have to shop. But in the United States, the large market with every kind of food possible assembled and spread out in orderly rows containing everything plainly visible and clearly marked, has become such a tradition that few families would know how to operate without it. Here you see women in mink pushing carts next to women in shabby coats, all bound together in an effort to get the most for their money. Certainly, there are not many women who would deliberately spend enough time or shoe leather to shop item by item in different stores. One big factor that has played a part in the growth of such large markets has been the fact that with their cash and carry policy, and with everything arranged for self-selection and self-service, your food dollar really goes for food, not for service. On the other hand, the smaller grocery stores make up in service what it lacks in savings. Just be sure that you really need credit, telephone shopping service, and delivery, before you become a steady customer at such a shop, for you may be sure that you pay for these services and added food costs, and this is only fair for it costs your grocer extra to provide them. If you're working or there is a new baby or illness in your home, or you are far removed from any shops, then the telephone shopping and delivery service may be a necessity for you. But even then, you'll be wise to try to arrange an expedition to the nearest market once every week, or even every two weeks, to stock up on staple items and canned goods". Bex Scott: [00:13:40] We definitely do that. We go to Costco, I think, at least every two weeks, sometimes every week. We're big Costco people. "The fancy grocery or delicatessen has its place in the shopping scheme of things, but is not for you on a budget. Fine hothouse fruits or deluxe foods are grand as an occasional treat, but don't belong on your regular shopping list. After all, the most expensive food is not necessarily the most nutritious. The delicatessen stays open long hours and can be a lifesaver if you happen to forget something". Next up, they talk about shopping in person if possible. "This is the only sure way of getting what you want and what you need, particularly in regard to meats and vegetables and fruits, where real saving or waste is involved. When you are shopping in a market, remember to mind your manners. Small children and dogs are a nuisance. Dogs must be left outside, but children must often be brought inside". Interesting. "Don't put babies into the push carts unless the store provides a special kind which has a place for baby. Don't let your toddler run wild through the sections. Not only is it most annoying to others, it can be dangerous if he pulls stacks of cans down on top of his head. And if your older child feels the need for action, keep him from ramming the push carts into others or from working up speed on the curves around the canned goods by giving him a job to do, such as keeping track of your checklist. Don't block the aisles with your basket while you talk with a neighbor. When you get in line, don't keep others waiting by scrambling back for one more item. And don't try to force your way ahead of others who were there before you. Shopping in a regular store also calls for manners. You may have been a customer for years, or you may be a real favorite with your butcher. Still, you can wait your turn pleasantly and without engaging service personnel in conversation at a time when they should be concentrating on other people and their orders. Don't ask for more than one delivery a day, and don't telephone for service just a few moments before closing time". Bex Scott: [00:15:53] I want to go back to the dogs must be left outside, but children must often be brought inside. Okay, next up we have a section about different items that you can stock in your larder. My favorite one is cheese. I love cheese, I could eat cheese all day, every day. And one of my favorite memories was when I went to the grocery store with my parents, and I think this was the first time my dad had ever been to the cheese section, because he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He didn't know there were so many different types of cheese, and I think my mom and I went off to do the grocery shopping, and my dad stayed in the cheese aisle the whole time, just trying to figure out what each of them were. So this section reminded me of that memory. So "cheese comes in a bewildering variety of types and forms, domestic and imported, and for a great variety of purposes. It is, in its less exotic forms, a very economical source of protein, and supplies vitamins and minerals too". These are all really great reasons that I like to tell myself when I overeat cheese, that I am getting all the vitamins and minerals that I need for my body. "There are three general categories used for convenience in classifying cheese: soft, semi-soft, and hard. Many cheeses are available in each group. Usually, cheese is a matter on which you wax enthusiastic or are content to stay with 1 or 2 mild favorites". I think my dad would probably fall into the wax enthusiastic category after that grocery shopping trip. "Gourmets are conscious of slight variations in flavor and traditionally favor the imported cheeses or used to. For recently, very fine cheeses have been made in the Western Hemisphere. If you are a cheese lover, you may have the attitude that processed cheese is only for cooking. It is not only an excellent melting cheese, but for the average family provides very good eating. In addition, processed cheese can be kept on the pantry shelf for emergencies. The larger-sized packages are usually more economical. Cheese spreads and mixtures can be bought in jars and are convenient for party occasions, if a bit more expensive". I also love a good cheese in a jar. Cheese Whiz on toast is great and when I was pregnant with our daughter, Kraft singles were my number one craving. So that is a very strange piece of knowledge about me. Bex Scott: [00:18:26] Okay, number ten is "how much is enough? Estimating amounts can throw the inexperienced housewife into fits". Fits, huh? "Everyone has his own classic example of the bride who tried to buy potatoes by the piece, or thought that a pound of rice was barely enough for four people". I don't know that we do have those examples. Okay. "To save you from the experiences that are supposed to teach you, but usually just make you suffer, or to refresh your memory and serve as a handy reference guide, here are some hints on amounts to buy for each serving. How much meat to buy for dinner? How many servings will come from a pound of fresh beans? A number two and a half can, or a frozen package. The food shopper, with an eye to thrift and good management, learns to buy carefully just what she can use", and then it goes into different amounts for what you should need for cooking, which is actually kind of handy. Bex Scott: [00:19:24] Next up we have "Storage, preparation and serving: kitchen convenience. Your kitchen is the room in which you spend many of your waking hours. Therefore, you want it as attractive and cheerful as possible. Because everything in it comes in contact with your food, you want it as sanitary and easy to keep clean as you can make it. Those things are important. But to you as a cook, the prime consideration in a kitchen is efficient and helpful arrangement so that everything is where you can find it and use it quickly and easily. The less stooping, bending or stretching, the better. The more working and storage space, the happier you'll be. Good ventilation and adequate lighting, both in the center of the room and again over each working area, are of primary importance. A posture stool or chair will let you relax for the many jobs which can be done just as well sitting down. Basic kitchen arrangement. There's a pattern to kitchen arrangement, or at least there's supposed to be. Ideally, a kitchen has lots of wall space and little floor space. It is not a corridor from the front of the house to another room or outside, and the walls are not broken up with lots of doors and windows. It is three basic work centers. The storage area around the refrigerator which should be nearest the back door, the preparation department which is the sink with workspace on either side, and the cooking and serving section, which should be nearest the dining area so that food can be put right on the table while hot". Bex Scott: [00:20:49] "The U-shaped kitchen is usually considered the most efficient. Here your equipment is grouped on three walls and you have few steps between your three work centers. The L-shaped kitchen is next in preventing waste motion. Space along two walls is provided for the equipment, and often the portion remaining can be made into a dining area, business space for your desk and cookbooks, or play space for the children. The two-wall or corridor kitchen can be as efficient as a ship's galley, unless it's a passageway to the back door. The one wall or Pullman type kitchen is convenient for use, but usually lacks adequate cupboard space". Bex Scott: [00:21:28] Next up we have "Seasonings, salads, sandwiches, and serving. Some women have a gift for turning out flavorful meals with the hot things hot and the cold things cold, with interesting contrast and textures and tastes, and served in gay and colorful fashion. Others serve the very same meal just as well cooked, to be sure, yet so dull and uninspiring". I think if I cooked for my family, I would probably fall into the dull and uninspiring category. Which is why I love that my husband likes to cook because he is great at it. I remember one time I made my mom's meatloaf recipe for our kids. I loved the meatloaf. I thought I did it right. But I think that was the last meal I attempted to make for them, because I was so crushed that they didn't like it that I probably, I don't think I made anything again after that except for baking. I love baking, so cakes and banana bread and all that kind of stuff. So it says, "what is the secret? Well, one thing is the matter of proper seasonings. You may have a shelf full of neat little spice jars and herb containers, yet how often do you use them and do you really understand how and when to use them? And what about seeds, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and the many other kinds? How about the different flavors you can achieve by using different vinegars and cheeses? Have you tried wines in your cooking efforts?" I've tried drinking the wine while I cook. That's great. "In general, how well developed is your sense of gastronomic curiosity? Are you willing to experiment, to try new ways of cooking your old favorites, and to offer your family new tastes occasionally? If you can answer yes to most of the above questions, then your flair for interesting meal-making is well above average. If you say no to too many of them, try to widen your scope of activities by experimenting more and investigating new products". Bex Scott: [00:23:26] "Meal time coordination. Chilled plates and chilled ingredients for salads. Hot plates for hot foods. These are part of getting the meal to the table in attractive form. For no one cares to eat lukewarm salad or meat in lukewarm gravy. Basic preparation and meal planning often come to grief at this point, for as much organization is needed at the moment of cooking as at any other point in meal making. Go back to your basic arrangement of your kitchen for real efficiency. The fundamental idea was to establish a traffic flow from storage to preparation to cooking, so that no time was lost and that food could be gotten to the table right from the stove. Somewhere in the traffic flow, you must be operating as a thinking director. You must have the ability to look at your menu and recipes, decide which foods must be prepared when, and then see that cooking time is so handled that your meat and potatoes are ready at the time that your salad is prepared, dessert ready, and the table ready and waiting. Experience and actual one, two, three planning are the only way to develop the ability to coordinate a meal perfectly". Bex Scott: [00:24:33] Last in this amazing book, we have a section called Camouflage Ideas. I had to read this because I didn't know what they meant, and I really needed to know what camouflaging was. "Sauces, stuffings, relishes and other accompanying dishes are methods of camouflaging either the shape or taste or amount of the foods you are serving. Sauces are valuable because they contribute to the food value and appearance of foods, and add flavor and moisture to those that need it. Good sauces are perfectly blended, smooth in texture, have no lumps, and are neither too heavy nor too thin. By serving leftover vegetables and meat in such forms as au gratin", that's not how you say it. I apologize. That was terrible. "or a la king, you create a whole new flavor treat, and make company fare out of icebox items that otherwise wouldn't stretch. Stuffings may be used to add flavor and to extend a basic food that is in short supply. Don't forget that you can stuff many forms of meat as well as poultry and fish. Remember that stuffing is meant to be a mixture with variations of seasonings. It should be neither too dry nor too moist. Relishes in accompanying dishes like dumplings, Yorkshire puddings, and cranberry sauce are excellent for bringing out the flavor of other foods". Okay, that wasn't as bad as I thought. When they said camouflage, I had pictured in my mind what we do to get our toddler to eat vegetables by hiding them inside of fruit purees and disguising things. So not as bad as I thought. Bex Scott: [00:26:15] Okay, well, I hope you guys all enjoyed this little trip into the 1950s of food buying and meal planning, and maybe you learned a thing or two that you can apply to your kitchen or your marketing. I know I sure did. I'm going to be passing many of these tips off to my husband, for sure, and maybe we'll even have him on a next episode to give his input on this amazing book. So feel free to find me on Instagram @PyrexWithBex. Shoot me a DM, give me a follow, and I will see you next time. 

Took The Night /mixed by DJ SPRY ART/ | Tracklist -> t.me/muzpoint/363 |

On today's episode, Andy answers your questions on how to align with your business partner who has a different mindset than you, how to know what product to sell, and how to master the monotonous but important daily actions to level up in life and business.

Rapid-Fire Question and Answer with Dr Demartini:Your Question: “I'm feeling unfulfilled by the work I'm doing with my clients. It's the same story week after week. What do you suggest I do?”USEFUL LINKS:Learn More About The Breakthrough Experience: demartini.fm/experienceLearn More About The Demartini Method: demartini.fm/demartinimethodDetermine Your Values: demartini.fm/knowyourvaluesClaim Your Free Gift: demartini.fm/astroJoin our Facebook community: demartini.ink/inspired

The ultimate male fantasy is rather flat & boring.'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood is told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator. It takes place in a USA where there has been an overthrown government and everything is now dystopian. Our girl is 33 yrs old & a handmaid, whose only purpose is to give birth. Life is very different: family structures changed, super totalitarian (everyone is watched), a lot of violence (capital punishment/suicide/torture), monotonous routine & a sprinkle of religiosity. It has very short chapters interspersed with her recollections of the past plus a little future historical context right at the end.Would love to hear your feedback and appreciate any support you wish to give :)Timeline:(00:00:00) Intro(00:02:46) Themes/Questions(00:24:30) Author & Extras(00:27:30) Summary(00:29:43) Value 4 Value(00:31:30) Join Live! Value 4 Value Support:Boostagram: https://www.meremortalspodcast.com/supportPaypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/meremortalspodcastConnect with Mere Mortals:Website: https://www.meremortalspodcast.com/Discord: https://discord.gg/jjfq9eGReUTwitter/X: https://twitter.com/meremortalspodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/meremortalspodcast/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@meremortalspodcast

The new treasure gets inspected and an old friend returns. We talk about the relationship of the prose to Auri's state of mind, how Foxen is endowed with character through bumbrous language, and we learn about malapropisms and spoonerisms and neologisms. @pageofthewind pageofthewind.com Join the community on Discord at https://discord.gg/tCZc6kXQcg If you like the show, tell a friend!

Better Than Sex /mixed by DJ SPRY ART/ | Tracklist -> t.me/muzpoint/349 |

We are happy to provide opportunities to develop your creativity and celebrate your talent. So, if you have tracks to premiere that you would like to publish on our channel, please contact us at promo(at)rsound(dot)cyou Links: https://tune.valeraunusovmusic.cyou/RRES0005 Label: @rhythmresonance Artist: @valeraunusuv Pre-Release Date: Sep 27, 2024 - Beatport, Spotify Release Date: Oct 11, 2024 “Acatamathesia” by Valera Unusov is an immersion into dark and hypnotic Techno rhythms. The raw and deep sound of the track awakens dark images and envelops the mind, bringing the listener into a state of sonic trance. Monotonous bass lines and mechanical sound patterns build a mystical atmosphere, where every sound movement leads to a state of “acatamathesia” - helplessness of the mind before the flood of the inexplicable.

Nehemiah 7-8 is a section of the Bible you might be tempted to skip. What does a list of names have to do with my life today? Why should I care about Ezra reading the Law? In today's episode, Jeff shares how Nehemiah 7-8 is not monotonous but monumental. And it has a powerful message for the people of God. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we're tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Nehemiah 7-8

Dance like Madonna, Love like Madonna and Mad like Madonna! /mixed by DJ SPRY ART/ | Tracklist -> t.me/muzpoint/337 | Track "Next" courtesy of the label "Which Bottle?"

If variety is the spice of life, then monotony is the anesthesia of it. Monotony is a lack of variety and interest; a tedious repetition and routine. But what happens when daily rhythms become deep ruts? If you have been here for a bit you may have heard me talk about ruts and how they are defined as being dull and unproductive and hard to change. I have also stated I don't want to be in a rut and I don't want you to be in one either.  Monotony. It has us falling asleep inside our own lives. And that my friend is no way to live out our one beautiful life. On today's episode let's create a plan for balancing rhythms that bring ease with having enough variety that we don't fall into a rut.As always, DM me with your thoughts on this episode. If you are interested in hiring a coach and ready to change your life, please consider a free discovery call with me. You can find the scoop on my website:  rscoachandstrategist.comFollow me on:Instagram: @Coming-Out-Gold-Podcast or @RS_Coach_and_StrategistFacebook: @Coming-Out-Gold-Podcast or @rscoachandstrategistRoyalty-free music from Pixaby.com

On our way to finding the job, we'd find fulfilling, many of us have had jobs that just felt like filler in our lives. Monotonous, tedious, meaningless but as Pastor Ricky will show us today, none of the work we should do should be meaningless. The way we work reflects the work of God. As we continue through Exodus today we'll see how both work and rest are acts of worship. When we place either of these in the top-tier position of how we operate in our lives, things fall apart. God knows how we should rest and work.

Bobby is feeling a neurosis that's he coined 'monotonous neurosis', he has a new lounge area, and It's nice to hear Bobby laugh while he's singing in the rain. You can read more about Bobby and prison reform on our website:   notesfromthepen.com And check out the GoFundMe to help with Bobby's new start  https://www.gofundme.com/f/j3khzk-help-for-a-new-start Twitter: https://twitter.com/NotesFromThePen Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJYuOh4pKxa/?igshid=y8lo9kbdifvq    Shout-out to JD and Ashely Bell for all their behind the scenes support. Intro and Outro music created just for Notes From The Pen by PJ Trofibio and Jeff Quintero and used with permission.

In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Xochitl shares 3 confusing words with the listeners. She and Jack explain the meanings of the words and how to use them in sentences.Transcript:00:00:00JackHey, A is the English podcast listeners. It's Jack here and we just want to announce that we are now on WeChat. Our WeChat ID is A-Z English podcast that is A-Z English podcast, one word all lowercase.00:00:17JackAnd if you.00:00:18JackJoin the group. You will be able to talk with me. You'll be able to.00:00:22JackTalk with social.00:00:23JackAnd we can answer your questions. We can read your comments on the podcast. So we'd love for you to join us and be active in our we chat group. Our WeChat ID is A-Z English podcast. Thanks. See you on the app.00:00:50JackWelcome to the A-Z English podcast. My name is Jack and I'm here with my co-host social. And today we're going to share. Well, we're going to do a we're under the vocabulary spotlight and we are going to share some words that we came across during our English corner classes that students kind of struggle with. And so so.00:01:11JackWas the first one that you you had that you came up with?00:01:15XochitlThe first one I noticed students struggled a little bit with was workload, the pronunciation, workload and then on top of that, what it meant workload is just. It's a compound word. It has the word work in it and the word load in it, and you put it together.00:01:19발표자Hmm.00:01:36XochitlWith no spaces and its workload, so workload just means the amount of work that each person is.00:01:44XochitlUh.00:01:45JackEach.00:01:45XochitlPerson's share of work so that can be at your house like domestic tasks like chores or that can also be at your job. You know, between your colleagues you may have a heavier workload if you have a higher position in the company. So that's kind of what workload refers to.00:02:08JackYeah, exactly. It's, it's it's a lot of times you hear it with the word share shared workload.00:02:15JackYou know, so you have, you have this like?00:02:18JackThe certain amount of work that you have to do at your office and then they divide it among the employees. You're gonna do this much? You're gonna do this much? You're gonna do this much? You're gonna do this much, and each piece is your workload.00:02:33JackAnd and then you basically just start working away, chipping away at it, you know, trying to to decrease it down to 0.00:02:42JackAnd of course, in the company or corporation it never gets down to 0 because there's always more work. You know you there's another workload piled on top of your old workload. And so you know, it's kind of a never ending, you know, thing but.00:03:02JackYeah, I mean, I just think that like, yeah, certain even within this podcast social and I divide certain parts of the workload, she's spends a lot of time talking to students on the app.00:03:13JackApp communicating with them, recording I my workload is. Yeah, I do like the editing and and and some of the you know adding like little music pieces or whatever to it which actually I enjoy. So it's kind of like my my workload is kind of the fun part and I get the the editing part of it.00:03:19XochitlCan I have an idea?00:03:34JackBut yeah, it's a it's a shared workload and and you know when you do that, when you share the workload, it makes it a lot easier to finish a project more quickly.00:03:47발표자So.00:03:50XochitlThe second one that I saw some students struggle with was the meaning of emotional labor. When I say emotional labor, what does that mean to you, Jack?00:03:59JackThis one I've actually I'm not too familiar with this term. This seems like uh, maybe something that is a newer.00:04:07XochitlKind of a new age term.00:04:09JackYeah, just like a Gen. Z kind of thing like.00:04:12발표자Yes.00:04:15JackMost workload is, that is that does that mean like managing your relationships with other people and and trying to keep those you know keep up with like replying to people on social media and emails and that kind of stuff is that, am I right about is?00:04:15발표자Well, let's yeah.00:04:33JackThat what an emotional workload is.00:04:35XochitlYeah, it has a.00:04:36XochitlCouple of different meanings. So some people said, uh, emotional labor, can you know it can be part of your job, like if you're working in customer service, you know, regulating your emotions and kind of managing customer emotions as well.00:04:52XochitlBut I think a lot more commonly in this new age, we use it when we're talking about women's workload in the home, which a lot of it is invisible labor, which means labor that you cannot necessarily see and appreciate. For example, if you have a stack of.00:05:12XochitlDishes and they're all gone, you know, because your mom did them. You can see that. That's another type of Labor. But that's a domestic labor, but.00:05:23XochitlWhen the kid comes flying home from school and maybe they got depressed because their friends bullied them and their mom is checking in on their kid day after day for the week and cheering them up and maybe your husband came home from a stressful job and then you have to see the in laws and you have to pick a a gift.00:05:43XochitlFor your mother-in-law, it's a lot of these things that kind of fall under an invisible guys that you can't see the person.00:05:53XochitlDoing these tasks in the same way, perhaps because they don't have a clean cut result, but overall you're doing a lot of Labor emotionally, kind of like what a a therapist would do, maybe. Or a psychologist would do. So you're you're kind of doing unpaid.00:06:13XochitlEmotional labor. You're like a, uh, unpaid therapist for your family.00:06:17JackRight, right. It's like it's not quantitative, but it's qualitative in nature.00:06:27발표자Hmm.00:06:28JackIt's like, uh, yeah, it's it. It's emotionally draining. But you don't really get any credit for it. You know, you do the dishes, you get like, a, you get a little little star sticker, you know, like, good job. You did the you did the dishes, you know, check that off the list. But.00:06:48JackAnd.00:06:49JackJohnny has a skin knee and he, you know, he's scared of skateboards now you know. So you've got to console him for 1/2 an hour. You don't. There's no. There's no sticker for that. You know, there's, there's, that's just.00:07:07JackI mean, I guess in in the traditional sense they would just say, well, that's parenting. So just, you know, suck it up and and do it you know.00:07:16JackBut it often falls on the the mother's shoulders. You know, she's the one that has to take do the the, the nurturing and the the caring for the child with the skin and the knee and the father kind of gets a pass as he, you know, marches off to his.00:07:36JackThe computer room.00:07:36XochitlDrink beer and watch TV or something.00:07:38JackYeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't ask your mom. Mom will deal with it, you know? Yeah. So emotional labor. I I like it. I dig it. Yeah, I'm. I'm. I think we should be more careful to to consider that, you know.00:07:43XochitlYeah.00:07:54XochitlYeah, I recognize it. Another thing I noticed that students were struggling with the vocabulary word to describe certain words. Certain chores. Sorry. And they they were missing one and I didn't want to interrupt, but I thought it would be be a good time to introduce the vocabulary word.00:08:15XochitlTedious Jack. What does tedious mean when attempts is tedious?00:08:16JackHmm.00:08:18JackYeah, if something is. If a task or a chore is tedious it it's just it's very.00:08:25JackWell, I'm going to use another big word to describe a big word. Monotonous and monotonous, means it's very repetitive. It's just like it's something that you do that is, it's not difficult, but it's. But it's time consuming and it's very annoying.00:08:45JackYou know, I'm trying to think of like.00:08:49JackYou know, a lot of a lot of construction work is very tedious. You know, when you're building a a wall like a like a brick wall, you have to just one brick at a time, you know, and it take, you know, it takes a long time to finish that wall. And so it's very just doing the same thing over and over.00:09:08JackAnd over and over again 100 * 1000 * 10,000 times. That is very tedious, tedious work.00:09:18JackWork.00:09:19XochitlOne of our students was talking about how she has a cat and she doesn't like to put her clothing directly into the washer because she's worried that the cat hair will damage her clogged her washer so she takes clothing item by clothing item and puts.00:09:32XochitlA lint roller.00:09:33XochitlOver it and gets rid of the cat hair that way. And so she said.00:09:39XochitlDoing laundry is incredibly tedious task for her.00:09:43XochitlI was more.00:09:43XochitlSo impressed that anyone would even think to do that, I just toss it in the washer. I I kind of shake things out. Like if I have some my sheets or whatever, I I just shake them out outside and then throw them in the washer.00:09:50JackYeah.00:09:57JackI've got those double stick tape rollers and I roll my clothes too before.00:10:02JackTo get all the dog.00:10:02XochitlHair off of him before you put him.00:10:04XochitlIn the washer.00:10:05JackYeah, yeah, just just run it up and down my shirt just to get. Yeah, yeah.00:10:08XochitlWild. I never. I didn't know this was a thing at all. Blenda doesn't shed hardly at all, so I don't even have this issue. He really doesn't shed. I can be wearing all black and and hug him and he'll sit on my lap and pet him. And. And there's like, no hair on me when I'm.00:10:16JackYeah.00:10:27JackOK. Yeah. Lily is my dog. Sheds a little bit. Not that much, but yeah, just every once in a while I'll take the roller just, you know, go over my my clothes not. Not every time. I'm not like like what she does. You're your student. But I do. We do have those, those rollers, those double stick tape rollers that that are really nice for just getting lint and stuff.00:10:41발표자Hmm.00:10:48JackOff of your your clothes.00:10:50XochitlBut do you do it before you put it in the washer or do you?00:10:53XochitlJust do it like.00:10:53JackOnly if I only.00:10:54JackIf I like shave my dog or something, you know, if I give my dog a haircut or something like that, yeah. Then I have to.00:10:56XochitlOh yeah.00:10:59발표자Yeah.00:11:00XochitlI would just shake it, shake it out like that and I don't know, does it. Maybe it sticks to your clothes anyway, I I've.00:11:07XochitlNever even thought.00:11:08XochitlAbout doing this, so that's new cleanliness tips for our listeners I guess out there.00:11:12JackYou have double stick tape rollers. Really good.00:11:15XochitlYeah, let us know is that something that you do at home or do you have any other tedious tasks that you often do? Let us know if there's any other vocabulary words that you would like us to cover. If there is a word that you're grasping of or trying to think of to describe as.00:11:32XochitlSituation. Let us know as well and umm, we'll try our best to come up with some vocabulary words that we can showcase to describe that. So leave a comment down below at AZ englishpodcast.com shoot us an e-mail at azspodcast@gmail.com and join the channel subgroup to talk to Jack and I directly remember that Jack and I are now hosting an English corner.00:11:54XochitlMonday through Friday for an hour a day and we have a lot of really great students. It's super fun. So if you would like to be a part of that, if you're interested in that at all, make sure to message Jack privately on WeChat or the A-Z English podcast WhatsApp, and we'll make sure to send you a link. See you guys next.00:12:12XochitlTime. Bye bye.00:12:13JackbyePodcast Website:https://atozenglishpodcast.com/vocabulary-spotlight-3-confusing-words/Social Media:WeChat: atozenglishpodcastFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/671098974684413/Tik Tok: @atozenglish1Instagram: @atozenglish22Twitter: @atozenglish22A to Z Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/theatozenglishpodcastCheck out our You Tube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCds7JR-5dbarBfas4Ve4h8ABecome a member of Podchaser and leave a positive review!https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-a-to-z-english-podcast-4779670Join our Whatsapp group: https://forms.gle/zKCS8y1t9jwv2KTn7Intro/Outro Music: Debora by Jangwahttps://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dilating_Times/single/debora/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-a-to-z-english-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

