My dear friend Kari grew up in Northern Arizona and always invites me on her frequent trips up that way. Kari and I have known each other since our DC days; she moved back to AZ a couple years before I did, and we've become close friends now that we're out west. She's definitely an outdoorsy girl - hiking, hitting the lake, winter sports, etc. I'm just not. outdoorsy. Though I try for the sake of being social and hoping that some of nature will rub off on me.
It never snows in the Valley, though the area around Kari's sister's house up north got hit with lots of snow last January/February. Of course we had to take Kari's nephew up to the snow and enjoy a change of scenery. Yes, it's nice that it's sunny ever single day in PHX, but I decided to join for a chance of pace (and temperature for which I am ill-equipped).
We bought sleds at Walgreen's on the way up - some colored plastic for cheap. Soon we turned off the main road, 4-wheel drived our way through some muddy dirt roads and ended up at the house. All started out well in Happy Jack, AZ, the middle of nowhere and nothing.
The dogs had a blast, little nephew enjoyed himself and soon it was off to the big hill down the street for some real sledding.
See - look how fun that is? It may not look that steep nor fast on camera, but when you have no way to control said piece of plastic, yeah....
Sledding from
L Dubbs on
Vimeo.
We were enjoying the fine view, I went down the hill a couple times and Kari and I decided to do one more run, sharing the sled. Started going down, hit a rock, flew up, I reached down to grab the side of the sled and instead grabbed
underneath the sled, which came slamming down on my hand. I knew immediately that something was broken.
It's amazing how the body responds, even to this tiny bit of trauma. I still had to walk back up the hill, dizzy, heart pumping, and nearly passed out when I reached the top. Wouldn't you know that the town's volunteer EMT on duty was standing right next to us, watching his own kids sled. I sat down, caught my breath, then headed back to Amy's house to take some drugs and wrap up my hand.
We still had a 2-ish hour drive back to Phoenix, and I tried to make the most of the scenery. The pain was in and out. For someone who plays the piano (and types and all that) regularly, I was a little scared to see how bad it would be.
Kari sat with me at the Urgent Care for a couple hours that night. The nurses and doctor were actually all awesome, and congrats to me, first broken bone. Cracked my bottom pinkie knuckle in a nice little fracture. We wrapped it up in
a temporary brace and I watched it turn crazy black, blue and purple over the next few days. I made an appointment with an orthopedist near my office to check things out further (and lucky me, he was young, hot, and a former MLB player - um, yes, please?). I got a plastered cast on my hand for a few more weeks and some strong drugs to go with it. Wahoo! And now I know to politely decline sledding invites this winter.....
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