Hardcore

And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your delight and pleasure, courtesy of my friend Isaac, here is a picture of me skiing out of the Dive on a broken leg:



If you look closely, you can actually see me gritting my teeth.

The agony and the ecstasy

Yesterday I finally achieved my last ambition of the season: to do the Dive. Delirium Dive is Sunshine's extreeeeeeme freeride terrain and I felt like I was the last person in the world - or at least among my circle of friends - to do it. Even Darrell did it a few days ago with some friends of mine while I was stuck at work and when Kate came in yesterday and mentioned she'd just done it, I knew I had to get up there asap. I was planning to do it today with Zander, but when Isaac offered to take me there yesterday afternoon I was determined to 'get her done', as we say out here.

In order to go to the Dive you have to go with a partner, be carrying an avalanche beacon (and know how to use it) as well as a probe and a shovel. I borrowed a friend's and we headed up at
2pm for our ride break. I got nervous as I reached the top - the drop in is ridiculously steep and you really don't want to fall there because you'd just keep going! Took me a while to get into the jump turns on the steeps but, with a bit of
side slipping thrown in, I was soon getting the hang of it. We were having a ball - it was so hot I even stopped midway to take half my clothes off and Isaac threw huge snowballs at our boss Casey, who'd joined us. Then, when we reached the relatively flat run out, we decided to gun it though the powder. Fatal error.

As I zipped through the still very deep but tracked out powder, I managed to catch an edge. I took a big tumble and felt my leg twist as I did so, though to my surprise my ski didn't release. I sat for a moment afterwards and realised my right calf was really rather painful, but assumed it was just muscle spasm. I got up and tried to ski down, it was hurting but if I put all my weight on my left foot and didn't turn much, I was able to get down to Casey & Isaac. The pain started getting worse, but I still had to get out of there, so I kept going with Isaac's help, doing the difficult bits on my bum or walking. When I got back to the piste I was able to straight line it down to the gondola station, which was very painful but what choice did I have? Got on the gondola, but by the time I got off, I was in agony. Still reluctant to acknowledge it could be anything other than muscle damage, I got back to Guest Services with Darrell's - who was waiting at the bottom for me - help (piggy
back!) and got changed. Went to walk back to the bus and realised that I couldn't walk. I asked Darrell to get ski patrol for me. Larry from ski patrol arrived promptly, did a few tests and said he thought it could be broken, so a wheelchair was obtained and I was wheeled to the infirmary to be splinted. I sat outside in the sun with Andrew, a fellow skier who had landed badly off a jump in the terrain park, waiting for my lift to the hospital (no ambulances here for us foreigners with no health care cover) and to cut a long story short, yes, the damn leg was broken. A classic skier's 'boot top fracture' of the fibula, in case you're interested.

I'm still in a lot of pain - back to the Percocets for me! - and unable to do a goddamn thing for myself, but can't say I'm devastated. I mean, I've managed to do everything this season I really wanted to do. I learnt to ski, I did my Level 1 ski instructor's course, I've had awesome road trips to Big Mountain, Fernie, Castle and Revelstoke. I had a go at snowboarding and even bought a board, despite not really liking it very much! And I finally did the Dive. There's only 3 weeks of the season left and yes, I won't be skiing, but I've had such an amazing season to date that I have to be damn grateful. And far better that I broke my leg doing the Dive than on some tame green run.

Darrell bought me a badge, which says: Delirium Dive: No Guts, No Glory. I couldn't agree more.

BBC in sense of humour shocker

Has anyone else noticed that when you play the new, embedded videos on the BBC website, the volume scale goes up to 11?

Revelling in it

So our trip to Revelstoke can only be described as a huge success. We got off to a good start when, on our journey there through an area called Beaver Valley, I glanced out of the passenger window only to see a huge black bear wandering along at the bottom of the hill to our left. We all leapt out of the car (it was a fair way away from us I should point out) just in time to see it disappear into the woods. My first bear! The drive that we thought would take us around four and a half hours, in fact only took just over three, and our motel, the Super8 was clean and pleasant, with the additional bonus of a hot tub and swimming pool. So far so good.

So when we first arrived at the resort and saw the dirt showing through the snow at the bottom and the driving rain we were crushed. Why did we come this late in the season when it was clearly going to be rubbish? We rode the gondola up with a certain amount of reluctance. We'll just get through a day here and we can always head home tomorrow if it's rubbish, was our thinking. We didn't, of course, bank on the 18cms of new powder at the top, our pick of fresh tracks through the trees and a skier count of around 25. Within minutes we found ourselves whooping and hollering our way down the super steep runs, trying our best to avoid hitting trees (Darrell almost succeeded) and had a blast. Kate & I got some more footage for the skiing/snowboarding video we're making, '40 Fanny Stacks'. The lunch was awesome - some of the best pasta I've had in ages (farfalle with creamy pesto, prawns, spinach and red peppers. Yum). We sang Mr. Big's 'Next To Be With You' and Flight of the Conchord's 'It's Business Time' incessantly. On day 2 Darrell & I decided to hire some powder skis just to see if they worked better in the Revie conditions and, though Darrell got on well with his Head Monsters, my Head Sweet Fat Thangs were horrible. They were heavy and reluctant to turn, so I took them back after 3 runs and got my own sweet Bandits back and it confirmed to me how much I love them! Sometimes I feel like they're not even skis anymore, they're merely an extension of my feet. And what big feet I have.