#psychic #psychicmedium #spirit #Clairvoyance #love #heaven #tarot #horoscope #guide #spiritguide #angel #tarot This Wednesday At 5:30 PM EST! "SkyWalker SchadenFreude's: Is going to take us on a journey that is twisted and complicated. So hold on and fasten your seatbelt. "Escaping the matrix" is a metaphorical term that means breaking free from societal constructs that limit people. The term comes from the 1999 science fiction movie The Matrix, where humans are trapped in a simulated reality controlled by machines. In the context of employment, the matrix can represent: Monotonous jobs, Limited growth opportunities, and A sense of servitude to the system. https://grizzlyllc.myshopify.com https://grizzly.spiritsale.com https://paranormalhub.com/grizzly-hunt Free Conceal Carry Laws of The USA From USCCA! Know The Laws Of Each State For Free! https://uscca.co/GRIZZLY-7015b000005mKPLAA2 For Trail Cams and More Click the Link Below! Blaze Video Inc. ⁠https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1879540&u=3878666&m=117504&urllink=&afftrack=⁠ For Tac Lights and Camping and More, Click the Link Below. EcoGear FX, Inc. ⁠https://shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=481056&m=70349&u=3878666&afftrack=⁠ For Blinds, Waders, Outdoor Gear, Range Finders and More! Click Below! Tidewe ⁠https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1447058&u=3878666&m=92895&urllink=&afftrack=⁠ For Survival Gear, Camping and More Click here click below! Survival Frog LLC... https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=564389&u=3878666&m=51591&urllink=&afftrack= For Bags and Backpacks and More Click The Link Below! https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1243597&u=3878666&m=82802&urllink=&afftrack= For Dash Cams, Monitors and Much More Click The Link Below! https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1579252&u=3878666&m=87684&urllink=&afftrack= For Digital Picture Frames, Microphones, Ring Lights and Much More Click The Link Below! https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1968845&u=3878666&m=87684&urllink=&afftrack= For Backback, Bladders, Gloves, Hammocks, and Camping Accessories, Click the link Below! https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=2298688&u=3878666&m=139327&urllink=&afftrack= --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/grizzly-onthehunt/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/grizzly-onthehunt/support

Every preacher has a unique preaching style. Some preaching styles are very effective, while others are not. In this episode, I want to discuss Ten Preaching Styles To Avoid.We will discuss:The "Look at Me" preacherThe "Comedian" preacherThe "Bible Commentary" preacherThe "Rubber Chicken" preacherThe "Microwave" preacherThe "Aimlessly Driving Around" preacherThe "I'm Talking To Myself" preacherThe "Boring, Monotonous" preacherThe "Screaming" preacherThe "Hammer" preacherSupport the Show.Subscribe to this podcast. Leave us a review. Point your friends to this podcast.Contact me at: alancarr@gmail.com. The podcast is a ministry of Dr. Alan Carr and The Sermon Notebook (http://www.sermonnotebook.org)If you would like some Preaching Matters Podcast merch, you can support the show while advertising for the show.Podcast T-Shirt: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1477329809/podcast-logo-preacher-gift-sermon-notes?click_key=10bfd3485c9c310cd30c1ea506644847488583b2%3A1477329809&click_sum=c33942ee&external=1&rec_type=ss&ref=landingpage_similar_listing_top-1&frs=1Podcast Mug: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1468678138/coffee-mug-the-preaching-matters-podcast?click_key=372978b5d3b54393df102deea8e8e4a635954690%3A1468678138&click_sum=7538cce4&external=1&rec_type=ss&ref=landingpage_similar_listing_top-8&frs=1

On this episode of the Awayken Space podcast I explore monotony in life.

In an age of constant change, we cannot overstate the value of adaptability and innovation. Yet, many of us find ourselves entrenched in a pattern of repetitive thinking, relying on familiar approaches to navigate the complexities of life. However, there exists a transformative alternative: creative thinking. This article explores the power of creative thinking and […]

