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December 15, 2005
The Visitor....
Felt it was time I published more inane drivel - it has been almost a week
4 1/2 days of work followed my last post, it generally crawled along but 1 day I was posted in the Ski School Alpine hut at the top of Whistler. There was low lying cloud in the valley but other than that the skies were clear and the views were great - made the day go by alot quicker.
An injury update as I'm sure your all wondering, my shin is well on its way to healing - currently itching like you would not believe, the shoulder has almost recovered - still a little stiff in places but generally fine. My knee still isn't great - can't straighten or fully bend it - but it is getting slowly better so I'm still giving it time.
My silliness on a snowboard is continuing, switch is becoming (very) slightly better and ollies are getting a little better. Still lots of room for improvement though, so I won't be doing "switch 9's" in the pipe yet ;o)
Today on Blackcomb was the first of the "Kokanee Valley Race Series", a timed Giant Slalom race down a blue run. Entrance is $20, you get a free T-Shirt and the fastest time in each of the various age/type categories wins a prize. Ben and a mate entered today (I was feeling a little rough), we're still waiting for them to get back from the pub to find out how they did but I'll let you know.
Our first visitor from the UK arrived on Monday evening, Katharine from the climbing club in Nottingham. We gave her a tour and got her kitted out with all her rental gear on Tuesday and on Wednesday morning left her at the meeting point for her lessons which she had booked.
The lesson went well and by the end of the day she was starting to link turns.
That evening we introduced her to the local Apres at "Dusty's Bar and Grill" (ribs were on special - although she went for the vege option :o) )
Today dawned bright and sunny and myself and SK left her at the meeting point to start her 2nd day of lessons.
We wondered onto Blackcomb for a while before deciding it was too icy and so ventured onto Whistler. Conditions were generally good but a few rocks and stones were exposed in places. I manged to put a large scrape down my board by hitting a large chunk of hidden ice, I'm waxing my board tonight so that will hopefully fill the hole :o)
We received a phone call at 3:30 from Katharine to say she had finished her lesson, was off the hill ... and was on her way to the emergency clinic with a suspected broken arm following an awkward fall!
3 hours and various opinions and X-rays later the doctors didn't really know what was wrong, It was swollen like a break but the x-rays showed nothing... very odd. She has a fiberglass splint on it at the moment and is returning in 6 days for a follow-up x-ray. We think its just sore and she'll be back on the board in days :o)
She's been given various painkillers just in case along with the advice to eat lots of fibre as "it'll plug you up good". Nice.
About 6 other people in the ward had similar wrist injuries - alot of them much worse as the person in question wasn't wearing wrist guards, the description of how they fix broken wrists is rather cringing - so this is just a plea to everyone to wear them when snowboarding.
Well I think thats enough drivel for one night, we're having a quiet evening with some beer. Tomorrow SK is working, I've got the day off so I'll act as a tour guide for Katharine around town.
Posted by edwardnorthridge at December 15, 2005 11:07 PM