A couple of weeks aqo, I got to play the gimp. Making an awkward save at hockey, I caught an edge the wrong way and twisted my foot in a direction it was not meant to twist. I had a very difficult time walking the next day, and continued to suffer discomfort for a few days following. Under certain circumstances, I can still feel the injury, but it otherwise doesn't hamper any mobility or sporting endeavour. However, with hockey playoffs on the horizon, I didn't want to risk doing any damage that could threaten my participation.
That was a concern when my friends offered to take me skiing for my birthday yesterday. Choosing to snowboard, I figured having my feet locked together would prevent any ankle-related injuries common with skiing, and only leave me susceptible to the standard wrist-and-ass snowboarding injuries, which I could be careful to avoid. I was having a great time, and getting much more used to the board than on my only other outing last year. I was getting much better. That is, until fate struck. And it struck specifically on the same ankle, at the very small window of opportunity it had through the night.
When getting on and off the lift, you have only one foot attached to the board, and this was the source of my worry, so I was extra careful approaching the lift, and even more so getting off, trying not to fall in a heap and getting whacked by a chair. Before our very last run, I successfully got of the chair and slid away in a speedy and steady fashion, only to discover that a pair of people ahead of me decided to stop and mingle directly in my path (for the third time in a row, I should add). In retrospect, I should have bowled them over. Serves them right for standing in traffic. Instead, I leaned hard to make a sharp turn, fell, and with only one foot attached to the board, it was free to turn and catch and turn some more, twisting the same ankle the exact same way as its original injury.
If this injury persists, I will scorn the names of those two for ages to come. And since I don't actually know their names, I will invent demeaning ones for them and scorn those. In any case, they owe me one human toboggan run down the mountain.