Do You Feel Safe at Home?

Posted Sun, November 1, 2009 - 8:37 PM
orienteering, biking

This Saturday Chris and Verónica were kind enough to set up a 3-4 hour AR practice event in Minnetonka. A big group of us headed out to Lone Lake Park for the 9 AM start. It was cold, windy, and raw out, but we warmed up quickly with a 300 meter run to the top of a hill to pick up our maps. Stephen Regenold and I ran solo, while everyone else teamed up in twos or threes. Midwest Mountaineering even showed up in their Halloween cowboy costumes!

Take a look at Attackpoint for a quick description of the course and links to gmap-pedometer. I had a pretty good run in just about 3 hours.

Except for the part where I skidded my bike out on wet leaves over asphalt, doing about 17 mph.

That's about 15-20 feet of plowed-up leaves. From my body.

So today I'm really sore all along the left side of my body - a sore calf, a big bruise on my upper outer thigh, a sore shoulder, a scrape on my arm, and a sore right side of the neck from the whiplash where my head hit the ground (that's why you wear a HELMET, people!) and snapped my teeth together. I can't turn my head all the way to the right, and have given in and taken a couple doses of Vitamin I since then.

Outdoor athletes have a hard life sometimes. It reminds me of Stephen's story about going to get a physical a couple days after a particularly prickly orienteering event. The doctor took one look at the scratches on his face and arms and asked, "Do you feel safe at home?" The standard domestic abuse question. You can understand why the doctor was professionally obligated to ask it, but in the actual context, it was pretty amusing. And it made for plenty of merriment, off-color comments, and a fair amount of teasing when he later retold the story - especially with Kari there.