Life with a Busted Elbow
Here's a fun game you can play. Pretend like you can pretty much no longer use your dominant arm and try to live life doing everything with your other arm and hand. Oh yeah, make sure to pinch and hurt your lame dominant arm at least eight times a day to remind you that it's busted and not going to work for you very well.

Try tying your shoelaces one handed (thank goodness for my Merrill slip-ons!) or showering with one arm. Or brushing your teeth with your weak hand. Its maddening but an abject lesson in just how utterly dependent we all are on our dominant arm's ability to get us through each day.

And I've been learning that being ambidextrous is far more than just a state of mind. Its damned hard to do those things you're used to doing with your good hand. It feels stupid, it makes me feel like an idiot. But I'm getting better and actually do have a fair amount of use of my right arm. But it will remind me in sharp, staccato bursts of red hot pain that its not well and is only operating under protest.

I can type, I can operate the remote control (oh thank god for that!) and can lots of other things but its always accompanied by a twinge of skin being pulled or the gash itself reopening and oozing. Truly good fun, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

The good part is that it is healing up very, very well. Even the small section that's missing skin entirely. I guess doing the Neosporin thing really does make a huge difference. Hopefully by this time next week I'll be back on my bike and not having to ride the motorcycle in everyday. I miss my bike rides into work. And I could use the exercise as being one armed right now has severely inhibited my ability to get a decent workout in.

On a side note, we watched the finale of the ECO Challenege: Fiji last night and it was, well, it was pretty disgusting. For some reason the producers thought that showing the nasty foot infections and injuries that people sustained in running this severe endurance race would be good for ratings. It was just disgusting for the most part. The Brazilian with the three infections not wanting to quit the race even though she couldn't open her eyes and could barely walk. The Playmate who nearly died of hypthermia and the myriad other nasty injuries that happened in the course of this epic race of hell. It didn't look like fun at all, it looked like a death march. Teams broke down, teams broke up, people broke down as they worked themselves nearly to death. I just don't get it really. Adventure racing looks like fun in the abstract, combine numerous outdoor activities into one event that spans any number of days. But the reality is that its dangerous, difficult and more effort than reward for most of the participants. Although I must admit that the pure joy of those that made it to the finish was pretty cool to see.

But damn, did they have to work for it. Check out the course on the site above and you'll get an inkling of how difficult this race was, universally considered the most difficult ECO Challenge yet.