marcus300 interviews TITANIUM
marcus300: Where do you live and what's it like living there?
TITANIUM:I reside in the North Eastern part of the US. Living here was great growing up, and I was just a regular kid. School system was adequate for the time. Everyone’s mothers were housewives, and fathers worked for the same company their whole lives. I was really fortunate to have grown up at such a time and place. The only regret is the snowy, cold winters.

marcus300: What are your stats?
TITANIUM: Stats-Age? 44 Height? 5’10” Weight?195 lbs BF% 12% Cycle Exp? Starting 4th cycle January 3rd. PCT Knowledge-HCG, Clomid, Nolva, and Tore. These are my staples in PCT protocol. • Training Exp-29 years. Crossing my fingers for another 29!

marcus300: What are your hobbies outside Bodybuilding?
TITANIUM: Bodybuilding isn’t a hobby. It’s a lifestyle. I like motorcycle riding. I collect firearms and love shooting. I have this thing for buying and collecting tools. (but, I use them). I love watching movies and collecting the DVD’s and music CD’s. Books are an another hobby, as I love reading and the feel of paper. The most recent hobby or pastime is this forum. I enjoy it so much and find the people here real, not plastic. It is a learning environment, so I am drawn to it. I spend hours on the computer, just surfing along and reading articles of interest. I just bought 5 books on machine shop and mechanical engineering. The application of mathematics to engineering and CNC application. So, I guess that's a hobby. Pretty boring stuff to most I think, but it is for filling and makes me happy.

marcus300: Why did you pick that screen name?
TITANIUM: Interesting question, I received a polio vaccine in grammar school. This is back when they still used the actual viruses in them,(attenuated poliovirus). I actually was afflicted with a rare reaction to the vaccine. Then actually coming down with polio itself. It only affected my knees, and was gone in about 2 years. Anyway, when I started BB at 15, they were fine, by age 23, or there about, osteoarthritis started forming. Then surgeries started and that was the end of my heavy squatting. (Doctors orders).Started racing bicycles, and found that there was still hope in some sport. I raced with and was trained by some of the best. By the time I was 40, they were down to the bone. Had them replaced about 2 years ago with titanium ones. They work great, and fought with the insurance companies to have them done. I hate insurance companies. Their blessing and a curse at the same time.

marcus300: What was your childhood like for you? You mentioned in your 11 facts that you was abused, in what way and how did it effect you?
TITANIUM: My childhood was poor in respect to child abuse from my mother. I’m not sure if she herself was abused as a child. I would get the beatings of a life time from her. Now, the easy part was the beatings for me. The hardest part was the mental abuse. She would lie to my father about some self diluted idea, and would start with my dad the second he came home. This went on every day of my childhood life. I would actually put my arms out to defend myself, which only made things worse of course. It took years of psychiatric treatment to get through it all. Could not have done it without them. My dad passed in 2003, and still do not talk to my mother to this very day.


marcus300: Did the abuse you suffered from your Mother have any impact on your life and how you brought up your children?
TITANIUM: The impact was devastating, and the long term damage was immense. I was brought up in a time when you could spank your children. I think that my father spanked me all of two times. Now, my mother is a polar opposite of that notion. I first started seeing a psychiatrist at age 15. I looked one up in a phone book, called and made an appointment all on my own. Parents never knew about it. The doctor never even charged me for seeing him. If it was today, the department of social services would have pulled me out of that home. But, it was so different back then. Child abuse was defined as a broken arm or a laceration of some sorts. But putting that aside, kids turned out better at that time it seems. I spanked my son on the bottom occasionally, but never touched my daughter. That was the way back then. And I think that it was the norm. Now, my mother did hit my sister, and my sister was abusive to her 2 daughters something awful. It makes me sick and angry just typing these words. Usually, if you were abused, then you abused your kids. I was saved by getting help as a teen, and being told that that was not the way to punish your child. My sister never saw a psychiatrist that I know of. She did 4 years in the navy, so I would have hoped that it would have broken that mindset somehow. But, it didn't. Its all in the past now though, since she is 4 years older than me, her children are adults now. I never got involved with her disciplinary politics, as I think it may have fallen on deaf ears. So, my children came from a bad marriage, a so called broken home. But seem to gravitate towards me on their own. Its actually a beautiful thing to watch happen. I help them whenever I can, which seems to be often. But that's part of the responsibility of having kids. You learn that you are not number one anymore. Your children are.

