My first alien abduction

Ouch. Just dammit. It may seem like I’m starting at the end of this story. You can see that my snowboard is somehow buried all the way up to the binding in snow and my right foot is already unclipped. Alex caught the ordeal from his helmet-cam, which was running at the time. Unfortunately there’s no good footage of the actual fall. 

How I managed to get myself into that particular position is still a mystery. My best guess is partial alien abduction followed by me falling from mid-tractor beam. Regardless of what nonsense I did to get myself there, the first thing I did after the fall was reach down and unclip my boot because my ankle was seriously pissed about being bent in a way that was just not right. 

My next thought of course was this: “I’ve been waiting all year for it to snow and it’s only 11 am on my first day. I better get a few more runs in before my ankle really starts to swell." Brilliant. And obviously that’s exactly what I did because I’m a grown up and I said so that’s why.

This of course was stupid. And painful. Fast forward to lunchtime and after I took my boot off I realized it wasn't going back on again. My friend who is a PA told me I wasn’t going to die, but I couldn't put any weight at all on my foot. Since we were at a mid mountain lodge my dad went to find out about how we enlist the help of that guy who drives hurt people down the mountain on a sled (for joy). It was a frickin’ beautiful day. Perfect day. And I was already headed home on a sled.

So I’ve got a torn ligament on the right side of my foot and a torn tendon on the left, plus some stuff in between that’s not too happy either. It’s was about 2 days before I could put even the smallest bit of weight on it. Those days involved a lot of hopping to the bathroom. Luckily I had a staff of about 10 family members to wait on me hand and foot, but it was small consolation for having to spend the rest of my vacation laying down. Nothing was severed or broken (woot!) and it should heal on it’s own...in about a year. Um, what? For an ankle sprain? Turns out ligaments are one of the densest and slowest healing soft tissues in the body, and the fact that it’s in my ankle means it gets less blood circulation than most everything else due to good old gravity.

Hilariously the sled guy had to ask me some questions, one of which was how this accident could have been prevented. I said, “Um, don’t snowboard?” Is it not obvious to everyone else that we’re all taking risks out here? If there's one thing I learned from therapy after my car was totaled by a drunk driver, it’s that my quality of life benefits from me taking risks. Yeah, driving is dangerous. But staying at home all the time is depressing and I could still be killed by an errant drunk pilot. So I snowboard. Because there’s not much else I love doing more than snowboarding. It’s like the freedom of flying plus the glinting snowcapped beauty of nature, all miles away from any and all responsibility. If I have to spend all year healing up so I can be whole again come next snow season, so be it. Some people might say I haven’t learned my lesson. I say I’ve learned the most important one of all: do what makes you happy. Do it with wild abandon.

Burton gets it right:

How could I possibly resist going back to this?