Ouch My Shoulder or I'm Smart

Today I’m going to tell a story about how I’m an idiot. It’s also a story about how I hurt my shoulder, but that’s really more of an illustration than the premise. The overarching theme here is that I’m a big dumbass. There are also some undercurrents about me coming face to face with my mortality, and some asides about ski town hosebags, but again, the cardinal proposition of the entry is that I’m an imbecile.

So every year the crew and I take a vacation out west to go skiing. It’s my big “mancation.” For the past couple of years we’ve been going to Utah. It’s beautiful. It has great skiing, and it’s not crowded. It also has one of the ugliest populations of locals I’ve ever encountered. This is one of those situations where relativity works in my favor. I’m fuckin’ handsome in Utah. In Birmingham, given the benefit of the doubt, I’m averagish (it’s a word) looking. In backwoods Utah, I’m damn good looking. Not that it does anybody any good, because the women are horrendous troglodytes, but it is a boost for the ol’ ego.

The exception to this rule is Park City. It’s the big tourist area, and I will admit that there are attractive women scattered around that place. The two best looking girls I saw all week were sitting at a table next to us at a bar while we were relaxing one afternoon. They were your typical highly manufactured skanks, both had that kind of a failed actress/porn star/tanning emporium employee thing going on. Not exactly fresh-faced, classic beauties, but they were babes in Utah. The guys they were with were what you would expect. Loud, terrible, wearing mixed martial arts t-shirts, “Throw me two Jagerbombs and a Heineken, bro!!!,” kind of fellas. One of them actually had tattoo of TROGDOR that covered his entire back. I know this because the gentleman was kind enough to remove his shirt in the middle of the bar to show it off. It burninated his credibility as a decent human being. (That might be a little inside. For the uninitiated here’s a link: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html )

Sorry, I felt the need to share that. Anyway, back to how I’m an idiot. This year we decided to take a day off of skiing to rent snowmobiles. There were eleven of us, and only seven of the rentals were upgrades from the 550 cc models to the 600 cc models. I decided that since it was my first time I didn’t care enough to pop for the extra horsepower. (Exhibit A that I’m smart.) The guides take us out into this valley between two large ridges, and we spent some time getting familiar with the things in a couple of open areas, racing around in these fields and jumping out of shallow ravines. A snowmobile is a lot like a water based Ski Doo except slightly more stable but less maneuverable, otherwise very similar.

The culmination of the day was a trip winding our way up one of the valley ridges to a huge open bowl. It had huge hills and drops and open expanses where you could really accelerate. So we’re zipping around in this thing like assholes for a while when my buddy waves me over.

Crazy buddy - “Hey, I found a place where you can get a big jump in.”

What I should have said – “Awesome, I’ll definitely try that last.”

What I actually said – “Right there, on the near side of that ridge? Watch this!” (Chalk one up in the dumb column).

Shockingly enough, I actually landed a couple of big ass jumps. Whooo!! Mission accomplished. That’s a box marked off in the life experience checklist. Now I can relax and enjoy the rest of the day with my snow motorcycle...

… Is what I should have done. However, just then another group of friends showed up, including the guy who would ultimately bring about my destruction, the guy with a camera. I immediately decided that I would not only continue to jump, but would set some sort of hang time record. I was going to go “poster” big. So I head up the hill on the far side of the jump, make sure that my friend has the camera on the “action” setting and haul ass down the hill. I go BIG; I get AIR; I CRASH into the ground. I BRUISE my knees and KNOCK the wind out of myself.

After awkwardly catching up with my machine, which was mindlessly continuing to idle down the hill, I relaxed, relishing the fact that I was not badly injured and thankful that I had the opportunity to try something daring. Who cares if there were no photos of my jumps?

… Is what I should have done. Instead I watched my friends take some jumps off the same spot for a while. I then headed back up the hill to “do this thing!” As I began my descent towards the ridge my original intent was to have a casual and deliberate jump that would get some respectable air and then call it a day. (Smart Exhibit B)

About halfway down the hill I have one of those “fuck it,” “you only live once,” moments. I revised my approach from “careful and deliberate” to “reckless, ill-considered and at high speed.” (Smart Exhibit B rendered inadmissible) The first few moments of air time I was feeling pretty good about my change of plans, but then the snowmobile started to rotate underneath me, the handlebars spinning away counter-clockwise in the direction of my left knee. Like a marine, or a ninja, I instinctively reverted back to my training. I then realized that I had never ridden a damn snowmobile before and jumped off. I kicked loose like that stupid machine was on fire. I landed on my left arm. (Ouch) I hit so hard that it broke the sunglasses I was wearing under my full faced helmet.

So now I’m rehabbing my shoulder, which is an adventure in itself. But that’s a story for another day.

AND THE TROGDOR COMES IN THE NIIIIIIIIGGGGHTTT!!!!!