By BradentonLarry - Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. Chapter 4 Strange Vegetation: Don & the girls are taken by surprise. Don slowly woke up from his very deep sleep. He felt a warm, soft feminine body pressed against his own. He didn't have to compare these sensations with those from the first time he'd awoken in the Manor to know that Toshia was in his arms. Somehow he just knew it was her. He smiled to himself, and only then started to remember the night before, with the rite, Toshia's sexual offering to the guardian of the portal, and his own deliriously erotic and ultimately painful encounter with the crone. While he reviewed these events, Don became aware, without looking around or even opening his eyes, that he was on the pillows in the witches' tent, and that quite a few other bodies were slumbering around him. [[MORE]] Toshia shifted her weight a little in his arms, and he kissed the top of her head. She squeezed his arm, and pushed back against him a bit. Smiling, he hugged her, and kissed her tousled hair again. They lay spooned together like this for several moments, before she wriggled around in his arms to face him. They shared a sleepy smile, and then she buried her face in his chest. Don gently ran his hand over her hair, knowing that he was now wide awake, but not wanting to disturb her if she needed more sleep. After several minutes, though, Toshia looked up at him and asked, "What did you find out last night?" "Not an awful lot," Don answered quietly. "She said we're looking for 'the Sage of the Tower.' We're supposed to go down into the valley and follow the river there to its source, where we'll find the Tower." "Hmm," Toshia murmured thoughtfully with a frown and her eyes still closed. "Are you alright?" Don asked. "Hm?" She looked at him and saw the concern in his eyes, and said, "Yes, I'm alright. I feel like I got fucked enough for a year, but I'm definitely alright. I didn't know I could have that many orgasms." "Did the guardian come?" Toshia paused for a moment, then said, "That was amazing! Very strange, but amazing. It felt like he was coming all through my body. It kind of hurt, but maybe that's just because it was so intense. I think that's when I finally passed out. Then I woke up here with you. Why did you ask about that?" "Something the crone said," Don shrugged. "And how was that?" Don told her all about the encounter with the strange woman. "So, a weird night all around, eh?" she smiled. "Well, I don't know if you noticed, but everyone was else was busy having an orgy while we were distracted." "I thought something like that was going on, but yeah, I was distracted." "I have to admit, it was extremely erotic watching you on that altar." "Oh really?" she smirked mischievously at him. "Maybe next time a dark demon needs sexing up I'll watch you." Don chuckled and said, "Fair enough." "You know, now that I'm thinking about it, it seems pretty rude that they had an orgy without us." "I thought you said you got fucked enough to last a year," Don said wryly. "Well, I was probably exaggerating a little, but it's the principle of the thing, you know? How about you? It sounds like the crone pretty much drained you." "Yeah," he admitted, "but here -- well, obviously, I'm not exactly out of commission." "Yes, I had noticed that," Toshia smiled, giving his erection a squeeze and a pull. For the past several minutes she had been idly toying with him while they talked. Don leaned in and kissed her. Soon, they were slowly making love amongst the sleeping witches and the three girls from the Manor. Though they were quiet, and not at all energetic, several drowsy people noticed what they were up to, and before long wakeful friskiness was spreading through the big tent and a lazy orgy had broken out. Only hours later, after the sex had finally run its course, again, did the company get around to washing up and eating. Then, after Cassandra had given them each a large flask of water and a pouch of fruit, both of which could be slung over their shoulders, the five travelers from the Manor finally left the clearing at the top of the hill. Following the path into the valley that Cassandra pointed out, they began to work their way downhill. Eventually, they came to the foot of the hill, and Amy was the one who said, "Well, there's no river here." "Well, maybe this is one big valley," Don offered. "I don't understand," Shelonda admitted. "Maybe all these hills all gradually descend to a river, and then on the other side they climb back up." "So, this could take a while, eh?" Amy frowned. "All the more reason to keep going," Toshia smiled and led the way up the next hill. As they went, they tried to keep moving in the same general direction. Don insisted that he usually had a very good sense of direction, but pointed out that when all else failed they just needed to keep going for the lowest point, and that ought to work. It had been about noon when they had left the witches, and, perhaps sated by all the fun of the morning and the night before, it was late in the afternoon before anyone mentioned sex. And then the subject came up in a fairly indirect manner, considering how comfortable they were all with each other. They had come into a stand of trees on a gentle slope. The trees were wide spaced, so that there was a nice clearing underneath the green canopy of leaves. The trees were hung with thick green vines of some sort that ran down and through the thick mat of soft leaves that covered the forest floor. The woods seemed particularly hushed and still here, Don thought. Then Nicole giggled, "That looks like a dildo." "What?" Amy asked with interest, and then, after Nicole pointed, she said, "Hey, you're right. And there's another one." Shelonda had stopped and was looking with the other girls at a kind of outgrowth on the sides of one of the vines. Taking a closer look, Don had to admit that they were right; the vines did seem to have what looked like natural dildos of different sizes and slightly different shapes growing out of them at intervals. "That's pretty weird," Toshia admitted. She had been in the lead, but had come back to see what all the fuss was about. "Still, I'd prefer the real thing," Amy grinned. Pulling her tank top up over her head, exposing her full breasts, she sauntered over to Don and said, "What do you say, Professor? Can you help a girl out?" Don chuckled but looked to Toshia. He knew they were trying to make time toward the river, and didn't want to slow things down if the others weren't ready for a break. However, Toshia was merely watching with a smile, as Amy dropped to her knees in front of Don and reached up under his kilt for his organ, which was already thick in anticipation. "Sex break!" Nicole shouted, laughing, as she tore off her own top and then grabbed for Shelonda. Don watched as the two dark-skinned girls fell into the leaves while they stripped each other's clothes off. In front of him, Amy had pushed his kilt up and was already working her warm, wet mouth up and down on his shaft, which was responding by quickly hardening for her. Don dropped his staff, water flask and pouch on the ground and pulled his t-shirt off, and then undid his kilt, letting both items fall on the leaves. Now naked, he concentrated on the wonderful sensations of Amy's tongue and lips on his cock. He held her head in his hands as he fucked slowly in and out of her mouth. Looking up momentarily, Don saw that Nicole and Shelonda had already gotten themselves into a 69, and that Toshia was standing over them watching, with her left hand up under her skirt and her right clutching at right breast. He looked back down, then, to watch Amy's pretty face as she sucked enthusiastically on him. She looked up at him with unmistakable pleasure glittering in her eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, Don noticed that Toshia was undressing and had knelt down next to the other two girls, though she was now watching Don and Amy. Remembering some of the other things Toshia had enjoyed watching, he bent down and said to Amy, "Get on your hands and knees for me." "Fun!" Amy said with a grin as she let go of his cock and turned around in the leaves. She bent over and presented her behind. Kneeling, Don grinned over at Toshia, and pushed Amy's skirt out of the way. Without any preliminaries, he took the fat head of his cock, wet with Amy's saliva, and pushed it into her very hot and willing pussy. Taking Amy's waist in his hands, he immediately set to fucking in and out of her vigorously. Amy grunted happily and shoved back against his thrusts. Toshia watched for a few moments with a smile on her face and her hand busy between her legs, but then finally bent down to run her hand over Nicole's back. Soon, she was laying with the other two girls in a happy confusion of legs and arms, pussies and tits, laughing, wet mouths and playful fingers. With a happy grin on his face, Don concentrated on giving Amy a proper fucking. He admired the view of her upturned backside and his thick cock-shaft sliding in and out of her, as well as her strong back and her strawberry blonde hair all messed up. He felt her fingers reaching back to play with herself as he fucked her, and it wasn't long before she was gasping out in a long, loud orgasm. Don thought he must still be depleted after his night with the crone, and from the single orgasm he'd had earlier with Toshia, because he could tell he was nowhere near ready to come. He leaned over Amy's back, kissed her shoulder, and said, "Why don't we go over and join the others?" "Good idea, Professor," she breathed. The other three welcomed them cheerfully, and it wasn't long before Don was looking down into Nicole's face as he slowly but firmly screwed her, while Toshia was in the middle of a little daisy chain -- hungrily going down on Amy, while Shelonda pleasured Toshia with her own lips and tongue. Aside from the rustling of leaves that they were all causing, they were all making enthusiastic sounds of pleasure and carnal joy. As a result, nobody noticed the additional rustling as a number of things moved slowly through the leaves toward and around them. Don was holding Nicole's wrists up over her head (which he had learned really turned her on) and felt some of the vines under the leaves brushing against his knuckles. He was also dimly aware that something had gotten wrapped around his ankles, but he paid it no mind. Don was too intent on fucking Nicole's sweet, tight pussy to worry about getting tangled in the undergrowth. Only when he felt something gripping his ankles tightly and pulling did he look around and say, "What the fuck?" As if on signal, he was hauled back, out of Nicole's delicious embrace, and up into the air, where he dangled, swinging back and forth. At the same time, there were shrieks from the girls. Don twisted around and craned his neck. It seemed that they had all been ensnared by vines and hauled up into the air. Off to his right, Don could see Shelonda who was also hanging upside down. By struggling, he could see that Amy was hanging from her wrists, as was Nicole. Toshia had somehow been caught by both wrists and one ankle. "Is everyone OK?" Don asked. A chorus of alarmed voices assured him that they were. He couldn't see what the others were doing, but he and Shelonda both tried to bend themselves up to get at the vines wrapped around their ankles. This was easier for the younger, lighter and more flexible Shelonda; Don made an abortive effort at loosening the vines before falling back down. He watched as Shelonda struggled to no avail. As she worked, new vines came down from the branches overhead and wrapped around her wrists. In another moment, she was hoisted upward, so that her head was again above her feet, though she was now spread-eagled, face down, high over the ground. At a loss for any other options, Don bent his knees in turn, so that he began to swing a bit from side to side. Once he started moving, he bent to the side to add momentum. The branches overhead creaked as Don and the vines that bound him moved through the leaves. He was dimly aware that other vines were descending toward himself and his friends, but he concentrated on increasing his arc of motion. Unfortunately, a thick strong vine caught him around the waist and brought him to an abrupt halt. Then, he was pulled upward, so that he was in a more or less upright position. The blood ran out of his head and he felt suddenly dizzy, but as soon as he could Don began to struggle against the vines that held him. He couldn't budge the vine that was wrapped around his midsection, though. Looking around at his companions, Don saw that more vines were moving along their naked limbs. He noted that the vegetative dildos they had noticed earlier seemed to be leading the way. In alarmed fascination, he watched as a thick green phallus pushed itself between Toshia's legs and into her vagina. Though she struggled against the invasion, the bizarre penis was soon up inside her, and then it began to move in and out of her slowly. At the same time, it was apparently expanding and contracting, pulsing visibly as it fucked her. Don saw that similar dildo-tipped vines were now violating Amy and Nicole. Looking to his side, Don could see that Shelonda not only had a vine penetrating her pussy, but that a thinner stalk seemed to have worked its way into her butt. It wasn't long before all the women had stopped struggling against their bounds but were moaning and whimpering in pleasure at what the vines were doing to them. Only Don was so far unmolested by the strange plants, but he couldn't do anything against the strong fibrous tendril wrapped around him. He watched and listened in a weird mixture of horror and excitement as the women began to come under the ministrations of the vines. Helpless to do anything else, Don saw Toshia twisting and trembling as the vine inside her pulsed and moved inside her until she was crying out in orgasmic delirium. Nicole came hard too, followed by Amy. When Shelonda finally climaxed she let out a scream that echoed in the forest, and Don could see that tears ran down her cheeks. The vines did not stop, though, but continued to fuck the women steadily. Before long, Don was witness to another round of loud orgasms. After that, the next set came quicker, and Shelonda wasn't the only one crying. After what seemed to be six or more orgasms, without the vines giving any sign of stopping, all the women were raggedly gasping for mercy. Don pounded on the thick vine that held him in impotent fury. Then, Toshia cried out incoherently. Don could see that the dildo-protuberance inside her was now at its thickest - about four times as thick as it had been when it had entered her. There seemed to be some sort of spasm in the plant's fibers, and then Toshia shouted out. Don watched as a thick, syrupy substance leaked out of Toshia and down her legs. There seemed to be a great deal of the viscous substance, and it kept spilling out of Toshia until it was spilling down onto the leaves below. The other women were now experiencing the same thing, as one by one the viney pricks came up inside them copiously. Gallons of the sappy jizz were shot into his companions and spilled on the forest floor. Don watched as the odd green cocks slowly withdrew from his companions. Each of the women hung from their restraining vines limply, wrung out from their exertions. Slowly, almost gently, the entire party was lowered to the ground, which was now sticky with vine-cum. As soon as he was released, Don sprang over to Toshia. "Are you OK?" he asked. "No," she breathed. "I'm definitely not OK. Let's get the hell out of here!" All of the women had trouble walking, but only Nicole needed to be carried. With the tiny young woman in his arms, Don led the others downhill away from the clearing under the trees. They didn't stop until they found a stream, where the women proceeded to wash each other diligently. Even the usually adventurous and cheerful Amy said that she had not had a good time. Sitting on a rock by the side of the stream, Toshia said, "Being forced to come like that, so many times..." "Not fun," Amy scowled. "And that felt like a fire hose inside me," Nicole said, "when it came." Don was acutely aware of the fact that he had neither suffered nor helped, so he kept his mouth shut. He wanted to talk about how weird it was that such a plant would even exist, but could tell that no one else was in any mood to discuss botany at the moment. "We'll have to be careful where we take our breaks from now on," Shelonda observed. "You can say that again," Toshia agreed, glaring at the trees around them. Chapter 5 Midnight Interlude Toshia sagged against the X-shaped cross, sleeping fitfully and uncomfortably. She was apparently forgotten by her captors, who had obviously feasted and fucked themselves to unconsciousness. Worn out by her struggles, and having given up on the possibility of freeing herself, Toshia had resigned herself to trying to get as much rest as she could in her current situation. Still, all she was able to get were little cat-naps, frustratingly brief. She would be in the middle of a pleasant dream – and any dream that didn't have her tied up in this old ruin of a castle was a pleasant dream – when she would wake up, painfully reminded of the discomfort in her limbs and particularly her shoulders. In one of these waking moments, she thought there was someone there with her in the dark. A motion or a soft footfall betrayed someone nearby. "Hello?" Toshia tried. Her voice came out as a dry croak. She tried to clear her throat, but that only made her cough. Quiet little slaps, the sound of bare feet on the stone floor, hurried away in the dark. Cursing silently to herself, Toshia scowled at the shadows around her. She was sure she could hear someone, somewhere in the castle, moaning in sexual pleasure. Toshia was acutely aware of how terribly horny she was, in spite of her predicament. Since coming to Eros, but before being captured by the warrior women, Toshia hadn't gone more than a few hours without sex. The XYZ made sure she and everyone else was perpetually in the mood. Now, though, denied release, Toshia's libido was on a slow boil. She wondered if... The bare feet, or another pair, were coming back! Toshia could make out a small figure moving from shadow to shadow approaching her. In the pale moonlight that came through the few windows in the hall, she could see that a naked petite, brunette girl was carrying a bucket over to the cross. "Shhh," the girl hissed when she stopped in front of Toshia. She put the bucket down, and then raised a ladle up, tipping delicious cool water into Toshia's mouth. Toshia drank it down eagerly, and then all of the second ladle-full. She whispered, "Thank you!" "I brought some food, too," the girl said. Bending over to undo a small bundle she had brought and laid on the ground, she then brought an apple up and held it so Toshia could take a bite of it. While Toshia chewed, she said, "They say you were with the goats." "Goats? You mean the satyrs?" "I guess so," the girl said, giving Toshia another bite of apple. "The ones with horns, goat legs and big dicks." Toshia chuckled a little, swallowed and said, "Yeah, those are the ones." "They say all they think about is fucking women," the girl said as she continued to feed Toshia. "Yeah," Toshia said around the mouthful of apple, "that's about it." "Can you tell me about them?" "I don't suppose you could untie me first?" Toshia suggested. "Oh, no, I couldn't!" the girl gasped. "The sisters would beat me terribly!" "The 'sisters'?" "You know the women who tied you up," the girl explained. "They call themselves the Sisterhood." Calling the warrior women who ran this castle sisters made them sound like Catholic nuns, and that thought made Toshia chuckle. "I'm only supposed to clean you up, but I brought food and water," she reminded Toshia. "Fine," Toshia nodded. "Keep feeding me that apple and I'll tell you what you want to know." Over the course of that hand-fed supper of what became two apples, Toshia told the girl about her first encounter with the satyrs, and how they chased her, caught her and had their way with her. As the girl pressed her for details, Toshia obliged, and admitted that she had made the most of what was at best a bad situation and at worst rape. Toshia had to admit to herself that, as rough as her treatment by the satyrs was, it was much better than the incident with the trees had been, and that she had found herself having fun, up to a point. The girl, though, wasn't interested in hearing about Toshia's emotional reactions or any ethical considerations. Instead she wanted details about how the satyrs had fucked her, particularly about the times when Toshia had serviced more than one of them at a time. "The first night, there was a lot of that," Toshia admitted. On being pressed, she said, "Yes, in my pussy, my ass and my mouth." Then, "Well, I didn't do much of it before, but I was getting used to it." And, "Usually on my hands and knees, or sitting on one of them." "It sounds like alot of fun!" the girl enthused. She had finished feeding Toshia, had given her another ladleful of water, and was now getting the cloth she had carried the apples in wet in the bucket. "Oh, it wasn't that bad, I guess," Toshia said, as the girl stood on tip-toes to wipe down her bound right arm. The rough, wet cloth felt very good on Toshia's skin. After pausing a moment, Toshia went on, saying, "They never wanted to hurt me really, just fuck me, whether or not I wanted to. I made it better on myself by wanting to, at least once they caught me and for the first few hours." The girl rinsed the cloth and began to wash Toshia's left arm. "I would love to be fucked for hours!" "Well, after that it started to get old," Toshia admitted. She was enjoying the caress of the cloth, and was more than a little turned on by the horny little brunette. "They let me sleep finally. They were kind of sweet about it, for them anyway. The next morning, though, after breakfast, it was more fucking. They just kept at it all day long, with only short breaks." "All at the same time?" the girl asked as she moved the cloth over Toshia's forehead and cheeks. She stood very close as she wiped down Toshia's neck. "Um, not so much," Toshia said. "By then it was mostly one after the other. It was exhausting, and started to get monotonous." "Monotonous?" The girl was lingering over Toshia's breasts. "Uh, boring," Toshia shuddered as the rough cloth moved over her erect and straining nipples. "We don't get to fuck cocks," the girl said as she moved her washcloth down over Toshia's abdomen. She was breathing on Toshia's skin. "The men are just for the sisters. We serving girls have each other and the sisters when they want us. I can't imagine being bored with fucking." As the girl rinsed and rung out the cloth, Toshia said, "Well, let me put it this way, the satyrs weren't exactly good lovers. They were good fucks, sure – amazing stamina and energy! But they weren't ever trying to make sure I was having a good time. Sex is so much better when you're with someone who is interested in your pleasure as much as his or her own." The girl was on her knees now, moving the washcloth over Toshia's legs. She said, "I guess I understand that." "Besides, cocks can be a lot of fun, but after a while, I like to have a woman's touch, if you know what I mean." "Like this?" the girl asked as she ran her fingertips up along the inside of Toshia's thigh and then very lightly over her pussy lips. Toshia shivered, and said, "God yes!" "Shhh!" the girl hissed. "I'm only supposed to clean you up. If we wake someone up, we'll both be in trouble." Then she leaned in and kissed Toshia's exposed pussy. "Tell me what happened then." "Oh, uh, well, they kept me busy, fucking me that day. I was in no shape to try to escape, and I never got a chance anyway. Yes, that feels so good! Don't stop!" The girl stopped licking Toshia's pussy and clit, looked up at her with a face shiny with Toshia's nectar, and said, with a playful grin, "Keep telling me the story then." "Yes, OK." Knowing what the girl wanted to hear, Toshia said, "We all fell asleep for a while, and then, I woke up when I felt one of them fingering me... Yes, like that, only not so nicely." Toshia wished she could hold the girl's head in place, keep her mouth on her, but all she could do to that end was to keep telling her story. "Even though we'd been fucking all day, my pussy was wet, and I wanted to fuck some more. I got up on my knees and he pushed his cock in me and started to fuck me. We weren't trying to be quiet so we were grunting there, and that woke up the other two. They started to play with my tits, which felt very good. Then the one who was fucking me, pulled me up and back, so I was lying back against his chest. God, that feels so good, don't stop! Uh, then one of the others got in front of me... He took his cock and pushed it into my pussy... right in my pussy with the other cock... It felt amazing! They fucked me like that – me between the two hairy goat-men, two cocks inside my pussy... I came so hard... Oh, god! Oh god! Yes, yes!" Toshia clenched her teeth to keep from shouting out. She pulled against her restraints and the cross creaked as she tensed every muscle in her body. Then the orgasm exploded through her body. She twisted and writhed against the wooden frame, as the little girl's tongue and lips pulled her on and on into a flood of fiery release. The girl kept at it, and Toshia came again and again, until she collapsed against the cross, spent. After a few moments, Toshia felt the washcloth wiping up the insides of her thighs, cleaning up her own juices. When she was done, the girl stood up in front of Toshia and asked, "What happened then?" Toshia sighed, "The rest of the night was more of the same, fucking and more fucking. We finally all fell asleep. When I woke up, they were gone. I have no idea what happened, but they were gone. The next thing I knew, before I could even get up off the ground, I was surrounded by the sisters and men who brought me here." "Why don't you do what they ask?" the girl asked. "Well, partly because they didn't ask," Toshia smiled. "You said the satyrs didn't ask." "Yes, but they weren't mean." "I think I understand," the girl nodded. "I'm Toshia, by the way." "I'm Nina." "Thank you, Nina. For everything." "You're welcome," Nina smiled. "I hope they untie you soon." "Me too!" Nina then took her bucket, washcloth, ladle and two apple cores, and disappeared into the shadows. Toshia tried to get some more sleep. Atop the Cliffs Chapter 6 The whole group was quiet and not at all cheerful when they resumed their hike toward what they hoped was the river at the bottom of the valley. The women were all pained from their experience with the sex-vines, and very far from thinking the forest through which they were moving was a nice place for a stroll and the occasional frolic. Don had not been violated in the same manner, but he was acutely aware of their physical and emotional discomfort. Moreover, though he had truly been unable to help in any way, his impotence during the attack (he could think of no better word for it) left him in a dark mood.  When he had convinced Toshia that he was up to leaving the Manor in search of a way home, he had only considered the danger to himself, and then, when the subject came up, to Shelonda and Amy, who were only coming along out of friendly helpfulness and a lust for kicks, respectively. He had not taken seriously the extent to which this course of action might put Toshia herself in danger. Of course, Toshia was her own person, and she was determined to find a way home. Nothing Don could do or say would deter her from that course of action. Neither would he try to do so. He had no right to forbid her anything of the sort. That wasn't what was bothering him. What worried him was the very thought that something bad might happen to her here, and that he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Sure, everyday life was full of random risks and dangers, but somehow you forgot about the possibility that someone you loved might get hit by a drunk driver while walking home from the store. Here, in this strange little adventure, it was now impossible for Don to put the dangers out of his mind. He didn't know if he could handle it if something actually terrible happened to Toshia. He had loved her for years, and even more so now. These thoughts and the mood of the women, kept Don in a subdued, remarkably un-horny mood. When they bedded down for the night – after making sure the area was free of dildo-shaped vegetation of any kind – they set a watch, and nobody started any mischief. It was the first night since arriving in the Manor that Don went to sleep without having sex just beforehand. It helped a bit that he took the first watch, and didn't have to try to fall asleep with still wakeful beautiful women lying next to him. Only after noon on the next day did a spirit of friskiness return. Naturally enough, it was Amy who got things going, spanking Shelonda hard on the ass and then fleeing just long enough to make the other girl exert herself. By the time the others caught up to them, they were making out on the grassy hillside. Nicole joined in the fun, while Don and Toshia looked on, both amused and aroused. That night, things were back to normal, if a bit less boisterous than usual. Don fell asleep with Toshia's head on his chest, while Shelonda took the first watch. The next day, they found themselves descending a steady, rocky slope to a sudden drop. They came to a halt at the top of a cliff face at least 20 meters high, at the bottom of which was a fast flowing, broad river. "Think that's the river we're looking for?" Nicole asked. "Hard to say," Don shrugged. "Well, we can't climb down that," Toshia said. Amy suggested, "We could jump." "That's crazy," Toshia responded a bit sharply. "We'd just hit the water," Amy pointed out. "Yeah, but you could hurt yourself hitting the water, and we don't have any idea how deep the river is," Toshia explained with a genuine smile, apparently regretting her crankiness of a moment ago. "You could break every bone in your pretty body." "Why would we want to get down there anyway?" Shelonda asked. "Exactly," Don nodded. "We need to either go that way, up-river, to find the source, or the other way, to see if this river joins up with another, bigger river. Either way, we don't need to risk breaking our necks climbing or jumping." "Well, which way should we go, then?" Nicole asked. "I think we should go downriver a ways and see if we come to another river, or someone who can give us some more information," Don said. Nobody had any objection to this plan. Neither did they object when he said, "But first let's take a break." In another few minutes they were all naked and Amy was sitting on a big moss covered rock, while Toshia knelt between her legs, licking and sucking at Amy's clit and pussy. Shelonda and Nicole clambered up on the rock on either side of Amy and were taking turns kissing her, each other or Amy's tits. Don stood back for a moment, hard cock in hand, admiring the scene. In front of him, was Toshia's upturned butt and ready pussy, ready for him if he wanted either or both of them. Above that were Toshia's thin, muscular back, Amy's strong legs and abs, and then a confusion of wonderful breasts and sexy, beautiful faces. Don could join in anywhere and be happily welcome. All around them were rocky outcroppings, trees and green underbrush – a beautiful natural garden of sorts – almost Eden-like. Off to the side, only a dozen meters away was the cliff edge. In the other direction, back the way they had come, the hillside was broken at intervals into sloping shelves. On an outcropping upstream and away from the river, so doubly uphill, but with a clear view of the spot where the women were already having so much fun, were two figures wearing black robes with hoods covering their heads. Don saw them first out of the corner of his eye, and then confirmed their presence without looking at them directly. Thinking quickly, Don reached down to caress Toshia's ass. He ran his hand down between her cheeks and trailed his fingers over her dewy outer lips. He bent down over her back as he pushed two fingers gently up inside Toshia's very wet pussy. He whispered to her, "Don't stop what you're doing. There are a couple of Watchers watching us. I'm going to take Shelonda and try to sneak up on them. Keep up the show." "Uh-hum!" Toshia managed and nodded a little. Don stood up and moved around to Shelonda, who was on the side of the rock furthest from the Watchers. Trying not to be conspicuous, he leaned over and kissed one of the girl's beautiful breasts, catching her nipple in his mouth. While he suckled at her luscious tit, Don parted her legs and pulled her a bit toward him. Happy to cooperate, Shelonda scooted forward a bit, allowing Don access to her pussy. Though he could easily fuck her this way, he wanted to move her further from the group, so that's what he did, coaxing her away from Amy and Nicole. Soon, Don and Shelonda were fucking against the side of the rock, away from the Watchers. Shelonda had her arms around Don's neck and her beautiful, full breasts against his chest as he screwed her vigorously. While he did this, he also whispered to her what he had in mind. When the two of them dropped to the ground next to the rock, they thought it must seem to the Watchers that they were merely continuing their fucking, but unfortunately out of sight. Don was pleasantly surprised that Shelonda immediately dropped out of horny sex kitten mode and stealthily followed his lead. Don had left his staff, along with his other things, on the wrong side of the rock, near where Toshia was still going down on Amy, but Shelonda was able to pick hers up off the ground near where they had dropped out of sight. Don lead the way, first toward the river, and then up hill, staying screened behind shrubbery as they moved quickly and quietly, hunched over. When Don was sure they were well out of the view of Watchers, Don risked a dash across an open area and a quick clamber up a steep rise to put them behind and above the position where he had seen the Watchers. He slowed down and crept forward, hoping to catch the black-robed voyeurs unawares. They could hear the sound of Amy coming loudly, as well as some sound from Nicole. Don suspected Toshia had found a way to encourage them to ham it up a bit. Unfortunately, though, when he peered around the trunk of tree to the place where the Watchers had been, they were nowhere to be seen. "Damn!" Don hissed. He looked around carefully through the trees and undergrowth, but couldn't see any sign of the black robes. "Do you think they heard or saw us?" Shelonda asked as they stood up and walked out to the little clearing where the Watchers had been standing. "They must have," Don shrugged frowning. "I thought we did a good job, though." "I smell shampoo," Shelonda said. "Huh, yeah, so do I," Don nodded, "and that looks like a shoe print there in the dirt." Just then, though, a loud shout made Don and Shelonda look toward the rock where they'd left their friends. Apparently, while Don and Shelonda had been sneaking up on the Watchers, a bunch of men had been sneaking up on Toshia, Nicole and Amy. One of the men had come up behind Toshia, caught her from around the waist and pulled her up and away from between Amy's legs. Toshia, who was the one who had given the initial shout, was kicking and struggling in the grasp of the man who held her, while a second man tried to close in on her from the front. Yet another man had already managed to get between Amy's legs and was shoving them roughly apart. Another man was rudely pulling Nicole from off the rock, where she had been kneeling over Amy's face. Two other men were on the rock, either helping with Nicole, or trying to hold Amy down – it wasn't clear from where Don and Shelonda were. All of these observations were made in the second it took for Don to spring into action, jumping down from the rocky shelf, and running down toward the women and the men. Shelonda followed close on his heels. While he pelted down the slope, Don noticed that all of the men had long, unkempt hair and seemed to be quite dirty in general. They seem to have brought crude clubs with them, but most of them had dropped them to the ground when they had jumped on the women. The one trying to get close to Toshia seemed to be wielding some kind of a knife, which made him a priority. Unless there were more men in hiding, there were only six of them. This meant that, while they outnumbered the women they had seen by the rock two-to-one, they had brought too few guys to actually pull off this gang rape or abduction. Shelonda, who was on that side of Don anyway, made for the guys on and next to the rock, leaving Don with Amy's would be rapist and the two after Toshia. Intent on enjoying the fruit of their surprise attack, the men didn't notice as Shelonda and Don closed in on them. The guy between Amy's legs glanced to the side just in time to see the flat of Don's hand coming in fast and hard. Don had never hit someone with full, multiple-board-breaking force before, but he wasn't surprised to see the man's head snapping around with savage force. As the man slumped to the side, Don realized that he might have killed him, but was frankly past caring. In the moment that he took to scoop up the staff he had left on the grass earlier, Don saw that Shelonda was effectively delivering a beating to the men who had been closest to her on the rock. Nicole was now able to more effectively fight back against the one guy who continued to wrestle with her. Now that Amy was free, she would be able to join in the fight. With one-to-one odds and Shelonda and her staff involved in the fight by and on the rock, Don was confident he could focus his attention on Toshia and her two attackers. In her struggle to free herself and to keep the second man from getting close to her, Toshia had forced the group of three back until they were perilously close to the cliff top. She had her right hand up over her shoulder with a tight grip on a handful of hair of the man behind her. With her left arm she was alternately elbowing that man in the ribs, and fending off his right arm – the one that wasn't locked around her waist. Any time the guy in front of her with the knife got too close, she would kick out violently with her bare feet. Don knew she was in grave danger of getting badly cut, if she didn't back herself off the cliff first. Don was directly behind the guy with the knife and prepared to bring him down with a single, decisive staff blow. Unfortunately, the man behind Toshia saw Don and yelled, "Behind you, Burt!" Burt twisted around and managed to avoid the slicing blow that would have split his head open. The staff in Don's hands spun around and came down again at whip-crack speed, and again Burt was able to just barely get out of the way. This time, though, Don brought the end of the staff sharply to the side, hitting Burt hard in the cheek and mouth. Don was satisfied to note blood running down Burt's cheek and chin. Pressing the advantage, Don snapped the other end of the staff around to smack into Burt's gut, which caused Burt to exhale sharply and nearly double over. Don was close enough to get hold of Burt's knife arm, and was about to finish the guy off, when, at that very moment, he saw that Toshia had managed to twist herself free of her attacker's clasp. Unfortunately, doing so cost her balance at the lip of the cliff. Her arms flailed a bit, she managed to call, "Don!" and then she fell. Don would have followed her over without any hesitation, if Burt hadn't chosen that instant to bring his knee up into Don's groin. As Don gritted his teeth against the explosion of pain, he saw Burt's knife arcing down toward his chest. Everything seemed to be moving in a kind of slow motion; adrenaline and years of martial arts training served to ramp up Don's perception and reaction time. Ignoring the pain in his crotch, Don let go of his staff, caught hold of Burt's wrist and, calmly stepping out of the way, he let Burt's arm continue down and then pulled it around, slipping his own arm under Burt's bicep and behind his back. One good jerk upward, accompanied by a particularly nasty, wet pop, served to dislocate Burt's arm at the shoulder. Don was vaguely aware that Burt was crying out in pain, but he was already focused on the fact that Burt's friend, who had managed to avoid falling over the edge of the cliff, was charging at him. There was a flurry of motion as Don twisted to the side and Burt's friend crashed past him, only to fall to his knees. The hilt of Burt's knife was sticking out of the left side of the man's ribcage, blood welling up around it. Don ignored the critically wounded man, and took a second to check on the others. One of the men was lying sprawled against the big rock, probably unconscious, and the other two were running away as fast as they could. Nicole had turned to look in Don's direction and saw one collapsed man, another with a knife sticking out of his chest, and the third sobbing on the ground at Don's feet while clutching at his shoulder. "My god, Don!" she managed. As if he agreed with Nicole's surprise, Burt cried out, "We were only trying to have some fun!" "With a knife?" Don scowled, and then added, "I don't have time for this." He kicked out hard and fast with his heel, snapping Burt's head to the side with stark finality. Without looking down, or back at the girls, Don hurried over to the cliff edge and looked down, searching for any sign of Toshia. He heard the others come up and join him. They all agreed they couldn't see Toshia, either clinging to the cliff face anywhere or in the river. Don scowled, his mind strangely calm and clear. "Get your things and Toshia's, quickly. We have to find a way down there fast." In another minute, the four of them were hurrying along the cliff top, moving downriver, looking for a way down. Chapter 7 The Easy Way; Toshia is thrown to the men. It was late in the morning when a pair of serving girls and four sisters came into the hall of castle where Toshia hung from the big X. "Get her down from there," one of the sisters commanded. The two girls hurried to comply. Toshia was pretty sure the small brunette was Nina, but the little girl avoided making any eye contact with her. They undid her ankles first, and Toshia breathed a ragged sigh of relief as she supported her weight on the ground for the first time in almost 24 hours. Pushing up, she relieved some of the strain on her shoulders. While the two girls worked to untie Toshia's wrists, the warriors moved a bit closer and seemed tensed in case Toshia should make an escape attempt. She realized how ridiculous their concern was when her right wrist was released and her arm fell to her side, a numb, useless appendage. Toshia cried out as her shoulder complained against suddenly moving after so long in the same position. When the other wrist was freed, Toshia's whole body followed the downward motion of her arm, collapsing in a pile on the stone floor. "Get her some food and water," the same woman ordered, and then walked away, leaving the other three guards to watch over Toshia and the serving girls. One of the girls ran off, while the one who was almost certainly Nina caressed Toshia's forehead with a moist cloth. Toshia groaned a bit as she worked to move her arms. Already, her hands were alive with a million pinpricks as the circulation returned to its normal levels. Probably-Nina began to gently massage Toshia's shoulders and upper arms. Then the other girl, a somewhat plain blonde girl with pendulous breasts and wide hips, returned with a flagon of water and three apples. The flagon was tipped up so Toshia could down several mouthfuls, and then the first apple was held for her, much as Nina done during the night. Toshia felt the rejuvenating effects of the water and fruit almost immediately. She fed herself the second apple, and drank down the rest of the flagon's contents. Her body seemed to have suffered no real damage from being tied to that damn cross. Though she could use a good night's sleep on a horizontal surface, Toshia felt reinvigorated. Naturally, given the XYZ, this meant that her sex drive was again kicking into gear. However, her feistiness was, if anything, only encouraged by the treatment she'd received by the warrior women. When the blonde offered her the third apple, Toshia smiled at her and said, "No thanks. You have it. I appreciate the help, both of you." The blonde smiled and nodded her head, and Toshia was sure she felt the briefest kiss on her shoulder from almost certainly Nina. The girls gathered up the apple cores, the empty flagon and the wet cloth, and hurried away. As if on cue, a half dozen of the so-called sisters came into the hall. Leading the way was the haughty Daphne, today wearing a shear red robe that hung from her strong shoulders, and parted down the front to show her cleavage, bare abs and the flowing swatch of gold-yellow fabric that hung from a belt around her waist to cover her privates. Toshia thought she looked like an adolescent boy's fantasy, something ripped off the cover of a Conan paperback or something. Too bad she's such a bitch, Toshia thought. Behind and to Daphne's right was also the blonde Viking woman, Brigit. Like the other warriors, Brigit was wearing the patched-together armor Toshia had seen the day before. The party of women surrounded Toshia. One of them, a big brunette with brown hair cut short, said, "Well, she smells better today." Toshia thought she recognized this woman's voice as that of Wanda, who liked a good butt fucking, but not from a "goat". "Yes, but has her attitude improved?" Daphne wondered. She looked down at Toshia, who was still crouching on the stone floor, with a raised eyebrow and a cold-disinterested expression. "Well, pup, are you going to behave yourself and do as you're told?" Toshia looked around at the armed and armored women, momentarily wondering which one was most likely to hit her if she got out of line. Toshia had been expecting something like this sort of question, and had actually not decided on which response she'd actually give. Finally, she went with, "That depends; are you going to tell me to go on my merry way?" Toshia expected to be hit, but wasn't. Perhaps it was the fact that Daphne actually smiled that kept the others from punishing her. Still, that particular smile was not one Toshia liked seeing. Daphne's smile was the sort that went along with a villain saying, "I was hoping you'd say that." Daphne shook her head and said, "Have no doubt about it, pup, you're not going anywhere. Your pale ass belongs to us now. You'll do whatever we tell you to and you'll do it with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. If I tell you to lick out Wanda's ass, you'll get in there and bury your face between her cheeks and say 'Yum!'" "Why is everyone talking about my ass lately?" Wanda asked, confirming Toshia's guess about her identity. Daphne ignored Wanda, though, and continued addressing Toshia, saying, "The only question is whether you're going to play along like a good little pet, or make us go to all the trouble of breaking you. Playing along is the smart thing, and certainly easiest for all of us. Plus, I'm sure Wanda's ass could use the cleaning. Don't get me wrong, breaking you will be fun too – for us. And be quite confident that we will break you; we've got all the time in the world. Honestly, just between you and me, I hope you're going to keep resisting." Toshia didn't even pause to consider her options, but said, "You know, Daphne, I'd really rather lick Wanda's ass than keep listening to you talk." This time she was smacked, and hard, by someone on her right. Catching herself as she slumped to the left, Toshia heard Wanda saying, "Wait, does that mean she's going to behave?" By way of reply, Daphne ordered, "Give her to the men." Abruptly Toshia was hauled up to her feet, by sisters on either side of her with firm grasps on her upper arms. They compelled her off to the side of the hall, where they led her down a short corridor that in turn led to a small, open courtyard. There was a big section of the courtyard's floor that was missing, and a number of chairs were arranged around this big hole. Daphne led the way, circling around the hole and taking a seat on what looked like the most comfortable chair. Toshia was led to the edge of the hole. Looking down, she saw a big chamber, the center of which, directly underneath her, was taken up by what looked like a very large mattress, covered with a dark red sheet. Brigit came up next to the sister who held Toshia's right arm, and said, "Our men have an easy life, really. They do our manual labor, of course, but there isn't much of that. Now and then we use them as playthings, but not very often. For one thing, they're men, and for another, dangling the possibility of sex in front of them, without giving it to them, serves to keep them well-behaved. So, they're pretty much always in a state of frustration, and they never ever get to just have their way with a woman." Brigit paused and smiled at Toshia, with what seemed to be actual friendly amusement. "Have fun." Then Toshia was shoved forward out into space. Fortunately, the mattress was soft enough to absorb her fall without hurting her. Still, she was left sprawling ungracefully on the red fabric, while above her the women laughed and clapped. Toshia noticed first that the sheet beneath her was not unpleasantly rough, and then that the mattress was thick enough keep her from feeling the hard ground underneath. These were good things, if she correctly understood what was in store for her. Looking around, she saw that three sides of the room, which only extended a small distance from the edges of the mattress, had only bars for walls. The room was, in effect, a large cage, or cell. There was one gate, manned by two particularly brawny sisters. On the other side of the bars was a crowd of naked men, all trying to get a good look at Toshia. The fourth wall was solid, and covered by an ancient mirror, pockmarked and cracked. Toshia could see herself in the surface, though not exactly clearly. Looking up, Toshia saw that Daphne and all her friends were gathered around watching. Daphne raised her hand, which seemed to command a measure of silence from the crowd. When everyone was quiet, she called down into the cell, saying, "Let's start her off with five." This caused both a round of applause from above and some commotion below, on the other side of the bars, as the men jostled for position. Toshia thought that, as Daphne had indirectly suggested, there were two ways to go with this, the easy way and the hard way. The hard way included putting up a fight. Toshia couldn't see any up-side to that approach. In fact, she thought this was what Daphne expected from her, and it would amuse the bitch no end to see Toshia gang raped for the entertainment of the Sisterhood. On the other hand, the easy way would certainly thwart Daphne's intentions – though it might only piss her off all the more. In addition, it had now been days since Toshia had been with the satyrs, and she had had only one orgasm in that time. The five men were now coming into the room with her. They were all naked and in good shape. Two of them were particularly muscular, and two were particularly cute. Their cocks were all semi-hard already, energized by the XYZ in their systems and the prospect of sex with her. Toshia noticed that none of them were graced with the kind of monster pricks she'd had with the Player or Igor, though the biggest guy, a dark-skinned Adonis with a shaved head, had one that was about the size of the Lord's, if his current state was a good indicator. Yes, Toshia thought to herself, the easy way has much to be said for it. To be continued. By BradentonLarry for Literotica

