Andrew, the destroyer

Sometimes destroying something is good. Destroying a race course - that's the kind of thing many of us dream of. Destroying a test - that's good too. Destroying the competition - always good .

Destroying yourself, your equipment, and your clothing - not such a good thing.

Well, unfortunately for me, that's what happened today.

So we went on an OD out in Littleton, MA. We had nearly the whole team and it was a beautiful day - late fall color with early fall weather.

The day was going really well up until a little turn-off when some of our group split off. We went up a fair bit of hill - much much more than you see around Cambridge - and then of course, you have to go back down hill.

I have really slow skis - the old nordic rollers make everyone else's skis look like Duncan Douglass'. So I was in a tuck for the entire downhill - double poling on any pseudo-flats amid the long downhill - just trying to keep pace. Anyway, as some of you know, I'm not the most experienced roller skier and going down the final descent I was going the fastest I've ever gone on roller skis. Anyway, the skis aren't the best and I got nervous and didn't hold the speed very well. Before I fell my left ski (the one I'd had alignment problems with earlier) came off and it was game over. I fell all along my side giving myself three big scrapes on my knee, some rather deep gashes on my elbow, a scrape all over my hip, a couple bruises on my chest, and a good scrape on my left elbow. My spandex, which protected me from getting too much debris in my hip, was ripped to shreds. All in all though, I came out of it pretty well for what it was.

But things just deteriorated from there.

I kept skiing with everyone else and we eventually regrouped with the others after a bit of searching. Everyone else was having a great time, but my ski was really having problems and I was running a really high heart rate trying to keep up. Eventually, my ski just succumbed to the wear (I guess I didn't repair it well last time). The bolt fell out of the roller ski and I could no longer skate.

So I was left behind to double pole and wait for the van. After all that one would think it couldn't get any worse, but skiing by myself, a car came quickly around a corner and I as I looked back, I was forced to dive out to the side to avoid the car. In the dive the tip of my pole broke.

So we finally made it back - everyone pretty thoroughly fatigued, but in good spirits after a great workout.

As for me, Chris City was nice enough to see me over to UHS to get fixed up. It actually went quite well - it took a long time to clean out all the wounds, but hey, only flesh wounds. They gave me a tetanus shot, some pain killers for the scrubbing of the wounds, a lot of gauze and sent me on my way.

Anything good to take out of this? Well, spandex is great.

Dave, I'm glad it's snowing in Europe. I'll be very happy when we get off the roller skis.

Final Note - I feel bad I don't have any pictures at the moment - they really are impressive. I can't seem to get them on my computer so when I can I might put a few up. You might be better off though as they really aren't pleasant.