Seven Blisters and A Cut

To start this post off, I would like to say that I do not have anywhere close to seven blisters at the moment, nor did I have seven blisters when I got the idea for this post. However, several days after coming up with the title for the post, I went bouldering at Noyes and got no less than four blisters, two on each hand. Yes, that happened.

All of this is an indication that I have returned to rock climbing and other outdoor activities. Adventure is out there. But so is danger. Even with that in mind, a couple weeks ago was not a great week in terms of avoiding personal injury. It started on Saturday during hiking, when I volunteered to help with food prep for lunch. Apparently I cut myself while I was slicing green peppers. It was, however, so minor that 1) there was no blood, and 2) I didn't notice I had a cut on my finger until four or so hours later. That was right after I let a match burn down a little too close to my fingers while we were working on fire building. No harm done, but wouldn't you know it, fire is hot.

A few days later, I went bouldering at Noyes before house dinner (more on that later, because house dinner deserves a post of its own). Besides being completely overhung, the holds on the wall are on the rough side. After traversing the wall a couple times, falling off half a dozen times, and getting a little work done on the Spiderman route, my hands were a little sore, but that’s normal. What wasn't normal were the four blisters that appeared a little later under calluses I already had. Not cool. They healed up really nicely, though, in just a couple days.

To end the week, I peeled some of my skin off when I was peeling a peach for my fruit of the day. Again, no blood, unlike the time I scraped the tip of my knuckle off while peeling an apple to make applesauce in my sixth grade home economics class.

Just to show that even normal, everyday life isn't safe for me, at house dinner two weeks ago, I smashed a fingernail against a plate while I was trying to slice something. How that happened, I don’t even know. But for awhile, I was cut, blistered, and bruised. College is fun!

To end on a more pleasant note for those concerned for my physical safety, here’s a picture of a waterfall at Treman State Park a few miles from Cornell:

[I’m fine, really. My knees aren't even constantly bruised from rock climbing anymore. It’s been over half a year since I last wrote about the perils of climbing, and I've moved on to different forms of injury.]