The Mock Dock

You are an Idiot!  This statement has been made many times in my many years on this celestial orb…but yesterday, February 3rd, 2008, I might have out done myself.  After having made it through nearly 13 months without a broken bone, Holmes made a decision, based on a dare, that tallied broken bones nos. 32 and 33 for my lifetime.  Here is the short version of the story…

Holmes Caymen does not back down from a dare.  Ask any of my colleagues.  So as the Super Bowl drug on, I stepped outside in the freezing winter air to enjoy a few puffs on a fine cigar, when one of my friends, asked if I had ever made any ski runs that involved giant moguls.

“Oh yeah,” I replied with the confidence of anyone who grew up in northern Wisconsin skiing every weekend.

“What is the drop like?”  My fellow conversants querried.  As I pondered the urban equivalent to the 10-15 foot drops that can be found on the side of a mountain landscape, felled by evergreens, snowshoe hares and freshly fallen powder, I realized that the house made for a very nice run, from the upper roof - to the porch roof-to the bushes-to the ground, so I used that as my comparison. 

 ”No one could do that,” my comrades chortled. “”We dare you.”

So it was those three words that caused me to scrounge through a garage until I secured a pair of ill-fitting cross-country skis, totally void of ankle support as only the toes tie in to this style of sky.  As I lace the boots, I trudged up the ladder to the peak some 30 feet in the air and declared my awesomeness.

With the bravado of ‘88 Olympic gymnast, I left the peak, as the braying skis tackled the ice covered shingles, my awesomely developed calf muscles pulsing with perfection.  With a simple jump-turn, I dropped over eave and trough onto the first floor roof protecting the screened in porch from all of Mother Nature’s ills.  As I neared the eave again, I focused on my landing in the prickly bushes below and made another spot-on jump turn leaving the safety of the ice-slick roof to plummet toward the bushes.

Looking on with eyes agape, my challengers were adrift in my rampant testosterone as it course freely through the cul-de-sac impregnating all women and making men cross-dress freely.

As I went for one more turn, I felt my right foot hang in the branches of these fine Arbor Vitae bushes and heard the telling snap of chicken bones.

So as I sit and type this story, nay - this allegory, I leave you all with this one thought.  Cross-country skis are not the right type of ski for slaloming down a 2-story tract home in the suburbs.