A Broken Bone, A Healed Mind

As you may or may not know, I am across the pond in Spain. This means that my communication has been more infrequent than my usual paucity. Thus, I will have to indulge everything that has happened from early January until this very second. I understand that it sounds horribly boring, but I am awesome so I will continue. Prego.

I spent a wonderful Christmas break in Colorado with my family; mostly working and snowboarding. We laughed, we sang, we played charades.

Like I said before, I also went snowboarding often. With el niño blowing snow into Colorado with hurricane ferocity, the snow was great. Tourists were kept at bay (in Texas, mostly) by the Denver storms, and the champagne powder was everywhere. I made it up (and down) the slopes seven times, enough to make any boy smile. Here is a picture of my girl friend and I on a perfect blue bird day.

My last day, however, was the best. The snow sprayed my face at every turn and I only met one overall-clad Texan on the slopes. I bounced and carved through perfect turns in and out of the trees with a perma-grin on my face and a twinkle in my eye. Everything that was good in the world was in Winter Park that day. My last run was the highlight; a beautiful tree run along timberline down through the trees, ending finally in a stretch of VW-sized moguls. It was 3:30 at that time, and I called it a day. As I made my way down the final stretch, I could see the parking lot in the distance. I had made it through seven days snowboarding, injury-free. But the angel of darkness, dressed in pink overalls wearing a pigtail, stopped me (but mostly my shoulder) in my tracks. (In other words, I was flying down a “green” trail and caught an edge trying to get out of the way of some girl who was sitting down beneath a small, hidden dropoff, successfully breaking the tip of my clavicle). Here I am, sling and all, sad as can be.

After a day of crying (honestly…I was an emotional rollercoaster…think pregnant woman), I visited the orthopedist. If I had to have surgery, there is no way I could go to Spain. Obviously, the fracture was aligned so that everything will heal on its own in about six weeks.

After the long, arduous trip across the Atlantic, I stayed in Sevilla for one night before heading to Rome with Carine. With a sling in one arm and a backpack in the other, I boarded the Ryanair 747. Rome was incredible in every way—beautiful architecture, delicious food, and every other good thing one could say about a place.

I won’t go into detail about my adventures in Rome entirely because three more pages explaining every unique aspect and element of every church I visited would be about as fun as reading my blog about the kayaks. Just know that I loved Rome, and reciprocally, Rome loved me. Here are some photos from our three full days there:

Next, Carine and I traveled to Athens, where we were greeted by words that looked more like mathematical equations than sentences. After a few extremely funny jokes I made about sigma, alpha, beta, etc., we saw the sites. Athens is not as intrinsically beautiful as Rome, but is nevertheless an incredible city. The acropolis was obviously one of the highlights of the trip.

After another day of history classes, we decided to venture outside of Athens to a city called Naplio. It is a beautiful coastal town about 2.5 hours from Athens. Atop the city lies an enormous Venetian castle, built in the 17^th century to guard from people I think (whaaat?). Anyway, it was a beautiful place, even in the middle of winter:

Now is the end...more to come.