ripping the shit out of my knee, and other poems, by Maya Angelou

currently, i'm sitting at Dieu Du Ciel drinking a 2 and a half year old Belgian Abbey Quadrupel (that is fuckin' spectacular) and mulling over the past week or so. to keep everyone (all 7 of you) up to date, let's start at the beginning.

monday. went to Jay Peak to snowboard on their 28 inch dump over the weekend. halfway through the day, me, Doug, and Stacy were almost to the bottom, and went to hit the tabletop jumps that are always there. my confidence on them has been increasing each time i've gone this season. as some of you know, i've been riding since 6th grade, and am seriously skilled when it comes to steeps, trees, etc. but never have been a "pipe and park junkie". i can hit jumps, but i was never one for big air. anyway, on this run, i hit the first, and got some air, and felt great about it. so, as i approached the second, i was about to slow down, but thought, "i feel good about this...i'm gonna really hit this one". so, i hit it, not realising that the fuckers who designed it made the kicker too steep and the tabletop section too long. i got some serious air, and on the way down i see the indented section of the tabletop flat where everyone had been landing. so, in a moment of "oh shit, i'm gonna land on a flat" panic, i did the complete opposite of what i should and i straightened my front knee. yep. i'm a genius. i landed. and dropped to my knees in pain. i slid down to the base, and felt this extreme pain in my knee, but couldn't pinpoint it. so, in the macho, id-driven, "i can deal with pain" mentality, i decided to let my knee cool off in the tram before we get to the top of the mountain and take on some serious terrain. well, to my surprise, it felt fine at the top. so i started riding in the "waist deep powder" that we were told existed up there (thank you jackass on skis without a jacket...there was almost no powder up there). everything seemed fine until i was riding in a trail called "Hell's Woods" near the bottom. i was surfing through some nice powder, and i kicked out my right leg to stop on my heelside and take a breather. well, as soon as i did that, i felt my left knee stretch outwards with two back-to-back "pops" in it. fuck. i lit up that glade with so much profanity that the fucking pine needles dried up and fell off all the trees in a rigor mortis-y fashion. i managed to get up after some down time and made it to the base. drank some beer at the base, then went home. i was NOT going to wait 8 hours that night to go to the hospital, especially on trivia night, so i got Dave and Jen to take a cab with me to Brutopia for the night. we just barely lost the first round, and lost the second round in the tie-breaker, but i had plenty of beer and shots, so my knee was feeling grrrr-eat! (where's Tony the Tiger when you need him??). cab home (after scoring some Boustan). get to the emergency room at 10am the next morning, with no more than 4 hours of sleep, and wait for 4 hours until i get called into a room. then 2 hours go by until they give me an x-ray (even though i knew it wasn't broken and x-rays can't see soft-tissue damage), then another 1.5 hours goes by until some med student comes in and tells me that "it's not broken" (thanks copernicus) and "we're not sure if you tore any ligaments, so here's some tylenol with codeine and a referral to mcgill sports medicine". the name of the painkiller is deceiving...it's called "Empracet"...doesn't that sound like "Percocet"? well, it's not. i learned that when i broke my elbow a year ago. they put so little codeine and so much acetaminophen in these pills that you would have to overdose on acetaminophen in order to get enough codeine to feel anything resembling pain reduction. i took two tabs (double the dose), a pill of Naproxen, and washed it down with a beer and still felt no effect whatsoever. jerks. so, to sum up, i got to sports medicine and they believe that i have partial tears in both my ACL and my meniscus. so, no more snowboarding for yours truly.

i guess that brings us to wednesday. got my second edition of Junior Mints 'n' Bosco into the carboy to dry mint it with 2 oz of spearmint leaves and a bunch more chocolate. my altbier, Falter, is ready to drink and is very tasty, though i might submit it to the National Hombrew Competition under the Strong Scotch Ale category since it resembles that more than an altbier. i met with the Dieu Du Ciel master brewer to discuss the finer points of going from homebrewing to professional brewing. it was nice to hear that he still loves it. i was also offered an all-expenses-paid trip to Boston on the first weekend of April to oversee an experiment involving live emotional expression tracking with the Boston Philharmonic. i'm pumped about that for so many reasons.

thursday. nothing happened. eh, whatever.

friday. filmed a new segment about the Formula 1 rule changes for the 2006 season with WatchMojo. that should be up this weekend. while many of you have seen the best way to pour a pint, i'm happy to say that my segment on the difference between ale and lager has finally surfaced. keep watching that site for some really cool content. for instance, all sports fans should check out the latest edition of the whip/around. this guy know sports like i know drinking. and you all know how well i know drinking.

so, now i wait until the subaru station wagon that brings my brother and our friends to montreal rolls in (later than planned) to kick off a nice, hearty, drunken bachelor party. and with the severity of the rain outside and my lack of an umbrella, i think i will probably wait here, in the bar, until that happens.