Frank does not look like a case study you would expect to find in a health article.
He does not speak the language of optimization. He is not chasing perfect routines, pristine biomarkers, or externally defined standards of wellness. What he does instead is inhabit his days fully. He builds. He explores. He learns. He connects. He moves through the world with a kind of embodied curiosity that is increasingly rare.
What interested me was not whether his life fit conventional definitions of health. It was how well his life was working for him.
A Quick Safety Valve
This is not a recommendation to copy Frank’s habits. Health is personally defined, and chasing perfect biomarkers, for some, can become its own kind of constraint.
What follows is an observation about alignment. By Frank’s definition, he is thriving. Strong. Independent. Sharp. Socially connected. Fully engaged with his environment.
The Man and the Workshop
Frank is an anomaly, at least within my social circle. He loves Corona, home grown weed, cornhole, and working with his hands.
In fact, to say he enjoys working with his hands would be a categorical understatement. There is almost nothing Frank cannot figure out, and that spans trades, tools, mechanics, systems, and problem solving that most people would not even attempt.
He built a full solar field to pull himself off the grid and an open-loop geothermal system that runs off a Canadian spring.
His land is wide. Private. Safe. The kind of place where experimentation is not reckless. It is contained, deliberate, and safe.
Enter the Potato Cannon
At some point, Frank went down a rabbit hole that started with a simple curiosity and ended with something you could imagine on YouTube or in a machine shop magazine.
We are not talking about some backyard potato cannon. We are talking about a military grade piece of artillery capable of firing a potato the length of multiple football fields with startling accuracy.
Watching Frank section himself off from conversation and start blueprinting the machine in real time felt like watching a mind lock into a different gear. Quiet. Focused. Unhurried. Fully absorbed.
How an Absurd Project Becomes a Health Investment
From the outside, it might have looked like a simple hobby. A toy. A strange distraction from the “real world”.
But as the build evolved, it became obvious that something more fundamental was happening.
Active retrieval and elaboration are two foundational elements of learning. But beneath them sits something even more important: accruing enough foundational knowledge to make creativity possible. The deeper the well, the higher the ceiling.
Frank was not just building an object. He was building a system, iterating it, pressure testing it, and expanding what it could do.
The Iteration Stack
The early prototype was crude. A PVC-style barrel. Single shot. Not entirely accurate. Not all that impressive.
Then it started evolving.
Phase 2: A turret was built for improved mobility and directionality.
Phase 3: Custom machined aluminum barrels of varying lengths were added to establish vectors and accuracy.
Phase 4: Breech sights, a sitometer, and a compass were added for more advanced targeting.
Phase 5: An improved trigger mechanism and hydraulic stop valve reduced pressure leakage and decreased lag time between shots.
Phase 6: Industrial air compression was built with an added belt-driven gas motor, and a trailer carriage was assembled for ultimate mobility.
The iteration list continues. Refining. Defining. Improving.
Cross Domain Returns in Frank’s Health401k®
What surprised me most was not the cannon. It was what the process created around it.
Social: The project became a bonding ritual. Grandchildren, friends, and feedback loops. Shared games. Shared experiments. Shared stories that will outlive the build itself.
Intellectual: Former knowledge got repurposed into new problems. Constraints became prompts. Each iteration demanded planning, testing, and adjustment. Learning did not happen in theory. It happened through iteration, testing, and feedback.
Physical: Machining, lifting, moving materials, tool work, repetitive setup and teardown. Not exercise in a gym, but repeated real-world output that demanded strength, coordination, and attention.
Environmental: The workshop became a living classroom. Tools, drawings, blueprints, parts, and prototypes shaped the space. The environment reflected learning in motion, not intention in abstraction.
Emotional: Flow. Absorption. The quiet satisfaction of competence earned. Hundreds of hours disappeared into a state that many people spend decades trying to access.
The Part That Will Annoy Some Readers
Frank is in his seventies and runs in stark opposition to common health narratives. He works in his shop for long stretches with a spliff hanging from his lips and a Corona on the bench.
He is lean. Physically robust. Mentally sharp in a way that feels unsettling.
I have no idea what his lab markers look like. If we sent him to Quest, I do not know what we would see.
What I do know is this: he is strong, independent, cognitively alive, and socially connected. His life is working.
The Quiet Takeaway
Frank does not optimize his life.
He inhabits it.
And cognitive and physical independence has followed.
Ryan Travis Woods