Falling...with style

-
Turns out, I'm not very good at skiing. But, skiing does make me giggle, which is definitely a good thing. Even when I was falling on my ass, I was laughing. But I mostly enjoy when other people are falling down.
I am pretty good at skiing uphill or on the flat, but I am pretty much completely unschooled and too big a wimp to really enjoy the downhill. It's the stopping that's the real problem. Stopping by way of falling is fairly effective, but sadly it is not always into a nice soft pile of snow.
Overall it was a lovely day. We started by driving, well, until we found snow. That alone was amazing. We took a little hike to see a beautiful waterfall that was half frozen and looked awesome.
From there we drove through the mountains, and past some energy capturing windmills which are much bigger close up than I thought. We ended up at a little cross country skiing resort full of hippies and generally nice people. They have several trails into the mountain behind them and a few groomed trails in their fields. I had never seen or skied on groomed trails before, and I'm pretty sure they are the greatest invention ever. We ended up skiing around for about 5 hours.
We were totally exhausted by the time we had dinner at the lodge, and to that point that sitting down for five minutes was bad, because it allowed just enough time for muscles to tighten up.
I've had my fill of skiing for a little while, but it was a lot of fun!
I still hold the belief that cross country is mostly walking with style, and some people have quite a lot of it. I on the other hand, and the b/f as well, are far better at falling with style.
More pictures to follow...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dueling Blogs

-
I have the immense privilege to be sitting right across from Maddog Medic in the flesh. We aren't speaking, though he is listening to me. Want to solve this riddle? He is transcribing an interview he did with me for his blog at this very moment. And I too am blogging at this very moment! How crazy?! I am stationed this week at the EMS today conference to stock up on professional wheelings and dealings and learn some stuff. This is a wonderful conference full of networking and new products and I learned already that one dose of glucagon costs $130. That's out of control! I cannot wait to catch up on disaster literature and EMS tricks of the trade and get as many free pens as I can at the expo tomorrow.  As for now, I'm headed to a class on smart stuff and pediatric breathing problems.  I am surrounded by EMS nerds and I love it! I spent the day learning about things above my pay grade such as how to read a chest x-ray and how to differentiate between subarachnoi...
Click for More

Clothing Removal

-
Image
Last week I had a patient who fell from her horse while jumping at a show. When I got there the BLS crew had immobilized her and, well, that was about it. She was complaining of neck pain and at that moment couldn't remember what had happened. I used my horsey knowledge to build up a healthy rapport with a scared patient. In general, not a lot was wrong with her. My biggest problem was that she was on the backboard and still had on all of her fancy English riding clothes. I made my best efforts to get off her button up shirt with high collar and black outer riding jacket, but it caused her pain, and then I made it worse. Worse than falling off your horse, worse than the public embarrasment of having an ambulance called for you, worse than defenitly losing your show class, was the stupid paramedic who cut off your expensive riding clothes. I, too, had never felt worse for cutting someones clothes off. She cried and shrieked and you would have thought I was punching her in the gut. I...
Click for More

The Race

-
Sometimes this job is like a race. Like you're carrying this person on your back, and it's a messy race. You're tripping and sweating and you almost drop them. It's bouncy and there's trash everywhere. And if you can just get them over that line. To the line and throw them over. Throw them over and into the ER, you're obligation is fulfilled. Your job is done. You've won the race. And for a long time, that was it. Mission accomplished and I wasn't responsible for anything else. I didn't care about anything else. Get them to the hospital.  Dust my hands off and pat myself on the back. But somehow, they crept in. What did happen?  Did they live?  For the first time I asked myself.  I began to bring them home. I put them on a shelf and they stared down at me. They said, did you run fast enough?  Did you fall?  Did you drop me?  You threw me onto this island- over your line, but was it salvation?  I left in a hel...
Click for More