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Topic: Ouch (Read 919 times) |
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David Lucifer
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Enlighten me.
  
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Ouch
« on: 2005-03-06 12:23:00 » |
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My first day of skiing this season will be last. The conditions were great at Sunshine yesterday. I was skiing with friends Dayle and Tony visiting from Toronto and we are all about the same level, comfortable on the blue runs. We took the Little Bunker trail off the Standish chair and I was bringing up the rear. The run ends on a fairly flat part so I advised Tony to pick up some speed at the bottom to make it over the next hill, otherwise he'd have to do some walking. I tucked it from about 30m up, picked up lots of speed but failed to see a sharp little dip in time and lost my left ski at high speed. I wiped out immediately when I hit the flat part at the bottom and flippped over on my back and slid. I would have been OK if I hadn't hit a wooden sign post. Well I'm lucky I didn't hit it head first, but my left shoulder took the blow. I laid on my back for a couple minutes assessing the damage. I couldn't move my left arm and I was afraid I'd broken the collar bone. After a few more minutes I manged to roll over and get on my knees. I got my right ski off, but the other one was nowhere to be seen. At this point I was wishing that I'd opted for insurance on the ski rentals. Then I began to wonder why no one was stopping to help. I got to my feet and was relieved to a track in the snow leading to my missing ski buried in the snow off the path. I tried to wave down someone to help me retrieve but they all just stared as they zoomed past. My shoulder was really beginning to hurt now and I started to black out so I got on my knees again. I crawled off the path, dug out my left ski and dragged it back onto the groomed path. Skiing down looked like the only option so I stepped into the bindings, took both poles and my left wrist in my right hand and very, very carefully started the descent.
Dayle and Tony were waiting at the lift and they could tell immediately that I was in bad shape. Tony guarded the gear while Dayle led me to the first aid station. I'm not sure why, but the infirmary at Sunshine is not at all easy to get to, down some treachorous steps and icy slopes. I have to give major kudos to the doctor and 2 technicians in the infirmary, very friendly, efficient and competent. They sat me on a bed and I had to wait for a few minutes while the doctor sewed up a big gash in a snowboarder's leg. Once they got my shirt off they could tell immediately that the shoulder was dislocated. It looked pretty bad so I only looked once briefly. Eventually the doctor came over and looped a strap that looked like a seatbelt around my elbow. He pulled slowly and gently on the strap while one of the techs pulled in the other direction on a sheet looped around my chest. A few seconds later my shoulder popped back in and the pain was almost disappeared, just like they said it would.
They kept me for a few more minutes to get the details of my fall, my contact info and to test my range of motion, grip, etc, and put me in a sling. They kept my rentals because they do some standard tests, and we took the gondola down. Back in Canmore we met up with Se7en, went for lunch at the Rose&Crown, and then went to the hospital for further checkup and xrays. Everything checked out OK, no fractures. I was a bit worried about being able to sleep but after a decadent night of fondu and wine I didn't have any trouble. Today my shoulder is stiff and sore, but I'm already typing again with both hands.
Now I'm thinking back to yesterday on the chain of events that led to my little ordeal. Every little choice you make can send you on a different path, some of them quite unexpected. I made an error in judgment that led to this injury, obviously it could have gone better but it could also have gone a lot worse (what if I had hit the pole head first?). Every moment has a vast number of possible futures leading from it, but some moments seem to be richer in possibilities than others (at least in retrospect). Just comparing the moment when I made that error in judgment to this one where I'm entering this message, the former seems to be objectively more important. Whatever mistakes I make now in choosing my words, it isn't going to send me to the hospital (I hope!).
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Iboseth
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Seize the day
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Re:Ouch
« Reply #1 on: 2005-04-17 14:32:31 » |
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Hopefully your fine 
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"... and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be."
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Mermaid
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Bite me!
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Re:Ouch
« Reply #2 on: 2005-05-11 15:16:29 » |
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This reminds me of a book I spied in an used bookstore recently. It was called 'It's a chancy, chancy, chancy world". English translation of a Russian book on cybernetics. It has a picture of an ape in the cover and I cannot remember the author's name. A flip through and I figured that it was either an extremely interesting book or a terribly flaky one. I really didnt get how 'chance' and cybernetics came together in a book. I moved on when an almost-new copy of Tintin caught my eye. When I got back home to do a search on the book, nothing came out of it. Has anyone heard of such a book?
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rhinoceros
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My point is ...
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Re:Ouch
« Reply #3 on: 2005-05-30 21:35:50 » |
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[Mermaid]
This reminds me of a book I spied in an used bookstore recently. It was called 'It's a chancy, chancy, chancy world". English translation of a Russian book on cybernetics. <snip> A flip through and I figured that it was either an extremely interesting book or a terribly flaky one. I really didnt get how 'chance' and cybernetics came together in a book. <snip> Has anyone heard of such a book?
[rhinoceros]
I have this book right in front of me. It's by L. Rastrigin, Mir Publishers, Moscow, 3rd printing 1988 (intitially 1973), translated in English. Not flaky at all. High-school graduate/college freshman level, with emphasis on understanding the concepts, popular but not completely without maths. There used to be many books of this kind at that time, extremely cheap by all standards.
A short answer to the chance/cybernetics question is that the world is not really as chancy as it seems at first glance. The problem of extrapolating (predicting) a "random" trajectory was the one which set Norbert Wiener thinking, and leventually led him to Cybernetics. His solution proved very useful for the anti-aircraft batteries of the Allies during WW2.
The book deals with control, risk and decisions, games, learning and conditioned reflexes, change and recognition, natural selection and evolution, self-adjustment, search paths... everythng in the presence of "chance".
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