Quote:
Originally Posted by recycled sixtie
Some kind of head protection is a good idea. I used to wear a hockey helmet. Skiing among trees is fun but trees are unforgiving...
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I wear a ski helmet these days, really like it. It looks like one of those "brain buckets" that Harley guys wear but it keeps me warm and adds a modicum of protection in falls.
It was almost 40 years ago to the day that it was "my turn" and I got my ticket punched. Skiing in Snowmass, CO. off-piste in the trees, going pretty fast in deep snow when one ski went under a branch buried in the snow and I did a high-speed face plant, punched myself in the gut so hard that I snapped both wrist bones in left arm and the top of the ski pole ruptured my spleen...good times!
December of 1980. I remember that day like yesterday. I remember what I was wearing. We were pretty high up on a steep part of the resort and I had a real fear of riding down a black diamond mountain in a toboggan. It was something I never wanted to do. I knew that my arm was broken pretty bad but I wanted to try to ski slowly down to the first aid station w the ski patrol guys. I remember kind of arguing w them, in a lot of pain and not thinking rationally. They are big, tough guys in the mountains and they knew they could get me down safely, they did it everyday. Still, I had some phobia about it.
I finally sort of talked them into letting me try to ski down, then I stood up, (I had been laying in the deep snow the entire time). When I stood, my eyes rolled back in my head like I'd just been punched by Tommy Hearns, one of the ski patrol grabbed the sleeve of my jean jacket and set me down easy. They strapped me in the toboggan for a semi-conscience ride down the hill.
I'm in decent health and still ski fast but if I got Covid now and died, the indirect cause of death would be losing my spleen in Aspen, CO. in 1980. It's my only health compromise and it has something to do w immunity from certain things, especially pneumonia. I take a special pneumonia vaccine every year for 40 years.