brinshannara

When last we saw, I was going to go skiing with P.

I drove us up there, and, barring a slight incident with a truck being RIGHT ON MY TAIL and honking at me, the drive was fine.

Actually, the whole day was fine.

Except when I fell.

By "when I fell", please understand that I wiped out worse than I have in the last 9 years (well, I haven't skied for like, 7 or 8 of those). In fact, I crashed through a safety barrier, which would make it only the third time in my entire history of skiing that I've actually hit something or someone. Thankfully, it was the least serious impact of them all.

So there I am, going down this easy hill with P following behind me. I've been down this slope about 982,913,028 times in my life. I have gone down it with my eyes closed (in my younger and somewhat stupider days). I think I've fallen down on it all of twice in my life. Now, this run merges with one on the left, and then they both come out into this wide open flattish area, where an intermediate run joins in. You then have the choice to go left, towards the hotel/chalet, right, towards the chairlift, or straight, down the double black diamond run where the old pomalift used to be.

I don't know how long it's been there, but it's been at least since last season that they've put up a big orange mesh net thing that says "ATTENTION!", with (thankfully) flimsy wooden poles holding it up. During the majority of my time skiing at this hill, this warning/safety thingy has not been there. Clearly, it's there to slow people down because of the convergence of so much traffic, and people criss-crossing in all kinds of directions. I mean, it makes sense that it's right there in the middle of this flattish merging area.

So I come down off this easy slope pretty quickly. And, I decide to myself, I will stop right in front of the warning sign thing and wait for P, who, I assume, is way behind me.

I was going a little too fast, it seems. I turned fast to the right, and skidded for a few feet more than I anticipated, crashing into the warning thing, getting one of the wooden sticks poking me HARD in the arm. I wiped out, took the sign DOWN, lost a pole, my hat and my goggles. I finally felt that I'd stopped moving, and then I sat up. "I'm fine!" I yelled to P, who had arrived on the scene.

I popped my skis off, got up, tried to fix the sign thing. Alas, one of the wooden sticks was actually broken (probably from when it hit my arm) and oh, the embarassment. A Ski Patroller came up to me, asking if I was okay. Anyways, I let him take care of the sign as I collected my hat, goggles and my pole, before getting back on my skis and going down the hill towards the chair.

Really, my pride was more wounded than anything else.

Until I wake up yesterday, Saturday, in SO MUCH PAIN. First of all, all my abs are annoyed with me. They're all aching. The muscles along the right side of my neck hurt like crazy whenever I move my head too much. Getting into and out of bed are agony, using all of those affected muscles at once.

My arms and legs are fine, though. Except for the spot on my left upper arm where that #%)*@# wooden stick just GOT me. I have a HUGE bruise (which I discovered upon showering yesterday) that is oval in shape, about two inches tall and one in wide, on the inner, upper part of my left arm. It is UGLY. We're talking deep purple for most of it and a slightly less dark pink for other bits. Oh, and it's yellow around one of the edges, too.

The moral of this story is obviously not to go skiing with P. ;)

Apart from the fall, I had a great day, and P drove us home (because it was dark. I don't like driving in the dark, and have very little experience in doing so.) and... yeah. Had a good day. :)

Saturday was a take-it-easy-and-relax-because-of-pain day, and today will be (eventually) work-on-paper-day.

But first, Sims 2. ;)