Crash, boom, bang

26 08 2010

Ah, the memories…. The sights and sounds and smells of a skate training run gone terribly wrong still hang around me like an old friend.

My skate crash exactly twelve months ago today that ended my season 2009 rather suddenly and violently was a freak accident. It could have happened to anyone, anywhere. Instead, it happened to me (wearing appropriate safety equipment, I hasten to add) at the bottom of a hill – when a cyclist and I took each other’s right-of-way as I was forced to swerve to avoid an oncoming car. The end result of it was three broken bones (all mine) – one of which was shattered enough to require two operations to fix. To add insult to injury, the cops nailed me with the blame and a fine of $500.

The chronology in a couple of words goes something like this: Happily skating. Crash (snap! snap! crunch-smush!). Pain. OH, F***ING PAIN!!!!! Ambulance, drugs, PAIN!!!!! More drugs, hospital, operation, titanium plate and screws, three days inpatient, two weeks on the sofa at home. Bored, bored, bored. B-O-R-E-D! Harumph.

Yep, that would be my left arm.

The best part of the whole experience was indeed the drugs they gave me while still in the ambulance. They were quite amazing – the world went fuzzy, and then suddenly colorful neon flowers lit up right in front of my eyes, where, rationally, I knew there weren’t supposed to be any. The drugs in the hospital were good too, but the halucinations were slightly less impressive.

(Just for the record, the worst part about the whole business was the sound of the electric screwdriver during surgery. Two surgeries, seven screws.)

At the time, without knowing any of the details, my mother sided with the cop. She chided me for being reckless, told me that it was all my fault and I deserved the consequences. (Thanks mom, I always knew you loved me.) She also tried to talk me out of skating ever again. To those who know me, a ludicrous thought. If you fall off a horse, aren’t you supposed to get right back on? Exactly.

As I do my training laps here this summer ahead of the Berlin Marathon in a month, my accident always gives me pause to think about how fragile the human body is, and how miraculously it heals. Still, while the physical damage has, for the most part, been repaired, the psychological after-effects remain. These days I do think differently when I skate, and my situational awareness is significantly higher than it was before. I don’t speed down hills anymore, confident that nothing will happen if I just keep my eyes open. My faith that other athletes (cyclists, joggers, dog-walkers, skaters) will behave predictably and sensibly as we speed past one another is also considerably lower than it was a year ago. In short, I’m now scared of all the stupid crap other people are capable of when their brains are stuck in neutral.

Swoosh!

I now skate as defensively as humanly possible, but not so defensively as to risk being picked up by the sweeper-bus in my next race. And despite all the time I am spending on my eight wheels this summer, I’m not really sure where I stand physically or mentally, and I often wonder if I’m just wasting my time and risking my health. My only other event this year was a cold, rained-out half-marathon in March, where I clocked my slowest 21 kilometers e-v-e-r. The marathon in September is supposed to be my opportunity to pick up where I left off a year ago, a triumphant return for a fallen gladiator, rising from the ashes, charging to a personal best and set to leave her mark on the history of the sport.

I’ve now spent the whole summer skating and I’m tired. But this afternoon, after work, I will be out there again – padded, helmeted and wheeled – swooshing my way on one of my two favorite routes in Zurich – around the airport (17km), or a local lake (19km), I haven’t decided yet which. One thing is for sure: with every training circuit I complete, I’m a couple of kilometers closer to the finish line. See you there in a month.


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Categories : Blood relations, Cruisin', EuroTrash, Skater Girl, Sports that can kill

Five reasons I will (probably) never skydive

6 08 2010

A very dear friend of mine here in Switzerland, let’s call her Anne, will be going on her first skydive this weekend. She is doing it for a charity project she is involved in and will be sponsored by family and friends.

Anne is about my age, she has lots of friends but also values her alone-time. She is soft-spoken, well-read, very smart, a bit introverted, and could easily be mistaken for a timid person. But those folks who might have that first impression do not really know Anne. She recently came flying with me and while aloft she told me one of her dreams is to go skydiving. I had to turn up the volume on my headset and ask her to repeat herself because I wasn’t sure I understood what she said the first time.

“I want to go skydiving,” she said nonchalantly. “Wanna come?”

Now ladies and gentlemen, I think I said somewhere here that I would try almost every sport once. This happens to be one offer I must categorically and humbly decline.

Not me

And this is why. Five reasons skydiving is not for me. (Aside from the super-obvious.)

1) It’s f*@#ing cold up there.

Brrr. Did you know that for every 1,000 meters in altitude the temperature drops by 6.5 degrees Celcius (or, for every 1,000 feet,  by 3.57 degrees Fahrenheit)? So that means, at about 4,000 meters (or 13,200 feet), the altitude at which they throw you out of the plane, it’s 26 degrees C (or 47 degrees F) colder than it is on the ground. Sorry, I get enough cold weather during our 9-month winters here.

2) The higher you go, the better the view.

And therefore, the faster you fall, the less you see.

