Danger at High Altitudes

Son #1 spent three days in Tahoe snowboarding with friends. He rearranged work schedules to give himself three days and returned home yesterday in time to get to work by 1PM. Clear skies and good weather helped ensure a timely arrival - we were worried. But he made it home.

He mentioned somewhat casually that he was pretty sore - and even more casually that he was mainly sore from a 'pretty bad fall' he took. He described it to me as 'I fell down a wall and tumbled pretty far - about 250 feet - sliding on my back, tumbling head over heels a couple times, rolling, sliding, more rolling, more sliding.

When he described it to his brother, he added 'and when I finally came to a stop, my first thought was 'hey, I'm still alive'. '

So to the angels who watched over him, thank you. For him - a 20 year old kid who believes he is invincible (as most 20 year old kids do) - to stop and think 'I'm still alive', is a pretty clear indication it was a bad, bad fall. He made it down the mountain under his own power - but is sore. And I'm sure that's an understatement.

Treadmill successfully completed including some time at a slow jog of 3.2MPH. Felt good. Though it took a lot of effort to concentrate hard on keeping that pace. The treadmill will go faster if I go faster - and it has a distinct whine when you're making the tread move beyond what it's set to move. So I have to really think about my pace....get into the rhythm....I count my steps 1-100 and then start over at 1. Over and over and over.

The treadmill has a 'reading stand' which I now realize is a complete joke. Seriously - I could no more read a magazine while walking/jogging on that thing than I could hang the moon. Even if I could navigate the coordination required to read while on a treadmill, my eyesight is so bad that I can't see anything I'd be looking at from the distance of where I am to where the reading stand is.

Time to look into 'large size print' - or get some iPod downloads of books. Now that's a idea.....

It's FRIDAY! Off to the races.....a sweet co-worker who knows this has been a challenging week is bringing me a sugar free vanilla latte this morning - what a nice thing to anticipate. And I will return the favor for her next week - we're going to alternate Fridays.....