dreamformula.com

Originally this post was going to be about the realization of childhood dreams, and how I had just recently realized one of those by successfully passing my Level I AASI Certification and officially becoming a professional snowboarder. There was going to be a paragraph about my dreams as a child, and one about how important it is for us to never let go of our youthful aspirations despite getting older and older everyday. In summary it was going to be a nice motivational piece about the power of being compelled to achieve something, and the subsequent excitement of eventually realizing that dream.

Then I broke my collar bone.

I got my first snowboard as a christmas present somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 or 12 years ago. It was a purple, black, and white Blacksnow board with heavy plastic bindings, and metal edges! It had no sidecut, in fact the board as omnidirectional with a slightly raised wedge shaped nose, and a flat, straight cut tail. I couldn’t turn it, or get down the driveway on it, but I loved every moment of trying.

This winter, 12 years, and 4 snowboards later, I’m still hard at it. That is until I broke my clavicle snowboarding at Afton Alps last weekend. I’m now required to wait at least 6 weeks before getting on a snowboard again, and am having so much trouble sleeping that I can not even have dreams about snowboarding. Talk about frustration.

I had it coming though. The way I see it, I’ve been doing this for a while, and this is the first debilitating injury that I’ve gotten so far. I was due for one.

Of course it was one of those, “Lets make one or two more runs and head home”, situations, and unfortunately I can not even say it was the result of some huge air or impressive spin gone wrong. Rather, I simply fell over while moving along at a fairly decent pace after catching my back edge. Landed square on my left shoulder, plowing it into a patch of solid ice, and forcing so much pressure through it that it fractured my collar bone.

And let me tell you, it f*cking hurt! I’ve had some pretty major surgery, and plenty of bike accidents, and encounters with sharp objects. None of them however come even close to this. I would not recommend it to anyone. This gets me thinking though, what is the most painful thing you’ve been through? Not that I we’ll really be able to relate unless we’ve both done the same things, but at least we’ll know what to try and avoid. Leave a comment and let me know.

That said, here’s hoping for a fast recovery, and that there’s still some snow worth riding on in mid March. Also, if I do get motivated again I’ll be sure to finish and post that original piece I had been working on.