marcus300:What do you do for a living?
TITANIUM: I am a machinist by trade, with some mechanical engineering background. When production moved overseas, so did most of the jobs. So, things changed quite abet for myself, and had to improvise. When I was on a bmx freestyle team in the late seventies, I got to know a lot of the local store owners.I started working on bicycles on the side. One thing led to another, and now have been head wrench and service manager in three pro bike shops ever since. Its not glamorous, but it pays the bills. It is amazing how much money you can make working in the pro shops. I’m thinking about getting back into machining, as I absolutely love doing it. Very challenging, and that's what makes it so appealing to me.

marcus300: Are you married and do you have any children?
TITANIUM: Yes, I am currently married. Actually, this is a grey area; lets call her a life partner. I have two kids from my first marriage. A daughter that is 16, and a son that is 14. Great children with no health problems. That first marriage was truly a complete catastrophe. The only good thing that came from that are my children. I divorced her about 10 years ago. But, until my kids reach 18, I am still entangled due to child support. I want to try to buy a house, so that they can live with me. That's what they want, and what I want. Hopefully, things will work themselves out. Patience is sometimes a rare commodity when needed.

marcus300: What's the relationship like with your wife?
TITANIUM: Its actually not bad at all. She comes from a different childhood all together than myself. Her childhood is more self inflicted in nature than anything. But, all things considered, she has learned a lot about “Life” itself and asks me to help her constantly. There is no problem with that, but it does become a lot when coupled with other aspects of everyday things. We seem to understand each other very well, and open communication is always in motion. This is a key point with the way I handle relationships. I don't dodge any questions and will say what needs to be said no matter what. It’s going to get to that point anyway, so just say it. Then sort it out from there. I have lost relationships over being like this, but understand that it is not said in a cruel or vindictive way. If she feels, at anytime, that she wants to leave or move on in her own life, I understand. Freedom of choice may take her in a separate direction than myself. This is not to say I don’t love her of care about her at all. Actually, it is the opposite altogether. If people need to find themselves, I get it. This gets into the whole maturity thing that , unless you have been through hell and back, most won’t either understand or incorporate. It’s an age thing also, but that was the way I have been for years. Any way’s, she has a good job, for the moment, and does fairly well. She is going back to college to finish out her accounting courses, (she is 42), and that says a lot. I have her into riding road bikes, but she seems to be terrified at times. I was riding motorcycles since the age of seven, so It’s different all together for me. But she seems to be coming along. She drives a Mitsubishi eclipse GT, a 2006.She goes through rotors and pads like nothing! Learn to down shift and engine brake!!! I have a class 1 license, so again what I take for granted, you need to teach others.( I don’t use the clutch , only to start and stop). There’s that tangent again! There are good family ties with her, as on my side, there are almost none, except my kids. Sex life? Hmmmmm. It’s good when it’s good, but I don’t need that so much anymore. Last cycle killed it, and I am just getting it back now. The cool thing is, is that she gets it, and there is no problem. This I will pass on to the younger crowd. If you can take sex out of the relationship, and the relationship is still strong, bingo! If that is what it is really based on, then it’s no good. Unless, that’s what kind of relationship you want, casual dating. Never my thing, since jealousy seems to creep in the back door somehow and screw it up. Honestly, I could move into the middle of nowhere and be completely alone, and be absolutely in bliss. And she knows this. (she frequents the forum here and sees what I’m posting).I’m not hiding anything, so it’s great. Keep your relationships honest and open, and you will make out better in the long run.

marcus300: Have you ever been unfaithful?
TITANIUM: Never. There are always opportunities, but attraction is purely physical. So, I stay away from that scenario all together. If you feel the need to be unfaithful, then you are in the wrong type of relationship. That will somehow come back and haunt you. It’s just a matter of time.