#92 We are back besties with part 2 of a two-part episode series on 10 things people don't tell you about becoming an adult!! In this episode we get into the question of whether patience is a virtue, manifesting your dreams, feeling like you have no clue what you're doing in life, making decisions for yourself and not for others, what to do if you find life monotonous and whether ‘perfect timing' exists. Find me on Instagram @wonderfullyzoeFind me on TikTok @wonderfullyzoeExplore the website unfreezepod.com

By BradentonLarry - Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.Chapter 4Strange Vegetation: Don & the girls are taken by surprise.Don slowly woke up from his very deep sleep. He felt a warm, soft feminine body pressed against his own. He didn’t have to compare these sensations with those from the first time he’d awoken in the Manor to know that Toshia was in his arms. Somehow he just knew it was her. He smiled to himself, and only then started to remember the night before, with the rite, Toshia’s sexual offering to the guardian of the portal, and his own deliriously erotic and ultimately painful encounter with the crone. While he reviewed these events, Don became aware, without looking around or even opening his eyes, that he was on the pillows in the witches’ tent, and that quite a few other bodies were slumbering around him.Toshia shifted her weight a little in his arms, and he kissed the top of her head. She squeezed his arm, and pushed back against him a bit. Smiling, he hugged her, and kissed her tousled hair again. They lay spooned together like this for several moments, before she wriggled around in his arms to face him. They shared a sleepy smile, and then she buried her face in his chest. Don gently ran his hand over her hair, knowing that he was now wide awake, but not wanting to disturb her if she needed more sleep.After several minutes, though, Toshia looked up at him and asked, “What did you find out last night?”“Not an awful lot,” Don answered quietly. “She said we’re looking for ‘the Sage of the Tower.’ We’re supposed to go down into the valley and follow the river there to its source, where we’ll find the Tower.”“Hmm,” Toshia murmured thoughtfully with a frown and her eyes still closed.“Are you alright?” Don asked.“Hm?” She looked at him and saw the concern in his eyes, and said, “Yes, I’m alright. I feel like I got fucked enough for a year, but I’m definitely alright. I didn’t know I could have that many orgasms.”“Did the guardian come?”Toshia paused for a moment, then said, “That was amazing! Very strange, but amazing. It felt like he was coming all through my body. It kind of hurt, but maybe that’s just because it was so intense. I think that’s when I finally passed out. Then I woke up here with you. Why did you ask about that?”“Something the crone said,” Don shrugged.“And how was that?”Don told her all about the encounter with the strange woman.“So, a weird night all around, eh?” she smiled.“Well, I don’t know if you noticed, but everyone was else was busy having an orgy while we were distracted.”“I thought something like that was going on, but yeah, I was distracted.”“I have to admit, it was extremely erotic watching you on that altar.”“Oh really?” she smirked mischievously at him. “Maybe next time a dark demon needs sexing up I’ll watch you.”Don chuckled and said, “Fair enough.”“You know, now that I’m thinking about it, it seems pretty rude that they had an orgy without us.”“I thought you said you got fucked enough to last a year,” Don said wryly.“Well, I was probably exaggerating a little, but it’s the principle of the thing, you know? How about you? It sounds like the crone pretty much drained you.”“Yeah,” he admitted, “but here – well, obviously, I’m not exactly out of commission.”“Yes, I had noticed that,” Toshia smiled, giving his erection a squeeze and a pull. For the past several minutes she had been idly toying with him while they talked.Don leaned in and kissed her. Soon, they were slowly making love amongst the sleeping witches and the three girls from the Manor. Though they were quiet, and not at all energetic, several drowsy people noticed what they were up to, and before long wakeful friskiness was spreading through the big tent and a lazy orgy had broken out.Only hours later, after the sex had finally run its course, again, did the company get around to washing up and eating. Then, after Cassandra had given them each a large flask of water and a pouch of fruit, both of which could be slung over their shoulders, the five travelers from the Manor finally left the clearing at the top of the hill. Following the path into the valley that Cassandra pointed out, they began to work their way downhill.Eventually, they came to the foot of the hill, and Amy was the one who said, “Well, there’s no river here.”“Well, maybe this is one big valley,” Don offered.“I don’t understand,” Shelonda admitted.“Maybe all these hills all gradually descend to a river, and then on the other side they climb back up.”“So, this could take a while, eh?” Amy frowned.“All the more reason to keep going,” Toshia smiled and led the way up the next hill.As they went, they tried to keep moving in the same general direction. Don insisted that he usually had a very good sense of direction, but pointed out that when all else failed they just needed to keep going for the lowest point, and that ought to work.It had been about noon when they had left the witches, and, perhaps sated by all the fun of the morning and the night before, it was late in the afternoon before anyone mentioned sex. And then the subject came up in a fairly indirect manner, considering how comfortable they were all with each other.They had come into a stand of trees on a gentle slope. The trees were wide spaced, so that there was a nice clearing underneath the green canopy of leaves. The trees were hung with thick green vines of some sort that ran down and through the thick mat of soft leaves that covered the forest floor. The woods seemed particularly hushed and still here, Don thought.Then Nicole giggled, “That looks like a dildo.”“What?” Amy asked with interest, and then, after Nicole pointed, she said, “Hey, you’re right. And there’s another one.”Shelonda had stopped and was looking with the other girls at a kind of outgrowth on the sides of one of the vines. Taking a closer look, Don had to admit that they were right; the vines did seem to have what looked like natural dildos of different sizes and slightly different shapes growing out of them at intervals.“That’s pretty weird,” Toshia admitted. She had been in the lead, but had come back to see what all the fuss was about.“Still, I’d prefer the real thing,” Amy grinned. Pulling her tank top up over her head, exposing her full breasts, she sauntered over to Don and said, “What do you say, Professor? Can you help a girl out?”Don chuckled but looked to Toshia. He knew they were trying to make time toward the river, and didn’t want to slow things down if the others weren’t ready for a break. However, Toshia was merely watching with a smile, as Amy dropped to her knees in front of Don and reached up under his kilt for his organ, which was already thick in anticipation.“Sex break!” Nicole shouted, laughing, as she tore off her own top and then grabbed for Shelonda. Don watched as the two dark-skinned girls fell into the leaves while they stripped each other’s clothes off.In front of him, Amy had pushed his kilt up and was already working her warm, wet mouth up and down on his shaft, which was responding by quickly hardening for her. Don dropped his staff, water flask and pouch on the ground and pulled his t-shirt off, and then undid his kilt, letting both items fall on the leaves. Now naked, he concentrated on the wonderful sensations of Amy’s tongue and lips on his cock. He held her head in his hands as he fucked slowly in and out of her mouth.Looking up momentarily, Don saw that Nicole and Shelonda had already gotten themselves into a 69, and that Toshia was standing over them watching, with her left hand up under her skirt and her right clutching at right breast. He looked back down, then, to watch Amy’s pretty face as she sucked enthusiastically on him. She looked up at him with unmistakable pleasure glittering in her eyes.Out of the corner of his eye, Don noticed that Toshia was undressing and had knelt down next to the other two girls, though she was now watching Don and Amy.Remembering some of the other things Toshia had enjoyed watching, he bent down and said to Amy, “Get on your hands and knees for me.”“Fun!” Amy said with a grin as she let go of his cock and turned around in the leaves. She bent over and presented her behind. Kneeling, Don grinned over at Toshia, and pushed Amy’s skirt out of the way. Without any preliminaries, he took the fat head of his cock, wet with Amy’s saliva, and pushed it into her very hot and willing pussy. Taking Amy’s waist in his hands, he immediately set to fucking in and out of her vigorously.Amy grunted happily and shoved back against his thrusts. Toshia watched for a few moments with a smile on her face and her hand busy between her legs, but then finally bent down to run her hand over Nicole’s back. Soon, she was laying with the other two girls in a happy confusion of legs and arms, pussies and tits, laughing, wet mouths and playful fingers.With a happy grin on his face, Don concentrated on giving Amy a proper fucking. He admired the view of her upturned backside and his thick cock-shaft sliding in and out of her, as well as her strong back and her strawberry blonde hair all messed up. He felt her fingers reaching back to play with herself as he fucked her, and it wasn’t long before she was gasping out in a long, loud orgasm.Don thought he must still be depleted after his night with the crone, and from the single orgasm he’d had earlier with Toshia, because he could tell he was nowhere near ready to come. He leaned over Amy’s back, kissed her shoulder, and said, “Why don’t we go over and join the others?”“Good idea, Professor,” she breathed.The other three welcomed them cheerfully, and it wasn’t long before Don was looking down into Nicole’s face as he slowly but firmly screwed her, while Toshia was in the middle of a little daisy chain – hungrily going down on Amy, while Shelonda pleasured Toshia with her own lips and tongue. Aside from the rustling of leaves that they were all causing, they were all making enthusiastic sounds of pleasure and carnal joy. As a result, nobody noticed the additional rustling as a number of things moved slowly through the leaves toward and around them.Don was holding Nicole’s wrists up over her head (which he had learned really turned her on) and felt some of the vines under the leaves brushing against his knuckles. He was also dimly aware that something had gotten wrapped around his ankles, but he paid it no mind. Don was too intent on fucking Nicole’s sweet, tight pussy to worry about getting tangled in the undergrowth. Only when he felt something gripping his ankles tightly and pulling did he look around and say, “What the fuck?”As if on signal, he was hauled back, out of Nicole’s delicious embrace, and up into the air, where he dangled, swinging back and forth. At the same time, there were shrieks from the girls. Don twisted around and craned his neck. It seemed that they had all been ensnared by vines and hauled up into the air. Off to his right, Don could see Shelonda who was also hanging upside down. By struggling, he could see that Amy was hanging from her wrists, as was Nicole. Toshia had somehow been caught by both wrists and one ankle.“Is everyone OK?” Don asked. A chorus of alarmed voices assured him that they were. He couldn’t see what the others were doing, but he and Shelonda both tried to bend themselves up to get at the vines wrapped around their ankles. This was easier for the younger, lighter and more flexible Shelonda; Don made an abortive effort at loosening the vines before falling back down. He watched as Shelonda struggled to no avail. As she worked, new vines came down from the branches overhead and wrapped around her wrists. In another moment, she was hoisted upward, so that her head was again above her feet, though she was now spread-eagled, face down, high over the ground.At a loss for any other options, Don bent his knees in turn, so that he began to swing a bit from side to side. Once he started moving, he bent to the side to add momentum. The branches overhead creaked as Don and the vines that bound him moved through the leaves. He was dimly aware that other vines were descending toward himself and his friends, but he concentrated on increasing his arc of motion. Unfortunately, a thick strong vine caught him around the waist and brought him to an abrupt halt. Then, he was pulled upward, so that he was in a more or less upright position. The blood ran out of his head and he felt suddenly dizzy, but as soon as he could Don began to struggle against the vines that held him. He couldn’t budge the vine that was wrapped around his midsection, though.Looking around at his companions, Don saw that more vines were moving along their naked limbs. He noted that the vegetative dildos they had noticed earlier seemed to be leading the way. In alarmed fascination, he watched as a thick green phallus pushed itself between Toshia’s legs and into her vagina. Though she struggled against the invasion, the bizarre penis was soon up inside her, and then it began to move in and out of her slowly. At the same time, it was apparently expanding and contracting, pulsing visibly as it fucked her.Don saw that similar dildo-tipped vines were now violating Amy and Nicole. Looking to his side, Don could see that Shelonda not only had a vine penetrating her pussy, but that a thinner stalk seemed to have worked its way into her butt. It wasn’t long before all the women had stopped struggling against their bounds but were moaning and whimpering in pleasure at what the vines were doing to them. Only Don was so far unmolested by the strange plants, but he couldn’t do anything against the strong fibrous tendril wrapped around him.He watched and listened in a weird mixture of horror and excitement as the women began to come under the ministrations of the vines. Helpless to do anything else, Don saw Toshia twisting and trembling as the vine inside her pulsed and moved inside her until she was crying out in orgasmic delirium. Nicole came hard too, followed by Amy. When Shelonda finally climaxed she let out a scream that echoed in the forest, and Don could see that tears ran down her cheeks.The vines did not stop, though, but continued to fuck the women steadily. Before long, Don was witness to another round of loud orgasms. After that, the next set came quicker, and Shelonda wasn’t the only one crying. After what seemed to be six or more orgasms, without the vines giving any sign of stopping, all the women were raggedly gasping for mercy. Don pounded on the thick vine that held him in impotent fury. Then, Toshia cried out incoherently. Don could see that the dildo-protuberance inside her was now at its thickest - about four times as thick as it had been when it had entered her. There seemed to be some sort of spasm in the plant’s fibers, and then Toshia shouted out. Don watched as a thick, syrupy substance leaked out of Toshia and down her legs. There seemed to be a great deal of the viscous substance, and it kept spilling out of Toshia until it was spilling down onto the leaves below.The other women were now experiencing the same thing, as one by one the viney pricks came up inside them copiously. Gallons of the sappy jizz were shot into his companions and spilled on the forest floor.Don watched as the odd green cocks slowly withdrew from his companions. Each of the women hung from their restraining vines limply, wrung out from their exertions. Slowly, almost gently, the entire party was lowered to the ground, which was now sticky with vine-cum. As soon as he was released, Don sprang over to Toshia.“Are you OK?” he asked.“No,” she breathed. “I’m definitely not OK. Let’s get the hell out of here!”All of the women had trouble walking, but only Nicole needed to be carried. With the tiny young woman in his arms, Don led the others downhill away from the clearing under the trees. They didn’t stop until they found a stream, where the women proceeded to wash each other diligently. Even the usually adventurous and cheerful Amy said that she had not had a good time.Sitting on a rock by the side of the stream, Toshia said, “Being forced to come like that, so many times…”“Not fun,” Amy scowled.“And that felt like a fire hose inside me,” Nicole said, “when it came.”Don was acutely aware of the fact that he had neither suffered nor helped, so he kept his mouth shut. He wanted to talk about how weird it was that such a plant would even exist, but could tell that no one else was in any mood to discuss botany at the moment.“We’ll have to be careful where we take our breaks from now on,” Shelonda observed.“You can say that again,” Toshia agreed, glaring at the trees around them.Chapter 5Midnight InterludeToshia sagged against the X-shaped cross, sleeping fitfully and uncomfortably. She was apparently forgotten by her captors, who had obviously feasted and fucked themselves to unconsciousness. Worn out by her struggles, and having given up on the possibility of freeing herself, Toshia had resigned herself to trying to get as much rest as she could in her current situation. Still, all she was able to get were little cat-naps, frustratingly brief. She would be in the middle of a pleasant dream – and any dream that didn’t have her tied up in this old ruin of a castle was a pleasant dream – when she would wake up, painfully reminded of the discomfort in her limbs and particularly her shoulders.In one of these waking moments, she thought there was someone there with her in the dark. A motion or a soft footfall betrayed someone nearby.“Hello?” Toshia tried. Her voice came out as a dry croak. She tried to clear her throat, but that only made her cough.Quiet little slaps, the sound of bare feet on the stone floor, hurried away in the dark. Cursing silently to herself, Toshia scowled at the shadows around her. She was sure she could hear someone, somewhere in the castle, moaning in sexual pleasure. Toshia was acutely aware of how terribly horny she was, in spite of her predicament. Since coming to Eros, but before being captured by the warrior women, Toshia hadn’t gone more than a few hours without sex. The XYZ made sure she and everyone else was perpetually in the mood. Now, though, denied release, Toshia’s libido was on a slow boil. She wondered if…The bare feet, or another pair, were coming back! Toshia could make out a small figure moving from shadow to shadow approaching her. In the pale moonlight that came through the few windows in the hall, she could see that a naked petite, brunette girl was carrying a bucket over to the cross.“Shhh,” the girl hissed when she stopped in front of Toshia. She put the bucket down, and then raised a ladle up, tipping delicious cool water into Toshia’s mouth.Toshia drank it down eagerly, and then all of the second ladle-full. She whispered, “Thank you!”“I brought some food, too,” the girl said. Bending over to undo a small bundle she had brought and laid on the ground, she then brought an apple up and held it so Toshia could take a bite of it. While Toshia chewed, she said, “They say you were with the goats.”“Goats? You mean the satyrs?”“I guess so,” the girl said, giving Toshia another bite of apple. “The ones with horns, goat legs and big dicks.”Toshia chuckled a little, swallowed and said, “Yeah, those are the ones.”“They say all they think about is fucking women,” the girl said as she continued to feed Toshia.“Yeah,” Toshia said around the mouthful of apple, “that’s about it.”“Can you tell me about them?”“I don’t suppose you could untie me first?” Toshia suggested.“Oh, no, I couldn’t!” the girl gasped. “The sisters would beat me terribly!”“The 'sisters’?”“You know the women who tied you up,” the girl explained. “They call themselves the Sisterhood.”Calling the warrior women who ran this castle sisters made them sound like Catholic nuns, and that thought made Toshia chuckle.“I’m only supposed to clean you up, but I brought food and water,” she reminded Toshia.“Fine,” Toshia nodded. “Keep feeding me that apple and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”Over the course of that hand-fed supper of what became two apples, Toshia told the girl about her first encounter with the satyrs, and how they chased her, caught her and had their way with her. As the girl pressed her for details, Toshia obliged, and admitted that she had made the most of what was at best a bad situation and at worst rape. Toshia had to admit to herself that, as rough as her treatment by the satyrs was, it was much better than the incident with the trees had been, and that she had found herself having fun, up to a point. The girl, though, wasn’t interested in hearing about Toshia’s emotional reactions or any ethical considerations. Instead she wanted details about how the satyrs had fucked her, particularly about the times when Toshia had serviced more than one of them at a time.“The first night, there was a lot of that,” Toshia admitted. On being pressed, she said, “Yes, in my pussy, my ass and my mouth.” Then, “Well, I didn’t do much of it before, but I was getting used to it.” And, “Usually on my hands and knees, or sitting on one of them.”“It sounds like alot of fun!” the girl enthused. She had finished feeding Toshia, had given her another ladleful of water, and was now getting the cloth she had carried the apples in wet in the bucket.“Oh, it wasn’t that bad, I guess,” Toshia said, as the girl stood on tip-toes to wipe down her bound right arm. The rough, wet cloth felt very good on Toshia’s skin. After pausing a moment, Toshia went on, saying, “They never wanted to hurt me really, just fuck me, whether or not I wanted to. I made it better on myself by wanting to, at least once they caught me and for the first few hours.”The girl rinsed the cloth and began to wash Toshia’s left arm. “I would love to be fucked for hours!”“Well, after that it started to get old,” Toshia admitted. She was enjoying the caress of the cloth, and was more than a little turned on by the horny little brunette. “They let me sleep finally. They were kind of sweet about it, for them anyway. The next morning, though, after breakfast, it was more fucking. They just kept at it all day long, with only short breaks.”“All at the same time?” the girl asked as she moved the cloth over Toshia’s forehead and cheeks. She stood very close as she wiped down Toshia’s neck.“Um, not so much,” Toshia said. “By then it was mostly one after the other. It was exhausting, and started to get monotonous.”“Monotonous?” The girl was lingering over Toshia’s breasts.“Uh, boring,” Toshia shuddered as the rough cloth moved over her erect and straining nipples.“We don’t get to fuck cocks,” the girl said as she moved her washcloth down over Toshia’s abdomen. She was breathing on Toshia’s skin. “The men are just for the sisters. We serving girls have each other and the sisters when they want us. I can’t imagine being bored with fucking.”As the girl rinsed and rung out the cloth, Toshia said, “Well, let me put it this way, the satyrs weren’t exactly good lovers. They were good fucks, sure – amazing stamina and energy! But they weren’t ever trying to make sure I was having a good time. Sex is so much better when you’re with someone who is interested in your pleasure as much as his or her own.”The girl was on her knees now, moving the washcloth over Toshia’s legs. She said, “I guess I understand that.”“Besides, cocks can be a lot of fun, but after a while, I like to have a woman’s touch, if you know what I mean.”“Like this?” the girl asked as she ran her fingertips up along the inside of Toshia’s thigh and then very lightly over her pussy lips.Toshia shivered, and said, “God yes!”“Shhh!” the girl hissed. “I’m only supposed to clean you up. If we wake someone up, we’ll both be in trouble.” Then she leaned in and kissed Toshia’s exposed pussy. “Tell me what happened then.”“Oh, uh, well, they kept me busy, fucking me that day. I was in no shape to try to escape, and I never got a chance anyway. Yes, that feels so good! Don’t stop!”The girl stopped licking Toshia’s pussy and clit, looked up at her with a face shiny with Toshia’s nectar, and said, with a playful grin, “Keep telling me the story then.”“Yes, OK.” Knowing what the girl wanted to hear, Toshia said, “We all fell asleep for a while, and then, I woke up when I felt one of them fingering me… Yes, like that, only not so nicely.” Toshia wished she could hold the girl’s head in place, keep her mouth on her, but all she could do to that end was to keep telling her story. “Even though we’d been fucking all day, my pussy was wet, and I wanted to fuck some more. I got up on my knees and he pushed his cock in me and started to fuck me. We weren’t trying to be quiet so we were grunting there, and that woke up the other two. They started to play with my tits, which felt very good. Then the one who was fucking me, pulled me up and back, so I was lying back against his chest. God, that feels so good, don’t stop! Uh, then one of the others got in front of me… He took his cock and pushed it into my pussy… right in my pussy with the other cock… It felt amazing! They fucked me like that – me between the two hairy goat-men, two cocks inside my pussy… I came so hard… Oh, god! Oh god! Yes, yes!”Toshia clenched her teeth to keep from shouting out. She pulled against her restraints and the cross creaked as she tensed every muscle in her body. Then the orgasm exploded through her body. She twisted and writhed against the wooden frame, as the little girl’s tongue and lips pulled her on and on into a flood of fiery release. The girl kept at it, and Toshia came again and again, until she collapsed against the cross, spent.After a few moments, Toshia felt the washcloth wiping up the insides of her thighs, cleaning up her own juices. When she was done, the girl stood up in front of Toshia and asked, “What happened then?”Toshia sighed, “The rest of the night was more of the same, fucking and more fucking. We finally all fell asleep. When I woke up, they were gone. I have no idea what happened, but they were gone. The next thing I knew, before I could even get up off the ground, I was surrounded by the sisters and men who brought me here.”“Why don’t you do what they ask?” the girl asked.“Well, partly because they didn't ask,” Toshia smiled.“You said the satyrs didn’t ask.”“Yes, but they weren’t mean.”“I think I understand,” the girl nodded.“I’m Toshia, by the way.”“I’m Nina.”“Thank you, Nina. For everything.”“You’re welcome,” Nina smiled. “I hope they untie you soon.”“Me too!”Nina then took her bucket, washcloth, ladle and two apple cores, and disappeared into the shadows. Toshia tried to get some more sleep.Atop the CliffsChapter 6The whole group was quiet and not at all cheerful when they resumed their hike toward what they hoped was the river at the bottom of the valley. The women were all pained from their experience with the sex-vines, and very far from thinking the forest through which they were moving was a nice place for a stroll and the occasional frolic. Don had not been violated in the same manner, but he was acutely aware of their physical and emotional discomfort. Moreover, though he had truly been unable to help in any way, his impotence during the attack (he could think of no better word for it) left him in a dark mood. When he had convinced Toshia that he was up to leaving the Manor in search of a way home, he had only considered the danger to himself, and then, when the subject came up, to Shelonda and Amy, who were only coming along out of friendly helpfulness and a lust for kicks, respectively. He had not taken seriously the extent to which this course of action might put Toshia herself in danger.Of course, Toshia was her own person, and she was determined to find a way home. Nothing Don could do or say would deter her from that course of action. Neither would he try to do so. He had no right to forbid her anything of the sort. That wasn’t what was bothering him. What worried him was the very thought that something bad might happen to her here, and that he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Sure, everyday life was full of random risks and dangers, but somehow you forgot about the possibility that someone you loved might get hit by a drunk driver while walking home from the store. Here, in this strange little adventure, it was now impossible for Don to put the dangers out of his mind. He didn’t know if he could handle it if something actually terrible happened to Toshia. He had loved her for years, and even more so now.These thoughts and the mood of the women, kept Don in a subdued, remarkably un-horny mood. When they bedded down for the night – after making sure the area was free of dildo-shaped vegetation of any kind – they set a watch, and nobody started any mischief. It was the first night since arriving in the Manor that Don went to sleep without having sex just beforehand. It helped a bit that he took the first watch, and didn’t have to try to fall asleep with still wakeful beautiful women lying next to him.Only after noon on the next day did a spirit of friskiness return. Naturally enough, it was Amy who got things going, spanking Shelonda hard on the ass and then fleeing just long enough to make the other girl exert herself. By the time the others caught up to them, they were making out on the grassy hillside. Nicole joined in the fun, while Don and Toshia looked on, both amused and aroused. That night, things were back to normal, if a bit less boisterous than usual. Don fell asleep with Toshia’s head on his chest, while Shelonda took the first watch.The next day, they found themselves descending a steady, rocky slope to a sudden drop. They came to a halt at the top of a cliff face at least 20 meters high, at the bottom of which was a fast flowing, broad river.“Think that’s the river we’re looking for?” Nicole asked.“Hard to say,” Don shrugged.“Well, we can’t climb down that,” Toshia said.Amy suggested, “We could jump.”“That’s crazy,” Toshia responded a bit sharply.“We’d just hit the water,” Amy pointed out.“Yeah, but you could hurt yourself hitting the water, and we don’t have any idea how deep the river is,” Toshia explained with a genuine smile, apparently regretting her crankiness of a moment ago. “You could break every bone in your pretty body.”“Why would we want to get down there anyway?” Shelonda asked.“Exactly,” Don nodded. “We need to either go that way, up-river, to find the source, or the other way, to see if this river joins up with another, bigger river. Either way, we don’t need to risk breaking our necks climbing or jumping.”“Well, which way should we go, then?” Nicole asked.“I think we should go downriver a ways and see if we come to another river, or someone who can give us some more information,” Don said. Nobody had any objection to this plan. Neither did they object when he said, “But first let’s take a break.”In another few minutes they were all naked and Amy was sitting on a big moss covered rock, while Toshia knelt between her legs, licking and sucking at Amy’s clit and pussy. Shelonda and Nicole clambered up on the rock on either side of Amy and were taking turns kissing her, each other or Amy’s tits. Don stood back for a moment, hard cock in hand, admiring the scene. In front of him, was Toshia’s upturned butt and ready pussy, ready for him if he wanted either or both of them. Above that were Toshia’s thin, muscular back, Amy’s strong legs and abs, and then a confusion of wonderful breasts and sexy, beautiful faces. Don could join in anywhere and be happily welcome. All around them were rocky outcroppings, trees and green underbrush – a beautiful natural garden of sorts – almost Eden-like. Off to the side, only a dozen meters away was the cliff edge. In the other direction, back the way they had come, the hillside was broken at intervals into sloping shelves. On an outcropping upstream and away from the river, so doubly uphill, but with a clear view of the spot where the women were already having so much fun, were two figures wearing black robes with hoods covering their heads. Don saw them first out of the corner of his eye, and then confirmed their presence without looking at them directly.Thinking quickly, Don reached down to caress Toshia’s ass. He ran his hand down between her cheeks and trailed his fingers over her dewy outer lips. He bent down over her back as he pushed two fingers gently up inside Toshia’s very wet pussy. He whispered to her, “Don’t stop what you’re doing. There are a couple of Watchers watching us. I’m going to take Shelonda and try to sneak up on them. Keep up the show.”“Uh-hum!” Toshia managed and nodded a little.Don stood up and moved around to Shelonda, who was on the side of the rock furthest from the Watchers. Trying not to be conspicuous, he leaned over and kissed one of the girl’s beautiful breasts, catching her nipple in his mouth. While he suckled at her luscious tit, Don parted her legs and pulled her a bit toward him. Happy to cooperate, Shelonda scooted forward a bit, allowing Don access to her pussy. Though he could easily fuck her this way, he wanted to move her further from the group, so that’s what he did, coaxing her away from Amy and Nicole. Soon, Don and Shelonda were fucking against the side of the rock, away from the Watchers.Shelonda had her arms around Don’s neck and her beautiful, full breasts against his chest as he screwed her vigorously. While he did this, he also whispered to her what he had in mind. When the two of them dropped to the ground next to the rock, they thought it must seem to the Watchers that they were merely continuing their fucking, but unfortunately out of sight.Don was pleasantly surprised that Shelonda immediately dropped out of horny sex kitten mode and stealthily followed his lead. Don had left his staff, along with his other things, on the wrong side of the rock, near where Toshia was still going down on Amy, but Shelonda was able to pick hers up off the ground near where they had dropped out of sight. Don lead the way, first toward the river, and then up hill, staying screened behind shrubbery as they moved quickly and quietly, hunched over.When Don was sure they were well out of the view of Watchers, Don risked a dash across an open area and a quick clamber up a steep rise to put them behind and above the position where he had seen the Watchers. He slowed down and crept forward, hoping to catch the black-robed voyeurs unawares. They could hear the sound of Amy coming loudly, as well as some sound from Nicole. Don suspected Toshia had found a way to encourage them to ham it up a bit.Unfortunately, though, when he peered around the trunk of tree to the place where the Watchers had been, they were nowhere to be seen.“Damn!” Don hissed. He looked around carefully through the trees and undergrowth, but couldn’t see any sign of the black robes.“Do you think they heard or saw us?” Shelonda asked as they stood up and walked out to the little clearing where the Watchers had been standing.“They must have,” Don shrugged frowning. “I thought we did a good job, though.”“I smell shampoo,” Shelonda said.“Huh, yeah, so do I,” Don nodded, “and that looks like a shoe print there in the dirt.”Just then, though, a loud shout made Don and Shelonda look toward the rock where they’d left their friends. Apparently, while Don and Shelonda had been sneaking up on the Watchers, a bunch of men had been sneaking up on Toshia, Nicole and Amy. One of the men had come up behind Toshia, caught her from around the waist and pulled her up and away from between Amy’s legs. Toshia, who was the one who had given the initial shout, was kicking and struggling in the grasp of the man who held her, while a second man tried to close in on her from the front. Yet another man had already managed to get between Amy’s legs and was shoving them roughly apart. Another man was rudely pulling Nicole from off the rock, where she had been kneeling over Amy’s face. Two other men were on the rock, either helping with Nicole, or trying to hold Amy down – it wasn’t clear from where Don and Shelonda were. All of these observations were made in the second it took for Don to spring into action, jumping down from the rocky shelf, and running down toward the women and the men. Shelonda followed close on his heels.While he pelted down the slope, Don noticed that all of the men had long, unkempt hair and seemed to be quite dirty in general. They seem to have brought crude clubs with them, but most of them had dropped them to the ground when they had jumped on the women. The one trying to get close to Toshia seemed to be wielding some kind of a knife, which made him a priority. Unless there were more men in hiding, there were only six of them. This meant that, while they outnumbered the women they had seen by the rock two-to-one, they had brought too few guys to actually pull off this gang rape or abduction.Shelonda, who was on that side of Don anyway, made for the guys on and next to the rock, leaving Don with Amy’s would be rapist and the two after Toshia. Intent on enjoying the fruit of their surprise attack, the men didn’t notice as Shelonda and Don closed in on them. The guy between Amy’s legs glanced to the side just in time to see the flat of Don’s hand coming in fast and hard. Don had never hit someone with full, multiple-board-breaking force before, but he wasn’t surprised to see the man’s head snapping around with savage force. As the man slumped to the side, Don realized that he might have killed him, but was frankly past caring.In the moment that he took to scoop up the staff he had left on the grass earlier, Don saw that Shelonda was effectively delivering a beating to the men who had been closest to her on the rock. Nicole was now able to more effectively fight back against the one guy who continued to wrestle with her. Now that Amy was free, she would be able to join in the fight. With one-to-one odds and Shelonda and her staff involved in the fight by and on the rock, Don was confident he could focus his attention on Toshia and her two attackers.In her struggle to free herself and to keep the second man from getting close to her, Toshia had forced the group of three back until they were perilously close to the cliff top. She had her right hand up over her shoulder with a tight grip on a handful of hair of the man behind her. With her left arm she was alternately elbowing that man in the ribs, and fending off his right arm – the one that wasn’t locked around her waist. Any time the guy in front of her with the knife got too close, she would kick out violently with her bare feet. Don knew she was in grave danger of getting badly cut, if she didn’t back herself off the cliff first.Don was directly behind the guy with the knife and prepared to bring him down with a single, decisive staff blow. Unfortunately, the man behind Toshia saw Don and yelled, “Behind you, Burt!”Burt twisted around and managed to avoid the slicing blow that would have split his head open. The staff in Don’s hands spun around and came down again at whip-crack speed, and again Burt was able to just barely get out of the way. This time, though, Don brought the end of the staff sharply to the side, hitting Burt hard in the cheek and mouth. Don was satisfied to note blood running down Burt’s cheek and chin. Pressing the advantage, Don snapped the other end of the staff around to smack into Burt’s gut, which caused Burt to exhale sharply and nearly double over.Don was close enough to get hold of Burt’s knife arm, and was about to finish the guy off, when, at that very moment, he saw that Toshia had managed to twist herself free of her attacker’s clasp. Unfortunately, doing so cost her balance at the lip of the cliff. Her arms flailed a bit, she managed to call, “Don!” and then she fell.Don would have followed her over without any hesitation, if Burt hadn’t chosen that instant to bring his knee up into Don’s groin. As Don gritted his teeth against the explosion of pain, he saw Burt’s knife arcing down toward his chest. Everything seemed to be moving in a kind of slow motion; adrenaline and years of martial arts training served to ramp up Don’s perception and reaction time. Ignoring the pain in his crotch, Don let go of his staff, caught hold of Burt’s wrist and, calmly stepping out of the way, he let Burt’s arm continue down and then pulled it around, slipping his own arm under Burt’s bicep and behind his back. One good jerk upward, accompanied by a particularly nasty, wet pop, served to dislocate Burt’s arm at the shoulder. Don was vaguely aware that Burt was crying out in pain, but he was already focused on the fact that Burt’s friend, who had managed to avoid falling over the edge of the cliff, was charging at him.There was a flurry of motion as Don twisted to the side and Burt’s friend crashed past him, only to fall to his knees. The hilt of Burt’s knife was sticking out of the left side of the man’s ribcage, blood welling up around it. Don ignored the critically wounded man, and took a second to check on the others. One of the men was lying sprawled against the big rock, probably unconscious, and the other two were running away as fast as they could. Nicole had turned to look in Don’s direction and saw one collapsed man, another with a knife sticking out of his chest, and the third sobbing on the ground at Don’s feet while clutching at his shoulder.“My god, Don!” she managed.As if he agreed with Nicole’s surprise, Burt cried out, “We were only trying to have some fun!”“With a knife?” Don scowled, and then added, “I don’t have time for this.” He kicked out hard and fast with his heel, snapping Burt’s head to the side with stark finality. Without looking down, or back at the girls, Don hurried over to the cliff edge and looked down, searching for any sign of Toshia.He heard the others come up and join him. They all agreed they couldn’t see Toshia, either clinging to the cliff face anywhere or in the river.Don scowled, his mind strangely calm and clear. “Get your things and Toshia’s, quickly. We have to find a way down there fast.”In another minute, the four of them were hurrying along the cliff top, moving downriver, looking for a way down.Chapter 7The Easy Way; Toshia is thrown to the men.It was late in the morning when a pair of serving girls and four sisters came into the hall of castle where Toshia hung from the big X.“Get her down from there,” one of the sisters commanded. The two girls hurried to comply. Toshia was pretty sure the small brunette was Nina, but the little girl avoided making any eye contact with her. They undid her ankles first, and Toshia breathed a ragged sigh of relief as she supported her weight on the ground for the first time in almost 24 hours. Pushing up, she relieved some of the strain on her shoulders. While the two girls worked to untie Toshia’s wrists, the warriors moved a bit closer and seemed tensed in case Toshia should make an escape attempt. She realized how ridiculous their concern was when her right wrist was released and her arm fell to her side, a numb, useless appendage. Toshia cried out as her shoulder complained against suddenly moving after so long in the same position. When the other wrist was freed, Toshia’s whole body followed the downward motion of her arm, collapsing in a pile on the stone floor.“Get her some food and water,” the same woman ordered, and then walked away, leaving the other three guards to watch over Toshia and the serving girls.One of the girls ran off, while the one who was almost certainly Nina caressed Toshia’s forehead with a moist cloth. Toshia groaned a bit as she worked to move her arms. Already, her hands were alive with a million pinpricks as the circulation returned to its normal levels. Probably-Nina began to gently massage Toshia’s shoulders and upper arms. Then the other girl, a somewhat plain blonde girl with pendulous breasts and wide hips, returned with a flagon of water and three apples. The flagon was tipped up so Toshia could down several mouthfuls, and then the first apple was held for her, much as Nina done during the night.Toshia felt the rejuvenating effects of the water and fruit almost immediately. She fed herself the second apple, and drank down the rest of the flagon’s contents. Her body seemed to have suffered no real damage from being tied to that damn cross. Though she could use a good night’s sleep on a horizontal surface, Toshia felt reinvigorated. Naturally, given the XYZ, this meant that her sex drive was again kicking into gear. However, her feistiness was, if anything, only encouraged by the treatment she’d received by the warrior women.When the blonde offered her the third apple, Toshia smiled at her and said, “No thanks. You have it. I appreciate the help, both of you.”The blonde smiled and nodded her head, and Toshia was sure she felt the briefest kiss on her shoulder from almost certainly Nina.The girls gathered up the apple cores, the empty flagon and the wet cloth, and hurried away. As if on cue, a half dozen of the so-called sisters came into the hall. Leading the way was the haughty Daphne, today wearing a shear red robe that hung from her strong shoulders, and parted down the front to show her cleavage, bare abs and the flowing swatch of gold-yellow fabric that hung from a belt around her waist to cover her privates. Toshia thought she looked like an adolescent boy’s fantasy, something ripped off the cover of a Conan paperback or something. Too bad she’s such a bitch, Toshia thought.Behind and to Daphne’s right was also the blonde Viking woman, Brigit. Like the other warriors, Brigit was wearing the patched-together armor Toshia had seen the day before.The party of women surrounded Toshia. One of them, a big brunette with brown hair cut short, said, “Well, she smells better today.” Toshia thought she recognized this woman’s voice as that of Wanda, who liked a good butt fucking, but not from a “goat”.“Yes, but has her attitude improved?” Daphne wondered. She looked down at Toshia, who was still crouching on the stone floor, with a raised eyebrow and a cold-disinterested expression. “Well, pup, are you going to behave yourself and do as you’re told?”Toshia looked around at the armed and armored women, momentarily wondering which one was most likely to hit her if she got out of line. Toshia had been expecting something like this sort of question, and had actually not decided on which response she’d actually give. Finally, she went with, “That depends; are you going to tell me to go on my merry way?”Toshia expected to be hit, but wasn’t. Perhaps it was the fact that Daphne actually smiled that kept the others from punishing her. Still, that particular smile was not one Toshia liked seeing. Daphne’s smile was the sort that went along with a villain saying, “I was hoping you’d say that.”Daphne shook her head and said, “Have no doubt about it, pup, you’re not going anywhere. Your pale ass belongs to us now. You’ll do whatever we tell you to and you’ll do it with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. If I tell you to lick out Wanda’s ass, you’ll get in there and bury your face between her cheeks and say 'Yum!’”“Why is everyone talking about my ass lately?” Wanda asked, confirming Toshia’s guess about her identity.Daphne ignored Wanda, though, and continued addressing Toshia, saying, “The only question is whether you’re going to play along like a good little pet, or make us go to all the trouble of breaking you. Playing along is the smart thing, and certainly easiest for all of us. Plus, I’m sure Wanda’s ass could use the cleaning. Don’t get me wrong, breaking you will be fun too – for us. And be quite confident that we will break you; we’ve got all the time in the world. Honestly, just between you and me, I hope you’re going to keep resisting.”Toshia didn’t even pause to consider her options, but said, “You know, Daphne, I’d really rather lick Wanda’s ass than keep listening to you talk.”This time she was smacked, and hard, by someone on her right. Catching herself as she slumped to the left, Toshia heard Wanda saying, “Wait, does that mean she’s going to behave?”By way of reply, Daphne ordered, “Give her to the men.”Abruptly Toshia was hauled up to her feet, by sisters on either side of her with firm grasps on her upper arms. They compelled her off to the side of the hall, where they led her down a short corridor that in turn led to a small, open courtyard. There was a big section of the courtyard’s floor that was missing, and a number of chairs were arranged around this big hole. Daphne led the way, circling around the hole and taking a seat on what looked like the most comfortable chair. Toshia was led to the edge of the hole. Looking down, she saw a big chamber, the center of which, directly underneath her, was taken up by what looked like a very large mattress, covered with a dark red sheet.Brigit came up next to the sister who held Toshia’s right arm, and said, “Our men have an easy life, really. They do our manual labor, of course, but there isn’t much of that. Now and then we use them as playthings, but not very often. For one thing, they’re men, and for another, dangling the possibility of sex in front of them, without giving it to them, serves to keep them well-behaved. So, they’re pretty much always in a state of frustration, and they never ever get to just have their way with a woman.” Brigit paused and smiled at Toshia, with what seemed to be actual friendly amusement. “Have fun.”Then Toshia was shoved forward out into space.Fortunately, the mattress was soft enough to absorb her fall without hurting her. Still, she was left sprawling ungracefully on the red fabric, while above her the women laughed and clapped. Toshia noticed first that the sheet beneath her was not unpleasantly rough, and then that the mattress was thick enough keep her from feeling the hard ground underneath. These were good things, if she correctly understood what was in store for her.Looking around, she saw that three sides of the room, which only extended a small distance from the edges of the mattress, had only bars for walls. The room was, in effect, a large cage, or cell. There was one gate, manned by two particularly brawny sisters. On the other side of the bars was a crowd of naked men, all trying to get a good look at Toshia. The fourth wall was solid, and covered by an ancient mirror, pockmarked and cracked. Toshia could see herself in the surface, though not exactly clearly. Looking up, Toshia saw that Daphne and all her friends were gathered around watching.Daphne raised her hand, which seemed to command a measure of silence from the crowd. When everyone was quiet, she called down into the cell, saying, “Let’s start her off with five.”This caused both a round of applause from above and some commotion below, on the other side of the bars, as the men jostled for position.Toshia thought that, as Daphne had indirectly suggested, there were two ways to go with this, the easy way and the hard way. The hard way included putting up a fight. Toshia couldn’t see any up-side to that approach. In fact, she thought this was what Daphne expected from her, and it would amuse the bitch no end to see Toshia gang raped for the entertainment of the Sisterhood. On the other hand, the easy way would certainly thwart Daphne’s intentions – though it might only piss her off all the more. In addition, it had now been days since Toshia had been with the satyrs, and she had had only one orgasm in that time.The five men were now coming into the room with her. They were all naked and in good shape. Two of them were particularly muscular, and two were particularly cute. Their cocks were all semi-hard already, energized by the XYZ in their systems and the prospect of sex with her. Toshia noticed that none of them were graced with the kind of monster pricks she’d had with the Player or Igor, though the biggest guy, a dark-skinned Adonis with a shaved head, had one that was about the size of the Lord’s, if his current state was a good indicator.Yes, Toshia thought to herself, the easy way has much to be said for it.To be continued.By BradentonLarry for Literotica

Monotonous tasks like cleaning out your email inbox or having meetings about scheduling meetings tend to suck all the time out of your workday. That's why they're called "Vampire Tasks"...

