Origins of the Blog Name.

A lot of you reading this blog may wonder where I came up with the name Collarbone Chronicles. Well it just so happens to be an interesting story...

It was my second day in Steamboat Springs. The day was filled with orientation activities and events such as class picking and college life presentations. After a long day of that, there was a scheduled school event where students could go to the local Strawberry Hot Springs (which is awesome by the way) for free to relax. My friends Matt, Shane, and I attended. After hanging out for awhile and meeting some new people, we headed back. On the car ride back we were talking about what we should do for the rest of the night and little did I know that I would have a very busy night ahead of me.

Nobody really had any suggestions, considering we were all new to the city, until I had the brilliant idea of, "Hey, let's go longboarding."

Matt had a longboard of his own, Shane used my skateboard since he didn't really ride, and my roommate Joe came along on his rollerblades. It was already dark out, but the road we were going to ride on, Bob Adams Dr., has lights down it. So we grabbed our stuff and headed outside.

In the parking lot, Matt, Shane, and I skated around while Joe put on his rollerblades, sort of as a warm up, which, as it turns out, didn't do me much good. Once Joe was set we headed out from the parking lot down the small road that leads from the dorm parking lot to Bob Adams Dr. Once we reached the end, we turned the U-turn to head downhill. I was in front and already had a good amount of speed, but just for kicks, I decided to add a few pushes to it.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with Bob Adams Dr., it's pretty gnarly. If you're leaving the dorms to head downhill to main street, the first curve of the rode is pretty sharp, coupled with a the hill being pretty steep. I've been longboarding for a while, but being from Minnesota, I soon realized I had no idea what real hills were.

My speed was increasing as I started in to the turn. Another great things about Bob Adams Dr. is that as the turn gets sharper, the road steeper. I was gaining speed like mad while trying to hold a sharp toeside turn. For those of you that don't longboard, toeside turns are quite a bit tougher than heelside. As I tried to hold this turn, I realized I was curving into the oncoming lane of traffic, which was the first bad sign. Thankfully, there were no cars coming, but as I kept heading downhill, I noticed I was coming up on quite the sizeable crack or mini pothole if you will. My previous longboarding experiences have taught me that cracks that big are not cool.

I realized as I was heading straight for it, that I couldn't turn sharp enough on my toes to dodge it. This left me with two options, altough the smarter one of course didn't come to mind, unitl after the accident. The better choice that I now see was I could have pretty much just sat down and taken the road rash. As bad as that might sound, it was better than the outcome of the alternative. The choice I went with, was to veer off on my heelside and try to run to a stop in the tall grass on the side of the road. Not good.

Getting back to being from Minnesota, I really don't know what real hills are, as well as I don't really know what fast on a longboard is. Around my house back in the MN, I can usually just hop off and run to stop if I get into trouble. Not in Colorado. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I tumbled. There was no couple steps, then fall, it was straight flippage. And by now you've probably guessed what body part slammed right into the ground; my collarbone.

I landed straight on my left shoulder which led into a pretty quick summersalt. I did not hit my head on the ground, which I have no idea how it happened but I am very thankful for. I immediately stood up and tried to breathe since I had the wind knocked out of me. On top of that I was in a pretty dizzy state from the tumble and the insane amount of adreline rushing through me.

Matt came cruising by, just fine of course, and up into the parking lot of Bristol Hall. To be completely honest, I really don't remember where Shane and Joe came from, but I remember them coming over to me too. Matt asked me, "Dude, what happened?" and as best as I could with still little oxygen I replied, "Dude, I bit it." I hear Shane from a little ways away, "Yo, did he fall?" and I proceeded to nod and gasp, "Yep."

Believe it or not, what actually hurt the worst was my hand, which now had many small rocks embedded in it. It wasn't until a little later that I realized my shoulder was a little sore and I tried to lift my arm and failed. I said to the guys, "You guys I can't lift my arm at all." and continued to try and do so. After a few tries I felt my shoulder and realized my collarbone felt like it was sticking out a lot more than usual. "Does that look right?" I franically asked Matt, Shane, and Joe, "I don't think it's supposed to be like!"

"I don't know dude, we should go find an RA or something." Matt replied. We walked back up to the dorms after grabbing my longboard and luckily found an RA at the front desk, who initially thought I was kidding when I came up to her and said, "So I think I broke my collarbone." She asked if I wanted an ice pack which at first I didn't because the adrenline hadn't yet worn off and the pain really hadn't set in, althouhg after about a minute of sitting down, it definetly did.

A number of passers by asked if I was ok which I half jokingly relpied to, "Nope." A few asked to see my shoulder and when I had confirmation that it was for sure broken I decided it was time to head to the hospital.

Thankfully my parents had come with to Steamboat to see me off on my first year of college and were still in town, so I gave them the call that no parent wants to get and they came and picked me up. We went to the hospital and ended up waiting in the ER for over an hour which was just a great experience for me. When the nurse finally came in and after having to deal with taking off my shirt for the first time ever with a broken collarbone (which is most uncool), she took to get an x-ray of my shoulder and then back to the room to wait for the doctor. When she finally came in with the printed x-rays, it showed that it was most definetly broken and in fact, split in half.

After talking with me about things I'll have to get used to doing, such as being in a sling, sleeping flat on my back for the next month, and having a terrible time in the shower, she proceeded to prescribe me pain pills and clean out my hand. The cleaning of my hand was one of the worst parts of the night. With water constantly running on it, the doctor used some special cleaner fluid, which stung on its own, to dig out the rocks in my hand, which of course made the stinging that much worse. After that wonderful experience at the hospital, I decided to stay at the hotel with my parents, pop some of my freshly prescribed pain pills, and fall asleep before it sank in how rough the first month of college was going to be.

It had been about two months since my little accident and unfortunetly, I'm still dealing with it. After about 6 weeks, I went back to the doctor because it was time to try taking the sling off. Since then, he told me to try moving it more and working it out to try and get the muscles back into shape; however, if after two weeks it was still bothering me, I should go back and see him. Well it had been two weeks and, even though my collarbone was supposed to be all better by now, it was still sore and causing me sharp pain whenever I put weight on it.

Turns out, it's still not healed. The doctor took another x-ray of my shoulder which showed, even though some new bone has formed in the break, there is still a significant space bewteen the bones that still needs to be filled it for it to be 110%. After hearing this awful news, the doctor then told me that I needed to set an appointment for three weeks from now to have it checked again and that if it's not healed by then, I would most likely need surgery. Not cool.

So, I am once again back in the sling by my own choice, trying to do everything possible to avoid surgery, which would completely ruin my snowboarding plans to ride at the season opening of Park City Resort in Utah. This also means that there won't be anymore snowboarding blogs for awhile since my first aventure of the season probably didn't exactly help my healing process. So yea, sorry to sort of leave this blog open ended, but wish me luck and I will definelty keep you updated on the happenings in the world of my recovery. Peace.