Many years ago I was voluntold to take part in an an annual endurance event run by the Canadian Army in Edmonton's River Valley. I seem to remember it involved putting on rucksack with 33 lbs (15kg) of stuff in it and running 20 miles (aprox 32km) before putting an 18 foot (5.5 metre) aluminium canoe on my head and tottering 3.2 kilometres (two miles) to the North Saskatchewan River. There competitors had to canoe 10km (something like six miles) downstream before running 5.56km (about three and half miles) to the finish line. I was so bad at paddling my canoe that at times the eddies in the river were strong enough to carry me back up stream. But I almost didn't even get to put my canoe in the water. There was an army medic stationed at the canoe launch and it was his job to ask competitors how they were doing. This was actually a test to weed out those who were so close to exhaustion that they were incoherent. My problem was that when I'm tired and excited my Scottish accent becomes very pronounced. The medic looked at me as though I was babbling and you could tell he was seriously considering sending me to join a couple of others who had already been pulled from the event after failing the Babble Test. But luckily for me, one of army doctors was just behind me. He announced to the medic that he had been brought up in Glasgow and could understand me. He vouched that I was not in fact babbling, though probably only other Scottish people could understand me at this point. So, I was allowed to continue. I honestly can't remember what my finishing time was but I do recall announcing that if I ever even suggested entering The Mountain Man again, people should feel free to bash me in the head with hammer.