Evel Knievel 1938-2007

I'm not entirely sure why a generation of boys growing up in the 1970s would become fascinated with the exploits of a masterful self-promoter who always seemed to be inches away from killing himself live on tv. But we did. And we bought his toys by the millions. I still have mine.
Maybe he taught us, as someone once noted, that how we face death is just as important as how we face life.
I don't know how Robert Craig Knievel faced his death today from his many assorted health problems, but he faced his life with a joyous and reckless abandon. Ride on, Evel....

Ice, Hawks, Tunnels -- oh my!

We had another great paddle last Sunday. It was a cold day, but we bravely set out into Portage Inlet. As we rounded the first point, Paula was ahead of us. Suddenly, she started whooping and shouting. "Ice!" she cried. Ahead of us, the Inlet had a thin sheen of ice on top. Paula had barrelled into it and soon the rest of us were into the icefield. Six little ice breakers.

The ice was very thin, maybe 5mm if that, although there seemed to be the occasional section that was a little thicker. What an odd sensation to paddle through ice. We often joke about the water getting thicker when we paddle, but this water was solid! One expects to hear a splash when one's paddle hits the water, but all we heard was a crunch.
Stroke. Crunch. Stroke. Crunch.
We were also scaring all the birds away. Our six kayaks plowing through ice were making quite a racket as we cracked the ice around us, sending flocks of birds hundreds of metres away into frenzied flight. No doubt they thought the demons of hell were almost upon them.

We knew it was cold, but we never thought we'd be out breaking the ice. Karl figured that there must be a small layer of fresh water on top of the saltier Inlet water.

We went up Craigflower Creek and found this tunnel which runs under the Trans Canada nera the Helmcken overpass.

Ooooh, it's pretty scary, eh kids?

The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. As we left the tunnel, we discovered that there were a lot of rocks in the water here, so we had to be careful. We made it through, but it took a little maneuvering.

The navigable portion of the creek ended just beyond the tunnel and the rocks.
So there was nothing to do but turn around and head back through the tunnel. There was a bit of a bottle-neck as we entered....

...but it was a perfect time to practice some doo-wop.

We ended up singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." The Tokens have nothing to worry about.

Back in the light of day, Karl and I were lagging behind the others when he pointed to his right. "Hey, is that a hawk in the tree?"

And there he was, a small hawk that didn't seem the least bit worried about or interested in us.

Borat Rules

The Long Recovery - Week 52

A year ago on this day, I fell off my bike. I dislocated my left arm, fractured it in three places, broke another bone in my left shoulder, and suffered associated muscle and soft tissue damage. The next day, I had four hours of surgery as a plate and ten pins were inserted to repair my arm which was then re-located into the shoulder and held in place by a strip of muscle that was sown across the socket. Damaged muscle was also reattached. This was followed by five months of physiotherapy.

Today, the arm feels okay. It is not 100%, and likely never will be. However, it does what I need it to do. I can ride my bike, I can paddle my kayak. I remember sitting in Emergency, doped to the gills on morphine and looking down at my busted shoulder, resigned to the fact that I might never kayak again. I thought that that was a cruel move by fate to let me discover a new sport that I love, only to take it away from me.

Fortunately, that’s not the case. It doesn’t seem to hinder my kayaking at all. In fact, strength and mobility seems quite normal if I keep my arm below shoulder level. It is only when I lift it above shoulder level that mobility issues arise. I can’t lift it straight up over my head anymore. I can only get it to about 75 degrees. I can cheat it, of course, and twist my torso a bit so it looks like I can get full range, but I know I can’t actually achieve it. It doesn’t hurt or anything, it just simply stops and won’t rotate in that direction anymore. My strength has not yet returned to normal. Lifting heavy boxes over my head is an adventure.

Occasionally, I can go for a few hours and forget about it, but most days the shoulder consistently reminds me that it ain’t quite right anymore. It almost constantly feels tight. And it is. It doesn’t sit right in the socket the way it used to and the strip of muscle that was sown across pulls it in hard. If you look carefully, my left shoulder is slightly narrower than my right shoulder. One of the chronic conditions left behind is that I get some slight chafing in my left armpit because the arm is held in so tight. I have to remember to let the arm hang away from my side so the armpit can dry out.

My shoulder gets sore and gets stiff. The muscles, particularly the muscles at the front of my shoulder, are fighting a battle with the stronger muscles of my back. The front muscles, which have all been tightened due to the accident, want to pull my shoulder forward and in, a folded-in slouch in other words, while my back is trying to keep things straight and upright. The front muscles ache fairly regularly, not enough to be painful or debilitating, but enough to remind me that major trauma occurred here. The same is true of the stiffness, which is mostly like a dull background noise, a persistent irritant like a buzzing bee that remains just out of swatting range.

I shouldn’t complain considering that at this time last year my left arm was in four pieces. And I’m not. But sometimes I feel like an alcoholic who faces his recovery every day. I was hoping that after a year I wouldn’t be constantly reminded of my injury, but it looks not to be the case.

But time heals all wounds, and hopefully my shoulder and I still have plenty of time together.

Tomorrow May Rain, So I'll Follow the Sun

Results of a Useless Experiment

The Spuzzum Institute, working under the auspices of the famed Professor Angst Philben and his colleague Dr. Herman Lemmonjello, has concluded, after seconds of scientific study, that a boxed set of each of Stargate SG-1 season 1 and season 2 when dropped from a height of almost a metre and a half (equivalent to the distance from the top of a kitchen cabinet to the kitchen counter) will break an egg should it land on one.
And quite spectacularly, too.