The Networks Flagship is back for the Autumn of 2023The weekly Podcast covering the latest news from the EPL, NBA, URC, GAA & NFL, Drops Friday MorningMake sure to click follow wherever you find your podcasts !Fan Questions are back !!!! - click the link to send in a voice note https://bit.ly/3giUar7or pop us DM on Twitter or Instagram to have your question read out and answered on the showProduced as part of the Mid-Season Slump Network. https://www.themid-seasonslump.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-ballbags/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dr. Matt Dyson, DU Canada waterfowl research scientist, and Dr. Mike Brasher join forces to discuss the exciting growth and application of science in waterfowl and wetland conservation across Canada. Matt shares insights on the ecology of boreal forests, effects of wildfires on waterfowl, difficulties of studying ducks in this vast landscape, and new science by DUC colleagues. Matt also recalls stories from his upbringing and accepts the challenge of identifying his favorite fish. www.ducks.org/DUPodcastwww.ducks.ca

All the way from Fort Wayne Indiana, this week's guest is author, journalist and podcaster Rosemary Mac Cabe. We cover a LOT, but one of the most fascinating topics was the difference between maternity leave here in Ireland versus the states – when I say the US system is crazy, I'm not joking. We also talk about how motherhood has come naturally to Rosemary, and yet at times she still finds it challenging, monotonous and not always fulfilling. We chat about how her relationship with her stepsons has changed since her son Atlas came along, and how Miss Rachel is the third parent in both of our households. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Don't let life become monotonous; seek ways to infuse a touch of enchantment and surprise into your love life.  Instead of a typical dinner tonight, why not transform it into an unexpected date night? Prepare something special for him, take the time to pamper yourself, and wear something that will captivate his attention. Let him know how eagerly you anticipate his arrival to unveil the dessert. From the moment he walks through the door, create an ambiance that sets the mood just right.

Monotonous Evil and Marvelous Good (Genesis 37:12-36) | 082723 by One Ancient Hope Presbyterian Church

 Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik. Welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show where I interview foil athletes, designers, and thought leaders. I talk not just about the equipment technique and so on. but also try to find out a little bit more about their background, what inspires them and their plans for the future and so on.You can watch this show right here on YouTube or listen to it on your favorite podcast app. Just search for the Blue Planet Show. I've been trying for a long time to get the Spencer brothers to come on the show and I finally met up with them after the Molokai To Oahu race and I got them both on the show today. So really stoked about that. Finn recently won the Maui to Molokai race and the Molokai to Oahu race, even though he had a major infection on his foot. So congrats on that. And they are both amazing athletes, not just in wing foiling, but also downwind foiling, prone foiling, surfing. They do everything. Really great guys to talk to. Hope you enjoy the show. So without further ado, here are Finn and Jeffrey Spencer. Alright, Finn and Jeffrey, welcome to the Blue Planet show. It's great to have you here. I've been trying to get you for quite a while. And then I finally ran into your dad at the finish of the Molokai Toahu race. And then Jeffrey gave me your text your cell phone number. So finally getting you guys on the show. Stoked. Yeah. Thank you for having us. Yeah. So you're on Maui. I'm on Oahu. And on Maui, just, since the Molokai race and not too long ago, I was in Lahaina like right before the Maui to Molokai race and everything was fine and now it's all gone. So can you talk a little bit about the fires on Maui and what, and. If you know anyone that got affected by it totally, yeah, we we had this storm that was passing to the south of the islands and it was like, usually it's not too concerning because it didn't look like it was actually going to hit us. But what happened was it ended up generating extremely crazy strong winds, like through the whole thing, but there was no rain or anything. So it's just. Like the most windy it's ever been, especially over on the West side in Lahaina. And they're just not used to having, that crazy amount of wind. So tons of stuff was getting knocked down. And I think just in the chaos, like the fire started, it was, there was ones on both sides of the island. There was some up country up in Kula and then also in Lahaina. So it was probably pretty difficult to be able to actually like. Control everything, especially in that amount of wind. It spread extremely quickly. And yeah, it's pretty devastating, but yeah, most the entire town of Lahaina pretty much burnt. Quite a few places up country as well, but look, it wasn't as bad up there. Yeah, it's not as densely populated now, at least but yeah, I was just reading in the paper this morning that there was some like live video of the power lines getting knocked over and then just falling into the grass and just like a line of fire starting instantly. Stuff like that. And then yeah, the wind was so strong that day that it just spread super fast and I guess people didn't even have time to. To get away, it's pretty, pretty tragic. It's like probably the big, the worst fire in, in recent history. Yeah. And then, so do you know anybody that got affected by it or lost their home or? Yeah. A bunch of our friends on the West side that we know and grew up with Santa paddling and foiling and surfing and just lost everything like lost their homes and pretty much everything. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, so if yeah, and then I guess I talked to Zane yesterday who lives over on that side too and Zane Schweitzer, he, and he said like they don't need more clothes and stuff like that. Everybody's been sending clothes, but they just need like certain things like VHF radios and containers and things like that. They need it quickly. So because shipping stuff there, it takes a while, so anyway. Probably the best way to support Maui's is by making a donation. Absolutely. Yeah. The best way is like supporting the families directly. If I know personally, like the Clayton's and the flex from paddling, they're good family friends and there's tons of others. We're able to find them on there, especially social media has been a really good way for people to communicate through all this and the Maui strong foundation as well as a really good resource that they're able to take the funds and use them wherever's most needed at the current moment. That's another really good one to donate to. All right. Yeah. Best wishes for everyone on Maui. That's just a tough situation to be in for sure. But anyways, let's talk a little bit about you guys. How, where did you, have you always lived on Maui or how did you grow up? And, what, how did you get into water sports and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, since we were, We've lived here since we were babies. We were born in Canada, but basically our entire lives was here. We weren't even a couple of years old when we moved here. So yeah, it's just been my way. But interestingly, it took us a while to get super into water sports. We did a bunch of, the average like school sports growing up team ones, like basketball, volleyball, stuff like that. And then we started stand up paddling around. Probably 10 years ago, actually, at this point, but then just from there, like we always had fun bodyboarding and surfing and Santa paddling and then got into it from there. Yeah, right on. Who's older or what are your ages? I'm older and 19, 22 and 19. All right. So I guess when you started, you were. Like around, I was probably 13. We'd always play in like the shore break with boogie boards and, when we were really young, but we didn't really start like getting into it more. Until, yeah, until I was 13 and you were probably like 10, 11. Yeah. Yeah. And that was that your dad taking you down, down to the beach and putting you on a board or did you just show interest in it or like, how did that work out? We would actually, we'd go over to the west side near Lahaina, we'd go to Laniopoko and the waves there are super fleet friendly, the best place for any, anyone to learn. We just take long boards and stand up paddle boards and spend the days over there in the summer. Nice. Nice. Okay. And then how did you start getting into foiling? What was how did you first start foiling? I think it was a while ago now. I think before it all started, we talked to Alex Aguero about just trying some surf foils. Cause he was making kite foils at the time. And then it was funny, he said he had just started working with Kai Lenny on the same thing. So then we started doing that with them, just went to Sugar Co. and had the first GoFoil prototype that we tried and then just started going to the west side a bit and just getting into it and then Kai put out that video of him downwinding and that just exploded it. Yeah. Then everyone was like, Oh, I want to try this. But you were basically tried some of the very first prototypes that Alex was making him. Totally. Yeah. We just be like us in the beach down here, just going with Kai and on this old sub board with a tunnel box drilled into it and Yeah, just testing stuff. It was fun. Yeah. And then where are you mostly trying to do downwinders or more in the surf or both or what were you guys doing? Most part, it was in the surf. For the first couple of months. And then we started to try a couple of downwinders and realize that it was super fun. So then we started doing that a lot more too. Yeah. The foils quickly evolved to be good enough for downwinding. Yeah. And then in the beginning you were using GoFoils and then I guess at some point you got sponsored by Slingshot or or how did that evolve? We'd run GoFoils as well and it was great. And then we had an opportunity to. To try the slingshot stuff as well and it worked really well for us. So yeah, we, we met with Tony Ligo. She's a awesome designer and Yeah wrote with them for a while, which was amazing. Okay. And then did you have like influence in the design and things like that? Developing products or not so much. They just would send you stuff and you'd play with it. We'd help them test stuff, but we're a lot of new stuff and the wings and then all the coils and boards. And so it was super fun. Learned a lot from that for sure. We're definitely still very early on in like our experience though. So it's not like we were saying like, oh, this is. What you should do to make it good, it's like more just Feeling it out and helping as much as we could. Yeah. And then probably the equipment you were using on Maui was like smaller and you guys are lightweight too, right? It's probably like smaller than what they could sell to the average consumer, right? So yeah, and then you were some of the, I think, were you the first to do a back loop on a wing foil board or yeah. That's awesome. I remember seeing that video and I was wow, that's insane. Yeah, I just remember we were doing them surf foiling off of waves. You could come back out and hit the ramp. And I'm just thinking oh, I think this would probably work with the wing after I just had a wave session. And then right after that, I'm like, in my mind, I could see how it would work. And then after that, I went straight back out that night and tried it for a few hours. And then. The next didn't get it, but I got like close. I like fully saw the potential. And then the next day I yeah, went out and tried again and somehow made it work, which was honestly really strange. Like usually if you're trying a new trick, it takes a lot longer to learn. Like even for me, it I usually take weeks to figure some stuff out. But I think the backflip is just so it's such a natural movement on the wing of the foil with that, that it it worked out pretty well. So what are, after people say, are you doing it? Then a lot of people figure it out how to do it, but, I'm still doing it, being the first to do it is always you don't have someone else's videos you can watch to figure out how to do it. So what are the biggest challenges of doing a back flip with a wing? I think a lot of it's very mental because it's it's difficult to, see yourself actually going upside down with the foil, especially. And I think the most important thing safety wise is just to keep your feet like in the straps with the foil facing away from you. Cause as long as that's good, it's not, you're not going to connect with the foil, which is pretty much the main way to hurt yourself if you're trying it. And after, after time of doing it to the biggest. Things that I've learned to help is if you're able to do one surf foiling or even start with a backflip on a trampoline and then transition to do one surf one, so you get the feel of how you move through the air with the foil on your feet. And then, after all that, if you can transition to doing it with the wing, make sure you have enough speed, really stay strong, it's easy to get disconnected with your legs and your upper body when you're going through it. Yeah, if you're able to work on all those things, it makes it a. Much, much more possible. Nice. Okay. Those are some good pointers. What about the wing handling? It seems if you don't get the wing right on the landing, you end up getting backwinded and falling into the wing. Like, how do you deal with that? Totally, yeah. A lot of it's for a lot of wing tricks, so much of it's in the takeoff which, or how much speed you have and what direction you jump when you get in the air. So for that one, it's really about Making sure you get enough height and angling off the window a little bit, because if you turn up too much, you'll come around and that's when it'll backwind. So if you're a little more angled down away from it, when you get that height and then suck your knees in and pull it around, it'll really focus on just pulling that top hand up. It'll not catch as easily when you're coming out of it. Yeah. You guys have amazing Instagram accounts. I'm just looking through it. I'm going to actually screen share this a little bit and maybe you can tell me how far back I need to go to find that when you first started doing backflips, it's pretty close a little further, I'd say. What is this? You're wearing a plastic bag. That was a ghost costume for Halloween. But yeah, a lot of it was not easy to breathe in if you ended up in the water. I think right there. I think, yeah, with the red board on the left and this one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So let's watch this. Oh yeah. I remember what, Watching this and being blown away, and you have a really small wing too, I guess that, that helps too, right? Absolutely, if especially if you're learning, the smaller the wing, the easier it is just to maneuver. I'd fully recommend if you're beginning, if you can get a good bump or ramp of a wave to go off of, and then a small wing, it's by far the easiest way to learn. That one right there is a three meter wing. Yeah. Just having less wingspan makes it easier. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. That compact style definitely helps as well. Not like you getting a huge amount of air, but that probably helps to getting high, the higher you get, the more time you have to rotate. But then I guess there's also more risk of injury, right? Probably, yeah. It's tough because sometimes you think so, but giving yourself more time to rotate in the air, actually, it just makes it easier. That's one of the things now I always work on with, especially the backflip, is I just try and get as high as possible. And you don't actually, unless you're going off a massive ramp, you don't end up going that high, just because you have to consider up. But then also as soon as you start pulling the wing back, you, you stop going up, it you just want to give yourselves as much time as possible to come around. Okay. Is there like a, another video you would, that one, your mouth is on right now is a pretty light. This one. Yeah. I'd say this is when I've got it consistent. I'm still using a bit of ramps, still not that much height. It's still pretty early on, but this was, I was feeling more comfortable with the double. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And then you're doing it, on the way into the beach, just cause that's your natural your natural regular foot or why is it that you're doing it on this tack? We're both regular footed. So we pretty much all our tricks going in, which is a bit of a bar for here. Cause. If we were goofy footed, we'd have way better ramps, but yeah, we try and make it work going in. It's good for surfing here since you're with the window a lot of the time, but yeah, for the wind sports, it's not as not as easy to find a good ramp. And then what about you, Finn? I guess you probably picked up the backflip pretty soon after your brother, or how long did it take you to figure it out? A while, actually. I started trying them pretty soon after, but I had never really done a backflip doing anything before. So I was doing them very weird and not going over backwards, like doing them sideways a bit. And then I went to a trampoline park and learned and then felt comfortable doing them and then went surf foiling and learned them going out off of waves. And then the next time I went, I was getting them down a lot more. Yeah. Finn was funny. His first attempts were so sketchy, which is why I say it's so important to keep the foil away from you and learn all the backflip stuff because he would get straight upside down and then just fold in half and land on top of the wing. But as soon as as soon as he figured it out on the surf foil, it was like night and day compared, for his technique compared to what it was before. I think it was later. It's so important to do this. All your backflip flips? Yeah. Yeah. I've seen, I've had friends who are trying it and it just yeah, like the board coming off their feet in the middle of the jump and there's like the foil landing on their wing and getting, trashing many wings and all that kind of stuff. And plus, yeah, it looked dangerous. What is this move? That looks nuts. But a backflip without the, without using the wing basically. Yeah, just going out and then you drift the wing and then do a flip off the wave. Wow. Yeah. So you guys are definitely on the forefront of all these tricks, but let's talk a little bit about the races. There was a lot of races over the last month. And and you guys both of you guys did really well in in these races. So let's talk first, I guess about the Maui to Molokai race. I, I was there and experienced it and just saw, I saw you, Finn like I was wing foiling too, and I saw you just disappearing on the horizon, just going it seemed like you were just going in a straight line as fast as you could locked into like a real steady, fast downwind angle. Yeah, the wind angle was pretty good. We were able to pretty much shoot straight from the start to, the Kanakakai buoy or the Kamalabouyam, the Kamalabouyam, yeah, and it was just weaving a bit downwind from there. But yeah, that first leg was pretty straight and just. Going super fast the whole time. So then, yeah, and I talked to Bobo Gallagher. He said that he didn't really see you until clo until you guys got close to Molokai. So did you see Bobo at all or after maybe 10, 15 minutes into the start? I think I did a turn and he kept going, and then I just lost sight of him for the, until around the buoy. But that whole race, I couldn't, or that whole section of the race, I couldn't really see anybody, so I had no idea where I was. And then . When I got to the booty I saw him a fair bit ahead of me and I was like, oh, shoot I gotta speed up. So then I just worked super hard and was going as fast as I can to catch up. And then we're, that gap was staying pretty similar to him ahead of me. And then I think once the wind got a bit lighter, I had a bit bigger wing and was able to pull up to him and then pull ahead to the, towards the finish. . So what size wing were you on? I was on a six meter. Yeah. And then Bobo was on like a 5'5 or something. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and you were both on the same foil. Like he showed me the duotone foil. He was using like a kite surfing, kite foil. Yeah, we were both on the Daytona race foil they have. Yeah. Daytona race. Yeah. That thing was, I think probably the foil is the most important thing for going fast. And, but of course also the wing is important for, because that's what powers you along basically. All pretty fast foil and then just a big, powerful wind. You can go as downward as possible. Yeah, and then when and you finished in 114 or something like that. Is that right? Yeah Which is amazingly fast for whatever it was 28 miles or something like that, right? Do you know what your average speed was on that run? I don't I think until the wind got lighter is probably around 28 to 30 miles an hour and then once you got lighter, it really slowed down a lot So at the end when I came towards the end, like everyone that was in my kind of around me just came to completely came off the focus, it wouldn't just completely died for a while. And then after a bit, then there was another gust and I was able to get back up on foil and fly over the line. But how was it for you guys? Did you have the wind completely die and you have to like just pump or how was it at the end? It got pretty light. I think even on the six, I was pretty underpowered and probably for Bobo on the five, five too. But we were both able to pump our way into the finish. Yeah. Yeah. So then, and you ended up finishing all I guess it was pretty close to like he was a minute or two behind you only or something like that. Yeah. So yeah. And from what I could tell is it seemed like you had more of a straight line and Bobo was trying to go more downwind on the way to Molokai. Yeah. So what's I know, like when, cause when the more downwind angle you have, the less power you have in your wing, basically. So how did you figure out your ideal angle to the wind and to the waves? And did you just go on a straight line or did you try to use the energy of the ocean or like how do you maximize your speed? It was mostly just using the winds and just trying to go as downwind as I could. And then just, Yeah. To keep enough power in the wing that I was able to go pretty fast. And then when it got lighter, I had to bear, go a bit slightly more upwind. And then, yeah, just trying to have as much power as possible. So yeah, you have to do that to keep some pressure in your wing. But do you try to weave a little bit to use the bumps or do you just go straight? Do you make any adjustments? When I, when the wind gets lighter. Then you can use the bumps a bit more, but when it's really windy, you're going a lot faster than them. So you're just cutting straight through. Okay. Or like it, you have to stay super focused when you're doing that. Cause you have to go up and down and try not to over foil or hit your board on a bump. And then. Yeah, especially when you're overtaking a bump, then it's easy to overfoil behind it, right? As you're coming down the face. What size mask were you using? I was on a 105. Okay, so pretty long mask, too. And then that, that foil, the Daytona, what's the how many square inches, do you know, like the the surface area? It's around a five. 60 square centimeters. Yeah. And it's not like a super high aspect shape, right? It's almost more like a little bit. Yeah. Like you can control and really just really locked in at high speeds. Yeah. So what do you think makes that foil so fast? I don't know. What is it that, is it a thinner profile or just like the overall, I think it's just. The mast is really slim and fast and then all the connect. It's a full one piece lower, so it's super. Sleep like the fuselage really thin and the wing connections and then the wings are really good shape and good profiles. So Just a lot of that makes it just super fast and low drag all right, and then jeffrey you did the maui to mulukai on a standard foil board, right? So yeah, so talk a little bit about how that went and and the whole experience Yeah, that was good. I same type of thing with Finn. After the start you get going for a bit and then you, it's, the bumps are, even though, it was a good day, there's just so much swell and water in the channel that you don't really see. Anyone else, like even if they have boats and everything, it's actually hard to tell where you are in relation to to everyone. So I was just coming and I had no idea where I was basically, but the run was really good. I think at the start, I had a pretty good line, but then definitely, Were you able to get up on full right away, right from the start or? Yeah, I was able to get going right away, which definitely is important in the races. You can lose quite a bit of time If you're off oil, which I figured out at the end, but about halfway, I think I went too close to the island and I would, the bumps just weren't as fast as they would have been further out. And I was worried about the wind angle being tough to fight against at the end, but it turned out to just get light. It wasn't actually hard to come in. So I think if I was, yeah, to do it again, I would have. Taking a much wider line especially through the finish where near the end, I accidentally, or I actually went too far over the reef and my wingtip came out on just a little accident as I was pumping in. And it was right before the finish where the wind was the lightest and the bumps were super, super small and I did my best to get back up on foil and got up for a second. But it was, if I had stayed further out, I would have had the energy to keep it going to stay in. But. On the inside, it was not the move. I lost tons of time there. Did you, and I was shallow. So you hit the reef or did you go around the reef? It wasn't too bad. I wasn't like all the way inside. I think the tide was pretty high when we were coming in. So I. I luckily didn't hit it. I hit it I was paddling on my stomach coming in, but it was just, once you get over that shelf, the, even the little bumps that you would have just outside of it, just aren't even there. so I just flattened out the bumps basically. Yeah. Yeah. And then you ended up finishing like in 14th place or something like that. Huh? You said 14, but and then what kind of what kind of foil were you on and board and foil? I'm just curious. Yeah, I was on a, just some prototype, a foil board we're working on. And a same thing with the front wing. It's about an 800 square centimeter size, but all the rest of the stuff is production stuff. I was using the mast and fuselage and all that. Like how long of a mass we're using on a standard flow board. I've been actually liking the shorter stuff. I've been using a 75 centimeter mast. Maybe when the conditions get really crazy, it can be nice to ride. A bit longer, so you have a bit more forgiveness just in that trimming and that height. But otherwise, yeah, the 75 is really nice. It feels like you have really good control and that's honestly one of my favorite parts about the whole duotone setup is how stiff it is. So you really feel like you have really good control the entire time when you're riding. Yeah. And then for stand up foiling, it seems like with the shorter mass, it's a little bit easier to pump up on foil too, right? And then you also have less drag from the mass, right? The shorter it is, the less drag is in the water. Cause when you're getting going, that whole mass is just sitting down in the water. So any length you're adding on is just. Pure drag when you're getting going. So that's probably a big reason. But it just helps with being a little bit more comfortable and having more control and more margin of error when you're, especially on wing foiling, I like to, I have a one or three mass and it just gives you that a little bit of extra time to react to, to like getting too high or whatever yeah, but cause when you're on a shorter mass, you really have to follow the contours of the water. Like you always have to go up and down. over every little bump versus the longer mass. Sometimes you can fly over the smaller chop without making too many adjustments, yeah, exactly. Interesting though. I like how, I think it is a little bit different in wing foiling than in standup foiling, like the, or downwind foiling, what size mast you're using. Totally. With the wing, it's nice to have that length. So you can just like, because you don't want to have to worry about going up and down. You just want to cut straight through everything. And then for downwind. Like that control you get from the shorter mass is definitely worth it. So even if you have to change your angle a bit, it's, I think it's nice. Yeah. So when you, when Jeffrey, when you wingfo, do you use the same size mass or do you use a different, or do you wingfo race at all? Or yeah, absolutely. I would use the same setup and was on, if I was doing. Yeah, interesting. Right on. And then the next day was the Molokai Holokai, and I guess only you stayed stuck around on Molokai Jeffrey. And then, yeah, so how did that next day go, the race, just on the Molokai coast? Yeah, it was great. Our our friends had a place for me to stay. So it was really easy for me over there. And it was great. There was tons of the people that live over there that were into doing the canoe race and everything. And the conditions I think were actually, yeah, it was a little lighter. And I think the the whole race was super interesting. Like we paddled way out to the Camelot buoy and which is just offshore near the the start of the run down the coast. And then we, yeah, basically started pumped up the bumps were really slow, which was, it was like kind of work to keep it going, but it was very like, they're just lined up and even it was hard to really gain a bunch of grounds. And when I started the race, the two other people who were really fast and that was Oscar Johansson and Aiden Nichols. And we all took super different lines like. Me from the day before I was thinking, okay, no matter what, I don't want to be too far in. So I went really wide into the middle of the channel and Oscar went in the middle and then Aiden went really close. And I think just the style of the bumps kept us all like really close. We were like super spread out the whole race and then we were coming into the finish and it was crazy after the whole, I forget how long it was exactly. But after that whole time, after the 10 miles or whatever it was, we were all basically in a line next to each other, like almost on the same bump. Basically. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So it became like a super hard pumping race and both goes, both those guys are super, strong and super good at pumping, especially like. Oscars of machine when it comes to that stuff. So it's very much for me. I knew I really have to focus on the technical part of it and really make sure I'm like taking the best line to each bump, making sure I save as much energy as possible. But I was still pumping as hard as I could some of the times. And just before the end, luckily, I think Oscar said he made a couple. Like bump mistakes. And then I was able to just pull ahead of them by 10 seconds before the finish. And then Oscar and Aiden were, I think it was 0. 4 seconds apart across the finish, which is extremely close for a race, right? Over 10 miles. Yeah. Yeah. It's unheard of. I think it was just because the conditions out there and the type of bumps were. They were so lined up. It was so hard to actually make distance on anyone, even though like we all took completely different lines. So it really doesn't make sense that we were right next to each other at the finish. Yeah. Yeah. That's just how it went, which it was pretty fun. It was like, I, it was the hardest I worked. I think in most of the races, just because they were right next to me, I just had something to really push for and really like really focus on to that was the most I focused in, or the most I had to focus in any of the race scenarios. From the past couple of weeks. Yeah. And then that, that just, that length of that race, it's almost, yeah, it's more like you can really go all out the whole way. It's not like you have to conserve for the last part, like on the mobile or whatever. It's really tough on the longer ones to know how much energy you should use at the start. Especially for M2O, that's the scariest part, is that basically, flat water pop up at the start and just thinking okay, if I use this much energy here, how much am I going to have for the end? And so for the Molokai Holokai race, it was like much more of a sprint the whole way. So yeah, it was a full grind. But yeah, it was really fun. Yeah. So yeah, so the Molokai or Maui to Molokai race and the Molokai Holokai, that was like two weeks before the M2O race. And then I think the following weekend there was the gorge challenge in Hood River and also the paddling mua on Maui, right? Finn, which one did you do again? I went to the gorge and then Jeffrey stayed here for Paddleamua. Okay, so how did the gorge, how was the gorge challenge? It was super fun. It was decently windy, a lot lighter than it usually is in the gorge, and then they ran both the wing downwind race and the sub downwind race on the same day, but they were, luckily this year they spaced it out by three or four hours, so we had time to do that one and then go back up to the second. So which ones did you compete in? Which races? I did the wing foiling downwind and course race, and then the sub downwind race. Sub foiling, right? Okay. So how, and then, yeah. So tell us a little bit about how those races went. So the first day they did all the downwinders, so at, in around 10 in the morning, they started the wing one and it was pretty light. We were all, everybody was just on their biggest wings, pretty much. I had a 6'5 and the, everyone started super close. And then these two guys, Johnny Heineken and Joey Pasquale, who are really good kite racers or kite foil racers, and now wing foil racers, they pulled a bit ahead. And then. I was trying, I was keeping with them a lot and then just slowly falling back and then just stayed like that the whole way down and just came in third in that one, maybe 15, 20 seconds behind Johnny and first and then 10 seconds. Wow. So that was a super close race too. Then how, what distance is that? Like how long is it? I think that one's not eight or nine miles. And what was the time on that one? 24. And you're going against the river current too, right? So that, that makes it a little bit slower then. Yeah. If you, yeah. Yeah. When it was super light. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess obviously if the wind was stronger, the how it is a lot of times, then you guys would have had faster times, right? And then in terms of the foils, we're using the same one that used in the M2M or? For the wing race, I was using that same Daytona foil. Yeah, so I guess depending on the wind conditions, you just use a bigger hand wing, but not necessarily a bigger foil. Yeah, usually. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There's also a 6'5 unit D Lab for that one. Do you know what what kind of wing Johnny Heineken was on foil? I think both him and Joey were on the Mike's Lab foils. Do you know what size by any chance? No. I think the, either the 540 or the 600. Yeah, and those are super fast foils as well. But interesting. Okay. And then how did the Paddle in Mura go? You stayed on Maui, Jeffrey, right? And then how was that? Paddle in Mura was awesome. That event is a fundraiser to support kids with special was. I think 300 people registered to do the race and they had to close registration because it was so full, which was just, yeah, it was so incredible to see the race launches from legal gulch. So having everyone down in there, like the whole. Canoe paddling community. And then all the oil community as well was like, just so incredible to see, and yeah, the race itself was really fun. The conditions were good. We had all had a nice, good start out in the wind line and went down to Kanawha and it was, yeah, pretty good race. I was feeling good. The other guys, there's some other really fast guys. I think James. Casey Andrew, I was where they got a bit ahead of me through the middle of the race. And then I was coming in next to Kai. And then I did the same thing that I did in a M2M where my wingtip came out and I fell and I had to grind back up to get up. And then Oscar came in and passed me just before the finish. And then I was able to like, run past him on the beach to the end. Cause it was like this crazy beach run finish, but it was a super fun race. And also I will mention Edo ended up like just coming out just to be part of it. He wasn't even able to get in just because it was so full, but he was faster than anyone, which was pretty cool to see. Oh, so Edo actually won the race, but he wasn't officially registered kind of thing. Interesting. That was pretty cool. And then, those guys are the ones who've finished in the front on the M2O race as well. Yeah. So that's interesting. But yeah, so let's talk about that. The big one, the paddle board world championships, the Molokai Toahu race that one you guys both did. And so how did that go for you guys? That was good. I think it went very well for me. Yeah, it was super fun. Except for one thing. Yeah, we had good wind and then pretty good bumps the whole way, but it was a bummer for me. A couple days before I started getting this weird pain in my heel and was having a hard time walking. And then the day or two before the race, it just, this weird spot started coming in. And then up until the morning of the race, it just kept growing until a big blister on my heel. And I still just couldn't really put any weight on it. And then did the race. Luckily I had footstraps on my board, so I was able to. Kind of not put much pressure on it and use my toes on my foot a bit more. And then when I got to the finish, I just had to go to the doctor and they like drained it all out and then had to cut all the skin away. And yeah, I saw you briefly at the finish and you were limping and I was like, what's going on? And you showed me, and it's it was almost like a tennis ball size blister on your heel. It was huge, ugly looking too. It's yeah, the night before we were looking at it, wondering should we try and drain it and bandage up now or we ended up just yeah, I talked to Scott Trudeau, and who's Kai's, Scott Sanchez, sorry, who's Kai Lenny's trainer and he just said that I should probably wait to drain it because I don't want getting infected, which was good advice because I think if we had tried to pop it, it might not have been able to race. And then, but luckily made it and then just had to go to the doctor right after. Yeah. And then they basically just cut off all the skin and just cleaned up the infection kind of thing, or did they, do they know what kind of infection or what would happen? No, not really. I think it just, I got like a weird bruise inside and then it was bleeding a little maybe, and then got infected. So are you still healing up from that? Or is that all done now? Yeah, still healing, I think. Still on crutches right now trying not to put much weight on it. And then I think it's maybe another couple weeks before I can do stuff again. And you're taking like some, you probably had to go through some heavy antibiotics and stuff? I had to go through a week after. Yeah. And yeah, wow. But yeah, it was the first time they had the wing flow division at the at the Molokai Molokai Tuawa race. So I always get those mixed up, but anyway so it's cool that you were able to win that one. And it was a really good battle with Bobo and then Aiden Nicholas. Yeah. Most of the whole way, I think. Did you see them? Did you see them going across? Or I know that you guys were all pretty close, but yeah how was that? Yeah, we all started really close and we're pretty much on the same line, all in a pretty tight pack going towards Molokai. And then once the wind got a bit lighter, I think I had a bit more power in my wing and I was able to just drop a bit below them further downwind and pull ahead. And then. Once we got a lot closer to Oahu and further up the coast and we had to start weaving downwind, then I think I really pulled ahead a lot just because I had more power and was able to ride the bumps a bit more when it got really light. And then I think. But before that we were all super close. Yeah, and that's something to mention too that I mean I guess at the start the wind was actually pretty decent but then in the middle of the channel it got really light in some spots and then and it didn't really get seemed like it maybe got a little bit windier again towards the end towards Oahu, but And then once you got around the corner, then it was light again, right? Did you get any lulls coming in towards the finish or? I think I came about as close to coming down as I could have, and then just got another puff of wind, as I was about to come down and kept going, but it was, yeah, it was close coming around the point where there's this big dead zone of wind before you got the wind coming from Hawaii. And then I guess Bobo is a natural goofy footer, which is helps in the Molokai race because you're going in that stance most of the way. So for you, do you feel like you can go faster in your regular stance than in your in when you switch feet in the goofy foot stance or how do you, it's pretty similar right now. And then I will, I need to spend more time going goofy though, cause I think it would be faster, but. With my foot to that race I, it was like, he was my back foot. So I didn't have to put as much weight on it. I had to use that as my front foot. It would have felt a lot worse, but yeah, both, both Bobo and Aiden were goofy footed. So on the. The kind of first reach over to a Wahoo, I think it was a lot more comfortable for them. And then Aiden is from New Zealand, right? And he's on a, he was on the Armstrong foil, right? Yeah. What kind of foil he was on or what size and I think he just had a prototype one. He said it was around 470. Oh, so even smaller than yours, huh? A fair bit smaller than ours, which I think it helped him when it was windier. And then when the wind got lighter, he was just having a hard time going as downwind. So that's another thing to to mention too, like basically on a really small foil. Yeah. Like sometimes you can't get the same downwind angle because yeah, it starts dropping off foil. So you need a little bit more pressure in your wing. Yeah. So it's always like a gamble a little bit. If you are too small. It helps going faster, but then you're also taking a risk at when the wind gets lighter. So yeah, for sure. Cause that's what happened was at the start he was super fast and actually pulling ahead a bit when it was windier. And then once he got lighter, I caught up a lot to him and then was just able to go more downwind and the same speed towards the finish, just put a big gap on him because it was really light. And I was able to go more downwind. And then what handling were you on? It was the duotone. I was on the duotone unit D lab six meter, which I think I would've preferred to have a six five, but it's so hard to tell what the wind is doing. Apart from, do you mind sharing what your weight, your body weight? I think like one 40 to one 45. Okay. So yeah, so six meters, pretty big for you, for your body weight. And what about your board size? What's, what were the dimensions of the board you were using? Four, four, 35 liter sky free board or sky. It's a pretty small board, like basically a sink sinker, right? So it's nice for the weighing down one to just use something that. Cause you're using such a big wing. You don't really need a ton of board to get you going. And then you want something that once you're up is just really out of the way, so you're not catching it on other bumps. And there's a lot of moments there. I feel like they make it a lot easier to control the foil at high speeds. And then, yeah, you're not really too worried about it catching. And you didn't fall at all during the whole way across or did you have any, right at the start, maybe a minute or two in, I was. I think I just hit a weird warble and then the nose started going down and I tried to put weight on my back foot and put it right on my heel where it really hurt and then just. Stuff that knows I've been flying and then luckily God pretty fast, like 10, 15 seconds and was going again. Oh, good. Yeah. That's I always like to use a little bit longer and board higher volume board for racing, because yeah if you do fall or come off and it's light, then it just makes it so much easier to get back on foil for like course racing and then if the wind's lighter, that's definitely the way to go. Cause then it's the worst when you're just stuck down in the water and everyone's passing you and. Yeah, I can't get going again now. All right. Jeffrey, talk about your experience at the Mali to Molokaris. I heard from A lot of stand up foilers that the start was tough. And then all the wing full escort boats went across or, made wakes and chop and world up the water and stuff like that. So yeah, talk a little bit about how the start was and then, yeah, how the whole channel crossing went for you. Totally. Yeah. The start of the race is always difficult since you start just below the island. Time to. Generate as big as they'll be in the middle of the channel yet. And the wind at your back definitely helps. It's, it makes it like much easier than a completely flat water pop up. But the hardest part is you're able to grind up and get going. And that's something I practice a lot, especially like in flat water stuff, but just staying up for that time until you actually get into the bumps that you're able to relax and regain some energy is definitely the difficult part. So my focus on the start was just getting up, getting going and then keeping my heart rate as low as possible and trying to ride as efficiently as possible to not. Burn so much energy. So about how long did it take the pumping in the beginning where you just couldn't even rest at all, like until you reach some bumps where you could just take a little breather, you can take like tiny rest. Cause there was like a little bit of motion, especially like with all the boats going around. Some of it was bad. Some of it, you had to pump through, but then some of it, you could use to, to ride a little bit, I ended up. On the south side of the line at the start. So the boats actually cut across me really quickly, which was bad because it was right at the start and I hadn't gotten on a glide yet. But then I got to the other side of this boat wake and got a tiny bit of rest, which actually might've helped me a little bit. It didn't last very long. It was probably a few minutes before any good rest and then several more until you were like. You could actually ride a bump for a bit. Yeah. Yeah. But my friend Eli was saying he had a couple times where boats went like right in front of him and I think that's something that they need to educate the escort captains on that when we just can't go through a boat wake when it's all turned up. It's not, we just, the foil doesn't work in that, yeah, it makes it super difficult to divide when those currents are moving in the water off the prop. Yeah, it's definitely tough. I'm sure next year we'll have it all figured out, because... It's tough starting the wing and the sub at the exact same time as well. Yeah, there's... Yeah. I guess there's talk of doing the foiling on a different day than the paddling. What do you think of that? Do you think that would be a good way to do it? Yeah, I think that could be awesome. And I'm sure even if they do that, there'll be separate starts for the wing and foil, or maybe the boats will start further out for the wing since they have to like... If they let, if the wingboats let the going to catch up with how fast the wings are going, especially like this year was pretty light winds and which is easier for the boats to drive in and makes the rider slower. But if it's strong, it's going to be even more difficult. So I think I think a separate day in general could be awesome. It would. I think give them more customizability for the race course and just start further on the wind. And then there's maybe talk of finishing down at like Waikiki area. So you have bumps all the way to the finish. And then it's still a cool, like finishing the run that all the guys do over there. And I think it could be nice for like their Just managing everyone in the water. It won't be so many people on one day which is always good for safety as well. Yeah. And then, we were talking about do we really, does every foiler really need an escort boat? Cause it's not like you have to switch out hydration packs or whatever. It's, usually. You don't have that much interaction with your boat. It's for safety, but everyone also had the satellite tracker and whatever. So if they had enough safety boats, maybe not every foiler needs to have their own escort boat. I feel like that's overkill. What do you think about that? I don't think any of the foilers or especially the ones that were going fast had any interaction at all with their boats unless something went wrong, like you said. And I heard that a couple of spoilers, the boats didn't even find them, like they basically went across the whole channel without their escort boat. Oh man. Yeah, I think there were a couple of guys that they didn't find them until they were coming in at the finish. That's crazy. It's tough with so many people out there. Yeah. Yeah. And then you said you... Yeah, pretty good positioning at the end, like you were like around fifth place or something like that coming towards the China walls, Portlock, and then what happened like that. That last part is always so challenging. So how did that go for you? Yeah, I was coming in and I was like, I'd saved enough energy coming into the end that I'm like, okay, I want to save a good amount for the finish here because you always know how tough it is, especially when the swell is small, you're just going to have to pump quite a bit. And I tried coming in. I ended up just on the back of a swell along the wall where the wave breaks. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to make it over this thing. I should just try and pull off, catch another wave. And then when I tried to pull off on the one behind me, it just wasn't breaking. So I ended up going over to the other boil next to it and did catch a wave. And then, but it was too big and I fell on it. And just, yeah, just messed around, wasted tons of time doing it. Was it, sorry, this was at China Walls or further down? China Walls, okay. Yeah, right after I finished, me and my mom and dad went back out on our boat and then was just watching him come in. And, oh, it was such a bummer because he was doing so well and like up with, like up ahead of Kai and Mateo, I think. Mateo was like next to me coming in. Yeah, I think he was running like fourth or fifth. Was just in between two waves coming around, like right at China wall and then came down and then there, there just weren't many ways to catch. So it was, yeah, it was a moment. Yeah. There wasn't that much energy. There wasn't many waves coming through that day. And then and then where did you just paddle straight towards the finish from there? Or what was your strategy after that? Were you trying to catch another bump or were you prone paddling the whole way? Or what, how did it go after that? I decided to wait and catch a bump just because I, there was enough swell that I figured something would come and I did get, I got one first one and then just couldn't hold on to it when I first caught it. And that would have been like good. I wouldn't have lost that much time if I got on that one, but then I had to wait for another one, got on that. And I think it might have actually been faster if I just paddled in, but. I guess I saved a little bit of energy and then I ended up catching another wave at the next reef inside and pumping as far as I could on that. And then, yeah, just paddling all the way in. Yeah. And then just prone paddling or did you paddle on standing up or both? I prone paddled most of the way. I know a bunch of people were actually like doing the knee paddle thing which might've been faster, but I don't know if it was. For me personally, I felt like I could grind pretty well laying down. And then once I got close to the finish where it wasn't as windy, I stood up and paddled in. Yeah, because standing up or kneeling also has more you have more surface area and it's a really strong offshore wind there. So yeah, it's but yeah, it's funny how that the last part is a little bit anticlimactic where it turns into a paddle race, right? But yeah, it's definitely challenging. A lot. Yeah, a lot can change in that last, not even a mile, really, I think even for first place, I think Oscar was actually the first one to the point. And then James was a little behind and even came down, but luckily got back up on a wave just at China wall and then was able to pump like the connection was really good. And he was he's really good at pumping as well. So he's able to like pump further in. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I think he caught a wave further in. He like, he pumped out to like pillars. Yeah, and then caught a wave there and then was able to connect it all the way over the reef and into the channel. So that's how you want it. So yeah. Cool. Yeah. So that so that was a bunch of exciting races and in a couple of weeks. Yeah. And what's next? Are did you guys know we're doing a wing full race here on Oahu on August 26th? That's like the, we're calling it the Hawaii wing full state championship. So I don't know if you guys can come to that, but that would be. Another somewhere else plan, but if not, yeah, we're certainly considering it because that could be super fun. You should come over for that Yeah, that'd be cool to have you guys But any do you have any other races planned or doing other competition stuff currently? I think you were considering going. Yeah, there's a kind of wing wave event in Morocco that I think I'm gonna go do and then Yeah, after that, not much. Yeah, otherwise we're considering other downwind races if they happen, but yeah, we'll see what comes. Yeah, right on. When is that race in, or the wave event in Morocco, when is that? I think it's end of September. Okay. So if you could design your own competition what would you include? Would it be like racing and freestyle or wave riding or yeah. What would, or does it, would it combine different? Like standup foiling and wing foiling, or what would you like what would be like your ideal race? If you could pick and choose. Everything would be pretty fun. Definitely a downwind subfoil section and then maybe downwind wing and then maybe some surf foiling and wing freestyle wing and waves. Just everything would be super cool. So like almost like four different division four different competitions and then have a combined score for every, everything. That would be cool. Yeah. Thanks. I'd be crazy. Yeah, that'd be super fun. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We're thinking about maybe trying to put something like that together for Oahu. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit more about, about your equipment. So after you, after your sponsorship with Slingshot Energy you're both writing for Duotone Fanatic now, or yeah. So how did that come about and how's that going? We were just talking to those guys and it. It ended up working out really well because their design team is based on MAUI, which makes it really easy for us to work with them for testing and designing and everything like that. It's really nice to be able to like, meet with people and actually go and ride together sky Solbeck, who's done a lot of the wing boards, and then Ken Winter, who does all the wings, pretty much. They live super close to us, so it makes it really easy. And yeah, it's been awesome working with them on everything. Yeah. And I interviewed Ken and Alan Cadiz and I guess they, they go together on like upwind and downwind to test the wings and see which wing is faster going upwind, which wing is faster going downwind and things like that. Do you guys go out with them too, or do you, are you part of that kind of the testing crew for the wings? Absolutely. We do a bit of that with them. And then I think a lot of reason why we came in was to test the wings for kind of freestyle and jumping too. Because I guess they don't do that a lot. Yeah. Yeah, they don't like I know I don't get this doesn't jump at all that's and I think that's pretty smart because yeah for me too like I like to jump but it seems like I always get hurt when I jump that's how I end up getting hurt so I try to avoid it too lately but Yeah. So what have you guys had any serious injuries? I would, I guess that the infection doesn't really count as a foiling injury, but like what kind of injuries have you had from foiling or water sports? I've had a couple pretty bad, like knee injuries. One a couple of years ago, we were towing and then. I like fell with one of my feet in the straps and got a little rolled and just twisted my knee super weird. I think I'm, I think I strained my MCL. So that was, I was out of the water for two or three months. And then another time, I think it was the first time I was trying front flips winging. I just landed one super weird and tweaked my knee again. And then was out the water for another couple months after that. So actually the front flip the forward loop. If we can't, let's is there like a good video that you can maybe talk about that a little bit? Jeffrey will have a lot more video. I think you posted the one where you hurt yourself. Oh, yeah, I think yeah, it shouldn't be too far down. Maybe Pass this a little further Did you post it? Yeah. Okay. I think yeah the one in the center at the bottom. No, yeah this one Oh, yeah, that's the one I heard myself on. Okay first time trying. Oh, that was your first attempt Yeah. Oh, yeah. It looks like a kind of a rough landing. So what happened, your knees got discontinued, got tweaked forward or something like that? My front knee, I think I just jammed it super hard into the board and then just tweaked it weird. Okay. So that's what, that's, yeah, I guess for somebody trying it, they don't want to visualize it where you hurt yourself, right? So let's I. Okay. So do you have a one that you can, is this a forward loop? I think you should go to Jeffrey's page. He's got a lot. Yeah, tell us which one was a good video that you, where you can talk about the doing. Probably. Yeah. A little up. Oh, wait. Yeah. Back a little. The one at the bottom of the center. That one's actually, yeah, that one's good. This one? Yep. I think the one before might be the first one I posted. Okay. And it was, I don't think like when I was doing this one, I don't think anyone was doing it this style. Like a lot of guys we're doing very like forward loop style ones which were good, but that's when you get like those super hard landings, which can be really tough on the knees and on it. Like when I was first trying this, I didn't actually like. The rotation is much harder for landing than the backflip, because when you come around the backflip, the board's moving forward, so it's very easy to plane out and get right back on foil. But with the forward, you really have to like, slow yourself down in the air so you have a soft landing. So I was pretty happy when this kind of all worked and it all made sense. I actually to learn this one, I wasn't completely blind. Wyatt Miller, who's this really good wind surfer was doing basically forwards on a wing. And I like watched his videos and saw his body movement and saw what like I could adjust a little bit. And yeah, then it all worked out, which was nice. Did you guys ever windsurf? Or before, before starting wing foiling? I can, but I Not a single Not like a single jump windsurfing Is that like how you tuck in on this one it looks A lot like windsurfing like a forward forward loop and wing foiling Like that tucked in Yeah, totally. I'd say the biggest difference is I'm looking like under my right shoulder instead of back up and over it. But they're very similar for sure. Yeah. So yeah. So give us some pointers on or is there another video we can play here? Yeah, near the top there should be some good ones. Okay. Let's look further up. At the very top, I've been posting lots of downward stuff. That one on the right, right there. Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So there's, oh yeah, that's a high one. Oh, over rotated. Yeah. So talk, give us some pointers on how to do this move. Totally. Yeah. So the biggest thing I look for is a decent gust. And that's like for the day you want to make sure when you're in the air, you're not going to hit a hole in the wind and lose power. Cause that's The sketchiest thing and the sketchiest thing is like committing to that forward rotation, right? So as long as you get up and have the power I find it's very consistent to get around. And yeah, once you get over, it's not it doesn't feel dangerous anymore. Like you can land on your stomach or back even, but the foil under you or to the side of you and it's fine. So yeah, I go, I focus on finding a decent gust. Try and get a good amount of height. It's the same as the backflip, where if you give yourself a little more time to come around, you're generally going to have it's generally going to be easier to actually make it. And then the biggest thing is I, so I jumped, get in the air, like a, just a big straighter. But then as I'm coming up, I tuck my legs up under me and keep the board pretty like flat. And then I wouldn't say flat, but like foil facing down. And then once you're at the apex, it's really all about pointing the nose of the wing, just straight down and holding your whole body, like compact and together and strong and then obviously coming out of it, once you feel like you're halfway through the rotation, then you start to extend your legs, trying to reach out and feel for the water on your landing because with front flips you're blind when you're coming in. Like you don't have the, when you're doing a back flip, you can. Look up and you actually get to see how far you are from the water when you're coming into touch. But on front flips, it's like mostly all about feel. So the more you can reach your legs out and feel that water, the like easier time you're going to have. Absorbing the impact of the landing. So I guess, yeah, like for tricks in general it's always good to use like the smallest wing possible handling possible, right? It seems having a smaller wing but at the, it's obviously you don't want to be overpowered and stuff, but you're saying like, yeah, use it basically use a small wing, wait for a good gust. And then. But yeah, I guess this is saying it's you don't want to be like probably overpowered with a wing that's going to be too big or whatever. And yeah, yeah, the bigger wings just make it more like you more technical, I'd say, like your technique has to be a little more on point because otherwise it'll pull you or throw you in a weird direction that you weren't expecting. And with the smaller wings, you just get a bit more of that control which definitely makes it easier to learn. Okay. Cool. Yeah, and then I guess, and also you don't really have that issue where you get back winded, like in the back loop, like if you get the wing in the wrong position, it's not like you're going to get back winded or whatever, but what are some of the potential mistakes or things to avoid when you're doing it? Yeah. It's a funny thing. Cause a lot of. A lot of people that do front flips are they do end up shutting the power off and going much more like over the front and then you can have points where it can potentially backwing but I like to try and keep the power in it just so I don't have that problem. But yeah, the definite, what are the things that I'd say people struggle with the most? I think a big thing is just keeping your legs really connected to your upper body because a lot of times, especially when I was learning them, I would go with the wing and then just leave my legs and the board a bit behind and then just get stretched out during the rotation. Yeah, it's really easy to leave the board and foil behind because there's quite a bit of even though the stuff is super high performance and super lightweight, there still is like volume and weight with everything that's on your feet there. So being like focusing on, you get that jump and you're focusing on the height, really just sucking your feet into your or just your knees up and your knees to your chest basically. And it's not even that much. It's just enough so that you have a good connection. Finn was saying and accusing it all tucked in a little bit, keeping your legs close to your body. The other thing I do is same with backflips. I make sure to not turn too much up into the wind when I'm doing it. And I think that very, like that allows me to keep the power in the wing a lot easier. And it really makes it so that when you're up in the air and you go to point the wing down, that it really like. throws you around and gives you that rotation because it's easy to come up and Force yourself over, but it doesn't throw you around the same way that it does when you're able to turn off the wind a little bit and really open up that wing to the wind and have it throw you around. Yeah, but it seems like also like you always pop up and try to get some height before you throw yourself forward, right? Like you don't want to just instantly throw yourself forward as soon as you come off the water, right? Totally. Especially for front flips, it's a lot easier to get a high jump than for back flips. Because of the way you're holding the wing and the rotation of it. So I always like focus, I jump and then pause for a second and think okay, I want to keep going up here. And then when I feel that I'm high enough for the rotation, then I'll commit to the point in the window and talking and going for it. Yeah. So how about some tips for landing? Not just and when you're doing flips, but just in general, what's, what are some tips for make sticking a landing and making the landing. Totally. Yeah. And in general, foiling is actually really nice for landing because you get. Yeah, the front wing and tail wing extended off that mass. So you get like a nice kind of cushion when you're coming in, as opposed to just straight windsurfing, you land so much harder without the foil. Breaking your fall on the water for basically any foil trick. The most important thing is to reach out as you're coming in and you don't want to reach out to the point where you're overextending your knees because then you could hurt them in another way, but you want to reach out enough just so you get elongated when you're coming in. And then as soon as you feel that water coming up, then you want to start compressing and compress as much as you can coming in, using the wing to support your weight as much as pos

