A Dumb Idea (#7)
Last night, I mentioned "officially" breaking my thumb. I also mentioned how I may have cracked my shin. Another time, I think I may have cracked my tailbone, but the only verified break was my right thumb.
For several years, the house I lived in was right by a big community park. There were baseball fields, a creek, and a big tobbogan hill. The hill was a butal place come winter. I saw a girl lose most of the skin on her face in a grizzy accident on the hill, and also witnessed a few broken limbs from collisions. There were two steep runs, and if you hit things right, you could criss-cross with others near the bottom.
But this isn't a sledding collision story--this is much more dumb.
Cross country skiing is cool. There's a wonderful sense of peace as you glide along through forest and fields. Occasionally, you climb some small hills and glide down the other side.
Cross country skis aren't the ideal skis for hurtling down a tobbogan run, though.
I wasn't a very good skier at the time, but I would try almost anything once if I was vaguely sure it wouldn't result in severe injury or death. I was with two friends, and we used all our energy to make it up the side of the tobbogan hill. We chatted at the top, and my friends went back down the side we struggled to get up. It was still fairly steep, but a gradual enough trek up and glide back down.
I was the goof who went down the steep side, forgetting we had built a ramp near the bottom.
Maybe others can steer well on cross country skis while going downhill, but I couldn't. After a brief time in the air after hitting the ramp, I ended up falling forward, crashing down with all my weight on my thumb. I heard what I thought was a tendon pop. I got up and took my glove off, looking at my thumb on a not-so-normal angle.
I told my friends I thought I broke my thumb.
"Can you move it?" one of them said.
"A little bit." I could barely wiggle my thumb.
The friend grabbed my thumb and cranked it around.
"Does that hurt?" he said as I yelped. I would have hit him from the pain he inflicted, but I probably would have messed up my thumb even more. My other friend packed my thumb in a bunch of snow and we went home.
The next day an x-ray confirmed it: I had officially broken a bone! Not a major break, even, but a break nonetheless.
I never skied down the tobbogan hill again, but it wasn't the last dumb thing I did on the hill. The following spring, under adult supervision even, we did one of the dumbest things I think we ever did.
I'll write about that another time...
For several years, the house I lived in was right by a big community park. There were baseball fields, a creek, and a big tobbogan hill. The hill was a butal place come winter. I saw a girl lose most of the skin on her face in a grizzy accident on the hill, and also witnessed a few broken limbs from collisions. There were two steep runs, and if you hit things right, you could criss-cross with others near the bottom.
But this isn't a sledding collision story--this is much more dumb.
Cross country skiing is cool. There's a wonderful sense of peace as you glide along through forest and fields. Occasionally, you climb some small hills and glide down the other side.
Cross country skis aren't the ideal skis for hurtling down a tobbogan run, though.
I wasn't a very good skier at the time, but I would try almost anything once if I was vaguely sure it wouldn't result in severe injury or death. I was with two friends, and we used all our energy to make it up the side of the tobbogan hill. We chatted at the top, and my friends went back down the side we struggled to get up. It was still fairly steep, but a gradual enough trek up and glide back down.
I was the goof who went down the steep side, forgetting we had built a ramp near the bottom.
Maybe others can steer well on cross country skis while going downhill, but I couldn't. After a brief time in the air after hitting the ramp, I ended up falling forward, crashing down with all my weight on my thumb. I heard what I thought was a tendon pop. I got up and took my glove off, looking at my thumb on a not-so-normal angle.
I told my friends I thought I broke my thumb.
"Can you move it?" one of them said.
"A little bit." I could barely wiggle my thumb.
The friend grabbed my thumb and cranked it around.
"Does that hurt?" he said as I yelped. I would have hit him from the pain he inflicted, but I probably would have messed up my thumb even more. My other friend packed my thumb in a bunch of snow and we went home.
The next day an x-ray confirmed it: I had officially broken a bone! Not a major break, even, but a break nonetheless.
I never skied down the tobbogan hill again, but it wasn't the last dumb thing I did on the hill. The following spring, under adult supervision even, we did one of the dumbest things I think we ever did.
I'll write about that another time...