BC

well, my last- minute trip to BC might have been more fun without a broken foot. however, there are a lot of things to do here with a broken foot, and great company to do them with. here's me at brohm lake, foot out of water.








i did manage to climb, as well, though it was a trick to hike in there. we alternated crutching with piggy- backing. it turns out, i can climb with my right foot and a left knee pad!! it was tough to find knee placements in this finger crack, though.

i can't remember this guy's name, but he was an enthusiastic member of the team of 10 climbers that ingeniously helped us break into joel's car through the trunk. somehow, it locked itself with the keys in joel's pants pocket. slightly shadowed, note the metal spatula, just one of the motley tools that finally spawned success in the venture.

deep sea kayaking around bohen island; a fun, alternative and foot-friendly adventure. here's joel, looking sexy as always.

Fun in CO . . .

. . . despite the broken foot. here's the gorgeous sun setting over the mountains. although it prevented us from going climbing (realistically, the colorado hikes are heinous and undoable in crutches), danielle and i were able to do lots of things together that we haven't ever done before. such as riding the motorized carts at target. if you have to be a gimpy invalid, you might as well have a little fun, eh?

the foot didn't look altogether too bad once the swelling went down and it stopped looking greenish. i am a bad patient, as it turns out. i took the splint off approximately 5 times a day in order to ice it, to bathe and to see how it was looking. i was wondering why at HCMC we use plaster and weberil instead of these fancy automatic splint forming thingies. my conclusion was it is probably so that patients can't take it off so easily.

i also took my splint off in order to crutch into the water and help danielle teach peanut how to swim. she can swim, but she's still in the stage where she won't unless she's absolutely forced. rocco refused to swim volitionally until i went sailing and left him on the shore. he howled for 5 minutes and suddenly, he was swimming across the lake to catch joel and i in the boat. crazy pooch.

The Incident

Danielle and I were psyched to go climbing at Rocky Mountain National Park on her day off. We hiked up there and enjoyed a pleasant hike that felt really short because we were so intently reviewing medical knowledge (I know, we're big dorks). We were warming up on this beautiful boulder with Long's Peak in the background. We decided to go check out some of the other boulders before coming back to this boulder to work on our project, Potato Chip (V7), on the other side of this boulder that was significantly less scary than normal due to the snow. I was hiking in flip flops because I was lazy and I always hike in flip flops. I was hiking over a rather large boulder in the talus field when my wet-from-snow foot slipped and I fell approximately a foot, my flops fell off, I skinned the toe on my right foot and I landed on the curved point of a rock with my bare foot. I called for danielle, but she didn't hear me. I crawled over to a snow field and set up camp. I felt nauseous and stunned and waited for the pain to subside. Danielle came back and bandaged my skinned toe, which was bleeding everywhere. She'd even brought some saline bullets in her first aid kit. But my other foot was the one that I was worried about. Finally, the pain started to subside and I began to think maybe I would climb some more. Then, I tried to stand on it. I winced, sat back down and knew it was broken. At the 5th metatarsal head to be exact. Shannon and Ben, two of Danielle's friends, came to the rescue and helped me get out. I rock hopped and shoulder assisted most of the way over the talus, and then Ben piggy backed me the rest of the way out to the main trail.
I walked on it for at least 3 miles because I was still in pain when using Danielle's shoulder as an assist and it would have gone much slower. So I just tried to walk on the inner part of my foot and the heel. I always kind of wondered if I would be one of the people who would tough it out hike on a broken bone if I had to. Now I know that I can. I did tear up a bit when at times I could feel the bones grinding. We stopped at DQ because we really deserved it by this point. Danielle took me to the Boulder hospital where we found out that I have an unstable oblique fracture on my 5th metatarsal head. No more hiking in flip flops, especially on talus fields. I already hate the crutches and I'm hating the fact that I won't be able to climb for quite awhile.

Colorado

Hesam and I decided to take a road trip in his 1980 VW westfalia. The trip out was a little long-we had to drive 55 the whole way because there is no 5th gear and we had to stop every 3 hours to cool off the air-cooled engine. We finally arrived, spent a margarita-ful fourth at danielle and EZ's house, and went climbing at Mount Evans the following day.

Here's danielle and EZ's dog peanut in front of the meadow boulder.
Unfor- tunately, after the brutally steep 1 1/2 hour hike in

and 1/2 hour of warming up, we got poured on. And usually in CO, it stops. So we were hopeful, and hopeful and hopeful . . . until we hiked out in the rain, which never did stop.

Gay Pride Festival

the drasler sibs and deepika. her family used to live with us when we were both 2. we were exactly the same age and best friends. we have pictures of us in the wagon together. and i haven't seen her since! she finally visited the states and we took her out downtown minneapolis to celebrate. it happened to be gay pride week, and she will probably forever remember minneapolis as the "home of the most gay people she's ever seen in one place." i guess its not so open in india.

High School Reunion

whoa, high school reunions are strange things. the entire night was like, "whoa! that's so-and-so!" people i haven't thought about in 10 years, quite literally. minnetonka was a strange place to go to high school, what with all the orange fake-and-baked dolled-up girls and backwards-hat nice-carred boys. i was pretty much a dork in high school. but, i can honestly say that everyone with whom i initiated a conversation was very friendly and it was really fun to talk to them and hear about what they were doing, even if they were rather superficial repetitive conversations. except kim hastreiter, who used to be a popular girl, on the dance team, "the rettes." SHE decided she couldn't handle all the superficial bull-shit and got really wasted and "hated everyone there because she was living in new york during 911 and she knew how life really was." Tracy McKinney and I in the photo above.

collette being funny at the reunion. she's one of my oldest friends. we go back to the fourth grade, where we had a judy blume club for the book, "friends forever." her husband, joe, and andy seng in the background

More Tanzania

nicola and felicity and two of their students. these are two of my good brit friends who were in tanzania doing a photo- journalism project. they have gone to several different countries and taught photography classes to street kids, then asking them to make a photodocumentary of their lives. the kids get to see the other countries through each others' eyes and learn about many other countries in a language-less, equalizing way. it was an amazing project and i was excited to see the finished product. these two girls were especially excited about their project and hung their photos-the first they've ever had-all over the wall.

the ugly side of tanzania is the trash. most people there litter and think nothing of it. and then drink out of and bathe in the trashy river. it makes you realize how global of a perspective we really have to take in preserving the future of our earth.

this is a dalla dalla, the public trans- portation mini-buses that cost a quarter to take. they cram them to the brim with appx 18 people fitting inside each and hanging out the doors. they are quite an experience. you are guaranteed to have an overwhelmingly sweaty and stinky experience and you might get a baby handed to you if you happen to have a seat.