A few days and much story-telling to those who were unable to make it later, and plans were made for a second Revie trip leaving the following Sunday. Amy, Chris, Gravy, Zander and Mr Ed were added to the original Revie trip veterans of Darrell, Chelsea & myself, 2 more cars hired, rooms back at the Super8 booked and off we went again. A hilarious journey there featured 2 walkie-talkies, much
Corona/Skittlebrau* imbibed**, mooning at slow drivers (and each other***), Russian roulette with the Hoosiers (don't ask), 2 restaurants refusing to let us in (both claiming to have 'run out of food') and Darrell taking the longest wee ever at the side of the road. Revie had lost more snow from the bottom and had less at the top, but we still had a ball bombing down the steeps before heading back home that night. Top time had by all. Again. See all the debauchery here.

*In the absence of an actual lime, lime skittles were popped into the bottles of Corona producing a foul green concoction
**though not, obviously, by Zander or myself who were driving the respective vehicles
***Prompting Darrell's classic first words to Amy to be "I met your arse before I met you!"

Fucking devastated.



Will update my blog about recent events when I'm feeling strong enough.

Chicks dig skills

I realise I've been a bit quiet recently, because Darrell has arrived and it's been all go over here at the Beaver. Last night we ended up having an impromptu 'circus skills' party, would you believe. Sparkle Barbie Horse began proceedings by balancing on a plank of wood on a log, then balancing successfully on the plank of wood on top of a keg (jumping up to do so) and then by getting out his diabolo and doing that while he balanced. Damn talented man; he got the skills baby. We all had a go, I was slowly getting the hang of both the balancing and the diabolo by the end of the night. I will post pictures/video soon, but it won't be tonight because when I get home from work we're picking up a minivan and Darrell, Kate, Chelsea, Laura, Andrew & I are all heading over to Revelstoke to ski/ride for a couple of days and stay in a 6 person suite at the Super8 Motel. Hurray!



By the way, in contrast to the post below, I'm really sad about Mark Speight. I'm too old to have grown up with SMart, but I knew who he was and I've been following the story unfold from over here. Given the circumstances of his fiancee's death, I can imagine it would be a real struggle to come to terms with what happened. Poor chap.

From my cold dead hands...

Goodbye Charlton Heston. I can't say I'm sad to see him go.

Getting dry

Random genius.

Homebirth takes another knocking

I happened across this study on the BBC website today. Oooh it made me so mad! You can tell the methodology is flawed without even reading the study itself. Even the headline is inflammatory: Home birth to ward increases risk. Well I'm fairly sure that you don't have to be a midwife or doctor to realise that if you're transferring in to hospital from a homebirth, then it's usually because the risk has increased. Why else would you transfer a labouring woman? For shits and giggles? There was no control group of women giving birth in hospital for comparison and the study included women who had planned to have a homebirth at 12 weeks pregnant, but who had either changed their mind or had a change in circumstances which meant that they instead gave birth in hospital. Don't you think that might just skew the statistics? If circumstances meant that a homebirth wasn't the most appropriate option, that might just mean that the risk was higher for that woman anyway?

I thought this quote was one of the most interesting:

But when complications did arise for women in this group and she needed tobe transferred to hospital, her risk of losing her baby was nearly eight times higher than the national average - and 12 times higher than had she given birth at home.

This, by inference, means that if a woman does give birth at home, her risk of having a stillbirth or neonatal death (the difference not defined by this article) is far lower than the national average (a fact any midwife worth her salt could already have told you, and one that is well documented). So, given the safety of successful homebirth in comparison to the national average for losing a baby - and with 98% of births occurring in hospital this must account for the huge majority of these - why are we not positively promoting homebirth for those for whom it is an appropriate option? Which, incidentally, is the majority of women. Why don't we have an 'opt-out' system, in the way that they have had in the Netherlands for years, where women are booked for a homebirth as a matter of course and only transfer to hospital-based care if problems crop up?

Of course I can answer my own question quite easily. The majority of doctors in the UK, who have a tremendous amount of power when it comes to shifting both public opinion and funds, have little faith in homebirth. They have little faith, in fact, in women's ability to give birth without interference. They have little faith in midwives and their ability to assist women in this most natural of functions. This has meant a general lack of confidence throughout society in both homebirth and normal* birth itself, reinforced continually through the media. This has meant that women who choose a homebirth often meet with resistance from their caregivers - midwives included - who will look for any excuse to deny them their wishes. Even their peers usually say things like 'Ooh you're brave!' about their decision. Of course, it is those who choose to give birth in hospital, who choose to face the inevitable 'cascade of intervention', leading so often to the handing over of power and control to a complete stranger, with concomitant poorer outcomes, that are the brave - or some might say foolish - ones. In my humble opinion at least.

*normal, in my own parlance, meaning without pharmaceutical drugs that block their bodies' natural instincts and feedback systems and without assistance from ventouse machines, forceps or caesarean sections. I could go on to say with the woman being in control of the experience, feeling empowered and with known and supportive birthing assistants who promote the physical and mental wellbeing of the mother and baby by working with the hormones in play during labour and beyond, rather than against them. But that might be a little too radical for some.