Members question: Do you have anymore tattoo's other than the ones on your back?
TITANIUM: Yes, I have two on each arm, and one on my chest.

marcus300: Why do you have 2 guns tattooed on your back?
TITANIUM: I get a lot of PM’s about that one. As most of the members know, I have core beliefs. These core beliefs are the US Constitution and the bill of rights. These rights I swore to uphold when I joined the core in 1984. While the rest of the world has changed, I have not. The pistols themselves are Colt 1911’s of actual size. John Moses Browning designed them before the year 1911. This was our US adopted side arm for almost 100 years. In between them, is says “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms”. And the NRA across my shoulders. And no, I am not an extreme right wing fanatic, but more conservative I think. I grew up in a time when you could walk down the road on a Saturday afternoon, to go shooting in the sand pits. My father grew up in a time when he would take his shotgun to school to go duck hunting. That was the normal part of life. The US that you see and live in today, is not what I fought for or my father did. If just one of our rights goes, then the rest are sure to follow. And to some that feel that it is outdated, they are just been a product of the current political propaganda machine. OK, sorry about that tangent I just went on. The pistols mean a lot of things, not just the obvious one people jump to.

marcus300: In some ways i can understand not changing with the times but it’s something what we can’t control no matter how extreme we feel, taking a shotgun to school may be something they did in times gone by but nowadays that's an impossibility, surely you wouldn't want people running wild with guns?
TITANIUM:I use it as a metaphor, as in relationship to responsibility, and accountability. It’s funny, because the people that abide by gun laws are not the ones responsible for the problem. Yet, we are the ones who suffer for it. A lot of the crime is based on political statistics, and not ATF statistics. I have an FFL, and the statistics for crime in the US by a lawful gun owner is less than 1% overall. You won’t hear that on any main stream media outlet. It’s all political agenda. We have a gun problem due to: number one, really poor punishments for gun related crime in the US. It’s deplorable at best. Most of the crime here is been found to be gang related. It’s a sad reality, but a real one. People will kill people no matter what. It has been that way since our conception, and will continue that way. Just like our country sending troops to Afghanistan. Same thing, not any different. Loss of human life on both sides. It’s all because someone has something that someone else wants. Think about it? What we really need is not firearm control, it’s prosecuting those people that use firearms in a illegal manner. Project “Exile” is a crime deterrent. Anyone that uses a firearm in a crime goes to prison for 10 years, and no plea bargaining. The NRA thought of it a long time ago, and I believe Georgia adopted it. Texas has lethal injection, which I completely agree with. Another statistic that is fascinating, is that the licensing system has never shown to be an ineffective way or reducing gun related crime. Why? Because criminals don’t care about the laws that govern the law abiding citizen. My grandfather was a chief of police of Boston. And so was his father.(yes, we are going back to the early 1900’s). It’s all propaganda that is spun for political votes. I know the laws in England, Marcus, but statistically speaking, since they adopted a complete ban on all firearms, now the police have to be armed. Why? Same reason as here. But, your country’s prosecutes the offenders more harshly than here. So, that is a positive thing. You will never be able to get firearms away from criminals, but you can take the criminals away from the firearms. And I really hate when you need a pointless licenses to exercise a civil Constitutional right. A false security blanket is all it is. You have the god given right to defend yourself and your family, and if that means taking a human life then that is what it takes. I would do anything to protect my loved one’s. And police can’t be everywhere all the time. There is a reason police do not get mugged in the US, but that should be obvious. Guns do not kill people, people do. It is that simple.

marcus300: What guns do you own?
TITANIUM:I have a rough estimate of about maybe 50 to 60 firearms at the moment. Types vary a lot, as some are very specialised in nature. I own a lot of custom handguns, rifles, and shotguns. I am a gunsmith, so I have a lot of tools specific to certain firearms themselves. Calibre's range from.22 long rifle up to .300 Win Mag. I am buying a .50 cal in the spring. ( I want one before the politicians ban them). I have some beautiful commemoratives also. There are so many different models and makes. I have a thread running in the lounge about calibre's and gun selection going right now. Members, again feel free to ask what questions you have. I will answer all the PM’s and e-mail I get. It’s not a problem. I actually enjoy answering the questions.

marcus300:Ive never fired a gun and Ive always wanted to, I think the next time I go to the States i will try it out, which do you prefer hand guns or rifles?
TITANIUM: The only thing that they have in common is that they discharge bullets.Other than that, they have nothing in common.I was taught on a .22 rifle, so that was my first exposure to them. If I was to teach someone now, probably a small caliber handgun , like a .22 Ruger. There easy to use, and recoil is minimal. I taught my wife to shoot with a 9MM S&W sigma, which is basically a Glock. (actually, S&W was sued over pattern rights from Glock over it).You could go to a nice indoor range, or outdoor one, and just rent one. As long as you are with an instructor, or someone that holds a valid license, your good to go. I think that that you would enjoy it, and find that they are not a scary thing that the media spins them out to be. So, your choice, but I recommend a .22 to start with.

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