I thought you guys might find some humor in this. It was written by my boss, his wife hes him on a short chain when it comes to outdoor adventures. She's sure that they are going to find his decomposed body somewhere at the bottom of a waterfall one day. You'll also see that Mr. Bossman has a wonderful way with words........


My entry letter for the contest to be on Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls (Just kidding)Share
Yesterday at 21:29
Dear Bear,

I believe you should pick me to be your guest on one of your televised survival adventures. Americans have this whining thing down to an art form. I have no doubt you will be inundated with letters from this side of the Atlantic by very noble people who have selflessly overcome many challenges and probably deserve a chance to go adventuring with you. That stuff might work on Oprah, but not on someone like you who eats raw maggots from the rotting intestines of mountain goats. Let me be blunt. I don’t deserve it at all. Consider this: How would you feel if one of those noble, selfless candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize ended up croaking on one of your wild survival treks? Could you really live with that guilt? Why not take an ordinary guy like me and not risk years of emotional self-flagellation if I slip through one of those ice crevices? Instead of boring you with some really sad story about why I am the most deserving contestant I am going to cut right to the chase and appeal to your ego. Obviously, you have a massive ego. Anyone who breaks his back in two places and then goes on to become the young British person to climb Mt. Everest in order to write a book about it has to have an ego to match that lofty summit.

In trying to appeal to your ego, let me first just say what a cool name you have. It’s right up this with Crocodile Dundee. Americans rarely get named after ferocious animals and when they do it’s usually just a golfer named Tiger (although I recently heard he changed his named to Cheetah) or someone like that. Also, I must add that you have single-handedly restored my faith in British masculinity. Before Man vs. Wild, my opinion of your country had been largely formed by my wife’s obsession with Jane Austen’s Victorian England and those Notting-Hill-Love-Actually-Bridget-Jones movies that she is always watching. Based on those, I used to think that all British men ran around like Hugh Grant speaking in a posh accent while fretting over paper cuts or getting exercised about the bread crust on cucumber sandwiches. Then you came along, biting through the spinal cords of raw fish with your teeth, eating worms and drinking your own urine. Wow! You taught us what it means to be a real Brit of a man by showing us that when some of you say “bloody” it’s not just an expression, but an adjective that is going to describe supper on tonight’s episode of Man vs. Wild.

I also happened to notice that before you parachute out of planes or paraglide off the side of a helicopter you make the sign of the cross. So I suspect that if you are a religious man living in England that you must be an Anglican. What good fortune it is that I just happen to be an Episcopal clergy person. Having me on your show would help strengthen the Anglican Communion. There’s no question that it could use some of your survival skills. Now to be honest, those of us who are in the Anglican Communion really have no idea what that is other than to use one of our favorite phrases: “It’s a profound mystery.” However, like all good Anglicans, we believe that if it is really old then we must somehow work to preserve it. That is where you and I come in. Countless Archbishops and ecclesiastical hierarchs have held numerous conferences and drafted endless parliamentary resolutions seeking to ease the strain on the bonds of the Anglican Communion, but what it really needs to jump start the process is for an Episcopalian and a member of the C of E to go out and leap over a pit of rattlesnakes together or make our own zip line through a rain forest somewhere. I do not know the Archbishop of Canterbury personally, but I cannot help but think that you would earn some good will within Lambeth by doing your part to foster the Communion. You could even rename our joint episode and call it, “Man of the Cloth vs. Wild”.

The biggest reason you should allow me to come along is that it would make my friend Andy Bracken jealous that I actually got to do something more extreme than he did. That is no small feat. You see, we are both from Appalachian stock, but unlike my Welsh ancestors, I do not think his people came over from the Mother Country. They were already here. The Native Americans used to give them wide berth. In fact, I think the name Bracken comes from the Native American term “Brackenwahhasheenaw” which is roughly translated, “He who boils corn smashings and then drinks his own fire water.” Andy is always jumping off cliffs with his bike and going over rapids in a canoe. In other words, it is simply impossible to out-Bracken him, but being on the Man vs. Wild show would probably help me finally establish some bragging rights over him. Surely, if anyone can understand the urgency and importance of placing your good friend on a ride in the wuss-wagon for once, then you must because you do it to millions of us each week on your show.

Thank you for your consideration.
Tim Jones.