3) There’s nothing wrong with the airplane!

So why anyone would volunteer to abandon a fully functional motorized aircraft with full tanks in flight is beyond me.

4)  Have you ever noticed what raindrops do to exposed flesh as it speeds toward earth at 200 kilometers an hour (125 mph)?

I would rather get my face peeling at a local spa, thank you.

5) For the actual jump there’s MasterCard. For the DVD that you can show your grandchildren, there’s MasterCard, too. But spending an afternoon watching the rookies land, hyperventilate and walk around the rest of the day intoxicated on an adrenaline high is: Priceless.

And you know that hangover is going to be a doozy… including the typical, day-after reaction of either severe addiction or swearing off the substance for life.

******

So, dear Anne, you are a better woman than I. Or rather: a better super action heroine than I. And I promise to be here on the ground, watching and cheering you on every step of the way – from the moment you zip up your jumpsuit and adjust your goggles till the moment you once again safely set foot on earth. Just please understand that I won’t be joining you. But thanks for asking.

******************

Update – She did it! She really did it!


Anne, you're the greatest!


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Categories : Cruisin', Sports that can kill, The Savvy Aviatrix

Happy Pilot Birthday

1 08 2010

Today, Sunday, August 1st, 2010, we celebrate not only Switzerland’s birthday (its 719th) but also my own birthday – as a private pilot. Ten years ago today, I climbed into the left seat of a small aircraft and took the controls for the first time – and I have never looked back.

Can't wait!

The decision to learn to fly was long in the making, but the logistics of life, including the lack of three essential ingredients of which one needs to have a great deal for this kind of project  – time, patience and money – kept getting in the way. I’ve wanted to pilot an airplane since I was six, and spent most of my life till I was 16 preparing myself for the aerospace engineering education I was going to get at MIT and the astronaut career I was going to have with NASA.

Until a crotchety, old, mean-spirited 12th grade physics teacher with thick glasses and a plastic pocket protector stopped me in my tracks. In the two short weeks I was enrolled in his class he manged to convince me I had the intelligence of a rock. My career in aviation was O-V-E-R before it began.

Nine years and two aviation-unrelated university degrees later, a friend’s uncle let me dream again. He gave me my first ride in his own two-seater Cessna 150. He had built himself two crossing runways on his farmland in western Canada and he kept his little bird in an oversized garage right next to the combine. It took another five years after that short flight across endless green and yellow miles of Manitoba canola fields for me to get my act together. When I saw Uncle Ron in July 2000 again, I had already registered for ground school and scheduled my first lesson.

On that sweltering August afternoon, with waves of heat rising off Berlin-Schoenefeld’s runway 25L like a mirage and with an instructor at my side, I was up and away. My ride on that auspicious first flight was D-EHPF – an orange-and-white striped Cessna 150, almost as old as I was. The chips in her beige plastic interior paneling and the comfortably worn upholstery on the seats indicated several generations of student pilots had passed through this trusty workhorse before me. And none had killed it.

That first day was a lesson in endurance and survival. The temperature inside the cozy cockpit reached well over 95 degrees F. Thermal heat ascending from the forests below made for a bouncy first flight that had me reaching for the sic-sacs more than once. We flew to an old military airfield just east of the city, today often used for landing practice. The grass strip is almost 9,000 feet long – more than enough space for pretty much any student pilot to safely get a plane on the ground somehow. (And those who couldn’t were advised to quit trying right then and there.)

Thirteen circuits later and rather green in the face, I unfolded my 5′ 10″ frame out of the miniature cockpit and gasped for air. My landing attempts had been painful for all concerned – the pilot, the passenger, the aircraft and the audience. My oh-so-patient instructor assured me after those first two hours of flight training that I had “potential.” Meaning:  I would probably not kill his bird either unless I flew it vertically into the ground. Little did we know at the time that it would take six instructors and countless more hours of patient, painstaking coaching before any instructor had the guts to send me solo. But that is a story for another day.

Happy Birthday, Switzerland! And many, many more happy landings, Evelynn Starr!

D-EHPF & me. Isn't she a beauty?


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Swiss summer fun

28 07 2010

Summer brings everyone outdoors. It’s warm, beautiful and the days are long. But nowhere does summer entice the population to spend its time outdoors more than in Switzerland. The Swiss have perfected the art of being perfect – clean water, clean air and pristine landscapes – and as soon as it starts to smell and feel like summer outside, the Swiss are off gallivanting through their own personal playground: the Alps.

Now there are about a million crazy things you can do in the summer with the Alps as your backyard (and another million in the winter). I had never heard of most of these so-called “high risk sports” till I arrived here six years ago. Oh sure, usually harmless pastimes like hiking and mountain-biking are popular here, too, but please – only if the path hugging the side of the mountain has a 40% grade, is less than a foot wide and drops off into a deep ravine on one side.

