Two years ago, me and about 14 friends decided to rent out a ski house in Beech Mountain to celebrate the 30th birthdays of our friends John and Adam. We had so much fun that we did it again the next year. And that was so much fun that we rented a house yet again this year to celebrate the “3rd Annual 30th Birthday Party.” We hope to all stay friends long enough to one day celebrate “The 30th Annual 30th Birthday Party.” But if you know how injury and infection prone I am, I will probably never make it to the year 2037 to see my friends turn 60. Here’s a sneak peak at two days in the life of this clumsy reporter:
One hour into my trip to the mountains, I had to finally admit that the head pain I was experiencing for the last two weeks was too much too ignore. I’ll tell you how bad it was: I let someone else drive my car. I never give up the wheel. We went to the ER and they told me that it was probably a stroke or a migraine. After a CT scan, they said it was actually just some of the ugliest longterm sinus damage they had ever seen. They told me to see a specialist and gave me pills so I could manage a few days without crying and sent me on my way. If you think that stopped me from continuing on my ski-trip, you are naturally thinking of someone else. And if you think that was the worst pain I was about to endure on the trip, you are also wrong about that.
During the first minute of the I was in the ski house, I noticed that we had a spiraly Brady Bunch staircase that led downstairs. During the second minute I was in the ski house, I hit my head on that spiraly Brady Bunch staircase that led downstairs. Oh well, at least I already had prescribed pain medication from sinus infection. Funny, I think the pain pills were the reason I hit my head, yet they were also the cure for hitting my head. That’s quite a mobius band of hurting and healing. And that also wasn’t the last time I hurt myself on the trip. No the big one was still to come.
The next morning we all rode the chairlift to the top of Beech Mountain. And I skiied all day. And I didn’t get hurt once! (Admit it, you thought I was going to tell you about how I then had a horrible skiing accident. That never happened. I don’t get hurt at hard stuff. I get hurt at easy stuff - like walking down the stairs.)
So the next day, we decided to put the skis up and go snow-tubing instead. Tubing is easy. Even my friend Larry can do it. (That would be funny if you knew Larry.) If you’ve never been tubing, let me describe the simple set-up: You get in an intertube and get pulled up by a lift to the top of a tiny slope that is maybe about as long as two bunny slopes. Everyone then forms two self-regulated lines and takes turns going down either the left or right lanes. Once you are on your belly riding a tube down the hill, you reach the bottom at full speed and then ride up to the top of another hill and then slide down and get out of the way for the next guy. The key term is “next guy.”
When I went down, I thought I was alone. But once I went down one hill and up another and was sliding back down at full speed to finish my ride, I saw the “next guy.” The Next Guy had stupidly gone down only five seconds after me and we were now headed towards each other in our inner-tubes at full speed. I know that sounds like it wouldn’t hurt, but once you’ve had a tube collision, you realize that while the tubes bounce back from each other, the men in them still crash INTO each other! As we were about to hit each other, I remember me and this stranger both looking at each other with these mutual expressions of “Well, this is gonna hurt. I wish you well stranger.” Then we hit.
Man that hurt!
We didn’t just hit each other. We hit skull to skull. My left side of my head to the right side of his head. You know the funny thing? It didn’t hurt at the time. I was more worried about the other guy. Even if he was twice my size. (I forgot to mention that. Yeah, he totally won the mass war, but he still got hit hard too. I’ve got a tough noggin.)
As I was still spinning in a circle in the snow, the first words out of my mouth were to the people running over to help me and then to the guy that collided with me. “I’m cool. Don’t worry bout me. Are you cool, dude?” He said, “Yeah, man. I think, I’m fine.”
Then me and this stranger high-fived, mentioned how “awesome that was,” and rode the lift to the top. Then fifteen minutes went by and I was definitely feeling it. The left side of my skull was hurting from the collision, as was the front of my skull from the staircase accident, as was the back of my skull from the sinus problems. Oh well, at least I had the pain medication… and a really fun ski trip.