Blog Worthy

Back in February and March I was over in Laos. This was after going to India for four weeks. I fractured my leg from crashing a motorcycle. After coming down from a winding stretch of mountain expanse with no petrol stations, service, or people for 40 kilometers, I finally came to a straightaway, and was 15 minutes away from a tourist destination that was going to be my next stop. There was a herd of cows about 100 meters infront of me alongside the road. As I got closer, 4-5 of them turned and bolted into the road, deciding to cut me off. I braked and lost control. I closed my eyes, and I don't think I hit any of the cows, but the cows were gone, and my foot was in the 10 O'clock position, when it should've been in the 12 O'clock position... and then 19 days later after going from Laos to Cambodia, then to America for surgery.

I was on my own in the backcountry of a place I couldn't even speak the local language in and got hurt, that was the time in my life I had man up.

I don't know what would've happened if I hadn't popped my ankle back into place on the side of the road, but I knew I couldn't keep laying there with it out of place.

Manliest thing I'd ever done.

I knew that was the key defining moment of My Big Break. Once the adrenalin and the shock wears off, this was going to hurt a hell of a lot more then, than it does if I don't do this now. Ker-pop! Back into place she went.

I feel no shame in exploring other countries, and people tell me that they would never want to put themselves in a situation like that in a third world country. The thought unsettles them, but that was just the beginning of a long journey home. I stopped crying for the moment. I moaned. Cried, cursed plenty, but got myself out of there. The same people who are scared of getting caught in a situation where they're far from medical help are the same people who tell me they're scared of guns, yet they promise me they'll never go to this foreign country, nor use a handgun. Baffling? I think they were confused or tricked into believing they were scared of something that likewise, does not need them.

My response is I'm terrified of underwater cave diving. Damn Clive Cussler ruined that with a good intro to one of his stories by talking about a diver deep in some mineshaft, miles from the surface, out of air, fingers worn down to the boney nub from trying to claw his way through solid rock. Complete utter darkness, claustraphoic as all heck, cave critters coming in from the black.

And people tell me they're worried about getting shot.

Are you kidding me? A shot is...blam! Blood And Augh! F----King! OW! The longest ride of your life to the hospital, followed by 6-12 months of surgeries and PT, depending on how bad or where it was. That sucks a lot of life energy and resources over a long period of time. That or you bleed out. Not the most dignified, but at least you can be put back together, and crawl your way out of it. Maybe get some final words in if it's grim and you're lucky. At least there's still a last breath of hope all the way through the night until a doctor finally announces the final verdict. I would know, I've watched several seasons of Grey's Anatomy.

The underwater mineshaft diving thing however...that's what terrifies me! No, no, no, no, no! No! NO! NO! Hells.....no! A million times no! I went scuba diving before, but certainly not so far from the surface I can't see it. Nobody's coming back from that. That's your tomb, instant death, burial, and funeral all in one.

Anyway, I had to reschedule anything, and ended up in Siam Reap, Cambodia. Checking out the Angkor Wat with a busted leg, I look beet. Picked up a lot of SE Asia history, and went out everywhere with crutches, hobbling around with a bandaged-up foot. I'm sure my experience would've been far different in Siam Reap with a better off leg, but I guess I got the bare-bones tour, and even that was really spectacular. Don't get me wrong, I was punishing myself because at that point, I still didn't know my leg was fractured, I just thought the muscles were all tore and stretched out of place!

The level of denial I was in was better than any poker player's face, or any guilty person on the stand caught dead-to-rights, because at no point during the time did it occur to me something was actually broken. My mastery of Mind over Matter was at an all-time high. Even my family said 'stick it out' a little longer on my trip, because I was too light in explaining the severity of my crash.

That's why I wasn't posting for a while! I wasn't walking on it for 6 weeks, then PT, followed by regular exercise ever since.

Food was good, and I even went fishing on the Mekong River. Mark it off the bucket list, caught a little fresh water fish and had a BBQ on the shore. Interesting fishing, kind of like Seining. Lay out a net, and then slap the water to scare the fish into the net, then pick the fish out as you pull it in.

That's why I say, 'Say NO to Farmed Fish!' Only buy Wild Caught!'