Prepare to be disappointed by the novel below!
I'm alive thanks! I did actually have a ski accident January 2017, but it was lame as shit. South facing mellow slope, late in the day, snow was alternating grabby/powder between the shadows and light, I was pretty bagged and skiing sloppy and all of the sudden my left ski stopped, maybe it hit something as well. My momentum kept carrying me forward, and my bindings didn't release as they were dialed up to 11 as I had a problem with pre-releases with those skis. I tried to somersault as I often do, to land on my back, but as I did that I felt a horrifying double pop inside my knee. I hit the snow all tangled up in a lot of pain, but once I untangled and stood up, he pain went away immediately.
I thought maybe I was okay, and tried making a couple turns. Knee was unstable as shit, but I'd never hurt a knee before so I didn't know what was up. I was the last guy leaving the top and it was only like 10 turns in to the run, so I called back up to the tail guide, and he came down to check me out. Just based on the description he knew it was ACL. We ended up boot-packing back up to the top instead of trying to ski down on one leg through the shit snow. By the time I got back up, the rest of the group had ridden the cat back up and was waiting, slow clapping as I came over the rise. Fuckers. It didn't much hurt climbing back up, except for certain movements. I sat the last couple hours in the back of the cat and watched it balloon up.
We drove home the next day, and on the drive home I arranged to drop by a friend's dad's place, as he's a pediatric orthopod. He checked it out and figured it was ACL as well, although by that time the swelling wasn't too bad. I paid $500 to go get an MRI, as that would have been a 3-4 month wait, and you can't get even get a referral to a specialist until you have the MRI done. I had them send the imaging to my GP and the friend's dad, and was pretty sure even I could see the remnants of the ACL in one of the slides (looked like a frayed rope). At that point I'd have had to wait another 4-6 months for a specialist, and then 4-6 for a surgery appointment. Thankfully, friend's dad's admin girl worked for another surgeon, who's supposedly one of the best in North America, and she slipped my name in to the pile. Went to see him a month or so later, he laid out the surgical option, and I was like "fuck yes I'm in" because otherwise my days of skiing and hockeying hard would have been over (I was 36 at the time). In the meantime I started doing physio, and by the spring I was jogging 5 miles no problem, mountain biking etc just to build strength up prior to surgery. Every now and again my tib and femur would collide when I slipped or something, but otherwise it wasn't too bad. I wasn't expecting surgery until late summer, but I got a call in mid-May from the surgeon's office saying there was a cancelation for early June, and that they needed an answer then and there if I wanted the slot.
Overall I found the surgery and rehab to be not all that bad. I'd been told horror stories by other people. I was walking without crutches 3 days after surgery. First 2 days I just laid on the couch, changed ice in the compression sleeve apparatus, smoked weed, and watched 10 seasons of Southpark. I walked from my place to Rogers to watch Tool 5 days after surgery, although ceasing the anti-inflams and codeine earlier in the day so I could have a couple beers was a big mistake, as the pain came roaring back halfway through the show and I nearly shit myself when the codeine constipation disappeared as I was walking home. I could fully extend the knee within a week. That surgeon has magic fucking hands, man, although he did also mention that my knee was pristine inside other than the ACL wreckage.
I did the recommended physio as instructed for the first 3 months or so, and after that I just went back to jogging/mountain biking at 2 months, and playing hockey at about 4.5 months. The physio had actually said at 3 months that if it was between doing the exercises he was giving me, or hitting the gym or playing sports, to do the latter. I'd bullshitted him that I wasn't biking yet, as I couldn't take much more stationary biking. I had a couple scary moments here and there where I thought I'd fucked myself and re-torn it, but those pops were muscle fibers tearing off from the hamstring where they took the graft. At 6 months when they had me do 1 legged jumps to measure distances, I was jumping further on the repaired knee than the original one, as the repaired one was always my strong leg.
I even managed to hit Revelstoke for opening day that year. On the first lift up I was like "boys, you have fun, I'll just be hitting the groomers" and then halfway up we saw people ripping down 3 feet of powder on what should have been the groomers. Next thing I knew I was hiking in to North Bowl and double ejecting a couple times on the way down (DIN's now at a reasonable 6). Maybe not the smartest way to ease back in to things a little over 5 months from surgery, but fuck it was fun to be back in the saddle! So in the end I only lost about half a ski season. Not bad! The rest of the ski season I was definitely hesitant and did not get sendy. From about 6-12 months post surgery the only time the knee caused pain was either when I overworked it, or when I sat on the couch for a week. Since then it's been basically 100% That leg's hamstring is definitely a touch weaker now, and I can no longer get that heal to my butt like I can with the other leg, so there's a little bit less range of motion. But otherwise last ski season I didn't even think about the knee while sending some cliffs.
TLDR section:
Otherwise, life's good fellas. I see that a few people have wondered where I've been in this and other threads. As to why I haven't posted here, I simply decided that it wasn't a productive use of my time any longer. It wasn't helped by the turn in the political atmosphere, quite frankly I started to find a lot of the posters and posts to be shit that I didn't and don't want to associate with. No need to belabor that, you guys can guess what my opinions on most shit would be, and I'm not here to argue them.
Not much has changed in my life. Business has been very up and down in Alberta the last 5 years, obviously, so that's definitely been a change from the first 15 years I was in the business. It's much more of a grind to make a nickel, but given how many companies have gone tits up around us, we can't complain. Thankfully we haven't been burnt too badly, other than a couple sub-trades going out of business that left us with messes to clean up. More frustration than dollars.
Not much to report on the special lady friend part. I did a little bit of dating in 17/18, but nothing that went anywhere. I posted my thoughts on dating apps/sites in other threads here, and they haven't really changed much. For most of the last couple years I haven't even bothered with them. If something were to fall in my lap I'd be open to it, but not much has. I fired up Tinder a bit over the summer, and had pretty much zero matches. I re-upped Bumble the other day, and out of the blue got half a dozen matches, most of which didn't go anywhere, but I did just go out for a date with a nice girl last weekend. It went well, and on paper she checks a ton of boxes. Very active, skis and snowboards (even used to patrol at Revy before it was Revy), fit, good career and so on. Problem is, she's got a 5 year old son, is interested in more, and by the sounds of it a fairly toxic relationship background. So we'll see what happens there, we're meeting up for another bite tomorrow. She's already asked if I have Peter Pan Syndrome, which I did not deny because I basically do. If anything it'll be good to get back in to the swing of things, and I probably should decide at 38 whether kids is ever going to be something I want to have. Pretty sure not, but who knows. Neverland's treated me pretty well so far.
Haven't spoken to, seen, or heard from the ex much the last couple years. She dropped me a line this summer to let me know she was moving up to Yellowknife or Whitehorse, fuck if I remember, and was getting a much higher paying job so she'd be able to start making some payments on her debt. As a refresher, she'd owed me about 20k when we broke up, and had made a 5k payment on it summer of 2016 with nothing since. In my email response I jokingly said "okay great, I've got a new car showing up in a few weeks, so if you could get me the 15k by then, that would be great!" Her response was hilariously passive aggressive, saying maybe she could get a line of credit or something, and it would have been nice if I'd let her know earlier. I told her to relax and pay me back what she could, when she could. She laughed and apologized and said she'd talk to me in October when she'd start making payments. Crickets since!
I'm not intending on making any sort of a regular return here, but figured I'd drop you sluts a line.
