I’d hire a rocket ship (certainly that wouldn’t cost more than $10,000, right?), jump out in a wingsuit, glide to Alaska, and wrestle an actual bear with tag team partner Bear Grylls.

To make my pitch unique, however, I’d need a hook. A clever angle. Something the editors of Outside wouldn’t see coming.

That’s when I decided that I’d take this adventure on a day when most people would never dare attempt something so bold.

A sick day.

I’d be the Ferris Bueller of outdoor adventuring.

Of course, if I was going to pull off the ultimate outdoor sick day adventure, I couldn’t let my boss get wind of it. To make it a fair story, I’d need him (Hi, Sean!) and everyone I work with to be in the dark. I’d need them to think I was at home with a stomach bug while I was actually flying to a bear fight. Therefore, I’d need to make myself unrecognizable in my pitch video.

So I’d wear a costume.

And it would be perfect.

But then I read the official contest rules and learned that the pitch video required an identifiable person. In other words, if I made my pitch dressed as Batman—no matter how awesome I might look—I’d be disqualified.

Fortunately, I had another idea in my back pocket. I want to turn this adventure grant contest into another contest. An alternate reality adventure game that anyone can enter. An alternate reality that takes place 100 years in the future.

Too bad the idea doesn’t stand a chance of moving on to the final round of voting.

Here’s why.

This idea is sorta’ crazy. In fact, it’s so out there that the editors at Outside will probably have a good laugh about it while they’re kayaking or mountain biking or wingsuiting or whatever feat of awesomeness they’ll be up to on their Monday morning break (I’m not jealous, at all).

Plus, I made a crucial mistake in the video. Watch it before you read on to see if you can spot it.

This alternate reality takes place in the year 2113 (when there is no time for adventure, naturally). In the pitch video, my teaser for the game says that the year is 2013. Whoops. Didn’t realize that until today. Two days after I frantically uploaded my application 52 minutes before the deadline. And since I can’t replace a YouTube video, there’s nothing I can do to fix it.

This, my friends, I’m calling a grant submission failure.

There’s a lesson here, obviously, which is that you should always get plenty of eyeballs on your work. No matter how silly it might be. Especially when you ditch your first idea for another idea at the last minute.

So, am I feeling a little embarrassed right now? Yep.

Am I terribly upset with myself? No. I had a blast brainstorming ideas for this project.

And best of all, I won’t have to wrestle a bear.

Hopefully, Outside will do this again next year and I can give it another shot.

Of course, that will be 2013. Not 2113.

Since anyone can enter the contest, it could be you. Or me.

I’m struggling to decide between a couple of ideas. One of them would make for a great story, but I’d have to break one of the contest rules in my pitch video. Normally, that would make this an easy decision. But that was before Outside recently ran a story titled Breaking the Rules: Doing Right Means Sometimes Ignoring the Law. My idea wouldn’t involve any law breaking. Just a silly rule.

What do you think? Should I play the safe route? Or break the rules?

And while we’re at it, what’s your dream adventure? Either tell me or enter the contest for yourself.

Despite a nagging knee issue (notice how I still refuse to call it an injury), I’ve kept telling myself that I’ll be able to compete in the Uwharrie Mountain Run on Feb. 4. Even though it’s a 40-mile run. Even though it’s on a hilly trail. And even though I haven’t managed to complete a single run longer than 13 miles since November. None of that mattered, of course, because I’d simply gut it out on race day.

But it’s time to face the reality that I have no business running that distance through the woods in my current condition. Today, I finally e-mailed the race organizers to let them know that they should give my spot to a lucky person on their waiting list.

Sure, it hurts a little to finally admit it. But it’s also a relief. During the past year, I’ve fallen in love with running for its stress-relieving, worry-zapping powers. Recently, however, I haven’t been able to run more than 5 miles without stressing and worrying that my knee won’t be able to carry me 40 miles. Now, without that fear clouding my thoughts, I’m willing to bet that this 5-mile run I’m about to take will be a breeze.

Plus, I’m comforted by the fact that my dream of running an ultra isn’t dying. I’m just putting it on hold. A wise friend of mine recently told me about an injury he endured while training for an Ironman a few years ago. He had to stop running for a while, but he eventually healed up and ran a 50-mile race last summer. “The way I look at it,” he said, “is that an injury every now and then is the price of admission for doing cool stuff.”

I couldn’t agree with him more.

In the mean time, I should probably be on the lookout for more cool stuff with less impact on my knees. Pillow fighting, anyone?

Instead, I’m entering a race that’s just plain insane.

I’m running an ultramarathon.

The Uwharrie Mountain Run is a 40-mile trail run billed as “a true adventure that requires intense concentration.” That’s probably because the course promises treacherous hills, ample opportunities to fall down, the potential to easily get lost in the forest, and numerous stream crossings, which depending on the weather, could be freezing cold.

Of course, it could also be raining.

Or snowing.

Fortunately, I’ll probably be far too insane to care.

At the urging of my friend and former boss Bil Boyd, I have applied to appear on the ABC show Wipeout. Yes, I have applied for the chance to look like a complete moron on national television. Don’t act like you’re surprised.

Obviously, I have no idea if I’ll ever hear back from the production company. As I understand it, most of the people who wind up on shows like this were discovered at on-site casting calls in California shopping malls. Or they slept with a producer.

