Thug Life

Our trip to Joshua Tree ended on a somewhat sour note, as Mat took his first leader fall and it wasn't a very good one. In a strange bit of counter-intuitiveness, the higher you get while rock climbing the safer it is to fall - there are more pieces of protection in, more rope stretch, and less chance that you will hit the ground. Mat unfortunately fell very close to the ground and in fact did hit the deck. Before you worry too much, he is okay, although he managed to cause quite a scene at the Hidden Valley campground on a quiet Tuesday morning. The order of appearance of good Samaritans responding to Mo's yells of "HELP!!!" were other climbers from the campground, Sky the hippie covered in Grateful Dead tattoos (was this the end? I'm coming to your side Jerry!!), the professional, courteous, and light-humored NPS EMT team (dude, is that your Eurovan? Si-ick!!!), and the private ambulance that somebody called in (If you don't ride in my ambulance you will probably die, blah blah blah, natural morphine secreted from the brain, blah blah blah).

Trips to the ER are always quite bizarre, and the Hi-Desert Morongo Basin Hospital Emergency Room was no exception. While waiting multiple hours to be seen by the triage nurse, we made friends with a local tattooed skinhead named Bonehead, who appeared to not really be in any sort of trauma but just there for the social networking, heard a teenage girl wax ecstatically about the $1500 credit she would receive for her newborn child, and witnessed another teenage girl obviously bad-tripping on something, writhing uncontrollably while screaming about a miscarriage and numb hands only to be galloping around greeting doctors with a smile and a handshake one hour later. Upon finally making it out of the waiting room Mat was cared for by a large, also tattooed Mexican nurse named Pete who took his vitals and asked him about his employment history while cracking truly funny jokes all along (Which falls faster - a feather, a bowling ball, or a science teacher? Neither - acceleration is independent of mass, homie!!!) Thank god for personable nurses because the lady who drove 5 staples into his skull and left shin did not deserve a five star bedside manner rating. I guess stapling flesh is serious business after all. (Another one from Pete's standup science routine: Why would an Eskimo never eat a Penguin? Different sides of the globe, homie!!! (There's got to be a better audience for this brilliant material somewhere!!))

All in all, we are counting our blessings and considering ourselves very very lucky. There were a number of things that could have gone wrong to make the situation much worse, and the fact that Mat emerged from another high velocity impact with the ground without a broken bone (see previous bicycle crashes) is a testament to all the milk that his mother fed him as a child or some strange genetic trait of a resilient skeletal system. We have again retreated to the safety of the Sacramento area, and are treating this as an opportunity to slow down and really assess what we want to do for a next step in our lives. Translation: we are watching the 7th series of Survivor (Go Rupert!) while avoiding all of the tough questions floating around in our heads. Is bike touring in a foreign country really safer than rock climbing? How would Mo like a four year Chinese medicine school program? Could we trade our climbing rack for a nice setup of fly fishing gear? Can the Giants really beat the Patriots? How do we catch a stowaway desert mouse potentially living in our van? How does one remove staples from one's head by oneself?

As for the photo - Mat has traded in his wrap-around bandage of gauze for something a bit more fashionable, and has not run into any problems on the Carmichael streets as of yet. We will continue to ponder our next move, and while our plans may have changed, we remain happy that nothing has tarnished the bright joy of being alive.