This week J-Man talks the social climate, how the online echo chamber works, and always remind you all if you have a fact, and a point of view always stay firm to it. Try to bring a different take to a monotonous lifestyle, and understand that when these people try too hard to be funny, it's called a reach. He will also talk about why it seems like these individuals have failed certain movies and etc because of their lame ass opinions. Listen live and subscribe to J360 Radiohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/j360radioLike, Subscribe, and Follow J360TVTwitch: https://twitch.tv/j360tvYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/j360productionsSupport J360 Productions: https://ko-fi.com/j360productionsJ360 Jams Submission Rules: https://j360productions.com/2022/07/25/j360-jams-submission-rules/Social Media (J360 Productions)Twitter: J360productionsFacebook.com/j360productionsEmail: J360productions@outlook.com

2023.08.10 – 0952 – The ‘Monotonous' VoiceMonotonous voiceSymptom: Spoken tonal delivery which has little variation, with a perception of a single (or ‘mono') tone. Such a delivery gives the impression that the speaker is bored or tired, that the topic is boring, or if reading from a script, that they have not understood the content enough to feel confident giving correctly-placed intonation.Some people deliberately adopt a flatter-sounding voice in the (mistaken) belief that it makes them sound authoritative, as they are keeping their emotions under control. A listener could mentally turn off from such a ‘drone-like' delivery. Catch up with episodes 217, 221, 258 and 316 for more monotonous content (if you see what I mean!)Prescription:· Presentation is a performance so think about what it is about your situation that may make you sound bored or distracted: are you fed up doing podcasts, or this particular topic again? Perhaps it's something outside the reading: do you feel stuck in a rut in life or your marriage? Maybe you (maybe unknowingly) feel you should be paid more and so will not give 100% until you are…. (Episode 890, if this sounds like you…)· A slight monotone may also be as a result of feeling less than comfortable in a current situation, perhaps working with new people or in a new studio or with new, unfamiliar equipment (episode 897 and those around it for more on this).· Remember the need to ‘turn up the personality' a bit when appearing on radio, tv or stage to achieve ‘cut through' a some of your energy is ‘lost' in transmission. (I explain more in episode 332.)· A monotonous voice may be because of tiredness and is sorted rather more obviously: more rest and less stress, better breathing and eating and so on. · If you don't understand your script, you may keep your intonation in a limited ‘safe zone'[1] this sometimes happen when you have to sight-read. Although this reduces the chances of not misplacing an emphasis too badly, it also inevitably creates less variety in the voice range leading it to sound boring, flat and lifeless. Explanation, rehearsal and marking-up a script will help. Better sight-reading for say newsreaders, usually comes from a background knowledge of current affairs so you immediately understand the significance of what it is you have just been handed and can show that in your colouring of words. Episode 720 is a good place to learn more about sight-reading and there's a whole series on marking up a script from 177.· Be more conversational in your delivery. Imagine talking to one person across the room from you and telling them a story (episode 464 onwards), and using gestures (episode 430 onwards) as you do so. [1] A ‘safe zone' may lead you to fall into a repetitive pattern of delivery: starting or ending each sentence in the same way, punching every (say) fourth word. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This edition of eponymous food stories involves two noodle dishes, and both of them are classic comfort foods that you can easily find in pre-made frozen versions in most grocery stores. But both of them started out as entrées for fancy people.  Research: Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Stroganov Family". Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Apr. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stroganov-family Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Luisa Tetrazzini". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Jun. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Luisa-Tetrazzini “Chicken Tetrazzini.” Daily News Republican. Oct. 30, 1909. https://www.newspapers.com/image/582035221/?terms=%22chicken%20Tetrazzini%22%20&match=1 Eremeeva, Jennifer. “The Definitive Beef Stroganoff.” The Moscow Times. Nov. 6, 2020. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/02/20/the-definitive-beef-stroganov-a64566 Gattey, Charles Nelson. “Luisa Tetrazzini: the Florentine Nightingale.” Amadeus Press. 1995. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/luisatetrazzinif0000gatt/page/144/mode/2up Lew, Mike. “Beef Stroganoff Is Named for Who Exactly?” Bon Appetit. Jan. 16, 2014. https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/article/origin-of-beef-stroganoff Goldstein, Darra. “A Taste of Russia.” Russian Information Service. 1999. Hillibish, Jim. “Tetrazzini Leftover Will Leave Them Singing.” The State Journal-Register. Nov. 22, 2022. https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/2012/11/23/tetrazzini-leftover-will-leave-them/45812546007/ Kurlansky, Mark. “Salt: A World History.” Thorndike Press. 2002. “Luisa Tetrazzini, Diva, Dies in ” New York Times. April 29, 1940. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/04/29/92957232.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 McNamee, Gregory Lewis. "beef Stroganoff". Encyclopedia Britannica, 31 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/beef-Stroganoff Peters, Erica J. “San Francisco: A Food Biography.” Rowman & Littlefield. 2013. Price, Mary and Vincent. “A Treasury of Great Recipes.” Ampersand Press, 1965. Rattray, Diana. “Chicken Tetrazzini Casserole.” The Spruce Eats. Nov. 11, 2021. https://www.thespruceeats.com/chicken-tetrazzini-3053005 Sifton, Sam. “Chicken Tetrazzini, the Casserole Even Snobs Love.” New York Times Magazine. Sept 29, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/magazine/chicken-tetrazzini-the-casserole-even-snobs-love.html Snow, Glenna H. “Peasants of Russia Thrive on Monotonous, Though Well Balanced Diet, Says Editor.” The Akron Beacon Journal. May 14, 1934. https://www.newspapers.com/image/228861067/?terms=%22beef%20stroganoff%22%20&match=1 Syutkin, Pavel and Olga. “The History and Mystery of Beef Stroganoff.” Moscow Times. Dec. 3, 2022. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/12/03/the-history-and-mystery-of-beef-stroganoff-a79582 “Tetrazzini Here, Meets With Injunction.” New York Times. Nov. 25, 1910. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1910/11/25/102052010.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 Tetrazzini, Luisa. “My Life of Song.” Arno Press. 1977. (Reprint edition.) https://archive.org/details/mylifeofsong0000tetr/page/68/mode/2up “To San Franciscans, I Am Luisa,” Declares Mme. Tetrazzini.” The San Francisco Chronicle. March 12, 1913. https://www.newspapers.com/image/457433091/?terms=Luisa%20Tetrazzini&match=2 “Turkey Tetrazzini.” Saveur. https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Turkey-Tetrazzini/ Webster, Jessica. “Chicken Tetrazzini, or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the mess.” The Ann Arbor News. May 12, 2010. https://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/food-drink/giadas-chicken-tetrazzini/ Welch, Douglas. “Squirrel Cage.” The Tribune. May 17, 1967. https://www.newspapers.com/image/321669094/?terms=Luisa%20Tetrazzini&match=1 “Who Are the Indigenous Peoples of Russia?” Cultural Survival. Feb. 20, 2014. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/who-are-indigenous-peoples-russia#:~:text=The%20smallest%20of%20these%20Indigenous,live%20beyond%20the%20Arctic%20Circle. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, HR Professional-turned-farmer Jeremy Tolley shares how to go about hiring someone for a potentially monotonous job.  Make farming easier with the Paperpot Transplanter and Other Small Farm Equipment at https://www.paperpot.co/ Follow PaperpotCo on IG https://instagram.com/paperpotco Podcasts by Diego Footer: Microgreens: https://apple.co/2m1QXmW Vegetable Farming: https://apple.co/2lCuv3m Livestock Farming: https://apple.co/2m75EVG Large Scale Farming: https://apple.co/2kxj39i Small Farm Tools https://www.paperpot.co/

In this episode of Everything is Logistics, host Blythe Brumleve interviews Stephanie Cannon, SVP at Pitney Bowes, about her background in logistics and how she fell in love with the industry. Cannon shares that she started as an industrial engineer in college and landed her first co-op job with UPS, which ultimately led to a full-time job offer and participation in their management trainee program. She discusses the importance of understanding all facets of a logistics company and the value of hands-on experience.LINKS: Pitney Bowes websiteConnect with Stephanie on LinkedinWHAT YOU'LL LEARN:The listener will learn about various topics related to logistics, including the speaker's experience working at UPS, challenges of logistics operations in different countries, Pitney Bowes' different business divisions and innovations, the use of robotics in warehouse systems, and Pitney Bowes' efforts to improve worker engagement and retention through automation.TIMESTAMPS: [00:01:52] UPS management trainee program. [00:05:27] International logistics operations. [00:07:23] Pitney Bowes' global e-commerce. [00:10:46] Workforce optimization. [00:14:09] Consultative parcel shipping solutions. [00:17:19] Flexible automation in warehouses. [00:20:41] Employee involvement in automation. [00:24:20] Monotonous jobs and robotics. [00:27:18] Robotics in Warehouses. [00:33:02] Parcel Shipping Index. [00:33:52] E-commerce innovation and automation.---------------------------------------------THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!At SPI Logistics they have industry-leading technology, systems, and back-office support to help you succeed. Learn more about SPI's freight agent program here. Make sure to let them know we sent you!Digital Dispatch helps you speak confidently about ROI with a website built for your customers, prospects, and employees. With plans starting as low as $90/month, learn how you can take your website from good to great by visiting Digital Dispatch. ---------------------------------------------ABOUT THE PODCAST: Everything is Logistics is a podcast for the thinkers in freight. Follow the podcast to never miss an episode. Follow EIL host Blythe Brumleve on social: Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube

Sixty-First episode of the series, where we reshape the meaning of monotony and deep-dive into the profound value it can bring into our life. We discuss the grueling process it takes, but also highlight the much needed necessity in order to improve and further drive our self-discipline and personal growth. But finally, we also ask ourselves: Should we even "Master Monotony?" - tune in, and enjoy the episode!-----If you'd like to stop by my personal website, where you can find more content and LtB-Themed products, please visit: https://www.philippkarbaum.com/If you wish to support the podcast in any way, please feel free to visit:https://www.patreon.com/philippkarbaumFor anything else, you can follow the following profiles:https://www.instagram.com/phkarbaum/https://www.instagram.com/leave_the_bubble/Music by Bensound.

Mastering the Monotonous: The Secret to Achieving SuccessHow to achieve success?

We all get bored at work from time-to-time, but some jobs are more monotonous than others.Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, mindfulness has been found to be an effective way to improve the boredom associated with remote working. So could boredom during jobs such as working on an assembly line or providing delivery services be improved with mindfulness practices too?Prof Jochen Reb at Singapore Management University is part of an international team of researchers trying to understand how we can improve work-induced boredom. Read their original research: http://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12370

Adam Smith famously argued that specialization is the key to prosperity. In the N.F.L., the long snapper is proof of that argument. Here's everything there is to know about a job that didn't used to exist.

On this episode, Kennedy sits down with the Host of FOX Across America Jimmy Failla to discuss all aspects of a Super Bowl celebration. Jimmy shares how his family celebrates the day, gives his opinion on the best foods to serve at a Super Bowl party and explains why the big day is truly the one "holiday" where Americans can unite. Follow Kennedy on Twitter: @KennedyNation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this second episode, we dive deep into why time moved by so quickly during the pandemic, why it seems that our life passes by too quickly, and how we can literally slow down time in our minds to make life more meaningful. I love to talk about this because we only have 'Won Body' and 'Won Life'. You can perceive that your life goes by quickly like the blink of an eye, which is not the route I want you to go down. Or you can live an amazing life, full of purpose, full of spontaneity and excitement, and full of joy and happiness. Our emotions affect time. Please listen to this episode, and if you enjoyed it, comment, share it with a friend or on your social media, and make sure to subscribe for more content like this! Support the showIf you benefit from episodes like this, hit that ‘Follow' button, and leave a 5-star rating on Spotify or Apple. This would really help this podcast to grow and reach more people who could benefit from living a pain-free life. Interested in working with us? We're looking for healthcare workers, busy parents, and working professionals over 30 who want to eliminate chronic pain from their life so they can enjoy a more active life with their friends & family. We've helped over 550 people find long term success in becoming pain-free. Book a call here to speak with us: https://www.flexwithdoctorjay.co/book Here's a few other places to find me: Join my pain relief support group for busy parents to get weekly live trainings by me and access to my free 6 module pain relief course: http://www.flexwithdoctorjay.online/groupFollow on Instagram: https://instagram.com/flexwithdoctorjayFollow on Tiktok: http://tiktok.com/@flexwithdoctorjaySubscribe on Youtube: http://youtube.com/flexwithdoctorjayCase studies on Yelp: http://flexwithdoctorjay.online/yelpText me anything: 4159656580

During the month of July, we're on short break and playing re-runs of our most popular episodes from the archives. We'll be back with brand new episodes the first Wednesday in August. This episode originally aired August 2021.Today we're talking about work and more specifically, how to deal with feeling stuck. If you're feeling trapped by your job or routine, or if you have a secret dream that you haven't yet had the courage to pursue, this episode is for you.Our guest is Clara Kitongo, a young woman who started practicing Buddhism at a time when she was really feeling stuck in her career and life. Her journey with chanting opened up an entirely new perspective on what a creative life means, and now she's living the life she always wanted.Cheat Sheet1:04 Introduction to Clara3:27 How she got stuck in a “treadmill type existence”6:04 What her dreams had been before she got stuck7:44 When and why she started practicing Buddhism11:36 How to become free from the chains of your own mind17:45 How she found her place in the workforce after school33:39 How she dealt with her pain along the journey35:36 What Buddhism says about opening the door to your life42:18 What a creative life really means44:49 How to deal with the opinions of others49:55 Advice for anyone feeling afraid to open the door to their own life