That being said, it sure can be rough on boats and shoulders!
Alan and Stuart hit the waters of Wilson Creek this morning at 9:00 am and -6 inches with the goal of getting in 10 laps in order to put our team total for the competition over 10 grand. While the lines weren't always beautiful, every lap was a blast in its own right and we were cruising toward an early completion of our goal. Our fearless but sidelined team captain, Brian, was running a great shuttle and photo service - and doing it all with his arm immobilized due to last weekend's shoulder dislocation and clavicle fracture. The Jackson 5 team was out there as well and they were tearing it up - TVF style. J5 already had 3 laps when we got there and they passed three times as we paddled through our laps (we were pacing ourselves pretty conservatively because we had no one to rotate laps with). Even with our slow and steady pace, Alan still managed to crack his H3 somewhere on lap 1, 2, or 3. Luckily we had two extra boats with us, so he saddled up the Jefe for the rest of the laps.
As Alan and I were approaching Little Woodall, the RL slide before the entrance to 10 foot, the J5 boys were closing in on us. I suggested to Alan that we do something goofy as we dropped over - for their entertainment before they lapped us again.
(Don't try this at home... this man is some kind of professional something...)
Alan does some kinda rail grabby thing and I go all out with a rail grab and paddle twirl - grinning ear to ear - until my boat kicks left and all of the sudden I'm side surfing in a really rententive hole. As I'm riding a pretty good brace, I see Brad peek over the lip and I try to give him a somewhat sheepish look because my foolishness had me side surfing right across his line. About the time he went around me though, the hole surged and my shoulder popped - OUCH - I flipped and managed to roll back up wondering why my arm wasn't working right. I managed to get both hands down near the left blade with my right blade way out in the outflow, but I couldn't move myself to either side because my arm refused to extend away from my body. As I'm wondering "what do I do now" Brad from J5 paddles up into the hole in his Mega Rocker and bulldozes me out of it while enjoying a pretty good rodeo ride himself (MANY THANKS BRAD!). Once I was out of the hole, I flipped, punched out, and climbed out on a midstream rock where I explained that my shoulder was dislocated. After about 30 seconds of hearing how to twist my arm around in an extremely painful series of positions (to get it back in joint) I suggested that I'd probably just tweaked it really badly. At our suggestion and, after seeing that we seemed to be in a safe place, the J5 guys headed downstream and sent our shuttle man back up to find us. While Alan was getting my boat back across to the roadside bank, I remembered an article that explained how to fix (reduce) a dislocated shoulder:
Our shuttle pulled up before we had even climbed up to the road and as we accepted the sad realization that we would not make our 10 lap goal we did the only thing respectable boaters can do in such a situation...
we drove back to civilization and ate mexican!
Peace, love, and TVF -
Stuart out.
No comments:
Post a Comment