No, I'm not being British. There was a fair share of blood, sweat, and bruises yesterday when I went on a not so leisurely sailboat cruise with a group of friends from engineering. I'll spare you the details of the girl getting concussed by a swinging boom (which I thought only happened in the movies) other more subtle shenanigans and just explain the stupid things I ended up doing. For you pleasure, I will sort them by the physical injury that it caused:
Half-inch long cuts on right, ring and pinky fingers
So, after we finally unsunk our canoe (that's a whole other story) we were pulling it along after the sailboat and just drinking and snacking on the ship. At one point I was was sitting on the hatch holding a bag of potato chips when the the captain raised his open palms signalling that he wanted me to throw the bag his way. I miss judged the strength of the wind and the bag hopped up over his head. In my infinite wisdom, I whipped off my glasses and dived overboard. Lesson number one - never dive head first out of a sailboat. Why? It doesn't hurt if you can angle your entry into the water right, which I luckily did, but that sailboat is going a lot faster than you may think and it's a bitch and a half to get it around again. So, needless to say, the chip bag was whisked away pretty quickly and there I was in the middle of lake with my crew of friends laughing and zipping away. I see the cord holding the canoe whipping by and swim out of the way of this monster thing barreling at me. I get out of the way and position myself to grab it as it comes by. I should've know better, but it was a really old canoe and the frame work was starting to show some wear and tear. There was a quick sharp pain as I grabbed the side and my hand slid down the rail to the end which I luckily grabed with a tightened grip and tried to hold as much of my body out of the water to reduce the drag that was trying to pull me away. My friend started to reel me in and I eventually noticed some red drops of blood on the canoe. I looked down at my hand and saw the blood rushing down my forearms in victory.
Stiff neck
This was easily the stupidest and most painful of my injuries. When I say stiff I mean stiff, if I angle my head as little as thirty degrees I can feel it tightening up which is accompanied by a dull pain.How'd this happen? So, after we dropped anchor and crashed the house boat party (that's a whole other story) we starting contemplating jumps and dives off of the upper deck. Being the idiot that I am my first attempt was a dive. I concentrated on going out instead of down. Even with that mentality my hands and chest bumped the ground, but my neck was fine. After this my other friend decided to do a more suicidal jump over the lower deck and the prop. He managed a cannonball getting some of the locals pretty wet but not at all displeased. Now things are starting to heat up, it may have been the gin, so I try to do a suicide dive off the top deck - which means head first, no arms. You grab the wrist of one of your arms with the other behind you back. The dive is nice but I totally forget to go out, not down. I drop in the water so fast and I hit the sand. Hard. This is just conjecture, because nobody saw, but it felt like my head was twisted so hard to the right that my neck was near parallel with my shoulder. The first thing I thought was "I'm paralyzed. Oh my god. I'm paralyzed" I try to kick my feet and to my relief I started kick water swimming back. Funny thing is, I was intoxicated enough at the time that I didn't feel anything. Now that it's the next day I'm in a whole new world of aches and pain.
Deep gash on toe
As the day was winding down we started to attach the canoe to the top of my friends truck. I walk towards the canoe to help secure it and swing my foot directly into the combat knife stabbed into the ground (you guessed it, that's a whole other story) getting a nice clean but on the side of my right, ring toe. It didn't hurt at all but I knew I hit something. I looked a the knife slightly loose in the ground and I know that I'm cut up pretty bad. The three girls looked down at my feet and covered there mouths and started making typical worried girl noises. I decide that I won't look at it but it need to be taken care of - luckily, my good friend was down to take care of me and she pryed my pinky away from that toe and said "It's deep. It's really deep." After the obligatory, "that's what she said" we ripped up some undershirt, grabbed some Polysporin, and I was fixed up in no time. I took of the make shifts raps and bandaged it up once I got home but I still haven't seen that actual damage.
Well, there you have it. A typical adventure with yours truly. Next time, the day I tried to climb into my friends house while running away from the campus cowboys.