As for me, I have no recollection of sleeping with a producer and I simply filled out an online application that posed some moderately probing questions, such as:

• What are your worst qualities?
• If you could be anyone living or dead, real or fiction, who would you be and why?
• If you were granted one wish (however impossible), what would it be and why?

In case you’re wondering, I said I can be a jerk; that I’d like to be Marty McFly so I can travel through time; and that I’d like to play a football game for the Steelers. On the moon. Why the Steelers? Because I’ve been a fan all my life. Why the moon? Because if we lose, at least I can say I’ve been to space.

As clever or just plain stupid as that might sound, who knows if anyone at the production company will read my application? Either way, I’ll keep you posted.

Even with that footnote as an excuse, I never intended to go four weeks without writing a post—let alone four months. Call it a hiatus, a sabbatical, a spiritual retreat, or plain laziness. No matter what, I’m back, and my next event is another marathon.

Even though I haven’t blogged since June, I haven’t stopped running. In fact, since the Tobacco Road Marathon in March, RunKeeper says I’ve run 568.6 miles, or about 20 miles each week. I’ve used most of that time to somewhat successfully concentrate on not falling face first on the trails at Umstead State Park. During the rest of the time, however, I’ve thought much about my next steps for this blog. Its future has mirrored the highs and lows that go along with long distance running. It’s gone as high as starting my own national egg toss championship and as low as pulling the plug on this whole project.

But for every time I think of one reason to stop blogging, I’m reminded of a dozen reasons to keep at it. Actually, today I was given 10,000 reasons to keep at it. That’s because the Japan Tourism Agency has proposed a campaign to give away 10,000 free roundtrip tickets to Japan, so long as the ticketholders publicize their trip on blogs and social media sites.

So, anybody know of something ridiculous I could enter in Japan?

Maybe a game show?

Unfortunately, my co-champ and I failed to secure a sponsor to send us to today’s event. So instead of competing for a world title, we played a backyard game of Russian Egg Roulette.

Watch the video to see what happened.

Now, I’m also falling short with my words. Probably because of all the beer I drank and time I spent baking in the sun.

Therefore, the highlight of today’s post is a video. Enjoy, but be advised that a middle-aged man nearly takes his pants off at the 3:04 mark.

Congrats to Aaron Todd, the inaugural Pan American Coaster Tossing Champion. Surely, a lucrative endorsement deal from Big Boss awaits you.

No. A destiny.

MAKE IT TO THE WORLD EGG THROWING CHAMPIONSHIP IN ENGLAND AND RAISE A BUNCH OF CASH FOR WORLD HUNGER

Clearly, as 2010 made way for 2011, I wasn’t just hoping to drop a few pounds or learn something new to expand my mind. I was aiming for global domination in a sport (if you’ll humor me and call it a sport) in which I am the reigning U.S. national champion.

An epic plan was hatched. My co-champion (and good friend) Mike Hepp and I would seek corporate sponsorship to send us to Swaton, England, for our world title shot. Along the way, we’d raise money for hunger-related charities. The sponsor would get some positive press coverage, hungry people would eat, and Mike and I would finally have an excuse to get WORLD CHAMPS tattooed on our chests.

Everyone would win.

Our efforts to attain sponsorship included the production of an epicly awesome video pitch, a website (thanks to my beautiful wife/web designer Carie), and a cleverly packaged direct mail campaign (egg cartons filled with plastic eggs stuffed with reasons to sponsor the champs).

The immediate results were impressive.

During that first week, the video racked up more than 700 hits on YouTube. Jason Jennings, a local TV sports reporter, blogged about our pitch, saying that we are “never short on tongue-in-cheek creativity.” We even received the ultimate pat on the back from Darren Rovell, a CNBC Sports Business Reporter who tweeted:

Any1 looking for sponsorship can learn from the US Egg Tossing Champs. Great pitch http://tiny.cc/5b4x6 (via @AnyoneCanEnter)

Unfortunately, most of the corporations we targeted for sponsorship didn’t quite see it the same way. The ones that actually responded were nice enough, but only before assuring me that they prefer to spend their time and money on actual charitable activities. Not egg tossers.

We did manage to flirt with the North Carolina Egg Association, but only after proclaiming that we might actually just pay our own way to England. Problem was, once we actually thought about shelling out more than $4,000 to fly ourselves and our wives to England to compete in an egg tossing tournament, it was easier to see what some of our potential sponsors were thinking.

That’s part of the reason why we have officially decided not to attend this year’s contest.

It’s a sad thing to finally type that.

For nearly the first five months of this year, I’ve been somewhat consumed with this idea. Now, here I am admitting that it won’t happen. That I’m giving in to the silliness of it all. That I won’t be meet World Egg Throwing Federation Andrew Dunlop in person this year.

Then again, I have no regrets about pursuing such a ridiculous adventure. If anything, I regret that I didn’t try harder to make it happen. That I didn’t follow through on booking that last-minute flight to Illinois to start a rally at the quarterly American Egg Board meeting. That I didn’t mail just two more egg cartons. That I didn’t tell enough people about the brilliance of such an insane idea.

Fortunately, Big Boss Brewing Company just dropped another tossing contest into my lap. Instead of eggs, I’ll be tossing coasters this Saturday for a chance at a Pan American title.

Plus, there’s no reason Mike and I can’t start saving up to make it to next year’s World Egg Throwing Championship.

Yeah, I think that might be a nice goal.

Or a destiny.