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Banged Shins, Pulled Muscles, and Thirteen Stitches — Oh My!

April 12th, 2009 No comments

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks.

Two weekends ago, I went up to Mammoth Ski Area with a couple of friends from work.  I had two great days of snowboarding.  After being totally worn out on the first day by the two skiers I was with, I decided to take a couple of runs through the terrain park to work a few different muscles.  I had a couple of pretty good runs – some good jumps, a few spills, but nothing major.  I hit a couple of the boxes and other metal features, and was doing pretty well overall.  On the third (and last) run through the park I decided to do something different on the very last box.  I decided to ride across diagonally from the toe side and drop off the side of the box.  (I usually go heal-side if I’m riding across a box.)  Everything was set and ready to go coming into the jump.  That is, until I forgot to actually hop up onto the box.

Having failed to clear the initial hurdle, my front edge slammed into the side of the box, and I pitched forward over the plastic.  With my toes caught on one side, I my shins smacked into the opposing rail on the way down, leaving a matched pair of cuts right above my boot tops.  Blech.  Finishing the move with a shoulder-first body slam into the ground didn’t help, either.  Luckily, the fall didn’t hurt all that bad, and the cuts are healing well.  I’m going to have some nice scars, but I wasn’t winning no beauty contests to start with.

The work week following was relatively quiet, but on Thursday Dore and I flew to Utah to meet up with my family to go skiing.  (Eric is working at Snowbird Ski Area as one of the tram operators.)  I managed to get through the first day relatively unscathed.  The second day, however, I managed to pull my tricep slightly on one of the few powder runs of the day.  Maybe I shouldn’t try tree runs though heavy tracked powder without being warmed up first.  Maybe.  Fortunately the pull wasn’t bad, and my arm was functional, if very sore, the next day.

On the third day I wasn’t quite so lucky, however.  It was a heavy powder day, and I should have known better than to try a 360 off of a road jump on skis.  (Note to self: seriously, stop trying that…)  I made it around, but the deep, choppy powder grabbed my skis, ripping one off.  I did a three-quarter forward bouncing somersault over the front of my remaining ski and landed flat on on my bum in a soft, poofy pile of powder.  All was well, until I tried to move and realized that my quad was burning.  (My right quad, oddly, just like my tricep.)  Good news: Skiing didn’t seem to affect my leg.  Bad news: Walking does hurt quite a bit.  Guess which one I do more often?  Bummer…

Oh well, it should heal in a couple of weeks, provided I stop running on it (I’m looking at you, kickball).

And speaking of kickball…

Our game this last week didn’t go so well at all.  I did manage to score one run in the first inning, but the other team was good, and got us out fairly quickly.  When they got to kick it was obvious that they were not just good, but really good.  We finally got two outs, and I was just waiting to get the third out to finish out the inning.  I finally got my chance on a short fly ball right up the middle of the field.  I ran as hard as I could, and all I could think about was getting that out.  As I dove for the ball, it crossed my mind that it was odd that the pitcher wasn’t turning away from his attempt to catch the ball.  And then came the stars.

In the grand scheme of things, there are some great truths.  E = mc^2.  Paper covers rock.  Knee is harder than face.  In the name of science, I took on the task of reverifying the latter.  And I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it is 100% true. I have the thirteen stitches to prove it.  And a pair of broken glasses.

As I rode to the emergency room with an impromptu friend, I couldn’t help but wonder: Who would have guessed that after seven days of hard skiing and snowboarding that kickball would have been the thing that did me in?  But there you have it.

So yeah… it’s been a rough two weeks.  I’m quite ready to take a break from my vacations and get back to some nice, solid, dependable tedium.

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