Here’s a short list of stuff I’ve discovered that looks cool, is cool and inevitably ends up claiming a couple of lives every summer. The activities all involve moving vertically somehow, usually from higher ground to lower ground, in a more or less controlled fashion. A good reminder that gravity is a law and not an option.

Base Jumping – This is the craziest of all and the one that is probably responsible for the most casualties. Definition: Jumping from fixed objects. B=building, A=antenna (or tower), S=span (i.e. a bridge), E=earth (i.e. a mountain edge). You freefall and pull the chute just before going splat.

Look ma, no parachute!

Canyoning (known as canyoneering in the U.S.) entails hiking up a mountain and then traveling through its canyons using a variety of techniques that may include other outdoor activities such as walking, scrambling, climbing, jumping, abseiling, and/or swimming. I’ve done this and it’s incredibly fun. Canyoning combines agility, strength and a healthy love of heights – on land, in the air and in the water. Often though, there is only one way out – down. Some important safety information, found on the internet: “There is great potential for injury for the unlucky, the reckless or ill-prepared.”

Paragliding – Jumping off a mountain with a kind of sophisticated parachute (called a “paraglider”) open already. On a pleasant day, paragliders can fly for hours with only the thermal lift to carry them. Their colorful chutes often dot the summer sky across Switzerland and sometimes pose a hazard to low-flying aircraft. Getting one tangled in your propeller can be messy.

Spectacular view

Tobogganing – This is the summer version of the luge in winter. You sit in a plastic or metal tub and careen down a mountain in a metal canal. If you use the brakes you’re a sissy.

Via ferrata – Italian for “iron road” – a form of rock climbing that sends you on a mountain route equipped with fixed wire cables and artificial hand- and footholds. It allows non-climbers to try real mountaineering. One website reminds potential athletes that in order to actually enjoy your outing, you need to be “fearless”.

Rock climbing for beginners

Summer adventure, anyone?


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The need for speed

22 07 2010

It’s about time I wrote something about one of my passions in life.

I am an avid and obsessed inline skater.

You may be more familiar with this sport under its colloquial name: “rollerblading”. It continues to be associated with the brand that first began to make and sell this particular kind of skate in the 1980’s. Today, Rollerblade is one of dozens of skate manufacturers but the misnomer has stuck. I have never skated Rollerblade. Today I skate K2.

I first put on a pair of inline skates in July 1993, near Vancouver’s spectacular Stanley Park. Everyone was doing it, it looked so easy, I figured I’d get the hang of it in a snap and be cruising on the Seawall in no time. Radiating naiveté, I took my first tentative steps in what felt like ski-boots on wheels. An amused crowd savored the free entertainment from the sidelines.

Evelynn skates, Vancouver, 1993

As in all endeavors in life, you only need to get up one more time than you fall down. And hell, I fell down a lot that afternoon. The crowd roared. And I kept getting up again.

Taking up skating was one of the best decisions of my life. I’ve discovered that it’s the closest you get to flying without ever leaving the ground;  a full-body aerobic workout without pounding pavement. And it’s a way to simply feel free. During the summer months, I try to knock off a cool 20 km or more every other day, weather-permitting.

About ten years ago I started to race and my competitive skating credentials now include everything from 10 km sprints to full marathons. I know I will probably never actually WIN anything, ever, but the thrill of the chase and the chance to push myself to my physical and psychological limits are what keep me coming back for more. It’s the speed that is particularly intoxicating.

My injury list is mostly harmless – scrapes, shredded skin, bruises and strained joints. Lesson number one was learned early: the street usually wins whatever fight you try to pick with it. There’s been the one or the other collapse due to exhaustion. And I’ve only had to be whisked away by ambulance once – with a season-ending triple compound fracture that required two surgeries, a titanium plate and seven screws to fix. (You should have seen the other guy… yeah, he was fine.)

This year, barring anything serious, I will hopefully peak on the final weekend in September at the Berlin Marathon – a European classic, and one of the five World Marathon Majors. In addition to the 40,000 ascetic sadomasochists who sign up to actually run the 42.195 kilometers through Germany’s capital, about 9,000 slightly more sane skaters also have the opportunity to compete. Our motivation? Fame, fortune, bananas and free beer at the finish line.

Evelynn's skate, Berlin, 2008

It will be my sixth full marathon in Berlin, a city that embraces athletes from wherever they hail and puts on a great show. I have simply not found a better-organized, cooler race, or more appreciative and enthusiastic spectators, anywhere.

As an over-40 amateur, I can only dream of reaching the finish in under an hour and a half.  The professional (female) athletes, 20 years younger than me, complete the circuit in about an hour and 15 minutes. My goal this year is a pretty respectable 1:45:00. In 2008 I came close, missing that mark by a mere 2 minutes. (Or, if you would rather have an even more heartbreaking statistic: 3.5 seconds per kilometer.) The days of a personal best (1:42:32) are probably over – I was still a spring chicken thirty-something the last time I set one of those. But, you know, impossible is nothing, right?

65 days to go. I’ll keep you posted.


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