Thanks for joining! This is a brand new community, and you are one of the first members. Introduce yourself, tell us where you live and where you'd like to get to in your fitness journey. Also, tell us about your pet if you have one.🐕‍🦺

I'm 53 years old, a husband to a wonderful wife of 28 years, a father of two daughters, 25 and 22. I still live in the same small town I was born and raised in Willcox AZ. We have 3 dogs, Mini Mouse a 6 year old miniature Dachshund, Bronx a 5 year old German Shepherd, and Daisy a 4 year old miniature Dachshund. We love our dogs. They have got to be the best motivators ever, they do not let us miss a single day of rucking. Through out my adult life I never really exercised. I grew up working in construction with my dad and was consistently about 25 lbs over weight. In 1999 I went to work for a TelCo as a network administrator and set at a desk most of the time, ended up about 100 lbs overweight. In 09 I decided I couldn't keep doing it anymore and finally made the leap to start my own business as a Home Theater Contractor. It was the best decision for my income and my health. I was forced to start moving and in the first year I dropped 40lbs but I was still eating fast food daily. I still managed to drop another 20lbs over the next few years only because the job was pretty physically demanding. But then I started having some swallowing problems and wasn't able to eat the amount of food I had before and as a side effect I began losing more weight. By 2014 it was affecting me more and more and I began have some sharp chest pains. While working at Dr's home installing some home theater equipment, one of the chest pain episodes hit me, Dr was there and convinced me to go to the hospital. A few weeks later after having a scope done I found out I had a disease called Achalasia which basically kept food from entering my stomach. There was a surgical procedure I could have performed to lessen the effects and allow food to pass but I would forever more have acid reflux and other side affects. That was when I made the decision to really start eating health and then later on started exercising..... a little bit. Though I continued eating pretty well, a lot of cheating and sweats still, but I hadn't really taken the exercise serious until about 3 years ago. As I was approaching 50 the other issues were showing up. Back and knee pain, and though I was pretty thin, around 195lbs at 6'3", I had lost a lot of muscle mass from failing to lift any weights.

For all of you who have joined with the annual membership or want to upgrade. I'll place the first order for the Tuff Rucker backpacks and the weight bladders when we reach 500 pre-orders (paid annual members). It will take 60 - 90 days for that first order to arrive, then we'll ship them out to you. I've done all the development and have chosen the manufacturers over the last 6 months. The bladders are manufactured in China. I looked at sourcing them from the US, Mexico, Taiwan, and China. I was surprised to find that the Chinese manufacturer actually made the best quality product. It turns out the manufacturer I chose also makes Camelback bladders, so they have a lot of experience making a very good product. I looked at all the same countries to make the backpack. Each of them produced good-quality packs. I ultimately chose a Mexican manufacturer. I had the opportunity to visit their facility several times and see their production in person. They were super fast to make changes I wanted, and being able to visit in person makes a huge difference. I'll keep you up to date as the pre-orders grow.