What happened to my foot??

I need to work on looking more suitably alarmed

Yes, this is what happened when you don’t have much sensation on your left leg/foot, poor ankle flexibility/mobility, and a slightly too large ice-climbing boot (I size them a bit bigger so that I don’t get super cold feet). Paradox Ice might be the only event when this can happen and people are more likely to laugh than be alarmed.

As I wait in Chicago O’Hare airport, hearing my flight to Montrose, Colorado get continually delayed, I think about how my extended hiatus from skiing, and my exposure to the disabled community has renewed my conflicted feelings about the expensive, white-people sports I engage in. I had always been aware of how relatively few minorities engaged in sports like climbing and skiing, but it was only after being away from those worlds for awhile, that it made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. I don’t have data to support this, but my guess is that a disproportionate of people with a handicap fall towards the lower ends of the economic spectrum, because their physical (and/or maybe mental) limitations, prevent them from earning a high salary. That isn’t to say the only people who climb and ski are wealthy; there are many dirt-bag climbers and ski bums. But, for the most part, the high barriers to entry for skiing in particular will exclude a lot of people from trying or doing it frequently enough to get good at it. With climbing at least, after the initial investment in gear, access is cheap/free. I know I have been out of the skiing scene for awhile, but I was still gobsmacked by how expensive lift-tickets were at Telluride, CO, where I am headed to right now. A full day lift-ticket at Telluride is $118. So for one day, a family of four would spend close to $500, before gear rentals (if they don’t ski frequently enough to warrant the purchase of gear), before accommodation and food, before transportation to get to the resort. And in a destination resort like Telluride, a family isn’t going to ski for just one day. It is kind of ridiculous. But I’m not sure what to do about it. Not skiing in some kind of futile protest is rather silly, and I am not in a financial position to donate tons of money to organizations to bring underprivileged kids up to the slopes. But is it enough to just be painfully self-aware that I am in the fortunate position of being able to afford weekend and the occasional extended ski trip? I really do not know.

Holy Lärabar! Lärabar sent me a box full of mini bars as part of their Ambassador program. It’s like Halloween candy, but better for you. Fortunately, I love Larabars because there are 300 of them (at least according to the enclosed letter – fortunately, I am not OCD enough to count). As most of you know, my bowel/bladder issues mean I am very particular about what I eat when I am outside (e.g. climbing, skiing, whatever) for long periods of time without ready access to a bathroom. These are one of the few bars that are agreeable with my faulty plumbing and that I like the taste of. So, I am really glad to have a few to nosh on for myself and keep me fueled; and spread the love and give these out to folks.

Entropy

Order restored. Okay, so I am a little particular about some things.

It is surprising how I am not crushed by all the daily reminders I have about my accident and the permanent effects of it. These include: cathing myself several times per day, plodding up the stairs to our third-floor walk-up apartment, negotiating icy sidewalks this time of year, taking the elevator up to the second floor at work as opposed to taking the stairs, parking in Handicap Parking spots (it still amuses me that the acronym “HPV” is used on signs). But sometimes certain things will serve as a jolting reminder of what I can no longer do, and make me feel very down. One such example was when I was researching rental car options in Europe. I scrolled through all the available small, non-luxury vehicle options and found that none of them were Automatic Transmission. Now, in my youth, I prided myself on being an excellent stick-shift driver (and, yes, an Asian female at that too) and owned manual-transmission cars exclusively until my accident in 2010. I enjoyed driving a heck of a lot more driving stick-shift and liked the control it gave me. As I assessed my rental car options, I felt gutted, feeling like somehow, a special exception needed to be made for me. I bloody hate being special in that way. Thinking about the extra inconveniences definitely made me reconsider my travel plans. What is funny is how something like that can feel like a punch in the stomach, whereas other reminders do not. For example, a co-worker of mine has a tennis racket in its case by his desk. I used to be a pretty talented tennis player, and played it pretty regularly/seriously for a decade and a half. But spotting my colleague’s racket each day as I walk towards my desk, doesn’t make me feel too sad. Neither does seeing all the bicycles hanging on the bike racks in the office. Again, I used to cycle pretty seriously, but I don’t really miss it that much.

Even though Metolius was not accepting any new members for its 2015 Team, I am heartened that they wanted to offer me their support and make me a Metolius Ambassador! I’ve basically used their Safe-Tech Deluxe Womens Trad harness exclusively for trad since I started climbing, as well as their tape and chalk. Given the rate at which I go through their chalk and tape (for crack climbing and all my broken fingers), this will save me quite a bit of dinero!