COFFEE & BISCUITS

So I have been windsurfing 3 times in the last 4 days. First day: excruciating back pain — which matched my experience 2 years ago. No surprise there. Second day: Sailing beautifully and felt an exhilarating upper body pain afterwards — arms, abs, even butt. Which made me think this would be a wonderful and fun complement to running (which is just foot work); I was supposed to build up upper body strength anyway.

But today, the injuries were stacking up. Arrived at Evanston: 7 knots wind. Choppy water. Lots of white waves. (In the process of windsurfing, you may already get sea sick). It took a long time for us to get on the board — a LONG time. I was surprised by how long it took myself to this, consider that I had almost immediately hopped on and sailed on in the first two times. Furthermore, at one point, I thought I was gonna die.

1. A BUMP ON THE HEAD (and almost fatality): I was trying to get on board, as a big wave was crushing toward shore. The mast fell toward my side. I lost balance and fell in. The mast followed. And hit me right on the head as I was in the water. The sail covered my head, and the weight of it pushed me under the water. Meanwhile, another wave came in and pushed the sail down under. I drank several gulp of water and tried to regain my clarify (after the mast hit my head), struggled to swim out of the sail but continued to be pressured under. Almost out of breath. But finally got out. (But that was scary). Just now when I washed my hair, I realized there’s a bump on the upper right hand side of my head.

2. TWISTED WAIST: I shouldn’t pull up the sail with one hand. But sometimes I got so tired that I did just that. Consequence is that right now I am suffering from disabling left side back pain, and had to wear a corset and have a lot of trouble sitting and walking or bending.

3. CLAMPED FINGERS: Several times when I tried to climb onto the board the mast moved and clamped my fingers between the board and the mast. Go figure.

4. TWISTED ANKLE: there is an area in the lake which is pretty far from the coast, but the depth of the water is deceptively shallow. So a gust of strange wind blew from nowhere and I felt off the board on my back, but landed STRAIGHT on my ankle. The foot immediately turned soft and I became a jellyfish. (For a moment, I thought, I will never be able to run away). From then on, pretty much I paddled back to shore.

Bottomline: I am still alive. And plan to do more of this and add on more injuries.