Five years ago I stood at the starting line of Ironman Coeur d'Alene. 140.6 miles. 105 degrees. A record heat wave moving through the West. I wanted to finish sub-12 hours. I finished at 15:58.

This is what happened in between and why it was still one of the best days of my life.

No Signal, Life happens when you put the phone down.

Last week we butchered one of our lambs. My two boys sat in the dirt and watched the whole thing.

I'm not going to show you any of it. No blood, nothing. This isn't that kind of episode. But I am going to be honest about what the day actually was.

I believe if you can't kill what you eat, you shouldn't be eating meat. I think it's wrong to hand that off to someone else and then look down on the people who do it. So we raised this animal, we fed it, and when the time came we did the hard part ourselves and I let my sons see where their food comes from.

Then they drank a soda in the dirt and went back to being kids, because to them it was just another day on the farm. Maybe that's the whole thing right there.

A note before you start: nothing graphic is shown or described in detail. If the subject isn't for you, skip this one. But if you've ever wondered where your meat comes from, this is an honest look at it.

No Signal. Life happens when you put the phone down.

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Watch on YouTube: @NoSignallife

My grandpa kept this tractor running for years with a pair of vice grips clamped to the battery terminal. It worked, until I went to fix it the right way and the whole connector broke off in my hand.

This is the tractor that moves the chicken tractor and mows the fields. When it went down, the farm went with it. So I spent the afternoon working backward through it, a spliced starter wire with no nuts and no tape, an ignition with power but no crank, corrosion, and finally a broken terminal I had to replace with a part pulled off my grandpa's '65 Fairlane. One old machine fixing another.

My grandparents are 85 and 83 and still out here every day. Grandpa's at the tractor with me. Grandma walks up in the middle of it to ask about her computer. The analog and the digital, back to back.

Life happens when you put the phone down.